From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:26:02 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >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.   
      
   A graduated income tax would still be legal.  A 5% tax on only the   
   wealthy could be challenged as not fair.  I'm sure the wealthy would   
   not hesitate a minit to bring that case.   
      
   >   
   >>>> 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   
      
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