Why wasn’t the final tally 99% to 1%?

In a Ukraine update from this morning Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported some more about the liberation of Kherson. The jubilation shown in many videos (and he includes some) shows the lie that these people wanted to be part of Russia. There’s also an elderly woman giving Ukrainian soldiers an ammo belt. Don’t mess with her! It appears Russians were storing ammo in or near private homes. Now that Russia is out of Kherson (though just across the river) it had to move its regional administration to a new place. They chose Henichesk and the only advantage this small town has is its distance from Ukrainian held territory. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Massachusetts voters passed, 52% to 48%, a tax of an additional 4% on income over $1 million. Yeah, we get why super rich dudes donated $1 million to defeat the amendment. Though ...

The ability to contribute $1 million to [defeat] an effort to tax the wealthy seems like evidence that the wealthy should be taxed more.

We also understand why 0.6% of the earners who would be taxed more would want to donate to defeat such a measure, but why did 48% of voters vote against it? Nearly all of them won’t be affected by the tax. Why wasn’t the final tally 99% to 1%? Clawson pulls apart the reasons. There is the claim that if the rich are taxed more they’ll just move elsewhere. But research done after such laws are passed in other states shows that rarely happens. Others say selling your house could result in an unexpected tax bill. Yeah, it could – if your capital gains on the house, after all the improvements are deducted, was over $1 million. Clawson mentioned an old chestnut, tweeted by Son of the South:

Hell no, it also taxes small business owners, farmers and fishermen. That’s a sure fire way to increase our food costs, materials and home heating oil.

Clawson replied:

Let me fix that for you: “Small business owners making more than $1 million of personal income a year, farmers making more than $1 million a year, and fishermen making more than $1 million a year.”

I and my brother have done a lot of genealogy work over the last few years, expanding on the research our parents had done. As part of that work I joined WikiTree, a free site for building a community ancestral tree that emphasizes finding sources to verify what a profile shows. I’ve been able to link up my own family to work others have done. I get a report emailed to me nearly every day showing what others have contributed for people with the same family names as my ancestors. I’ve also asked questions of the community of users and they are pleased to share what they know. One of those community questions was more of a comment. The user included the text of a petition to the Virginia Legislature presented by a free man of color in 1834. As a free man of color he wasn’t allowed to stay in Virginia. He asks the legislature to be allowed to stay until he earned enough money to buy the freedom of his wife and two children. This user commented that such suffering on a personal level makes him sad and angry. Various community responses agreed it is sad and depressing. But such stories need to be told. We can’t let these stories be covered up. And in this case we need to see the profound courage of a man confronting lawmakers to save his family. Descendants of slaves need to know their family history. The rest of us need to know that history too, even those of us whose only family trauma was the death of an infant during the Atlantic crossing or running aground in sight of land off the Virginia coast. I’m pleased WikiTree is doing what it can to help those stories be told. An example is starting a list of Southern plantations to provide a place to group plantation records. This is another higher level of family history I haven’t had to deal with. I’m glad I saw this discussion. Here is a link to that community comment and its discussion. I doubt you will be able to see it if you aren’t a member of WikiTree.