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[quote quote=10738]GR, your wealth tax concept is about to get a real-world test. A ballot initiative in California is being proposed by the healthcare workers union. A one-time, 5% tax on California’s 255 billionaires, solely on their wealth over $1 billion. Supporters say it could raise $100 billion and offset looming cuts to Medicaid. Not surprisingly, Gavin Newsom is against it. Newsom’s team is launching a PAC called “Stop the Squeeze,” correctly terming it a “can of worms sliding down a slippery slope (two cliches at once, must be good) by taxing cars, houses, wheelbarrows and everything else.” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is against it for the best reason (I think) stating that “I don’t know that people fully appreciate the vulnerability we face as a state when it comes to our revenue sources.” True that. 1/3rd of CA revenue comes from the Top 1%. The California Campaign to Introduce a First-of-Its-Kind Billionaire’s Tax – WSJ[/quote]
Gavin Newsom opposes California ‘billionaire tax’ as he eyes 2028 White House bid
Knew it. He’s conscious of and concerned about billionaires leaving (a) California and (b) the Democrat party. So Newsom isn’t going to say or do anything to offend the state’s billionaires.
Hollywood ready to back Newsom:
Newsom 2028: Hollywood Donors Line Up Behind Governor’s Expected White House Bid
Do we really want people who make their living doing make-believe choosing our president?
Along those lines, liberal Democrats refer to Trump voters “getting impatient” over inflation.
Trump Vowed to ‘End Inflation’ — His Voters Are Impatient
Well, now. Apparently no Biden voter ever got impatient over his rampant, literally worst-in-two-generations inflation. And all the Lefties denied that rampant spending with no attendant production would lead to inflation. Biden built a bubble that had staying power–inflation is legendarily difficult to tame. Reagan found that out with Carter’s inflation.
Great points. I can get beach time in California for a fraction of the cost of Hawaiian beach time.
Some California resorts suffer the same issues. 33 years ago, we went to Hotel Del Coronado just off San Diego. It was quiet, peaceful, no build-up…really just that great old hotel, all built from interlocking wood. Had a wonderful time. A few years back, my industry held their annual get together in San Diego, and I thought “Great, I’ll revisit the Hotel Del.”
Mistake. Newly-built condos and townhouses surround the hotel, prices have been Disney-fied and there were massive throngs of tourists. I can’t wait to not go back…
…according to the Washington Examiner, Newsom is the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination. They rank the Top 10, and here’s their comments on Newsom:
1. Gavin Newsom
It is early, but Newsom is simply the undisputed front-runner to be the 2028 Democratic Party presidential nominee. Outside of one recent outlier, Newsom holds a commanding lead over his probable rivals in all recent polls, and he is the unquestioned leader of the Democratic Party in the nation’s largest state. And unlike everyone else on the list, it is clear Newsom wants the job and fully intends to run in 2028. He has traveled to all the early presidential primary states for listening tours and constantly asserts himself into national conversations, taking on not just Trump, but also Vice President JD Vance and Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Greg Abbott (R-TX). Newsom is not as young as Ocasio-Cortez or Moore, but at 58, he is decades younger than Biden, and while he is not as natural a social media talent as Ocasio-Cortez, he still gets it. Unlike Gallego, Shapiro, and Beshear, Newsom has never needed to win a Republican vote in his life, and he has a left-wing governing record to prove it. But Newsom does not need any Republican votes to win the Democratic nomination. He only needs to consolidate Democrats, and he already starts with more of them than anyone else. With unmatched name recognition, a massive donor network, a polished national media presence, and the implicit backing of the party’s most powerful coastal institutions, Newsom begins this race not just as a contender, but as the prohibitive favorite.Here’s the remaining nine in order:2. AOC. Youngest by a decade at 39. Has mastered social media. Has an national institutional support base.3. Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland4. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona5. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Ranked his poorly because he’s a centrist, I kid thee not, and out of touch with the Progressives.6. Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. See Shapiro. Too white, too male, too out of touch with Progressives and has prioritized jobs and growth over carbon reduction, the bastid.
7. Sen. Chris Murphy of CT. Almost the perfect Progressive with daily TikTok savvy, Trump resister, and separated from the mother of his two children.8. Pete Buttigieg. Yeah, this low. Controls the rich, single, white women vote, .but no other Dem constituency likes him. 0% support among black voters.9. Gov. JB Pritzker. Worth $4 billion. Not moderate, not business-friendly, straight progressive10. Kamala Harris. Only Presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison and Richard Nixon lost their first presidential general election and won their second. Vapid, self-serving, no vision for the country. Pass.We complain about asset inflation and home affordability but ignore the risks in asset ownership. Homes aren’t easy to maintain, and the stock market goes down, spectacularly at times.
In 2007, I received a call from a friend of mine who was an SVP at Countrywide, the residential lender. We live four blocks apart in a very nice, upscale neighborhood. He said, “Mick, if you intend to sell your residence at any point during the next three years, do it today. I mean, literally, today.”
I asked why and he said “You know that house on the corner of X and Y, right between our two houses? It is owned by a house painter.” I said “You mean a painting contractor right? A guy with thirty painters?” He said “No…I mean a house painter. And not only does he own that house, he owns a condo in Mt. View and a ranch in Gridley.”
I couldn’t believe it, said so, and he said “Have you heard of liar loans?” I said “sure, low document loans, basically you state your income. Nobody wants them because you need 20% down, a 740 FICO and you pay two hundred basis points over market.” He replied “That’s the way it used to be. What if I were to tell you that you only need 5% down and you could borrow 3% of that? And you need just a 640 FICO and the loan was at market rate?”
I was shocked. “But that would be a disas–” and he let it sink in. I had seven figures of equity in my house. Lost all of it in the ensuing two years. After my convo with my friend, I begged Mrs. Mick to sell, she wouldn’t hear of it. Made it back, but still…
Laurie sounds awful, but in a DEI awful way.
You got that right. But as awful as she sounds, the real capper is her stance on taxes. She’s at the age and level where her compensation is substantial, both in gross income terms and in total compensation, per transparentcalifornia.com, she has averaged $300k annually for the last three years.
Her position on taxes is that she shouldn’t have to pay them because she doesn’t like how they are being used (remember, she’s former U. S. Army). Difficult to walk that Socialist/Republican line, I imagine.
Academics, including professors at the Stanford University School of Education (SUSE), have done a lot to damage the college readiness of American kids (particularly Californians).
I am very close to a SUSE (pronounced “Suzy”) PhD who is a diehard, committed Socialist and has so many personal challenges that she just can’t understand normal thinking. Quite literally the worst person I have ever met face to face, described in this Substack, if you are interested:
I wouldn’t leave my kids alone with her for five minutes. For quite some time, she was in charge of selecting books for secondary schools in a very large public school district.
Frankly, I’m not sure how she got into SUSE. She didn’t graduate from high school, scored on the 48th percentile on the math portion of the CBEST. She did undergrad work at a midlevel UC, has a correspondence Master’s from some school in Vermont, but she’s a lesbian registered Democrat civil servant (check, check aaaaand check), so after an interview with the department chair, she was accepted and started to wreak havoc molding young minds. Happily, she’s near retirement age.
Hard to see him win. Not a very likeable guy, as his failed presidential run indicated. It’s a very crowded field of experienced Democratic politicians with existing and deep support bases, his initial polling numbers are very poor (1% to 3%), he’s never held elective office, he’s a billionaire trying to buy a job supervising actual humans, voter fatigue with celebrity candidates, he has no governmental track record, and he has three real problems:
- At best, his messages overlap those of the other candidates.
- His key strong points (environment, climate, corporate justice) are secondary concerns in California right now. Most Californians are interested in a strong economy, low inflation, more affordable lives, public safety, low-cost energy, good schools and reduced homelessness. There’s no real reason to vote for him.
- He needs to build a support team from scratch when other experienced staff has already committed to other candidates.
We have normalized and protected incompetence. We stopped championing excellence and became skeptical of it as an elitist thing. We have cultivated a culture of entitlement that drives achievement lower and reward expectation higher. We have allowed people to bolster their profiles via grievance vs via competence. We have trained a generation in playing the DEI game, to the point of creating a trans identification fad that is only just now slowing down. In short, we have taken a community minded, Protestant work-ethic based, patriotic culture and sold it out for consumerism and stupidity. But it’s not my fault because I am oppressed and traumatized by the way you guys look at me.
AI is only going to accelerate that phenomenon. It pretends to be additive, but in reality, it is not particularly groundbreaking. It aggregates existing data quickly without much in the way of discerning that which is needed. AI does not, cannot, will not, invent, create, design or discover anything really critical. It can only summarize what has gone on before, and what’s worse, it will invent that which is not there. It hallucinates.
Dems will continue to run against Trump in the foreseeable future. It’s all they have.
My worry is that they will latch onto “Tax the Rich” as their core focal point. It was the only talking point that moved the needle for Harris, and she abandoned it — my guess is in response to the billionaires who funded her campaign.
Momdani and AOC don’t have those concerns, nor does Sanders. If they figure out that robbing Peter to pay Paul is their sole resonant talking point, they will ride the politics of envy until they drop.
“I’ve raised at least $50 million for the left,” recalls Evan Barker at The Free Press, but “on Tuesday, I voted for Donald Trump.”
How my party lost me, Dems must return to normalcy and other commentary | New York Post
But “the final straw was Oprah Winfrey’s tone-deaf speech” at the Dem convention: “A larger than life Hollywood billionaire” who “said nothing that spoke to the Americans who had once constituted the Democratic base.”
So, the incredible advantages for existing homeowners include:
- Property values may drop.
- Much taller, denser buildings than today with loss of views, sunlight and privacy and avoidance of setbacks, step-backs and open-space rules.
- Much weaker local control and neighborhood influence.
- No public approval process, no subjective design review, no broad discretionary decision, CEQA is bypassed, as is CEQA lawsuits.
- Single family homes are protected by anti-displacement rules, but usually for rent-controlled multifamily housing. It doesn’t protect single family homes or duplexes not under rent control.
- Density increase will be dramatic. Bill does not allow for added funding for parking, roads, schools, parks, sewers, water, policing or emergency services, or mitigation for parking, traffic congestion, noise or neighborhood services.
- Cities are explicitly restricted from imposing additional fees or inclusionary requirements because a project uses this law.
- So you’ll get more congestion, tougher parking crowding in schools, crowding in public facilities.
- Parking pressure that spills over into adjacent neighborhoods. I have that little happy, happy, joy-joy right now. Increased competition for curb parking, more circulation, more park and ride behavior.
- It allows cities to exclude some sites through a transit-oriented development alternative plan. So. some neighborhoods will become “dumping grounds” for density.
- It allows transit agencies to override local zoning on their own land.
- Very complex interaction of CA TOD rules, Local TOD alternative plans, MPO-created TOD maps with “rebuttal presumption of validity”, HCD oversight and potential attorney general enforcement.
- Potential for gentrification or other demographic shifts.
- Does not guarantee shadow studies, sun access protections, light or noise pollution abatement.
- Somewhat ironically, more traffic and more congestion. More service trucks, more late-night activity, more noise, more rooftop decks, less backyard privacy.
- Greater fire and safety risks.
- Homeowners can’t “opt out” through democracy, even if a majority of local voters wish to exempt themselves.
- Delayed/inevitable changes in unincorporated county areas.
- This is to affect all light rail stops, train stops, intersections of bus stops, major bus stops.
- Best bonus of all, property taxes — might increase. Awesome.
Senate Bill 79 – known as the Abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act – supersedes local zoning rules to allow developers to create more housing around transit hubs. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law.
It takes effect on July 1, 2026. It affects the counties of Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside. All the high-density counties.
Why is this happening? Matt Lewwis, a spokesperson for California YIMBY (one of SB79’s sponsors) says “If your home is close to a transit stop, you’re getting exclusive access to a publicly funded amenity that needs to be accessible to more people,” he said. “The only way to get that access is building more houses by transit stops.” In other words, you don’t have any say and the fact that you were there first is literally immaterial.
SB79 author Scott Wiener says his bill favors people over buildings when you prefer low zoning density. You’re basically racist if you’re against his bill.
Los Angeles desperately needs new housing. So why are its politicians still fighting SB79?
