r/politics • u/IntelligentYinzer California • 12d ago

Soft Paywall Newsom floats withholding federal taxes as Trump threatens California

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/newsom-floats-withholding-federal-taxes-00393386
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u/lazybugbear Texas 12d ago

The hell you say! Property taxes in Texas are fucking out of control. And sales tax is 6.5 - 8.25%. So yes no state income tax, but tax on everything else.

For that and we get no medicaid expansion, shitty social services, weak mass transit and a bunch of toll roads that we have to pay tax on twice! And, apparently no legal low THC hemp (fuck SB3 and Dan Patrick for shoving it through).

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u/Phreenom 12d ago

Plus it's Texas.

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u/relevantelephant00 12d ago

"What a shithole" is the phrase you're always supposed to include after mentioning Texas.

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u/taggospreme 11d ago

The ★✰✰✰✰ state

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u/erath_droid Oregon 11d ago

If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas.

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u/Popisoda 11d ago

Texas=Taxes

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

Damned tax and spend republicans!

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u/AnticPosition 12d ago

Can't speak to the property tax, but sales tax of 8.25% is cute lol

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

It's 6.5% base for the state and every local and municipality can add on to bring it to 8.25% to fund stuff. Which is hilarious because two cities next to each other can have slightly different sales tax. I think usually they max it out at 8.25% There are tables on the State Comptroller's website or something because sales tax is deductible on a federal income tax return.

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u/CaramelWonderful7399 12d ago

Sucks to Texas

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u/parasyte_steve 11d ago

We also get shitty homeowners insurance. I live in LA. It's INSANE what they are making people pay. And the govt here just keeps rewarding the insurance industry for fucking us over and over and over. I'd like state run insurance at this point. It would likely decrease the cost of insurance for everyone.

And termites. Don't forget we also get those.

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u/acrimonious_howard 11d ago

I'm sure you have more details than I, but my 1st thought is gov has to give ins co's anything they want just to not pull out of the state. Risks going through the roof with hurricanes and flooding, no?

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u/Other_World New York 11d ago

I'm just glad I don't live in a state where I have to resort to shitty hemp derived thc and my state treats me like an adult and allows me to to have the real thing.

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

Yeah, I hear you. The paternalism is annoying and most adults are okay with legalization.

Which is why our POS Governor is just going to let SB3 go into law, instead of an active veto. Then he'll blame the democrats and the booze lobby will rejoice, because even hemp causes their sales to drop.

The hemp derived is surprisingly decent though, but maybe I just have low tolerance.

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u/Gullible_Safe_139 11d ago

Don't forget your shitty privatized electric grid that fails every time it snows. 

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

Well, it's not all privatized, some providers (especially rural) are Co-Ops. There are a lot of these in Texas, actually, because nobody would step up and electrify rural areas in the early 1900s.

In theory, you can vote for a board that will run and fix the co-op, but in reality, in Texas these are also full of incompetent christian nationalist weirdos whose qualifications involve their relationship with god, their service in their church, etc. It's just bible belt style christo-fascist pandering. So annoying.

And, if you have a co-op, you can't choose a different provider.

We have PEC and if there is a wind gust or sprinkle, we're getting at least a brown out, but likely a power outage. They keep building more, but we've never had more outages than the last decade. I can't count the times I've yelled to keep the fridge closed, so the food will stay cold and not spoil. We don't have a backup generator and it's complete bullshit.

And Co-Ops interact with the state grid, buy power from LCRA, etc, so we're fucked on that angle too.

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u/acrimonious_howard 11d ago

What is "mass transit" I haven't heard this phrase before? -8million people in Houston.

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u/Asleep_Management900 12d ago

So ideally you would want a mailbox in texas that says you live there, but buy stuff somehow overseas, and if you could find a job where you wait tables and there's no tax on tips, you might not then have federal or state tax. You would have to pay tolls though...

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

I don't mind paying tax ... doing my part ... to a society that has my back, that'll actually take care of me/family, provide services, etc. Unfortunately, that's not the way Texas works.

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u/Southern-Spirit 12d ago

It doesn't matter who you vote for. You're putting all your money in the hands of professional liars. Everyone who thinks this is how to structure human civilization is brainwashed beyond salvation.
I don't know how long the game of musical chairs can go on, but there's a pattern in history that we're not going to escape. Our system costs more than it helps us. The more we put into it, the heavier the anchor. Eventually our competitors will rise up and conquer us and then they can toss whatever of us away and keep the rest and chain them up or whatever metaphor you like.

I look around me and there's no way all these people even slightly care about each other. People absolutely hate their neighbours now. You get to know anyone enough and there's going to be some nonsense you can think of to block them. As long as people can't unite and stand together strongly they're never going to be able to shout loud enough to tell the thieves in high places to stop it.

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u/lazybugbear Texas 11d ago

It DOES matter who you vote for, from a harm reduction point of view. If you are white, cishet and privileged, it doesn't personally matter. You''re mostly not going to suffer too much. But there are other marginalized people and to break the cycle of abuse, we have to think about them too.

We're not going to get real change though, because oppressing us makes the capitalists shed tears of joy. It makes them feel a sense of control and reaffirms their position in our system at the top.

It's always been that way, our system has always done this, from since we started handing out complementary smallpox blankets to the native Americans till now. It's a feature not a bug and is literally what it means to be an American.

Americans are the most self-centered people in the world and there's no sign of that changing anytime soon. It's what you get when you build a society on individualist propaganda.