redqueeninla ~ a musings locality

Here is a final summary of all fourteen of November’s Proposition-positions. The essay where each is first explained, is hyperlinked; each of those essays follows beneath a subject header below.

Proposition	position	Shorter name	Short name
Prop 1	YES	Housing Bond	Bond for Housing Affordability Programs
Prop 2	YES	Rainy Day Fund	Increase Budget Stabilization Account cap
Prop 3	YES	Sets Top Tax Rate	“Millionaires tax” (retains highest-income taxation)
Prop 4	YES	Public Campaign Financing	Permits Public Financing of Campaigns statewide
Prop 5	YES	Recall Reform	Reforms Statewide Recall Elections procedure
Prop 37	YES	Loan Program	Loan Program for Middle-Income Home Buyers
Prop 38	YES	Immunology	Immunology and immunotherapy bond for research
Prop 39	NO	Voter ID	Prohibits citizens from voting without government ID
Prop 40	YES	Billionaire’s Tax	“Billionaires tax” (backfills looted healthcare dollars)
Prop 41	NO	Prop 40 Spoiler	Designed to sink Prop 40
Prop 42	NO	Prop 40 Spoiler	Designed to sink Prop 40
Prop 43	NO	Curbs Local Taxation	Constrains local taxation choice
Prop 44	NO	Clinic Budgeting	Predetermines healthcare clinic budgeting
Prop 45	NO	CEQA	Modifies Environmental Review

The Billionaire’s Tax (Propositions 40 + 41&42)

I’ve been asked about my feelings around the Billionaire’s Tax, aka Proposition 40.

It’s a shocker that CTA is against the proposal to levy a one-time tax on the state’s billionaires. It’s TheTeachers who’ve done such a good job explaining that the privatization efforts within the educational sector are bad for society, bad for your local school, bad for that pillar of democracy: education. Billionaires have had their sights on our public sector schools for decades now, besotted with the yarn that “choice” is the prerogative of everyone, especially the poor, and hence the canard that offering a choice of schooling in a repurposed mall without child-focused facilities or professional, regulated teachers or staff is a viable “alternative”. It isn’t. That’s union busting and it’s promulgating deprivation and lack of opportunity for your kid.

So, with having had these billionaire class warriors in our sights for quite some time now, and having the thrilling experience of witnessing TheTeachers do such an excellent job articulating the source of this threat, it’s a bit gobsmacking to suddenly find oneself on the opposite divide from TheTeachers. As the OG explainers of this real danger to and for the people, why should they suddenly be taking their eye from the ball like this?

Well, politically-prickly personalities notwithstanding, there’s this argument that Prop 40 doesn’t safeguard the distribution of education dollars as our budget has been setup structurally to support. That because everyone always comes first for the vulnerable kid’s vulnerable monies, and we setup things structurally to safeguard it (Prop 98), that this supposed end-run around the structured monies is a betrayal.

But CTA wants this argument both ways: because it is a one-time tax, it is criticized as not sustaining long-lasting funding. And the thing is, this being a one-time tax, expressly avoids undermining our taxation’s structural setup. In particular, it is because this tax is not destined for the general fund, that it works. The tax is targeted to backfill the gaping hole left by DJT’s HR1, that BigBadTerribleNoGoodUglyBill, sucking dry the welfare and social support dollars assisting our poorest kids.

This isn’t to say the education dollars are unimportant. And it isn’t to undermine them; it is to supplement the kid’s entitlement, not to supplant it.

And as to the fear mongering around the threat that they’ll just leave the state: to where? This state is overpopulated for a lot of inherent reasons: its weather is crystalline. Its politics are supportive for a common good. Its people are well-educated and the economy is well-anchored. If they didn’t flee NorEastern Massachusetts, they won’t flee California. There’ll be much mewling about the possibility; the evidence from numerous places suggest it will not pan out.

The bottom line is: clawing back this money unjustly detained in DC for the exclusive benefit of the class that unfairly reaps so much benefit from this essentially one-time seizure (which will cease when MAGA forfeits its triumvirate hold on government), is a justified reaction.

Now is not the time to blink. The ill-begotten gains of these billionaires should rightfully be clawed back to provide protections for the neediest among us, for those who have been unjustly and unceremoniously forsaken.

Vote YES on Proposition 40, the Billionaires Tax.

AND…. If you’re a “yes” on proposition 40, there’s a hefty benefit that accrues to you immediately. Vote yes on Prop 40 and you don’t have to spend a moment more thinking about two more propositions: Prop 41 and Prop 42. A “yes” on Prop 40 is a package deal of NO on Proposition 41 and 42. Both these bills have been put up by billionaires to undermine and derail Proposition 40. A yes-vote on Prop 40 is a three-fer: an instantaneous no-vote on both Prop 41 and Prop 42, by definition.  These are part and parcel of the same effort, the same initiative, the same backers. The ones working to defeat Prop 40, have installed Prop 41/42 to muddy the waters, confuse you, instill doubt and come up dry on Prop 40.

Don’t Let Them Do It. If you agree that Prop 40 should be invoked to backfill the HR1 monies that have been unjustly withheld, then you must vote NO on both Proposition 41 and Proposition 42 to ensure its passage. Pay no mind to the little man behind the curtain pretending there is reasonable argument for either of these propositions. They are there to drain your support and attention from Proposition 40: don’t let that happen.

Proposition 40 comes as a package deal: nearly ¼ of your proposition-thinking (3 of 14) is taken care of with one clear understanding: backfill the missing HR1 money, sustain our social welfare capacities, retain our structural support for funding education and pay no mind to the sniveling complaints of the beleaguered billionaires. They live and work in the Golden State because that’s where their well-trained engineering workforce cohabitates. We are the technology powerhouse because this is where that libertarian workforce comes to be educated and likes to live.

{YES on Prop 40 / NO on Prop 41 / No on Prop 42}.  A package deal to hold harmless what was stolen away.

California’s Kid-Critical Ballot Propositions

This is one of a series examining the 14 ballot Propositions appearing on California’s November 2026 general election ballot. Prioritized first are those Propositions most critical for our most-vulnerable.

Proposition 3 and Proposition 43 ~ affecting
government’s ability to work for kids

Prop 40 (the “Billionaire’s Tax”), is essentially a ‘war bond’ to replenish the federal dollars skimmed from California’s federal tax appropriations (the HR 1 cuts), that would have gone toward the state’s social and welfare safety net. California counties alone are anticipated to be short $9.5 billion annually in new costs, with an estimated 1.8 – 3 million people tossed from Medi-Cal, Cal-Fresh and other such programs beyond. (For more on YES to Prop 40 (and its automatic trigger to NO on Prop 41/42), please see RQILA essay #1 in this series.)

Prop 40 seeks a one-time, temporary remedy to back fill lost monies for the disenfranchised of this specific, federally-centered crisis. Not a property tax, Prop 40 only taxes accumulated personal wealth above $1 billion.

Prop 3 (the “Millionaire’s Tax”), seeks to codify a long-time, structural remedy for insufficient taxes paid by California’s top 1.5%-earners, those individuals earning more than $371,000 annually.

Made permanent would be higher income tax rates first enacted fourteen years ago, following the Great Recession (2007-2009), in 2012. The tax was extended by voters in 2016 (at which time an increased sales tax was not extended), and leaves completely untouched the state’s bottom 98.5% of earners (~38.8 million people).

Looked at from another perspective, if allowed to expire (i.e., if Prop 3 does not pass), California’s top 1%-richest taxpayers would personally be enriched an estimated average of $59,000 apiece, while collectively depriving California schools and its children up to $15 billion annually.

Where Proposition 40 is (arguably) criticized as a one-time remedy that bypasses the state’s general fund, Proposition 3 is fully vested in California’s established, structural minimum distributions for K12 education, community college, county offices of education and state agencies providing direct K12 education services. Accordingly, the monies codified permanently by Proposition 3 are vital for all California’s children, and our state’s ability to provide services for their education, health and welfare.

As usual, it is the state’s most vulnerable who would be most affected, even while SUPPORTING this proposition would not alter the status quo one iota. Vote YES on Proposition 3.

Prop 43 (“curbs local tax choice”), also critically impairs the government’s ability to protect local funding for education and kids (or any other chosen purpose).

Currently, a local municipality may propose to tax its own citizens in order to, say, float a bond for schools facilities. That local initiative would be brought to the electorate via one of two routes: (i) local governing body (i.e., city council), or (ii) citizen’s petition. By state constitutional law, special taxes initiated via local governing body are harder to pass, requiring a 2/3 vote; via citizen’s petition, however, the people may choose to tax themselves by simple majority (>50%) vote.

Proposition 43 would always require the punishing minority-rule threshold of 66.7% vote, regardless of the initiative’s provenance. This effectively removes the option of taxation from most people’s own hands, even for a considered, common, good reason (e.g., to purchase updated schools facilities for your kids). Instead, it empowers a minority with twice the power to assert their opinion, since it takes half as many people (33%) to oppose that tax as to support it (67%).

Prop 43 is not only bad public policy, and bad for our children especially, it is anti-democratic. The people should be allowed to purchase (i.e., float a bond) what they collectively choose by majority rule, not minority imposition.

Proposition 43 is tyrannical, forcing the will of a mere 1/3 of the electorate upon the rest. Should a locality wish to tax itself for a common purpose, that should absolutely be the choice of its people, not the domineering prerogative of an ideological faction. Vote NO on Proposition 43 for the sake of your children, and your neighbor’s.

Propositions 1, 37 and 45:  Two Housing Initiatives and a Decoy

First considered here were California’s kid-critical Propositions:

• YES on 40 (levies one-time tax on highest earners – “Billionaires tax”),
• YES on 3 (retains current taxation rate at the top – “Millionaires tax”),
• NO on 43 (limits voters’ ability to raise revenues for local government services) … and the two determined by YES
•   NO on 41 and NO on 42 because they exist to torpedo Proposition 40.

Next considered are three housing initiatives, though it turns out the last one only pretends to be one:  Prop 1, Prop 37 and Prop 45

Prop 1 is a bond issue placed on the ballot by the legislature. It’s not tricky, there aren’t lobbyists and special interests trying to spin and twist understanding; there is no formal opposition to the measure. It’s straight-forward: authorize $11.25b for veteran and income-qualified housing. The proposition would “create and preserve affordable homes, expand homeownership opportunities, and support housing for [low-and-middle income Californians, students, youth], veterans, seniors, farmworkers, first-time homebuyers, working families, people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, Native American communities, and individuals with disabilities”, according to SHE, a community-development organization in the San Joaquin Valley.

An excellent fact sheet is here, and Ballotpedia’s thorough synthesis, from funders to full-text, is here. The Legislative Analyst estimates taxpayers would effectively purchase this initiative at:  “…$500 million to $600 million annually for about 25 years, … about one-quarter of 1 percent (0.25 percent) of the state’s total General Fund budget…”

This is why we have a government:  to be able to support those in need; even conservatives support this use of money, because it backfills where the “free market” has failed. As emphasized by the bill’s co-author, Asm. Buffy Wicks: “We all know the stats in California – two-thirds of lower-income renters are rent-burdened, 170,000 people are unsheltered, and we are 1.2 million units short of the affordable housing we need … ”. 

YES on 1 steps in where the market will not, delivering housing programs for California’s most vulnerable, making good on providing what is a common good, for all.

Where Prop 1 addresses income-qualified housing for California’s neediest, Prop 37 addresses the “missing middle” class of would-be homeowners. Limited to new construction or the first sale of a converted nonresidential property, the Proposition seeks to support the “dream of home ownership” for qualified individuals, with a second mortgage that would reduce the downpayment required, to be as low as 3%. The bond is for $25b but is structured to be repaid by recipient’s mortgage payments directly, not by taxpayers. And thus the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office anticipates: “No Direct State or Local Costs”.

YES on 37 is a reasonable experiment in jiggering the housing market in such a way as might create new incentives to increase affordability.

In contrast with Proposition 45, which just administratively, is estimated to cost Californian’s up to or even exceeding $100m annually, in the short term. In the long term, CalChamber’s “Building An Affordable California Act” (BACA, aka Prop 45), would significantly ‘modify’ CEQA, with unclear consequences ethically, legally, physically or fiscally for environmental degradation, harm or cleanup.

In the meantime, the proposition is promoted as a way to halt the impeding of important housing development projects, even while this measure was largely addressed last year with the urgency passage of AB130 and SB 131.

California’s housing crisis is no longer tied to “modernizing” its seminal Environmental Quality Act, aka CEQA; that issue has been mitigated (though with respect to affordable housing, Prop 45 actually backtracks by overriding such protections built into last year’s AB 130). However, Californian’s own environmental sustainability, absolutely depends on not shackling or further “modifying” CEQA.

Prop 45 is not, therefore, some necessary “corrective” to the housing crisis which bedevils California, because Prop 45 is neither a housing nor a home-building initiative; it is a building proposition. BACA is all about making building easier, swifter, and free of any manner of regulations, oversight, scrutiny and alternative suggestions, for a set of projects that builders, manufacturers, extractionists and resource provisioners – tech billionaires themselves define to be “essential”.

Sufficiently vague as to encompass all projects (in particular data centers), this demolition of CEQA will significantly reduce public input, critically limit local government’s capacity to conduct its business, and change its standard of review so that only the applicant, not government professionals, may singularly hazard an alternative project, which must meet standards locked in to the moment of submission, and are therefore impervious to new findings.

Adding insult to injury, CalChamber, the proposition’s authors, have ensured the permanence of BACA/Prop 45, by inserting an electoral poison pill mandating 2/3 voter approval for amendment. For more on the anti-democratic imposition of a super majority, see the discussion of Prop 43.

This is not regulation, it is regulatory capture, just in time for the new crunch of data centers. Gone will be any community’s right of environmental objection to the proposal site after project submission: it will be too late.

The proposals of Prop 45 are arrant and severe. With deregulatory fever creeping into power internationally even while the globe heats inexorably, this is the worst conceivable development from iconically environmentally sensitive California. We must vote NO on 45 for the planet, for our kids, for their opportunity ever to inhabit any house of any sort come 2076. Housing bill or no, Prop 45 must be stopped.

Election Reform:  Prop 4, Prop 5 & the Malign Proposition 39

Next Propositions to consider after the:

• Billionaires imbroglio, (Yes on 40 – No on 41 – NO on 42), the
• Kid-critical, (YES on 3 – NO on 43), and
• Housing (+ nominal-housing/actually environmental) (YES on 1 – YES on 37 + NO on 45), …

are three very important proposals around the electoral process. The first two – easily recalled as the ones with single-digits – are absolute YESes for the absolute common good, while the double-digit one is an absolute Hell-No!

Prop 4 would allow for public financing of political campaigns up and down the state. Currently, only “contract cities” are allowed to authorize public financing of campaigns. Proposition 4 would bring equity to the other 74% of California’s “general law” cities. Public financing of elections facilitates diversity of socioeconomic, and racial classes, in local government.

Critically, this proposition does not mandate public financing of election campaigns, it simply allows municipalities to choose whether to arrange for the public financing of campaigns. And these ‘public funding systems’ can be very different from one another; read about some examples and their benefits here.

Vote YES on 4, the California Fair Elections Act, to “allow public funding of campaigns so elections are won, not bought”. Countering the weight of corporate and oligarchic money in elections is crucial to enabling the people their voice, and ensuring a healthy democracy.

Prop 5 detaches the recall process for statewide officers, from the matter of their immediate replacement. The separation centers the election solely on the issue of performance and recall, cleaving ideological principle from practical reelection.

Untangling this confounded process is important because the demographics of the electorate in a recall election winds up being very different from that of a general election. Resulting in a very different set of people (currently) reelecting a recalled officer than happens organically in a straight forward election.

Consequently, the only organized committee at all, either for or against this Proposition, is Asm Carl DeMaio (R, AD75) in opposition along with Republican legislators, whose party comprises just 25% of the registered voters in California. As a minority they were uniquely successful in electing a Republican governor because that vote was improperly tied to the recall election and its particular constituency. Secretary of State, Dr Shirley Weber, rightly declares this biased setup should not be the way recall elections are constituted: YES on 5.

The last electoral reform proposition is even more plain than the patent Props 4 and Props 5:

Prop 39 seeks to separate voters from their ballot and it’s a HELL NO. Proposition 39 would effectively institute regressive voting interference measures for Californians that just simply is not our way, and is not needed, not one teeny tiny millimeter of the way.

But worse, as speculated by consultants, no one, not even the proponents of this travesty, actually think there is voter fraud that needs this sort of response. The measure is on the ballot to crank up Republican participation in November’s election. This is a faux-solution to a non-problem, which sounds plausible to credulous MAGA. Pumped full of verbiage by California’s most onerous, right-leaning fear-mongers, the theory that they are plunging money into this fool’s errand not for its own righteousness but for the atmospherics that draw voters out, makes a lot of sense. Do not fall for it, At. All.  HELL-NO on 39. It’s an electoral and ethical embarrassment.

Budgeting Propositions; t’ain’t no more  – Prop 2, Prop 38 & Prop 44

This last set of Propositions (follow these hyperlinks for the first four posts on billionaires, kid-critical, housing and election reform Propositions) – all involve budgeting, and the necessity of compensating for the effect of Trump’s tax cuts for the rich as they ‘trickle-up’. The foundational redistribution of monies has compelled some very graceless maneuvers trying to counteract damage to the fiscal landscape.

Prop 2 is a state budgeting initiative that raises the limit on its rainy day fund, and also changes the way some deposits to that account are calculated. Regular deposits will be required until the rainy day fund reaches 20% of General Fund tax revenues. When capital gains are particularly high, more of these funds will be requisitioned.

This analysis from California’s Legislative Analyst Office is comprehensive, but the complicated measure is better explained clearly and concisely in context by these “comments” of the floor analysis of the state Senate:

YES on 2 is dictated by the empirical experience of our legislators, the folks we elected to do our public work. We should vote with the evidence.

Prop 38, like Prop 40, seeks to backfill a deficit created by federal MAGA policies. But rather than clawback redress from the .01% benefiting from HR1 welfare cuts (Prop 40’s strategy), this measure would regionally heal cuts in immunological scientific research and biomedical immunotherapy through $8.4 billion in general obligation bonds.

MAGA adds insult to injury in requiring us to pay twice to support a scientific biomedical research complex that was so recently the envy of the world. Failing to obtain our due returns on federal taxes, this proposal instead sustains a vital industry in-state, simultaneously boosting jobs, healing and potential revenue. Why this isn’t happening federally – to the common good of one and all across the nation – is absolutely unfathomable. But until this psychosis of antisociality passes, at the least fellow Californians can benefit from this particular avenue of research which derives life-giving therapy.

The measure is potentially self-sustaining from patents and profits generated, but regardless the measure is invaluable as a reflection of the sort of society we wish to be, sustaining a positive feedback loop of common good for industry, knowledge, and health. Even though narrowly prescribed, please vote YES on 38 to sustain this essential corner of scientific research and its consequential findings.

Prop 44 is a sensationalized solution to a powerful problem – how to focus money efficiently where it is most needed, equitably and without doing harm.

All organizations face this problem. But in the instance this proposition addresses – healthcare clinics – there is a systemic structure that must be supported even while tilting against special interests that may have grabbed an inequitable share of resources.

The proposal was intended to address excessive administrator pay, but instead of facing that issue head-on, its language specifies that Federally Qualified Health Centers very broadly “spend at least 90% of their revenue on program services advancing their charitable purpose, including but not limited to patient services, rather than management and overhead.”

This jeopardizes the support services incidental to front line clinical care: rent, maintenance, clinical tests and testing, administration.

No one runs a business this way, performatively maintaining front line services at the expense of systemically necessary support services. And no one wants to have their business plan mandated in this way – the demand is impractical, the requirement is oppressive and mostly, the proposition does harm to the endeavor’s core purpose. Whether that “business” be, say, a school, a hostel or a Federally Qualified Health Center.

Vote NO on 44 to preserve the mandate of healthcare clinics to provide full service patient care.