US Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to rally in California this weekend with Reps. Ro Khanna and Aisha Wahab in support of Proposition 40 , a November ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of the state's billionaires to fund healthcare and education amid historic cuts to social spending by President Donald Trump and…
Page F3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 29 September 2026
Billionaires spend millions to kill their wealth tax, and the poll says it's working.
As it ran on the front
Proposition 40 asks California voters to tax a billionaire's net worth once, at five percent, to pay for healthcare and education. The filing on this one is short: California has two hundred billionaires, and the tax touches them and no one else.
The campaign against it started on August 25th, when groups backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel launched an advertising blitz against a tax that applies to net worth, not income, once, this year, to people worth ten figures or more. Building a Better California and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes are the two committees carrying it.…
…(cont) On September 21st, a group of Nobel Prize–winning economists put a name to what the ballot line does. They called the vote a potential "turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy." They noted the measure was still popular then, with 52 percent support.
Nothing else moved in the twenty-four hours between the economists' statement and the poll. The advertising did.
This weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders is set to rally in San Francisco, and next Monday in Los Angeles, alongside Representatives Ro Khanna and Aisha Wahab and progressive candidate Jane Kim, at events billed "Ballots Over Billionaires" and hosted by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, the union that wrote the initiative. The rallies land as the campaign enters its final weeks, with the opposition's spending still running and the poll it helped produce still standing.
The measure would raise money, once, from net worth over a billion dollars, to fund healthcare and education in a state absorbing cuts from Washington. The people asked to pay it are the ones paying to make sure they don't have to. The ledger closes itself, hon.
“You want to know who's spending money to kill the billionaire tax? The billionaires. They ran ads for a month, and the day after some Nobel economist called this a fight against oligarchy, the poll cratered — that's not a coincidence, that's the receipt for what they bought. If it fails, the two hundred richest people in the state just financed their own tax exemption and called it public opinion.”
“Look, this isn't about protecting anybody's fortune, it's about protecting California's competitiveness — sound investment climate, job creators, the works. Sure, Building a Better California happens to be funded by, well, the exact people the tax would apply to, but that's just civic engagement. Did I say "civic engagement"? That's — that's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
· Fewer than half of California voters back billionaire tax: Poll from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax from the morgue, 25 Aug 2026
· Nobel-Winning Economists Say California Billionaire Tax Could Be ‘Turning Point in the Battle Between Democracy and Oligarchy’ from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.