Residents Offer Own Picks for Harbor Commission p. 2
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Final Chapter Closes on Williams’ Books p. 3 This Is Not the Lone Ranger of Yesteryear p.11
The Local Publication You Actually Read
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
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July 12 - 25, 2013
his past November, California voters approved Proposition 30, raising sales and income taxes, with the express purpose of restoring education funding. The vast majority of new revenues were to be coming from those earning $500,000 or more. The priorities expressed in the vote have broad popular support, both in California and throughout the United States, but this was the only such measure passed anywhere in the country. Leading grassroots organizers who helped make it happen said it’s only the beginning at a panel discussion titled, “The California Comeback: How Progressives Stopped California’s Decline,” on June 22, at Netroots Nation in San Jose. In the corporate media, Prop. 30 is virtually synonymous with Gov. Jerry Brown, but it’s actually a compromise Brown was forced to strike with a coalition of progressive groups who began circulating a petition for a millionaire’s tax in early 2012. The compromise forced Brown to withdraw his own, more modest initiative, and negotiate the much more progressive measure, which voters ended up approving by a nine percent margin. Initially, Brown refused to meet with the millionaires’ tax organizers. 1 California Comeback/ to p. 10