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.
It’s comical at this point. No way anyone votes for him if he tries to run for president.
As if anyone can remember anything for longer than a week.
You’d be surprised. I thought the same thing about trump 2024. A lot of people only see newsom as a charismatic anti-trump, And don’t actually see or care about his individual decisions or policies. Which, come to think of it, is very similar to how trump made it in.
The truly fucked part of government is the people who you’d want in the position absolutely want no part of the position. Almost everyone in government is in there for the money and the power. If you did manage to get someone in who is altruistic, they would simply be fighting against swarm upon swarm of horrible people, while at the same time refusing to take bribes and make personal deals to be able to advance any form of wealth.
For the most part, we’ve designed our government to only attract self-serving pieces of shit, and the few that aren’t in that camp never make it to the top because of all the other self-serving pieces of shit.
We’re looking at a sack of turds that occasionally does something anti-trump while licking the balls of some other oligarch, vs someone who walks out there talking centrist and campaigns for the right claiming they’re very nice people.
It is entirely possible that the DNC puts him out front instead of AOC, then we’re left with whoever trumps successor is (asuming we ever have actual real elections again), or some democrat right sycophant, or trying to convince everyone in the fucking US to write in a name.
We’re cooked any way the cards fall
Not really cooked any way the cards fall, you as an individual understand that alongside myself. Our knowledge and ability to discuss freely is what will save us. The senate has a good chance soon, we’ll know:
The Democratic candidates for those potential flips:
North Carolina: Roy Cooper
Ohio: Sherrod Brown
Alaska: Mary Peltola
Maine: Troy Jackson
Texas: James Talarico
Iowa: Josh Turek
Kansas: Adam Hamilton
If they let midterms happen without militarizing it and accept the results without fucking with them, we have a chance.
I wish those weren’t ifs
The primaries showed how much pull cable news pundits still have. They just have to tell voters “don’t vote for the policy that helps you and everyone else, the only way to beat republicans is if you imagine a voter who loves republicans dogshit policy and strategically vote for a dem candidate with those policies”