Here in California, the cons are out with a new campaign against taxes. They bought a ballot initiative that is trying to limit the taxes the state can raise on it’s own AND make it more difficult for citizens to raise taxes via legitimate initiatives. (I distinguish between “bought” and “legitimate” based on whether paid signature collectors were used. Paid collectors shouldn’t be allowed. They have corrupted the process.) The supporting campaign keeps trying to make the case that the thing that makes California so expensive is taxes. That isn’t true. Granted It IS true that taxes are higher, here, than many other places. But when I start thinking about cost of living, taxes generally aren’t on the list. I don’t blame the government. I blame private and corporate entities.

Yes, California adds a bunch of gas tax – probably the most visible spot for “high taxes.” It’s somewhere between .83 cents and $1.08 per gallon, depending upon whom you believe. But the gas companies charge every cent they can get AND manipulate the market to keep prices higher than they need to be. The tax is dependable and predictable, but the rest of the price? That’s the variable and it fluctuates wildly based on…reasons.  The price fluctuations affect the prices of everything “downstream” that gets shipped anywhere. By themselves, the gas companies can seriously harm the economy on a whim – and they do so on a regular basis, often as a political statement. Those decisions are made in corporate boardrooms, not government offices.

When it’s time to cover my housing for the month, it’s not taxes that depress me. It’s the rent. It’s outrageous. Rents and mortgages in the state are probably the single most important driver of cost-of-living these days. And they’re outrageous because of private companies, not government. In fairness, it was a conservative government (43) decision that allowed (even encouraged) Wall Street to attack our living situations but that was deregulation, not taxes, and deregulation is a darling of the One Percent and the far right.

When I push my cart up and down the aisles in the local market, pricing decisions by private companies, not government, are looking me in the face, depressing the crap out of me. People don’t shop just on what they want. They have to consider what they can afford, as well. For many, that means less. Perhaps less quality, often, simply less food. But it’s not the taxes causing those choices. It’s pricing decisions made in boardrooms.

Our local, corporate, killer power provider (PG&E) already charges exorbitant prices and the increases just keep coming. Every time they kill a few people or burn down a town, they get a rate increase. Then, they get another increase to do the work they should have been doing in the first place. I don’t even buy power from PG&E, but they get to gouge me anyway through “delivery fees.” In winter, I don’t fear taxes. I fear my PG&E bill. We, the victims, get happy ads telling us how they’re working to do the right thing. And even that took deaths and lawsuits. Again, corporation. Not government, not taxes.

I do acknowledge that taxes are higher on the working class than they should be – everywhere in this once-great nation, not just California. But that’s because of a tax shift from the wealthy to the non-wealthy. If the One Percent would pay taxes at the same rate they extract from society, taxes could actually be reduced on the working class.

This tax trap measure is basically the same play Ohio tried to make to keep citizens from adding abortion protections to their state constitution. Get a ballot measure on some fake “issue” to make it harder to govern or make changes, locking in advantage for one team that disadvantages everyone else. In this case, the One Percent don’t want to pay taxes on what they take out of our society, so they try to make it harder to raise their taxes by subjecting the process to a decidedly NOT democratic two-thirds threshold instead of a simple majority.

I’ll tell you this: I don’t think we should let them do it. If you agree, vote against this latest measure, the ‘California Two-Thirds Legislative Vote and Voter Approval for Fee and Charge Increases Initiative,’ (that’s a mouthful) when it comes up on the ballot…

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Well, Draymond Green finally got himself suspended indefinitely. Green has been a dirty player for quite some time. Those who like him just say he takes no guff but I think he’s too aggressive and has been for a long time. He keeps getting suspended for unsportsmanlike behavior and after his last episode, hitting an opposing player in the face, the league has had enough. Good. The Warriors keep him around because of his talent, but I don’t know what value he brings to the team, not being on the court…

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In a move that shocked absolutely nobody, the cons have decided, reluctantly, of course, to move forward with their politically driven “impeachment inquiry” into Joe Biden’s activities. I get it. They have no choice. The lack of evidence demands it. They absolutely MUST do it. How else are they going to find a charge? So far, nothing they’ve done has worked. They’ve leveled unsubstantiated accusations. They’ve suggested, without support, misbehavior. They’ve made unfounded assertions. I mean, what does a corrupt party have to do to get a response from people, these days?

They had it all worked out. They’d get Hunter to “testify” behind closed doors so nobody could hear what he said, then they’d rush out to the microphones and claim that Hunter had handed them the smoking gun and now they just HAD to move forward. Hunter sort of shot a hole in their plan by not showing up. (I think he plans to honor their subpoena right after Jim Jordan honors the subpoena he ignored from the J6 committee.) So they couldn’t blame Hunter but it didn’t stop them from moving forward with the rest…

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Hey, speaking of stupid, does anybody know exactly what the right wants to see at the border? I mean, are we actually supposed to set up gun turrets and simply murder anybody we see who happens to be too close to the border? ”Close the border” is so much easier to say than to do. What, exactly, are they asking for?

I’d like to wind the cons up a bit. Sure, any thinking person knows walls don’t work but I say we should give them their stupid wall after all – but only if we use a billionaire tax to pay for it. (It turns out Mexico didn’t, won’t, never has, and never will pay for it.) It’ll be in interesting social experiment. Do cons hate brown people or love billionaire wealth more? Inquiring minds, indeed…