Guardian UK: Hasta la vista, Arnold

[marmar]

Hasta la vista, Arnold
California is shrinking, it's broke, and Schwarzenegger wants to tax golfers. It's time to terminate the governor


George Neumayr
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 February 2009 18.30 GMT


After Gray Davis ran up enormous debts as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others challenged him in a 2003 recall. Davis was ejected from office and Schwarzenegger parachuted into Sacramento with high hopes.

Today, that recall looks pointless: California is in worse shape under Schwarzenegger than was under Davis. A steady stream of bad news reports about the Golden State trickle out from the media: Despondent Californians are moving out of the state in large numbers, the state's treasury has been empty for months, tax refunds are on hold, etc.

Has Schwarzenegger governed worse than Davis? It is arguable. In one sense he has certainly been more dangerous than Davis: Many of his questionable proposals, had Davis advocated them, would never have gotten passed.

Schwarzenegger, owing to his celebrity and his stealth status as a Republican, has been able to advance dubious legislation much farther than the unpopular Davis ever could.

Billions, for example, have been spent under Schwarzenegger for controversial embryonic stem-cell research. Had Davis proposed such spending, Republicans would probably have cited it as an additional reason to recall him from office. But since a "Republican" proposed the legislation, it was suddenly acceptable. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/29/arnold-schwarzenegger-california-economy

[Runcible Spoon]

1. ok Gropenator sucks by why single out stem cell research?

Was there a lot of wasted money? Californians feel free to educate me on this one. :shrug:

[NV Whino]

2. I've said this a hundred times, but I'll say it again.

We had a surplus when Davis was in. Enron snookered us and Davis took the surplus to buy us electricity. (Thank you, Gray.) Dale Isa and his GOP cohorts ushered Arnie into office via a recall, which also took its financial toll on CA. The first thing Arnie does in office is settle the Enron suit, which was actually going quite well, for pennies on the dollar. Mission accomplished. That accelerated the slide into bankruptcy and here we are today, broke.

Gray Davis was not popular, but I hate it when he is misrepresented. And just for the record, Prop 13 had nothing to do with CA's current financial status. See above.

[Cleita]

5. I read differently. He acquired debt incurred by Pete Wilson when he

took office but was able to pay it down until the Enron crisis occurred. Am I wrong. I'm too ill right now to want to google much.

[NV Whino]

8. No we actually had a surplus

Which, among other things, gave us a discount on our DMV fees. I just got my current DMV notification and rather than going down as it has every year, it has gone up this year.

[lapfog_1]

3. More than one problem even in the few paragraphs posted...

"After Gray Davis ran up enormous debts as governor of California".

He (and the state) was held up at gunpoint. The lovely folks at Enron (and others) basically said "now that we have your electric grid, you WILL pay the rate we want or we will keep turning your power off". Right after Davis signed the long term contract (at an outrageous rates), magically California had no more "rolling blackouts". This was without one single new supply of electricity coming online.

That long term contract at double the previous contract (but less than spot market prices during the "rolling blackout" period) was the key to the beginning of bankrupting California. The Governator kept saying he was going to "go to Sacramento and OPEN THE BOOKS". Well, he went to Sacramento, but the books were never opened. There just wasn't that much any governor can do to affect the budget... a great deal of the budget is allocated by proposition (which is a good reason to hate propositions).

Guess who Arrrrrnold met with just before throwing his hat into the recall ring?

One guess.

[Cleita]

6. Also, the books were always open and online for everyone to see who

bothered to look. That whole recall thing was such a circus. I wish we could change the laws about the way it's done so this never happens again.

[Cleita]

4. The man should never have been Governor for many reasons, but he had

many big bucks from out of state conservative think tanks who spent the money and propaganda to get and keep him in office. Those who opposed suddenly found themselves either having to change their ideas or be squeezed from their jobs, such as the SOS who objected to his ideas. The purpose was to get legislation passed through by a Republican Governor that would compromise California's electoral votes throwing them to the Republicans instead of the Democrats as usual, giving us another eight years of a Republican administration. The Republicans knew they needed a candidate that appeared to be a liberal because no true Republican could win after Pete Wilson. Thank God that backfired on them. I hope we can get rid of him and the Republican cancer in this state sooner rather than later.

The article has several inaccuracies. Davis didn't accumulate enormous debts but acquired them from former Republican Governor Pete Wilson and then was railroaded by the energy crisis and duplicity in dealings with Enron that added to the debts. Arnold has never been a liberal in the true sense. He only promoted liberal ideas dressed in conservative clothing meaning that everything he did that sounded good had no provisions for funding except to raid other programs, defunding them to pay for them. When he ran out of those sources, he started in on making the state employees pay for them with loss of jobs and pay cuts. Some liberal.

[SoCalDem]

7. His term is up in '10.. why waste money we don't have..

He should have never BEEN put in there..but dems here seem to always find lackluster opponents to go up against the rambunctious republicans who seem to weasel their way in..

Reagan
Deukmejian
Wilson
Ahhhhhnold

to name a few.... we have yet to recover from Reagan, and have been assaulted by 3 since him..

[Cleita]

9. I think our election system is compromised in many counties.

Maybe it's time to work on that on a grass roots level. I myself have been put on a permanent absentee ballot basis as have my whole precinct because they say there is no place for us to go to vote. It seems to me that the absentee ballots are the easiest to throw out if you don't dot every i and cross every t the way you are supposed to and there is someone in the county clerk's office who makes that decision with no opposition to confirm it. As recounts have shown in other states, the absentee ballots are the easiest to dump. I just wonder because my precinct is very Democratic in a very red congressional district that was gerrymandered several years ago. It would seem a convenient way to make our liberal votes worthless. I can't seem to get anyone in our local Democratic headquarters interested in this. They have basically no interest because they consider our district a lost cause.

[SoCalDem]

10. Pretty much the same here.. I had to make 4 phone calls to even FIND

our democratic HQ person, and when I called, I was "treated" to a trio of toddlers singing the phone message...not the least professional...and then it took him almost a week to get back to me..

The Florida Fiasco showed me how fickle the people who count absentee ballots can be..