Bernie Sanders wasn’t sweating the details.
At a rally in downtown Los Angeles Monday evening to support the Proposition 40 wealth tax on the Nov. 3 ballot, Sanders did rattle off a bunch of statistics showing the need to curb the power of billionaires. For example, the independent U.S. senator from Vermont and two-time Democratic presidential candidate noted that Elon Musk “now owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households.”
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Enraging stuff. But watching from the swanky Novo theater among an adoring audience, I hoped to hear reasons why I should vote for Proposition 40 and not just against the oligarchy, and responses to serious questions: Would the measure’s one-time 5% tax on California billionaires’ net worth set up the state to fall off a fiscal cliff in a few years? Why shouldn’t the revenue flow to other hard-hit services besides healthcare, education and food assistance?
Neither Sanders, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) nor any other speaker had much to offer people sympathetic to their message but still wary of Proposition 40, but it’s obvious fence sitters weren’t their targets. Rather, Sanders et al. were unashamedly preaching to the choir, hitting anti-establishment notes as part of a larger movement targeting wealth inequality.
The wind is definitely at the anti-billionaire movement’s back, even if it might not be at Proposition 40’s. Polls show the wealth tax lagging behind the two billionaire-backed poison-pill initiatives, Propositions 41 and 42. But surveys also show a growing share of Americans hostile to billionaires and broadly supportive of efforts to place higher taxes on wealthy earners.
Even if Sanders showed no willingness Monday to grapple with the complicating details of Proposition 40, the exuberance of his audience and the broad themes of wealth inequality that excited them indicated a willingness to carry on his battle.
This is someone who has twice lost bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, but hundreds of people were willing to wait for hours outside on a 100-degree day for the chance to hear him speak. Before he took the stage, audience members broke out unprompted in the union chants – “sí, se peude” among them – used in past struggles. They howled with approval when he mentioned his bill in Congress to tax wealth – not just once, but every year.
As for Proposition 40, I left the rally as I had arrived: supportive of the call to claw back some of the wealth and power hoarded by the super-rich, but unsure of whether this measure is a productive way to do it.
Golden State staff
Noted, With Comment
Xavier Becerra on cruise control: The Democratic candidate for governor could live on an island until Election Day and still win, says L.A. Times political columnist George Skelton. It helps that he outperformed Republican Steve Hilton during last week’s CNN debate (their only scheduled matchup before the election), but Skelton says Becerra should try to articulate a vision – “if he has one” – for the California he wants to build.
Sigh. Them again? Yes, California has problems – and the Washington Post editorial board often analyzes them in shallow, unhelpful ways. The latest example is its short editorial bemoaning Becerra constantly tying Hilton to Donald Trump during last week’s debate, ignoring that the CNN moderators’ questions seemed filtered through a national lens.
The freedom to roam, or not: San Luis Obispo Tribune columnist Clive Pinder amusingly compares the ability to walk across other people’s property in England without getting shot to the signs everywhere in California declaring “Private Property. No Trespassing." The difference, he says, is in opposing notions of freedom – the freedom to defend your land here, and the freedom of others to walk across it on the other side of the Atlantic.
Going has gotten rough: Pay toilets for public use were everywhere in California before the state banned them in 1974. Problem was, no money was set aside to keep public restrooms open and clean once their funding source had been removed. Historian Bryant Simon writes in Zócalo Public Square that Starbucks has filled the void since then, and some policymakers now want to reverse the state’s pay-toilet ban.
Paul Thornton
Ballot endorsement scorecard
No, and hell no: The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board says Proposition 4’s reversal of the state’s ban on public campaign financing lacks an effective oversight mechanism and urges a “no” vote. In another endorsement, the Chronicle’s board calls Proposition 38, the immunology research bond measure, “one of the most noxious deposits on California’s political dung heap in years.” That, more or less, matches my assessment of Proposition 38.
A really busy bee: The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, whose members were laid off by the hedge fund-owned McClatchy Media last month, has published a flurry of ballot recommendations recently. It says yes on Propositions 2 (rainy-day fund), 3 (income tax on high earners), 5 (recall election reform) and 45 (environmental review reform), and no on Proposition 43 (two-thirds vote for tax initiatives).
“A big, glorious mess”: In the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann puts Proposition 40 in the historical context of early 20th- century progressive reforms and New Deal programs giving way to the 1970s anti-tax revolt and the Reagan revolution, which set the stage for the current crop of California billionaires arising from Silicon Valley. Lemann casts Proposition 40 as part of a backlash to mega-billionaires’ fundamental disconnection from the rest of society.
Robert Greene
Readers Respond
Jon Regardie
This piece prompted the following response from a reader:
I'm old enough to remember when the City Council met five days a week. Going down to three days does not seem to have improved things.
It seems that some of our councilmembers are always happy to reduce their constituents' power or influence, but never their own.
For example, Katy Yaroslavsky is on record supporting allowing noncitizens to vote but opposing expanding the size of the council.
– Norm Green, Los Angeles
What do you think? Golden State is a public forum. Send your responses for possible publication to forum@golden-state.org.
