Comms+ @GoodJobsFirst. Support: econ development equity, corporate reform. Past: @usatoday @mcall @vcstar @latimes. Bilingüe. 👋🏾 https://xitter.cf/t.co/IeZLwfOR3o
Ventura, CA
Joined May 2008
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Arlene Martinez retweeted
Ok here is a radically non-violent idea. How about we address the underlying problems of "rising inflation and stagnant pay" before they metastasize into rage and violence? The alternative pathway is a cruel indifference towards rising inequality/declining labor share, followed by the suppression of protests via the police state.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
Pritzker is trying to position himself as Not The Guy Who Lost The Bears while also as Not The Guy Who Broke The Bank For A Bears Stadium, which is a tough needle to thread when you're talking about handing over $1.5B in property and sales taxes. fieldofschemes.com/2026/10/2…
Arlene Martinez retweeted
With Meta shutting down No Kings, Ellison blocking TikTok ads for a documentary on Elon, Amazon supplying tech for ICE.... It's a good time to remember that this story has played out before.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
A sign that people are not being "lifted" off SNAP: they're showing up to wait in the hours-long line at the overwhelmed local food pantry.
ALT Those forces have hit especially hard in areas that were already struggling economically, like West Virginia’s once-flourishing coal mining communities. The spike in gas costs means a 45-minute drive to the nearest grocery store can set residents back more than $15. And West Virginians who must comply with the new work requirements to receive food benefits are confronting a lack of jobs and training programs. Since last summer, about 24,000 people, including 8,000 children, have lost food stamps, according to the West Virginia Department of Human Services.
Food pantry workers on the front lines of feeding their neighbors say they're facing unprecedented challenges after cuts by the Trump administration. Demand is surging, while the amount of food they're getting from the federal government has fallen. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wes…
Arlene Martinez retweeted
Remember when neoliberal econs told us in the post-Covid period that companies were NOT taking advantage of inflation to raise their own prices in excess of any cost increase? They also told us that industry concentration didn't explain post-Covid price hikes. Well, economists at Northeastern University tested that proposition and found good evidence for this practice--what non-econs might call "gouging" or "profiteering"--in the airline industry. Go give it a read! (link in next tweet)
Because stadiums don't generate net economic activity, developers only make moola if they turn the area around it into an "entertainment district." They know using a place a few days a year isn't going to cut it. Now if policymakers could learn that and stop giving away our money
The Bills have grand plans for hotels, bars, restaurants and other cool stuff surrounding their brand new $2B stadium.
Not on our watch, say the residents of Orchard Park:
.@UHC is hiking prescription plan rates by 56% - to $170 per month for the "value plan" - and the customer service rep laughably told us it was "inflation" and blamed the "federal government."
Arlene Martinez retweeted
A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley’s billionaires’ wealth back to where it was just 31 days ago, on September 7.
When it was "just" 178% higher than on January 1, 2023.
They’d rather let 3 million people lose their health insurance than let that happen.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
To follow Elon Musk’s America PAC money, WIRED created a live-updating tracker that highlights the trillionaire’s overall influence on November’s elections. buff.ly/q0P4LIo
Arlene Martinez retweeted
Oligarchs’ lavish spending against the tax measure is one of the best arguments in favor of it.
Something is deeply sick in the society when billionaires have this much couch change just lying around while hundreds of thousands of people could get kicked off their medical care.
Second tactic: unleash a tsunami of misleading ads.
The billionaires have already spent $230 million. Sergey Brin alone has spent $138 million. @patrickc : $20 million. @ericschmidt : $15 million. It is one of the most expensive campaigns in U.S. history.
The billionaires have reserved nearly $100 million worth of advertising, compared with roughly $100,000 for supporters of the tax.
And they are nowhere near finished. Voting begins today—80% of Californians vote by mail—and runs through November 3, Election Day for the midterms.
The advertising tsunami will only intensify between now and then.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
We're three weeks away from my Atlanta book launch event at Manuel's Tavern (Oct. 27 at 7pm), hosted by A Cappella Books . Looking forward to a lively conversation with @rafi_kohan about This One Will Be Different.
🤖 Made with AI
Arlene Martinez retweeted
My advice for how commissioned studies should be treated by the media. doi.org/10.1093/978019782024…
Arlene Martinez retweeted
Arlene Martinez retweeted
We and other organizations have been tracking billions in state and local tax dollars data center companies are getting, but they're also getting sig *federal* tax breaks and subsidies, including substantial R&D credits, capital gains tax breaks and others tucked inside the BBB.
Meta paid just 3.5% of its profits in federal corporate income taxes last year.
Part of that is due to claiming the research tax credit to pay for the equipment it uses in data centers to power its AI activities.
itep.org/metas-outlandish-ta…
Arlene Martinez retweeted
For example, in 2019, 2020, and 2023, Sergey Brin and Larry Page—the co-founders of Google and, respectively, the second- and third-richest people in the world—reported no income and paid no income tax on their colossal Alphabet-derived wealth.
Since 2019, their combined wealth has increased by more than $400 billion.
Sergey Brin is now spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat the proposed billionaire tax.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
To win this referendum, Silicon Valley’s billionaires are trying to stay out of sight. That is precisely why we need to shine a brighter spotlight on them than ever before.
Since 1982, the wealth of California’s billionaires—the richest 0.0002%—has increased thirtyfold. It rose by 144% between 2023 and 2025 alone. California billionaires now hold $2.4 trillion in wealth, equivalent to 50% of California’s GDP.
The wealth of these 250 billionaires is as big as the total income reported by all California families on their individual income tax returns – some 20 million of them.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
Three million Californians will lose their health coverage as soon as next year if the billionaire tax does not pass. Yet according to this campaign, it is passing the billionaire tax that poses the greatest threat to California’s health care system (!!).
It is an old trick: convince people that the cure will make the disease worse.
Here is the main ad flooding California television and social media right now. Orwellian.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
Second tactic: unleash a tsunami of misleading ads.
The billionaires have already spent $230 million. Sergey Brin alone has spent $138 million. @patrickc : $20 million. @ericschmidt : $15 million. It is one of the most expensive campaigns in U.S. history.
The billionaires have reserved nearly $100 million worth of advertising, compared with roughly $100,000 for supporters of the tax.
And they are nowhere near finished. Voting begins today—80% of Californians vote by mail—and runs through November 3, Election Day for the midterms.
The advertising tsunami will only intensify between now and then.
Arlene Martinez retweeted
As we set out to test if we’d be able to start our own private schools, no one from any of these three states checked our backgrounds.
No one asked what we plan to teach or how we would measure student performance, either.
propublica.org/article/propu…
really digging the kind of reporting ProPublica's been doing - they opened a school and became problem gamblers to name just a couple
New: ProPublica designed a reporting experiment to demonstrate how easy it can be to open private schools that might then access public money. We succeeded in opening two schools. No credentials or background checks required. propub.li/4dQIQAA
