cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/45483
The coalition behind a plan to tax California billionaires on Monday announced it's reached a major milestone in its efforts to get its proposed wealth tax on ballots this fall.
The California Billionaire Tax coalition revealed it has now filed more than 1.5 million signatures, or nearly twice the 875,000 signatures required to make the California Billionaire Tax Act an official state ballot initiative.
The proposed tax, which has drawn opposition from Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and support from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), will hit the state's billionaires with a one-time 5% wealth tax that proponents say will be used to fund local hospitals, food aid, and public education.
Mayra Castañeda, an ultrasound technologist and a member of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which proposed the ballot initiative, said that the tax was essential to preserve quality of healthcare in California.
"When funding is cut, it brings a world of pain," said Castañeda**.** "It means longer ER waits, fewer healthcare workers, rural hospitals shutting down, delayed care, and lives lost that could have been saved. It's clear that most Californians and most billionaires recognize how reasonable and necessary this proposal is—both to keep emergency rooms open and to save California businesses from closing."
Jared Hamil, a member of Teamsters Local 396, said gathering more than 1.5 million signatures in favor of the tax means "we are one step closer to the California we deserve."
"We deserve to be able to afford to see a doctor when we’re sick," Hamil emphasized. "We deserve to know our local hospital will be open and ready to treat you in an emergency. In a nation as rich as ours, that’s the least we deserve."
A poll of California voters conducted last month by the University of California, Berkeley found that the proposed billionaire tax is broadly popular, with support outweighing opposition by a roughly two-to-one ratio.
An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that the tax will raise $100 billion in revenue over the next five years, which would be enough to fill the hole in California's state budget caused by the Republican-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that takes an ax to spending on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
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And children wouldn't be locked in cages, and random people wouldn't be sent to random countries, and probably the transfer of wealth to billionaires would have been slowed to the point it would have been possible to stop it. Epstein would have probably been investigated, and the child victims would have had an opportunity for justice. The people of Cuba's life would probably be improved and we would probably be making strides on international climate pacts. We wouldn't have accepted a foreign airbase in the Midwest, and the people of Ukraine would have had enough support to actually be doing more pushback against Russia.
Less bad is better than perfect and it is a position of privilege to be able to minimize how much better Harris would have been.
Obama locked children in cages, deported more people than Trump's first term, and bailed out the perpetrators of the '08 financial crisis. Biden had full access to the Epstein files and sat on them. Biden also did not roll back the extra sanctions that Trump placed on Cuba in his first term. Not sure why having a foreign airbase in the Midwest is bad, since we have hundreds of military bases around the world. Also not sure how funneling money into a proxy war against Russia is good for the citizens of the US.
The Democrats are not "less bad." They are the other side of the coin of capitalist politics. They are the ratchet in the Overton Window shift.