Bad things happen when those in power lack seriousness. Not long ago we had a Republican president who told Iraqi insurgents: “Bring ‘em on!” Now we have a Republican governor in California who sees the state’s current budget catastrophe as nothing but a big joke. Why else would Arnold Schwarzenegger post a tasteless Twitter...
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, amidst the worst economic depression in seventy years, demands that the state legislature dismantle what he calls the state’s “luxury model” social programs. To justify his budget cutting zeal he has repeatedly sounded the alarm that we’re in the midst of an economic catastrophe. But nothing will shake his religious...
As the California budget crisis continues to be a showdown between a recalcitrant Executive and a weak-kneed Legislature, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, discussing the merciless state budget cuts he has proposed, insisted to Mark Leibovich of the New York Times Magazine (July 5, 2009): “I see the faces behind those dollars. I see the children...
The California State Senate adjourned at midnight unable to pass three stopgap bills that would have saved the state $7 billion. In an attempt to appease Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the Democratic leaders of the state legislature hastily drew up the three complicated bills to try to stave off fiscal collapse and the necessity...
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is accomplishing right now what he failed to do in 2005 when he tried to put the state’s major labor unions out of business and downsize the state government. At that time there was no economic catastrophe to point to as an excuse to shred the social safety net. But...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that the test of our nation was “not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger might be married to a Kennedy but his governing philosophy is pure George W....
Lame-Duck Terminator
Before the music swells, the long dissolve, and the credits roll, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his merry band of right-wing Republicans who control a third of the state legislature are intent on making one final power play to squeeze the last drops of blood from California’s public institutions. Schwarzenegger’s hackneyed “State of the State”...
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