From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 2/12/2026 1:35 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   > On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:06:13 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 2/11/2026 12:20 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>> February 11, 2026   
   >>>   
   >>> Class war is the future of American politics   
   >>> By David Wallace-Wells   
   >>>   
   >>> The San Francisco Bay Area is home to at least one-third of the value   
   >>> of the entire U.S. stock market. Late last year, you couldn’t escape a   
   >>> chilling billboard campaign, meant to be cheeky, from an artificial   
   >>> intelligence start-up: “Stop Hiring Humans.” And on Saturday, somebody   
   >>> tried to AstroTurf a trollish Billionaires March through the city in   
   >>> defense of Silicon Valley’s 21st-century robber barons. Only a few   
   >>> dozen people showed up, heckled along the way by passers-by.   
   >>> The billionaires themselves also seem to be on the move. In recent   
   >>> months, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have all purchased   
   >>> homes outside California, potentially bringing their hundreds of   
   >>> billions of dollars with them. Others have spent the past few months   
   >>> raging about the injustice of the state’s new politics of class   
   >>> warfare.   
   >>>   
   >>> Why? A proposal — supported by the local congressman Ro Khanna but not   
   >>> the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and currently floating in limbo as   
   >>> a potential ballot initiative tentatively scheduled for the fall —   
   >>> that would impose a one-time 5 percent wealth tax on the state’s   
   >>> billionaires, whose wealth has soared since the pandemic.   
   >>>   
   >> This makes sense - California faces a projected budget deficit for the   
   >> 2026-27 fiscal year, with estimates ranging from a $2.9 billion shortfall.   
   >>   
   >> However, California Governor Gavin Newsom is not in favor of the   
   >> proposed California wealth tax. Why?   
   >>   
   >> It could damage the state's economy, drive away top earners, and reduce   
   >> funding for public services by reducing overall tax investments.   
   >>   
   >> He has consistently opposed such measures, stating years ago that wealth   
   >> tax proposals were "going nowhere in California".   
   >   
   > A citizen's ballot initiative might change his mind.   
   >   
   Apparently, the Governor is not in favor of special taxes for wealthy   
   people, to pay off the state deficit. In the US, it would probably be   
   unconstitutional. Everyone is equal under the law. It's in the US   
   Constitution.   
   <   
      
   >>> This isn’t exactly pitchforks in the streets, the nightmare   
   >>> entertained by every generation of aristocrats and oligarchs as a   
   >>> supremely flattering form of status paranoia. But about the symbolism,   
   >>> at least, the horrified billionaires and would-be billionaires are   
   >>> basically right. There has never been a tax of this kind so seriously   
   >>> considered in the United States before, and the policy would mark a   
   >>> genuinely new era of the politics of extreme wealth in this country.   
   >>> Or is that new era already here? Politicians now casually invoke “the   
   >>> Epstein class” and more routinely name-check affordability than they   
   >>> ever campaigned on its close cousin inequality. Prominent plutocrats   
   >>> talk much more openly about their right to great fortunes and their   
   >>> hostility toward oversight and interference from the government, and   
   >>> leftists talk more openly about their hostility toward extreme wealth.   
   >>> Last year was marked by class-warfare bookends: In January, as the   
   >>> tech right joined the president’s MAGA army for his inauguration in   
   >>> Washington, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man was handed close to   
   >>> unilateral control of the machinery of government, partly as a   
   >>> thank-you for political contributions of nearly $300 million. And in   
   >>> November a democratic socialist was elected mayor of the world’s   
   >>> financial capital, relying on public matching funds against the many   
   >>> millions spent opposing him and almost universal hostility from the   
   >>> banking class.   
   >>>   
   >>> One big question is whether this backlash will go beyond lip service —   
   >>> whether the country’s partisan coalitions, which have seemed so   
   >>> unshakable in the time of President Trump, will be reshaped by   
   >>> antagonism for billionaires, and the response of those billionaires,   
   >>> as the sunset of Trump’s long reign comes slowly into view.   
   >>> “Masks off — that’s the right way to put it,” says Gabriel Zucman,   
   an   
   >>> economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has helped   
   >>> craft wealth-tax proposals like the one in California and similar ones   
   >>> being considered internationally.   
   >>>   
   >>> One year in, Trump’s second term is transparently and by many orders   
   >>> of magnitude the most brazenly corrupt administration in American   
   >>> history, with crypto meme coins and the president’s personal lawsuit   
   >>> against his own I.R.S. The outward deference of tech oligarchs to   
   >>> Trump seems to have outlasted the so-called vibe shift of young, Black   
   >>> and brown voters, many of whom have since abandoned him. And the   
   >>> billionaires’ apparent comfort with transactional, acquisitive MAGA   
   >>> politics seems to illustrate what Khanna — who represents parts of the   
   >>> Bay Area and many of those billionaires — has called Silicon Valley’s   
   >>> broken social contract.   
   >>>   
   >>> Musk’s purchase of Twitter more than three years ago looks even more   
   >>> politically consequential both in retrospect and because of how widely   
   >>> it is now being imitated by others who share his desire to shape the   
   >>> country’s information diet from above. Larry Ellison’s Oracle now   
   >>> holds an ownership stake in TikTok, and his son, David, owns CBS News   
   >>> and is vying for control of CNN. Jeff Bezos just neutered what was   
   >>> either the country’s second- or third-most-important newspaper, about   
   >>> a year after he took control of its editorial page and steered it   
   >>> unmistakably to the right.   
   >>>   
   >>> Then there is the flood of scandal contained in the recent release of   
   >>> files related to the Epstein investigation. So far they have failed to   
   >>> land any prominent American in obvious criminal jeopardy, but they fit   
   >>> neatly into a noxious vision of elite impunity and entitlement. “We   
   >>> were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans,” Senator Jon   
   >>> Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, said in a speech last weekend. “But this   
   >>> is a government of, by and for the ultrarich. It is the wealthiest   
   >>> cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class, ruling our country.”   
   >>> That is all prologue, of a kind. Up ahead looms the prospect of   
   >>> radical social and economic transformation at the hands of A.I., whose   
      
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