Gavin Newsom sells out healthcare to protect billionaires

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·

Governor Gavin Newsom joins tech billionaires to crush Proposition 40, sacrificing healthcare for millions of working families to fund his own presidential ambitions.

A treehouse summit for the untouchables

We learned long ago that the very rich do not live in the world the rest of us inhabit. While working families in Flint and Fresno count every grocery bill and pray the heat stays on, our ruling class gathers in Silicon Valley treehouses to hatch plans for our collective ruin. Last winter, Google co-founder Sergey Brin reportedly confronted California Governor Gavin Newsom in a treehouse at tech investor Chris Larsen’s holiday party. The grievance was not a collapsing public school or lead in the water. It was Proposition 40.

Prop 40 is a modest, one-time tax on the overall wealth of California's approximately 200 billionaires. It is designed to backfill federal budget cuts and rescue Medicaid, the health insurance lifeline for nearly 15 million Californians. But according to KQED, Governor Newsom is actively campaigning against the measure. He claims it will chase wealthy entrepreneurs away, all while positioning himself for a presidential run. As SEIU-UHW West president Dave Regan put it, Newsom is acting like a politician with a campaign problem, not a governor with a healthcare problem. During the Financial Crisis of 2008, the ultra-wealthy risked the system for profit while ordinary people bore the cost. Today, the system rushes to protect the oligarchs who broke it while leaving the vulnerable to rot.

The multi-million-dollar defense of hoarding

The billionaires are not leaving anything to chance. Sergey Brin has funneled money into political organizations to block the wealth tax, according to BBC reporting. Chris Larsen has chipped in to defeat the measure. Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg secured a special stock deal from his own board. He crafted a new non-voting Class C share structure through a Form 8-K filing to insulate personal wealth from potential tax liabilities. These men treat civic obligation like a software bug to be patched out. Governor Newsom bends the knee to these donors, proving that when the billionaire class demands fealty, the centrist political machine delivers every single time.

A democracy carved up by the donor class

We are told by center-left architects like Third Way that a wealth tax is simply not electable. They insist that we must appease the people who own the machinery of our economy. The ballot measure is modest, but the terror it strikes in the hearts of the elite reveals the fragility of their oligarchy. If we let Newsom and his billionaire patrons defeat Proposition 40, we are telling every future generation that their health, their homes, and their survival are worth less than the tax bracket of a Google founder. We must pass the wealth tax, break the power of the donor class, and force these modern monarchs to pay their debts.

Sources

  1. KQED: The Political Calculus Behind Newsom’s Opposition to California’s Billionaire Tax
  2. BBC: Are California voters about to impose 'world's first' tax on billionaires?
  3. The Mendocino Voice: Letter to the Editor: Prop 40 will be coming for you
  4. TechCrunch: Billionaire Palmer Luckey isn’t leaving California over the wealth tax