As young folks on college campuses increasingly fall for the illusion that socialism will solve the country’s ills, there is a mindset that rich people need to bail out the poor folk. Their ideology centers on the belief that if someone has “too much” money then they should give it up to others who have not made it in life – or allow the government to rob Prosperous Peter to pay for Poor Paul. They consider it evil to be wealthy.

A truism in the Bible is that the world will always have the poor. Jesus said that so there’s no getting away from it. Prosperity is commensurate on intellect, ambition, circumstances and other factors such as where one is born. Poor Americans have it far better than the folks in Calcutta, for example.

AOC is of that mindset that rich folks are cash cows to pay for her party’s overspending. But government – in particular California – doesn’t have a cash problem; it has an overspending and stupid lawmaker problem.

Democrats in California are pushing for a ballot initiative to implement what is called a Billionaire’s Tax to “prevent a healthcare collapse.”

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed the ballot initiative, the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, to amend the state Constitution to introduce a one-time tax of five percent on the assets worth at least one billion. That’s not a billion dollars sitting in a bank account; that includes the value of real estate, businesses, stocks, etc.

Some California billionaires saw this coming – remember they are smart folks – and have been fleeing the state, meaning California loses their tax money. Silicon Valley billionaires Google co-founder Sergey Brin, SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson, and Naveen Rao with Unconventional AI, have recently moved to Incline Village, Nevada to dodge the billionaire tax likely coming because since we have so many low information voters who think that’s a great idea. It’s not. Even calculated Newsom said he’s against the idea but we’ll see if he will reneg.

In April Rao moved from the Bay Area to a $20 million 8,000-square-foot mansion on the shores of Tahoe. Why? Because he doesn’t have the value in cash required to pay such a draconian tax! Having to pay it would is “not just a disincentive” but he said his “company will die or I’m insolvent.”

This ballot measure is not about saving health care. It’s about covering these massively ballooning costs of private and public pension funds which are a significant financial liability for the state and as we are seeing to local governments. They’d love to fill the hole for pension program gaps with money extorted from citizens.

On page 26 under Section 50310 (Legislative Authority) is a VERY SCARY part. It contains wording that allows the state Legislature to amend the law to do whatever they want with this “one time” tax “if the statute is consistent with and furthers the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.” In other words, they can expand it to an “everyone tax” by lowering the threshold from, say, a billion to a million or whatever level they wish and make it a permanent tax. So if you own a house worth $650,000 – which is not a mansion in California – and have $500,000 in your 401K and make a “millionaire tax,” you could be socked with a one-time tax if the Legislature wants to lower the threshold to a million. Most all the wealth of average Americans is in real estate equity and retirement, not bank accounts. Like Rao, we have no way to pay that but do you think the state will care?

While voters may want to “sock it to the rich,” remember how the U.S. income tax system began. The Founding Fathers and the generation of leaders that followed weren’t keen on the idea of an income tax. Tariffs and sales taxes funded the federal government in the early days. But the financial costs of the Civil War led to the first national income tax on the richest which was intended to be over with once the war was over.

In 1894 an attempt to implement a permanent income tax was passed by Congress but the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional! Along came the 16th Amendment ratified in 1913 which made the income tax permanent. But rates were very low — just one percent on income above $3,000 at a time when the vast majority of Americans made less than $2,000 per year. The tax was up to seven percent on high earners — and applied to few Americans. Income tax brackets today range from 10 percent for those making less than $12,400 to 37 percent over $640,600!

So the Billionaires Tax Act would allow the state Legislature – dominated by Democrats – to make it to where citizens would have to list all their assets and their value and submit them to the California Franchise Tax Board and authorize the board to appraise those assets and confirm value. They could then enact a penalty of up to 40 percent on your tax bill if the board determines you’re undervaluing your assets. The FTB could subpoena financial records!

Don’t fall for this crap from these sneaky bastards. They pass these laws and bury new taxes within hoping that nobody notices! This is like the time in 2010 when Nancy Pelosi was asked to comment on the health care bill and replied, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it — away from the fog of the controversy.”

As another example of how taxes are snuck in, on June 30, 2025 Newsom signed into law on AB 130 to remove the California Environmental Quality Act as an impediment to new infill, multi-family, and mixed-use projects. But buried in AB 130 is a section that allows local agencies to impose Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) fees on new housing, which some stakeholders argue functions as a new “tax” on development that may increase costs for homeowners and renters, up to $16,000 per unit!

If you think housing costs are too high, Sacramento only makes things worse.

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Pensions systems are sucking city, county and state budgets dry.

According to state Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, the combined unfunded pensions in California amount to approximately half a trillion dollars that cannot be paid. It’s unsustainable situation.

Instead of getting the pension boards to do better at getting the best return for its investments and trim the benefits and crack down on disability scams, they want to bully private sector firmms to is invest in DEI.

The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) fund is $166 BILLION SHORT despite record returns! Its California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) for educators has an unfunded obligation of $88.7 billion.

On top of that, retirees get free medical benefits for life!

StanCERA, the Stanislaus County Employees’ Retirement System, carries about $800 million in unfunded pension liabilities. StanCERA is the retirement agency for Ceres city employees and those debts are impacting the city budget.

Look at these statistics and you’ll see why things are getting out of hand:

In 2005, only 1,841 CalPERS retirees collected pensions exceeding $100,000 annually. Four years, later that number spiked to 6,133. In 2013, 16,838. In 2023, 51,530 were collecting pensions of $100,000 or more!

These generous packages were approved by elected officials. Not surprisingly, Curtis Ishii who was in charge of CalPERS managed to wrangle the highest annual pension package of $444,295 after 45 years of employment. Retired Solano County administrator Michael D. Johnson draws $404,307 annually!

Here are local examples found on Transparent California:

• Former CUSD Supt. Scott Siegel who, after 33 years of service, collected a CalSTRS pension of $165,750.22 in 2024! (These are annual payouts that go up each year).
• Jay Simmonds, another former CUSD administrator, collected $162,337.83 in 2024.
• Gary Napper, city manager of Ceres many moons ago and who retired from the city of Clayton in 2019, collected a CalPERS pension of $173,103 in 2024;
• Alex Terrazas, the city manager of Los Banos before he was city manager of Ceres, collected $143,993.25 from CalPERS in 2024;
• Former Ceres City Manager Brad Kilger who retired from the city of Martinez, collected $139,620.99 from CalPERS in 2024;
• Retired CUSD Supt. Denise Wickham, $86,168 collected from CalSTRS.

This is why these pension plans in California are going broke and the taxpayers are suffering for it.

California isn’t the only state with this problem. Of all 50 states there is a staggering $832 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. This figure arises from states’ failure to set aside sufficient assets to cover the full cost of promised benefits. On average, states have funded only 72 cents for every dollar of pension benefits owed, leaving a 28 percent gap that must eventually be filled through higher taxes, reduced services, or further borrowing. This underfunding is exacerbated by volatile stock markets, where “paper gains” from investments can temporarily mask the problem but evaporate during downturns.

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Rich people aren’t the only ones fleeing California. There is a middle class exodus too.

Net domestic out-migration from California increased to 288,600 in 2025. That is the highest amount leaving California since the pandemic.

It’s no secret why they are leaving and it’s not because they find California lacking in beauty. The report, “California at a Crossroads: How Bad Policy Cost California Its Economic Edge – and How to Win It Back,” authored by PRI scholars Dr. Wayne Winegarden and Kerry Jackson, uses federal government data to document a troubling shift in the state’s economic trajectory. The report highlights a growing affordability crisis. While California’s median household income is roughly 20 percent higher than the national average, that advantage disappears once taxes, housing and energy costs are considered. Thus the typical California household has 35 percent less disposable income than the national median!

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I’m amused by the people who have no idea how things work in life. In our post about my column discussing about Ceres getting another car wash, an individual named Juan Manriquez wrote: “Still ballot that we get an AMC theatre with a Dolby cinema and an imax at that Walmart site on hatch & Mitchell.”

Voters don’t vote for what businesses come to their town. You can’t pass a measure ordering AMC to build a theater in Ceres. It doesn’t work that way. If AMC thinks a theater in Ceres would be profitable when the neighboring towns just minutes away have multiple screens, they would. But they don’t.

Ceres’ biggest problem is being an appendage to Modesto and Turlock just 10 minutes down the freeway with its Ten Pin and Target and Olive Garden and Texas Roadhouse. That’s why Ceres gets an overdose of fast-food places and car washes and gas stations. But the Planning Commission wants the the City Council to start looking at moratoriums on them.

Apparently Mr. Manriquez doesn’t read the Courier because if he did he would know that Vallarta Super Market, Five Below and Ross Dress for Less are going into the abandoned Walmart.

Get informed, people, before commenting and voting.

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Politics has always been a dirty business. No one proves that more than state Senate candidate Alexandra Duarte whose trashy hit pieces on Marie Alvarado-Gil are dirty and disgusting. Her attacks on a recent Republican convert are deplorable so much as that the Stanislaus County Republicans Assembly condemned her style of campaigning as “false and misleading.”

She also ran a hit piece mailer showing Alvarado-Gil posing with Vice President Harris, with the notation: “Marie Alvarado-Gil Seen Holding Hands with Kamala Harris.”

For crying out loud, it was a photo op with a government official, not some clandestine hand-holding session. Two women holding hands for a picture would be the female equivalent of two guys shaking hands in a photo op. Big whoop. So a state senator wanted her photo with the first female vice president. Does that make them political allies? Hardly (I’m no fan of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or Joe Biden but if I saw any of them I’d want to take a picture with one because they were our nation’s president and a part of history.)

In another slimy National Enquirer style mailer which Duarte obviously approved shows the senator looking seductively over pink and red romantic hearts with an exposed shoulder with the verbiage, “Lifelong Democrat Marie Alvarado-Gil loves Joe Biden.” Another calls her a liberal Democrat. Nice try though. Duarte’s nose is growing longer by the hit piece.

Get it straight: Alvarado-Gil changed parties because Democrats have lost their collective minds and have become uber radically left progressives.

I often relate that when I heard Senator Alvarado-Gil speaking in Ceres years back when she was a Democrat, I thought, wow, this sounds like a Republican, not a Democrat. Lo and behold in 2024 she changed parties and the Democrats got vicious with her as they will with turncoats.

In 2023, before she changed parties, Alvarado-Gil voted against Democrats in a bill endorsed by Governor Newsom to “grant unyielding power to an unelected state commission to impose unprecedented regulatory actions” over the gas and oil industry. His said she voted no on SBx1-2 “because we don’t need more bureaucracy, we need less. Constituents in Senate District 4 are feeling the pain at the pump, as it further strains household budgets. This bill would not provide the relief that is needed, which is one of our district’s top concerns.”

Alvarado-Gil has been tough on crime too, especially fentanyl dealers.

Duarte also had the audacity to bring up Chad Condit’s salacious allegations of sexual harassment which have not been substantiated and seem whacky and very questionable to me. Her campaign used a quote from the Daily Mail who reported on the Condit allegation that Marie “used male chief of staff as her SEX SLAVE.” Really? If she was fair she would share how the Courier reported that Alvarado-Gil’s assertion about Condit’s “consistent drinking and possible illicit drug use” as well as claims he stole $50,000 from her campaign account.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed by Duarte’s vile campaigning, folks, but it’s because of her glaring lack of credentials. So she can shoot shoot guns and she is the wife of a one-time congressman who lost to Adam Gray in 2024. This is the same John Duarte who endorsed Ceres Mayor Javier Lopez for Congress but quickly backtracked when Trump endorsed Kevin Lincoln.

Since Alexandra Duarte hasn’t served one day in elective office – not even locally – she conveniently has no record to criticize. But her obsession with going negative on Alvarado-Gil smacks of total desperation.

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As the City Council was wrestling last week with a potential budget gap of millions of dollars, members were voting to give away $3,000 to tax funds to local groups. Is that a prudent thing to do when you’re talking about possible employee layoffs?

They might want to adjust their spending habits, just saying…

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I’m sure you’ve noticed the high percentage of drivers who lack common courtesy and never use their blinkers to signal their impending lane changes or turns. I’m convinced that if we could convince those people to use their signal lights when they drive we might coax them into using a little common sense when they vote. Otherwise, in a state plagued with such a high cost of living, why do they keep electing the very politicians who keep piling on more taxation, more regulation and more government spending?

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com