They are spending a goddamn million dollars a day to convince you that a tax on billionaires is a tax on you.
Read it again. That’s the whole scam. Proposition 40 is a one-time 5% tax on California’s billionaires. Only billionaires. The money mostly funds healthcare — the union that wrote it says it preserves coverage for 3.4 million Californians — plus some education and food assistance. Not your paycheck. Not your small business. Billionaires.
So the billionaires raised $340 million to kill it. Sergey Brin alone put in at least $102 million. Eric Schmidt threw in more than $42 million. Peter Thiel, Tony Xu, Patrick Collison, Chris Larsen — Silicon Valley writing checks into one Super PAC apparatus. Since July the three anti-wealth-tax committees have pulled in more than $297.8 million. The yes campaign has $33 million, nearly all of it from one healthcare union.
You know what a million a day buys? Ads. Robotexts. Mailers. A doctor in a lab coat telling you the tax won’t improve healthcare. Firefighters, carpenters, teachers — hired goddamn costumes, every one of them paid out of the same billionaire wallet. Spanish-language pieces telling Latino voters it’s “a good idea, poorly executed.” And the punchline ad, warning the measure would “expose all Californians to higher taxes” — which is a flat-out lie, because the measure doesn’t touch Californians. It touches billionaires. That is the entire point of it.
They even bought backup. Two more measures on the same ballot, Props 41 and 42, funded by the same money, rigged so that if either one outscores Prop 40 the billionaire tax dies even if voters pass it. That’s not a debate. That’s a buyer slipping a poison pill into the merchandise so nobody gets served.
And through all of it, not one ad says the word billionaire. It’s “doctors, teachers, small businesses, working families.” It’s “an everyone tax.” They spent $340 million to make you believe you’re the one getting taxed, when the only person getting taxed is the guy cutting the check for the ad telling you that.
Somebody on the yes side asked the only question that matters — how much is enough? The donors’ answer, bought and paid for: all of it, and your healthcare in the bargain.
They won’t pay 5% one time. They’ll pay $340 million to never pay it, then hand you the bill for the confusion and call it democracy. Eat shit. Take the lab coat off before you rob the sick, you sanctimonious fucks.
Source story: Tech billionaires raise $340M to defeat California Prop 40 wealth tax.