SB 51: the California politics thread

What's up this year? Lots!

- The housing crisis, Prop 10 and SB 827 (RIP (for now))
- Prop 5 (and the hope of a split roll measure in a couple of years?!)
- Prop 6 (lol this is going to lose I hope)
- When did Gavin Newsom disappoint you first?
- Feinstein vs De Leon (lol) and the state democratic party
- The state republican party (lol)
- Ballot Measure C in SF (this one seems nuts!)
- What is the deal with all the ballot measures, isn't that what we pay these people for?
- high speed rail (lol)
- single payer (lol)

Let's talk about it!

someone explain SF measure C to me? is it doomed now breed, weiner, etc. are against it?

re: ballot measure 6, is apparently a lost cause at this point, ha, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-gas-tax-repeal-campaign-cash-20180930-story.html. but prop 10 is not polling well either (and is kind of a mess legislatively as i understand it): https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article219033985.html.

LA measure B (city bank) is cool btw, and the LA times sucks for opposing it.

I have no idea what's going to happen to measure C but I hope it passes. The split on the Dem side (Pelosi and various supervisors for it, bu Breed/Weiner/others against it) is kind of weird but idk how many voters really take their marching orders from Breed and Weiner tbh. Whereas everyone I know thinks bajillionaire companies paying more to house the people they've misplaced is a no-brainer.

uh wtf at the DST prop?

I'm really behind the times, yall are going to have to hold my hand as I fill out my ballot. The only ones that seem clear cut to me on first blush are 6 (NO) and 10 (YES).

agreed on 6 and 10.

the DST prop changes nothing but it gives the legislature the right to consider and in principle make changes. DST kills a few people people every march. vote yes IMO on that one.

the bond measures (1-4) are all yeses for me.

prop 5 extends the infamous prop 13 (i.e. restricts localities ability to fund education by restricting their ability to tax massive real estate wealth). you could make the case that extends it to be fairer, but any extension of prop 13 makes the task of removing it politically tougher. so no on 5 IMO.

8 11 and 12 are classic examples of "What is the deal with all the ballot measures, isn't that what we pay these people for?" i guess i'd be yes on 8, no on 11 and yes on 12?

Sent my ballot in the other day. Yeah C has been worth it just to see Benioff and Jack@Twitter complaining at each other in public.

given the financial structure that tech VC encourage (i.e. avoid making a profit), i like that ballot measure C is a tax on revenue, not profits.

caek did you go and get naturalized or somethin

no i can't vote, so i'm telling as many people as possible how to vote instead

that's very generous of you; if I couldn't vote I don't know how I could stand researching ballot measures

anyway not californian so y'all can do whatever as long as you don't come for our water

also lol at gerry brown's veto statement for the 4am last call option

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SB-905-Veto.pdf

"mischief and mayhem".

xp
He's the Frederik B of California!

ha i do live here fwiw

much as I find the Salesforce tower annoying (I work right next to it), I have to say this guy's allright. Or at least better than most.

Benioff and Salesforce have donated to multiple San Francisco Bay Area causes including $250 million to support hospitals, $11 million to help the homeless, and $50 million to public schools. In his talk, he acknowledges that some of city's business leaders haven't been as generous.

"I have gone hat in hand to every high net worth individual in the city," he said. "I know who is willing to give money, and who isn't. I already have the list. I know if we're going to raise money for our schools, the homeless and hospitals, there's a group of people in our city who are willing to give. And there's a group of people in the city who give nothing based on the level of wealth they have. You're either for the kids, the homeless and the hospitals, or you're for yourself."

graded on a curve he is easily the best of the bunch. SFDC has an obscure business relationship with ICE/CBP though.

I have to admit I don't know what Salesforce does.

Aside from putting their name on things around the city and buying Metallica.

Salesforce makes Rolodex-as-a-Service for your entire company.

considering the software they sell is basically a spreadsheet/database combo from the 90s, their research team is also bizarrely good at AI/ML, which is one of their reasons their involvement with CBP is unnerving.

I've used a few Salesforce databases in my job and basically a spreadsheet/database combo from the 90s seems about accurate. tbf there was a huge need/demand for this, so their success is not really much of a surprise.

Also it’s a federal election so off topic but it’s interesting because of the top two primary so: the congressional election where I live is between jimmy Gomez (democrat) and a Green Party guy. I believe this is the only two candidate congressional election involving the greens in the country. Based on the lawn signs and the number of times they’ve canvassed our home, the Green Party guy is going to run away with it. (He won’t. He’ll lose by like 40 points.)

I can't believe I am actually going to vote for Gavin Newsom for the first time in like 20 years? ... like I actually voted against him for Lt. Gov. because I hated him so much as SF Mayor and before that as appointed stooge to Willie Brown on the Board of Supes ...

otoh I'm kinda cool with Jerry Brown as governor, and I kinda hated him as mayor,

and actually a lot of the current bullshit in Oakland can kinda be laid at his feet, though not really. Like I don't think any one person can be held responsible for the incompetence, venality, and obstructionist idiocy that is a lot of Oakland government: the people that don't have to run for office, so they can be pretty much awful and stupid with few repercussions to their careers.

There's some new local version of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers sending out mailers to Oakland addresses arguing against voting for various property tax measures on principle.

Oh yeah, Yes on Measure Y -- extending Just Cause protection to people that live in duplexes and triplexes (as opposed to currently where it's like 4+ units)

yeah latimes had a lot of dirt on newsom a few months ago but he was still one of the favorites

i'm still registered to vote but i'm not in the country anymore, but i would vote for newsom

I'm with sarahell on the mixed feelings about Newsom. He is a guy who I *really* don't like or trust, even when a lot of his policy prescriptions and positions line up with mine. He's just a fucking slimeball that wants to be president really badly. Dunno if I will bother voting for him, he's almost certain to be the winner anyway.

i remember being a local blogger about 10 or so years ago and my fave thing was comparing him to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman

I think he is also a big fan of Huey Lewis & the News iirc

I can't hate him, he stepped forward to support same-sex marriage at a time when most of the rest of the country was charging in the other direction

comparing him to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman

yeah you weren't alone in this the similarity is just too eerie

he stepped forward to support same-sex marriage at a time when most of the rest of the country was charging in the other direction when it was most politically advantageous to him personally, handed the GOP a wedge-issue that helped get Dubya re-elected, resulted in the passage of Prop 8 in California actually *banning* gay marriage, and did not actually result in any valid gay marriages

fixed

that whole charade was nauseating, grandstanding at his worst. He knew he didn't have a legal leg to stand on and did it for the purposes of benefiting no one but himself.

xp - even when in practice it was preaching to the choir and a high profile distraction from his pro-development/pro-corporate policies?

^^^

he has a history of this grandstanding, like when he wanted to improve the health of poor & working class San Franciscans by banning cigarette sales from chain stores with pharmacies -- that pretty much affected nothing except the ability to buy fairly low-priced cigarettes at Walgreen's stores. ... as opposed to walking a block or less to a liquor store and buying cigarettes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55cG7EytB7M

omg I pulled up this video to show how fuckin obnoxious he was at the time and the closed captioning is wild

**APPLAUSE BY HOMOSEXUALS**

xp the conversation it started was a huge push forward for gay rights

i don't think he literally tried to feed a cat to an ATM tho

the conversation it started was a huge push forward for gay rights

he didn't start it - Alaska and Arizona already had gay marriage rulings on the books - he just made the splashiest (and emptiest) show about it. which is his modus operandi.

xp Dan -- I'm not saying he's evil incarnate, just that it was a self-serving move. And it is often super useful to be reminded that in the central SF Bay Area, one lives in kinda a political bubble and that there is certain hair-splitting we do here, some more-progressive-than-thou type stuff, that looks ridiculous to most other Americans

Oh yeah, and Oakland has a mayoral election ...

Alaska and Arizona, come on. This *was* a big push forward.

Bush had already given his SOTU pressing for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Massachusetts was on track to start allowing marriages in May of that year. A backlash was going to happen in 2004. And Prop 8 was a direct response to the California Supreme Court recognizing marriage rights in 2008

agree that it was a partly self-serving move, but it was also a very good thing

yeah, on paper he has done all the right things, but you read into the details of his life and he is a total slimeball

thing is, how else would you vote if not on what he has done and the positives more or less outweigh the negatives

i feel like this single payer healthcare program was hyped a lot in california, but like it's crazy when you do the math

i'm not against it though

on paper he has done all the right things

not when he was mayor! he did a lot of not-right things

as mayor his sponsorship of Prop N (Care not Cash) was very controversial

yeah, i know what you mean

i guess i should say given the options

I agree that policy-wise I'm compelled to vote for him, more or less. At the same time, I absolutely hate watching him talk and prior to our current scandal-goalpost-moving POS chief exec I would have assumed Newsom was a lock for doing something scandalously unethical/illegal that would tank his career. I guess we're going to find out soon enough.

Well when the alternative is John Cox...

i was listening to an interview with scott weiner and he mentioned that brown had vetoed the 4am last call thing but he would bring it back next year and didn't expect any problems with newsom on that issue. there was then a weird moment where the interviewer and weiner acknowledged that yes, newsom is a known partier.

a friend of mine/former journalist wrote a semi-autobiographical novel that briefly features an obvious Newsom character riding around in a limo drinking champagne, doing blow and engaging in bisexual hijinks

"That, in turn, should be the opening line of your novel.

god damn i need a voter guide who tf are all these yahoo local judges speaking in code

i forget, are you in LA?

yeah, I got one yesterday... right into the recycling bin

I haven’t gotten one …yet, though maybe they are actually targeted because it would be a waste of money where I live… though CA lobbyists love to waste money!

I have received two, one from Right Path, which I know is a republican organization, and one from Voters First, which I don't know much about but it is so clearly a conservative group from just the name. They must be well-funded or they wouldn't have gotten the jump on everybody else

This is going to be a sickening fight. California voters have to be convinced to bring a gun to a gun fight

it's weird they're sending this shit out right now

Nothing yet — just the usual cable tv, life insurance, credit card offers

I've received three as well, straight to the junk mail recycle pile.

yeah we got 3 yesterday
straight into the old recycle-bin-arino

makes you realize how much money is at stake to control Congress after the 2026 election, when the opposition is willing to throw multiple millions of dollars into the void in the hopes of picking up stray votes where few votes can be found. this is a high stakes game.

The republicans also remember when they had more power in state politics…

Though for the last 10-15 years there has been a conservative exodus to Arizona, Nevada and Texas as well as to the great state of death.

Florida?

That, and more.

(presumably this is happening everywhere)

Empty empires: A few Berkeley landlords are sitting on several vacant buildings

One Berkeley family may own as many as five vacant properties. Their bill under the city’s new vacancy tax will be more than triple what they paid in property taxes last year.

“Each of the units is “uninhabitable,” Sabhlok said, and it would be too expensive to fix them up. So, he said, “I’m holding (them) for inventory.”

oh okay that’s fine then

Their bill under the city’s new vacancy tax will be more than triple what they paid in property taxes last year.

Henry George would approve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

that's interesting, as it came out of a review that was done of vacancies in Berkeley that countered the common belief that the new buildings in town are mostly vacant. it turns out they aren't, and vacancy rates are relatively low; but there are vacant buildings in town, they're just mostly owned by a few people and are borderline uninhabitable.

Yeah how do they write that whole article without mentioning that overall the vacancy rate in the city is low. I'm fine with the vacancy tax, agree it corrects Prop 13's perverse incentives, but it's not gonna make a huge difference.

I wonder how they will actually enforce the vacancy tax tbh.

Certainly must be possible w/ utility and garbage service usage? Got to be easier than the British trying to tell if you had a TV or not in the old days.

I really do wish we could find a way to counter crazy narratives like "these new buildings are all empty etc". How do you even reach people who believe these things? <sigh>

It’s easier and cheaper to fake having a tenant living in a vacant residential unit than to fake that tenants are not living in an illegal occupancy

held my nose and voted YES on 50

the fact that it has a sunset clause made it easier

Thank you.

Ok, fingers crossed.

I hope this works

I dislike both yes and no opinions but went with yes because desperate times, etc. But I really didn’t like doing it.

yeah, I wasn't thrilled... I think the nonpartisan approach is best overall... but I went for it anyway, mostly as a pure anti-Trump vote, more expressive than logical

My district and any possible district that could be drawn from my district would be the bluest of the blue…

But I remember when we were a red state

Been a shift, that's for sure.

Some post-mortem LOLs:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/05/no-tick-tock-hed-00631875

Headlines seen right next to each other:

* Peter Thiel makes $3m donation to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax

* Gavin Newsom comes out swinging against California billionaire tax

I don't think people really understand what the billionaire tax is or what the consequences will be if it passes

If you can summarize I would appreciate not having to try to parse /lazycitizen

it's a one time 5% tax on billionaires, rather than a recurring tax. I know one controversial aspect of it is that it is backdated to Jan '26, meaning, there is no way for them to avoid it if it passes; if the live here now they are subject to it. Which will probably mean that if it passes it will go into legislation and who knows when any of the money will ever get paid.

I'd rather just see some kind of recurring tax.

Is it better than no tax at all? Honest Q. I promise I will do my due diligence come voting times, but for now I just can't dive in without "diving in" being throwing myself into the cold-as Pacific.

Don’t just tax them, kill them.

oh I'll vote for it, I just think a recurring tax would be better and more likely to not wind up in the court

I say again: don’t just tax them. Kill them and take all their money and redistribute it. They are parasites on the world and deserve nothing less.

ok that isn't on the ballot

I know, just trying to be the voice of reason.

I'm responding to quincie

I don’t totally understand it all and am open to new perspectives, but besides it being retroactive, this wealth tax bill taxes unrealized gains. I didn’t think that either of those things was legal. So for example unicorn startups which have enormous wealth on paper but not much cash will go under. A huge part of the California tax base is dependent on these companies

I think the super rich should be taxed more equitably, with a higher income tax that doesn’t allow for loopholes. I am peeved that the CEOs of many companies get huge salaries and then tax breaks so that can buy back stock shares instead of reinvesting in their companies

I think the Bay Area technology companies for the most part do believe in reinvestment though. By some estimates, Bay Area companies now account for 30-50% of the entire US stock market! Why would we want to kill that

I am told that this bill will result in capital flight, a loss of intellectual property rights, lesser opportunities for startups, job losses for everyone, reduced investment, and that it will affect the general economic health of the state. I’m not sure I believe all of that, but it sounds kind of scary. As I said, I don't understand it all

Nitrous Oxide didn’t grip me before bit today it did…

with a higher income tax that doesn’t allow for loopholes

these people have zero income. unless you're going to start taxing debt, it's wealth or nothing.

my favorite bit of this is the "valuation can be based on voting interests in a company when they exceed actual economic stakes" bit. which means sergey brin doesn't own 5% of google as far as the state is concerned. he owns like a third of it because his 5% stake has special voting powers. if it passes he's going to have to sell most of shares. lol. I think he fucked off to Miami the last week of December with this in mind.

it doesn't matter though because if he resided here after Jan 1 at all he's subject to it.

a loss of intellectual property rights

oh no

So for example unicorn startups which have enormous wealth on paper but not much cash will go under.

What will the world do without unicorn startups? How will we possibly turn some basic societal function that has worked for 50-1000 years into an app just to monetize it and enrich like 5 people on earth without unicorn startups?

Nitrous Oxide didn’t grip me before bit today it did…

i wondered what happened to this post!

xp As someone who has worked in the Bay Area tech industry for twenty-five years, I am not at all worried about the impact of the billionaire's tax.

I am among those who believe that the Bay Area tech industry is vibrant because of the concentration of expertise, not the concentration of billionaires. That expertise is not going to move to Texas or North Carolina in a blink of an eye.

Concretely, I used to see Larry and Sergey in the halls at work all the time twenty years ago. Obviously, I haven't seem them in years. Their decision to move their holdings outside of California doesn't impact me: from my perspective, they left long ago.

I am sure there are some dysfunctional aspects of this tax from a tax code perspective, but the ethics of it don’t bother me enough to delve into them tbh.

Though in terms of CA tax code, there is already an extensive set of rules and assumptions and guidance about whether an individual or business is a CA resident that have been put in place because of sales tax avoidance and income tax avoidance… like, it would be interesting to compare income/net worth of people who live near Tahoe, and see whether there are a lot more wealthier people on the Nevada side of the state line.

In summary, the group who will gain the most from this tax will be the lawyers and consultants who are either on the government enforcement side or being paid by wealthy people claiming they aren’t subject to the tax.

Larry is irrelevant but brin came out of retirement to oversee gemini/deepmind a couple of years ago. He’s been forcing the deepmind people in London to relocate to mtv for the past couple of years. Ironic if he’s forced out of the state now.