r/santacruz

When I started getting slick mailers for propositions that weren't even on the ballot yet just to get the petition signed, my suspicions were immediately raised. This one is promoted as protection from taxes on personal property, retirement savings, etc. of ordinary people.

But "Building a Better California" was started up by Google founder Sergei Brin, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and received major funding from Peter Thiel and David Sacks. Its purpose seems to be to either block or mitigate the proposed billionaire tax intended to fund healthcare. Right now they're pushing for two initiatives. The one this mailer is for would block the billionaire tax entirely, under the guise of prohibiting new taxes on personal property, and the other would impose burdensome audit and refund requirements on programs funded by special taxes, most of which already have audit requirements written in.

They claim the "fine print" of the billionaire tax initiative enables property taxes on everyone, but I just read the thing and I can't find anything like that. The allowable asset exclusions alone are more than any of us are ever likely to own, even given real estate values around here.

Whatever you might think of the billionaire tax -- and there are arguments to be made both for and against it; I haven't formed a firm opinion yet myself -- I'm not inclined to give tech billionaires more control over our state government than they already have by adding their pet propositions to our state constitution. The fact they seem to be marketing it using exaggerated scare tactics targeting the elderly with retirement savings, apparently hoping we won't actually look into it, doesn't help.