Why Does Gavin Newsom Keep Helping the Oligarchs?

In opposing the California wealth tax and helping push through the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger, the governor is doing the bidding of billionaires.

This year Gavin Newsom has shown that he would be a billionaire-friendly president. Which means he shouldn’t be president at all. In short order, we will all have a huge field of Democratic presidential hopefuls to keep up with, but Newsom has done us a favor and disqualified himself before he even formally launches his expected campaign.

Newsom has aligned himself with the uberwealthy on two major fronts. He has strongly opposed a ballot initiative that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of California billionaires. The measure would almost certainly pass if it had vocal backing from Democratic politicians in the state. But lacking that support, polls suggest it might fail. In addition, Newsom pushed Attorney General Rob Bonta and other Democratic attorneys to cut a deal with David Ellison (son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison) and his company Skydance, instead of continuing litigation to stop or stall Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Newsom’s public wariness about the attorney generals taking a tough line against the merger inspired other California Democratic politicians to adopt the same stance, undercutting the leverage of Bonta and his colleagues. The attorney generals ended up dropping their opposition to the merger after a few minor concessions from Ellison and his firm.

Newsom has cast these moves as being in the interests of his state’s residents. After all, Ellison threatened to move Paramount’s headquarters away from California unless Bonta and the other attorneys general blessed the merger, potentially costing thousands of Californians their jobs. (Ellison’s Skydance acquired Paramount last year.) Newsom and other critics of the billionaire tax say it would raise money initially but ultimately would rob California of revenue, as the superrich leave the state en masse.

In reality, the economic case for the governor’s stances isn’t clear-cut. Sure, Ellison isn’t moving Paramount’s headquarters from California for now, but I would expect the company’s workforce in the Bay State to be drastically reduced in the next few years. That’s what companies that merge do—claim redundancies and lay off thousands of people. Ellison has already written a memo to employees of the newly merged company hinting at significant job cuts to come.

Also, we should consider the........

© New Republic