With friends like Arnie …
Contrary to popular misconception, Schwarzenegger has done little to help working people
By Paul Sawyer 10/05/2006
The important election for governor of California is two months away, yet the mass media have bought into the new makeup of Arnold Schwarzenegger, devised by a public relations team brought in from the Bush campaign.
Badly tarnished by the public’s rejection of his reactionary policies, which he failed to jam into law, he now pretends to offer himself as a friend of the working poor by agreeing to raise the stingy minimum wage by one dollar, and as an environmental protector by holding a ballyhooed press conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair to oppose global warming.
In both cases, Schwarzenegger worked behind the scenes to weaken proposed legislation to index the minimum wage to inflation and to insert an escape clause voiding pollution controls in case of an “economic emergency.”
This pumped-up version of Ronald Reagan with an accent is backed by the same nouveau-riche developers, car dealers and mortgage brokers who brought us Gov. Reagan’s crippling state policies. Schwarzenegger has for all purposes been acclaimed by the media as our governor to be, with minimal attention given to his opponent, Phil Angelides.
Left mostly unexamined is Schwarzenegger’s deplorable record: Not only his reactionary policies already rejected by the public, but also his attempt to shift an enormous bonded indebtedness onto future taxpayers and, most importantly, his neglect of increasingly festering public problems, untouched at a time of relative economic prosperity.
While the wages of most workers have been stagnating and even decreasing due to inflation over the past several years, Schwarzenegger proposed to strip government workers’ pension benefits while vetoing a modest rise in the minimum wage for the working poor. At the same time, he favored a failed attempt to cripple unions so they would be unable to participate financially in political activity.
At the same time that public concern grows about overcrowding and lack of qualified teachers at all levels in our public schools, Schwarzenegger made a short-term agreement with educational leaders to cut and then restore mandated education funds in the state budget. He has only this month finally restored those funds as promised, after solid public rebuke at the polls and having been taken to court by educational leaders to restore those voter-mandated education funds.
Air pollution has been a continuing problem, particularly in Southern California. It has been moderated by efforts to set pollution controls on diesels, autos and industries, and by slowly building public transportation. These measures have certainly helped over the years, yet due to flagrant violations by diesel manufacturers and failure to impose even stronger pollution controls, the lethal pollution problem is still very much with us.
Now an agreement is in place with the Legislature to cap pollution emissions further, yet Schwarzenegger has negotiated an escape clause for industries in case of “economic emergency.”
Completely under the radar is the recent bill that allows the huge telecom and cable companies to bypass local regulation that has provided cable access for local communities. One of Schwarzenegger’s political advisers, Matthew Dowd, also is a lobbyist for one of the big telecoms, AT&T, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. These companies provided big campaign funds while sweet-talking lawmakers into passing their beneficial legislation which now threatens existing local public access with plans to broadcast over our community infrastructure.
Now Schwarzenegger, in order, to protect the huge profits of the health insurance companies, has vetoed the long-needed single-payer health program bill, which deals with perhaps our single most important problem: providing universal health care.
Another serious unaddressed problem is the huge punitive California prison system, the largest per capita in the world, overcrowded with nearly 250,000 prisoners — two-thirds of whom are jailed for nonviolent, drug-related offenses. These represent unaddressed health, counseling and education problems. Their enforcement through imprisonment as drug crimes effectively represses young adults in our communities of color.
The courts have cited the state for overcrowding, poor medical care, ethnic segregation and lack of sufficient counseling and educational help. Increasingly abusive practices bordering on torture are in use. Suicide rates in the prisons have skyrocketed, approaching 50 for this year alone. The prisons have become holding bins of violence and terror.
The whole system is topped with the ultimate terror of “cruel and unusual punishment” by “lethal injection.” Though calling for prison reform, the Terminator caved in to the powerful prison guard union and dropped any efforts at reforms called for by court order.
Instead he’s recommended expanding existing prison complexes and adding more. And despite growing rejection by the public of state-sanctioned murder in favor of less expensive life imprisonment, he has proceeded with killing all who appealed for clemency. That includes, most recently, Tookie Williams, an African American who received large public support for his help in reforming younger gang members, as well as the elderly, sick Native American poet Running Bear (Clarence Hill).
Schwarzenegger has clearly demonstrated that he is neither an environmentalist nor a friend of working people. Rather, he is a man of little compassion with a love for wealth.
We the people will pay a heavy price in unsolved problems and further indebtedness if he is elected.
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