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Did California Millionaires Just Turn On Their Billionaire Cousins?
More than 40 California multimillionaires signed an open letter this week urging voters to pass Proposition 40, the one-time 5% tax on the wealth of the state’s billionaires. The letter was organized by Patriotic Millionaires and Tax The Ultra Rich Now, and it doesn’t mince words. The signers say they can afford to live anywhere and choose California because they love it. They call the billionaire tax a very sensible solution to a looming healthcare disaster, and they point straight at the roughly 200 billionaires who’ve spent millions trying to kill it. In their words, “It’s past time for billionaires, our thousand millionaire cousins, to do theirs.” Prop 40 would raise tens of billions of dollars, with 90% of the money going to healthcare after Trump’s big ugly bill stripped coverage from more than a million Californians. Here’s the catch. Voters have to vote yes on 40 and no on Propositions 41 and 42, because billionaire money put two spoiler measures on the same ballot. If either one gets more votes than 40, the tax dies. Polling shows support hovering just under 50% When the rich start saying tax us, that’s not charity. That’s democracy starting to claw back what oligarchy took.
$32 Million Airline CEO Breaks Ranks and Demands a Wealth Tax
Scott Kirby runs United Airlines. He took home about $32.3 million last year. And in an interview with The New York Times published Sunday, he said something you almost never hear from a corporate boardroom. He said wealth inequality has become a danger to our society. He called for a national wealth tax, and he said inheritance taxes should get close to 100% at some level. His exact words were, “I would pay them.” Kirby argued the tax has to be national, not state by state, because the rich will just move. He didn’t name a rate or a threshold. Right now the federal estate tax tops out at 40% and exempts the first $15 million per person. Fox Business sneered that a $32 million CEO was lecturing America, and its anchors spent the morning calling it double taxation and hypocrisy, since United charges you extra to escape a middle seat. Fine. Kirby’s no saint. But think about what it means when the people at the very top of the ladder start saying the ladder’s about to tip over. They can see the pitchforks from up there. The question is whether Congress can.
Texas Republicans Plot to Gut the Lieutenant Governor’s Office If a Democrat Wins
Here’s what happens when Republicans think they might lose. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is in real trouble. Public and private GOP polling shows him potentially losing next month to Democratic state Representative Vikki Goodwin, a lawmaker Patrick’s own attack ads made famous. So, according to Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report, multiple sources say Republicans are preparing to strip the lieutenant governor of all legislative powers if Goodwin wins. The lieutenant governor presides over the Texas Senate and holds enormous sway over committee assignments and which bills reach the floor. But most of those powers come from Senate rules that senators approve at the start of every session. A Republican majority could simply rewrite them. The Texas Tribune laid out that playbook last week. Goodwin told the Tribune, “I’ll figure out ways to get things done.” She also pointed out that the core powers, like being next in line for governor, are written into the state constitution. No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since Bob Bullock left that very job in 1999. And Patrick already faces a police complaint from Goodwin over AI deepfake images of her his campaign used. So the rules only count when Republicans win? That’s not democracy. That’s a rigged game, and voters should remember who rigged it.
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Public Citizen Drops a Report Exposing Trump’s MAHA Betrayal
Remember Make America Healthy Again? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised to get toxic chemicals out of our food, our water, and our air. A lot of people believed him and voted for Trump because of it. On Monday the watchdog group Public Citizen checked the receipts. Of the 21 environmental chemicals the White House’s own May 2025 MAHA Report pledged to address, 20 have gotten less regulation under Trump, not more. For nine of them, including the cancer-linked herbicide atrazine, mercury, and PFAS forever chemicals, the administration actively loosened the rules. Trump’s EPA rolled back drinking water limits on forever chemicals, weakened air pollution rules, and went easy on glyphosate. Public Citizen calls those the most egregious betrayals of the movement that helped elect him. The lone exception was microplastics, where the administration took what the report describes as at best a baby step, saying it might consider regulation someday. Research director Peter Whoriskey put it bluntly. He said “MAHA is worse than an empty slogan.” This is the oldest con in the book. Sell working people a promise about their kids’ health, then hand the pen to the chemical lobby. The MAHA moms got a slogan. The polluters got a permit.
Did Mortgage Rates Just Push the Housing Market Into a Deep Freeze?
New September numbers came out today and they’re grim. Pending home sales, that’s signed contracts on existing homes, fell 7.3% from August and 11.3% from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors. Economists expected half a percent. The index dropped to 66, the lowest reading since tracking began in 2001. Every region fell, with the West down more than 9% and the South, the nation’s biggest housing market, down more than 8%. Why? Mortgage rates. The 30-year fixed started September around 6.8% and hit 7.6% by the end of the month, and it’s still climbing. Builders are pulling back too. Housing starts fell 4.6% to an annual pace of 859,000, the lowest in a year, and homebuilder confidence hit a 14-year low. NAR’s chief economist Lawrence Yun said “housing affordability is more affected by changes in mortgage rates” than by job gains. Trump promised cheaper homes. Instead a whole generation is locked out, sellers are frozen in place, and the American dream of owning a home keeps slipping further out of reach for working families.
Could America’s $1.7 Trillion Car Loan Bubble Be About to Burst?
Americans now owe $1.7 trillion on their cars. That’s more than all the credit card debt in the country. And a new Reuters analysis, picked up by CarBuzz, warns the whole thing could come crashing down. The average new car payment has jumped from $550 a month in 2019 to $765 today. To make those payments fit, lenders stretched loans out to seven and even eight years. More than 30% of subprime loans written this year won’t be paid off until the car is over 12 years old. In 2019 that figure was under 6%. People will owe money on cars that no longer run. Meanwhile, the share of subprime auto loans at least 60 days late is hovering around 6%, near the highest level in more than 30 years. Pandemic stimulus made budgets look healthier than they were, lenders wrote loans they shouldn’t have, and now the bills are due. CarBuzz warns this could “shake the auto industry to its core.” This isn’t a story about reckless borrowers. It’s a story about wages that haven’t kept up with prices for 40 years, and a system that profits by lending working people into a hole. We’ve seen this movie before. It was called 2008.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, October 20, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
