Gavin Newsom leaves no doubt: He's with the billionaires

Hot Take

Over the past year it has been hard to tell if Gavin Newsom was governing California with one eye on his potential presidential campaign funders. His recent endorsement of Proposition 42 suggests he has both eyes on them.

The Nov. 3 ballot measure is one of the most flagrant examples of the rich hijacking California’s citizen-initiative process for their own ends. It would ban the state from imposing most taxes on unrealized wealth and, as explained by Mariel Garza, exists solely to nullify Proposition 40, the billionaire tax that Newsom has vocally opposed from its inception.

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Newsom’s hostility to the wealth tax isn’t unreasonable: Proposition 40 is structurally flawed, and you can ask Californians to reject it without putting yourself in the billionaires’ ideological corner (or, at least I think you can).

But supporting Proposition 42 is fundamentally different. It leaves little doubt that Newsom is throwing in with California’s billionaire class instead of just arguing against a badly drafted if well-intentioned wealth tax.

Tech billionaires are spending $1 million per day to defeat Proposition 40, including pushing this and another poison-pill measure, Proposition 41, that would nullify the billionaire tax if it passes with more votes.

Proposition 42 is particularly dishonest because it is being advertised by its backers as protecting the pensions and 401(k)s of cops, firefighters and whatever other affinity group might tug at the heartstrings. No one has ever seriously tried to tax the retirement savings of working people in California. If you’re going to enact a ban on that, you might as well also outlaw unlocked jails or wingless airplanes.

What is unmistakably real is the growing movement to claw back some of the resources hoarded by the super-rich, and Proposition 42 would make future wealth taxes impossible to enact in California. Its financial backers include Google co-founder Sergey Brin (net worth: about $250 billion), former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (net worth: about $40 billion) and other tech oligarchs.

Is this really how Newsom wants to be remembered: The governor who prevented future Californians from taking another pass at taxing billionaires and lied to them about whose wealth they were really protecting? That’s enough to make a Proposition 40 skeptic like me consider voting for it.

Noted, With Comment

By Mariel Garza and Paul Thornton

Speaking of Prop. 42 dishonesty: The executive director of Thrive LA, a political advocacy organization funded largely by business leaders, asserts in this disingenuous article published by CALÓ News that the billionaire-backed measure is intended to protect the modest retirement of working people. It’s not.

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A post-MeToo gut check: “Can you imagine, dudes reading this, worrying that men will follow you down your street, to your house, because they like the way your ass looks in leggings?” Nuala Bishari asks in a powerful essay for the Bay Area-based Coyote Media. “Because I have to worry about that. My day-to-day life hasn’t changed at all since the MeToo movement began.”

DSA-LA rising: New Yorker staffer Benjamin Wallace-Wells parachuted into Los Angeles this summer as the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter was mulling whether to endorse progressive Councilmember Nithya Raman for mayor. “Nithya is just not a socialist,” one member of the group’s more ideological caucuses told Wallace-Wells. Another member noted that Raman “was two years behind on her [DSA] dues” before joining the mayor’s race.

Nobody likes Nithya? Last week, in the only televised mayoral debate, Mayor Karen Bass attacked Raman in that classic “Mean Girls” way: None of your colleagues likes you and “they don't find you to be basically honest.” Ouch. Journalist Jim Newtown explored the council dynamic further in L.A. Material this week.

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