The End of Arnie's Days

[realFedUp]

The End of Arnie's Days
http://www.alternet.org/story/27732/

By Dean Kuipers, LA CityBeat. Posted November 7, 2005.

Longtime Los Angeles politico Jackie Goldberg discusses Schwarzenegger's suicide strategy for Election Day and the corporate takeover of California.

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Why do you call these propositions the "corporate takeover of California"?

Jackie Goldberg: If you take a look at who's paying for all of this, it's really extraordinarily large businesses. And they're not even all California corporations - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent a quarter of a million dollars on one of them. That's in addition to the California Chamber, which tends to represent the largest corporations. You've got all the major pharmaceutical companies spending a fortune confusing the people about Propositions 78 and 79. You've got huge amounts of pharmaceutical money in Proposition 75. In fact, there is not a single one of these that isn't being financed by the largest corporations and the biggest players -- not just in California. The governor has fund-raised in New York, in New Jersey, in Florida. They're after a Tom DeLay-kinda takeover like he did in Texas.

How does Proposition 76 turn Schwarzenegger into a king?

Right now, it takes a two-thirds vote of the legislature and the governor to do a budget. If this were to pass, that's no longer going to be true. Because if eight Republicans refuse to vote for the budget, which they're willing to do if they've got a Republican governor, then the budget won't be on time and then the governor gets to decide what to put in and what to take out. Well, can you imagine a Republican assemblyperson or senator voting for a budget again, as long as there was a Republican governor? No! And if the reverse were true, the Democrats wouldn't either. This isn't partisan. This is about making any governor king.

Is the governor showing his true colors with this slate?

I have no idea who the guy is. I thought he was fiscally conservative and moderate to -- God forbid -- maybe even the L-word on some of the social issues. But he's been singularly reactionary on all of them. I don't know if that's who he is, or if it's what his advisors tell him to do. But he's alienated all the Democrats and most of the independents.

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