Arnold used the mess set up by the energy crisis to play off the ineptness of Gray Davis. Gray was seen as only about money, so much so that even the most liberal John Burton was disgusted with him. Second, Jay Leno owns a lot of cars...and the vehicle tax helped to undo Davis who was looking to make up for the energy crisis/Enron/et.al gamed system which had just drained the state's coffers of a few billion, in order to just keep the lights on.
Arnold then has meetings with Ken Lay in LA prior to the fiasco as Greg Palast has reported on "Arnold Unplugged - It's hasta la vista to $9 billion if the Governator is selected"
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=283&row=1""It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.""
Populist coup or not, most Californians hated the tripling of the VLF tax and wished that Davis could have gone after Enron et al in order to balance the budget -- see "State Triples Vehicle License Fees"
http://forum.teamxbox.com/archive/index.php/t-203818.htmlNo wonder Arnold was on the Leno 'Tonight Show' so often !
Davis was doing exactly what Arnold would have done...Which is the big surprise behind all of this. Arnold then used Davis' tactics, since Davis used Wall Street loans to bail the state out for around $10 billion; Arnold then turned around and by cutting the VLF added about $4 billion to the borrowing, since he went to Wall Street for $14 or so billion dollars! Neat trick, huh ? So if you were Wall Street during this fiasco, who would you support, a candidate who'd generate 1% commission on a greater or a lesser amount of borrowing ? Correct...Wall Street went with Arnie.
As for populism, Arnold supports Colorado-style TABOR (taxpayer bill of rights) formula budgets. See "Arnold Schwarzenegger supports TABOR -- Wall Street Journal, 9/24/03" at
http://www.idtaxreform.com/TABORintro.htmYou see now that under TABOR's population/inflation growth formulas, as with Colorado's from 1992, an initial year's budget has to be about perfectly equitable to begin with when the formula commences. Arnold is trying to legislate this now, to no success, and will attempt ballot initiatives for it soon.
So there you have it. A disguised 'environmentalist', 'pro-choice','moderate' Republican who, once he's in office will do exactly as the party dictates. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Populist my arse.
Warren Buffetts' advise is curious, since his advise says one thing
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/14/MN7302.DTLin order to get jobs back to California (lower corporate taxes), while saying another when you look closer
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm(raise corporate taxes). And Arnie is a supporter of outsourcing ! The whole globalization multinational corporate scheme to lower taxes, offshoring jobs and capital, and lower wages in America, is what Wall Street wants to hear, not what Main Street needs. Who wins ? Opportunists like Arnie. Who loses ? Let me guess....