Here's a tale as old as American politics: a tax proposal surfaces, and immediately both sides start lying through their teeth about what it actually does.

The latest chapter involves efforts to pass various "billionaire tax" measures — and a coordinated campaign to convince seniors that these proposals will somehow come for their retirement savings, their homes, and their modest nest eggs. Mailers, robocalls, and slick digital ads are reportedly flooding older Americans with the message that taxing the ultra-wealthy is really just a Trojan horse for taxing them.

Let's be clear about two things simultaneously, because apparently that's too much to ask of our political discourse.

First: Deliberately misleading seniors — or anyone — about what a tax proposal actually does is contemptible. If your argument against a policy can't stand on its own merits, maybe your argument sucks. Wealthy interests running scare campaigns that distort the plain text of legislation aren't defending liberty; they're defending their accountants' billable hours.

Second: Skepticism of new taxes isn't misinformation — it's common sense. History is littered with "targeted" taxes that metastasized into broad-based burdens on the middle class. The income tax itself started as a levy on the rich. California's own tax creep is legendary. People who worry about scope expansion aren't conspiracy theorists; they're paying attention.

The real problem? The mainstream media treats this as a one-sided story. Either billionaires are saints being persecuted, or they're cartoon villains hoarding gold coins. Neither framing serves you.

What seniors — and all of us — actually deserve is a straightforward explanation of what any proposed tax does, who it hits, and what guardrails exist to prevent mission creep. Instead, we get propaganda from the top and patronizing dismissals from the press.

As one SF resident put it, "Everyone's got a agenda. Nobody's got a spreadsheet."

That about sums it up. If you want people to trust the tax code, try being honest about it — from every direction.