California's Last Stand

PJ Media ^ | 8 Dec 2025 | Victoria Taft

[Rummyfan]

There comes a point at which the velocity of stupid outpaces, and then laps, the rigors of reason. California is about to get lapped.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and his leftist legislative supermajority and their union buddies have finally run out of other people's money. The left's fix for this is to chase away all the rest of the billionaires who still call California home by pushing a ballot initiative demanding a 5% retroactive wealth tax on the net worth of billionaires.

The billionaires who still call California home are thinking about leaving.

And it's all because the left prefers takers over makers.

Newsom and his band of plundering communists broke the "free" ObamaCare Medi-Cal program by inviting illegal aliens from all over the world to enjoy health insurance while they came to get their commercial truck driving licenses. Newsom rang the dinner bell, signed up more illegal aliens, and now that the explosion of billions of COVID funding is going away, the state is out of money.

As a result of the left's never ending envy of people who do big things and make big money, everything from paintings, investments, patents, trade marks, stock and stock options, intellectual property — real and unrealized gains — of over a billion dollars would be plundered to backfill the left's latest disastrous overspending on "free" health care for illegal aliens.

The time to get out is now. After the plunder come the guillotines and Reign of Terror. The proposed "one-time tax" is for the 2026 tax year, so even if the rest of the Silicon Valley tycoons make tracks to get out of town, they'll be on the hook for the unprecedented and gluttonous tax.

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TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: budget; california; taxes

[Rummyfan]

[sphinx]

I don’t know what the precedents are, but the Supreme Court should find a way to definitively prohibit retroactive taxation, period.

Retroactivity of any form is an abomination. It has crept in through a variety of weak spots, as when something important depends on a “reasonable man” standard, with “reasonable” being defined by a jury. Once that is subjectified, the goalposts keep shifting. That’s long been a major problem.

But it’s a decisive shift when legislatures start explicitly imposing retroactivity. It’s been just over a decade since I was last in California, very briefly, other than a short layover in LAX. Maybe that’s far enough back that I wouldn’t get nailed on a retroactive tourist fee, at least on the first round.

The second and third round, I might not be so lucky. And the LAX layover was just last year....

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

I don’t know what the precedents are, but the Supreme Court should find a way to definitively prohibit retroactive taxation, period.

The USSC has already ruled in several cases that retroactive tax laws do not run afoul of the Constitution's Ex Post Facto laws because they are not punishment of a crime committed in the past.

See: Kentucky Union Co. v. Kentucky, Burgess v. Salmon, Carpenter v. Pennsylvania, Bankers Trust Co. v. Blodgett, Locke v. City of New Orleans

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

Newsom and his band of plundering communists broke the "free" ObamaCare Medi-Cal program by inviting illegal aliens from all over the world to enjoy health insurance while they came to get their commercial truck driving licenses.

And with the good 'ol Motor Voter Law, each illegal driver license, CDL or just regular, is another Voter Ballot.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

Retroactivity of any form is an abomination

Abomination describes most everything democRAT / DemoKKKrat.

retroactive tourist fee

Reminds me of El Rush-Bo's fight with New York City and State over when he 'worked' in New York after moving to Florida. He described how he had to hire more accountant(s) to deal with these commies. He had kept his posh New York apartment for a time, but eventually sold it. I also remember when Rush changed the Johnny Donovan intro. It used to say "Via New York City." He eliminated that also.

[gitmo]

It made me think of El Rushbo’s battle as well.

He avoided even visiting the state after that.

[DugwayDuke]

I’ve had at least two job offeres requiring a move to California. I declined both because I could see where California is headed.
At one time, California asserted a right to tax your pensions if you had ever lived in California. This was struck down.

The smartest move by a corporation. Hughes Aircraft had a group of ‘Grey Beards’ who were tasked with long range forecasting and planning. In the late eighties, these Grey Beards forecasted that California was a lost cause. Hughes sold most of their facilities in California and moved to other states.

[libstripper]

Guess what. The restriction to billionaires will loudly last about as long as the initiative passes Then it will go down to millionaires and then all sorts of other people. Its complete Communism.