Not only has Gov. Gavin Newsom vocally opposed the proposed California billionaire tax, but he also wants to prevent the state from ever passing a wealth tax in the future.
On Friday he endorsed Proposition 42, a ballot measure that would cancel out Proposition 40, the proposed billionaire tax. Prop. 42 would prohibit retroactive taxes like the one-time 5% tax on assets that would apply to any billionaire who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026 if Prop. 40 passes.
But Prop. 42, funded and placed on the ballot by billionaire and Google co-founder Sergey Brin to defeat the billionaire tax, also would go further, by banning any new taxes on personal property.
That includes pensions and 401K accounts before retirees start drawing retirement income from them. It also includes other investments, financial assets, business holdings, art collections and all other forms of personal wealth that would be affected by the billionaire tax or any future wealth tax.
Newsom’s decision to support Prop. 42 runs counter to his own Democratic Party and some labor unions. It also aligns him with some of the wealthy tech donors with whom he’s maintained longstanding relationships dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.
Ahh yes, a third party with absolutely no support in the house. They’d get so much done, even in the 5% chance they actually get elected because the system is rigged for two parties.
Don’t get me wrong. Would love a mamdani or even El sayed (sorry if it’s misspelled, going off of memory) to be placed all over every part of our government. More AOC’s and Sanders’. But we need to make the best short term option, not just help guarantee the win of the fascists by withholding votes or put them on a third party with no chance of winning. We’re not ending this shit hole situation in a single election, so better to make progressive change than let the atrocities continue with full support from the entire government.
This has been the argument for literally 30 years.
Yes, you’re not fixing this in a single election. So giving up all power by agreeing to vote for a supposed “lesser evil” is giving up the future elections as well as this one - because the centrists don’t even win.
The reason to vote socialist when you lose the primary is not that third parties will win - the system does give a massive advantage to D or R candidates. It’s to record that the centrist Democrats left votes on the table, and exactly how many they did.
Yes, I totally get this, but Harris would have been better than Trump. And if the public put the same effort and pressure on her that they’re putting on trump, it might have actually made some difference. Everything is conjecture though, because it didn’t happen that way.
I hope there’s enough socialist party support in the 2028 primaries to make a difference. If there’s a good candidate, and they get enough of the vote, I’ll probably swing that way. Things are so bad right now, that it may end up swinging public sentiment enough.
How do you propose to put “effort and pressue” on elected officials if you’re not even willing to deny them your vote?
Remember how everyone was talking about how they were going to push Biden left after 2020? It’s nonsense - your leverage is greatest BEFORE someone is elected, not after.
Which is how we’ve gotten here. Hundreds of thousands of additional people projected to die because of policies enacted by the current administration (usaid), the absolute silence from trump and his goons on gaza (yes I know Harris also supports Israel, but she seemed like she’d at least attempt to listen to us, and isn’t literally buddy buddy with bibi)
No, she didn’t. Her own internal polling showed that her support for the Gaza genocide could lose her the election. . . .and she continued it.
The people involved basically asked her just to lie to them . . . not even to change policy, but pretend she would. That was too much. The only response was “I’m speaking”
We need to stop negotiating against ourselves.