Tag Archives: Kos

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget, California, Environment, Health Care

To: kos Re: Arnold Schwarzenegger R-CA

8 Comments

(cross-posted from dailykos)

People (myself included) are giving you a lot of crap in the comments of your post about the Republican wonder Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In it you suggest that Arnold is governing like a Democrat (though an imperfect one), which merits praise.  May I suggest to you that Arnold is simply getting closer to governing the way he ran and that it is sharply contrasted to his 2005 “year of reform”, skewing people’s perceptions.  He is not now, nor will he ever be a Democrat.  Arnold is a moderate Republican and is governing like one.  There are serious differences between what a Democrat would do in office and what Arnold does.

What I want to do is go on a subject by subject basis and get at the heart of what is going on when it comes to his supposed social liberalism, fiscal conservative and environmental progressive governing style.

Let me state up front that since moving to California two years ago, I have written thousands of blog posts on Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This governor loves to say one thing and do another.  His public statements rarely match up with his actions.  I talk about Arnold’s governing philosophy in terms of software versions, since it switches all too often.  He has actually stuck to one version in the last year and a half, something that kos picks up on.

Health Care
The governor is living up to his campaign promises and has pushed forward a health care plan.  I am glad that he has made it a priority, though the Democrats long have been leading on this issue and it is one of the top issues on the minds of the California electorate.  That said there are clear differences between Arnold and the Democrats.

The mainstream Democratic health care policy in California is SB 840, a single payer plan.  It was passed through the legislature last year, but was vetoed by Arnold.  He has pledged to do the same this year.  The Democrats do not have the votes to override him.

In order to pass health care reform, under the reign of Arnold, it must stick within the current private health insurance sector.  He has pushed forward his own plan that has been pretty ripped to shreds by all sides.  Not only that, but he has failed to find a single legislator to carry it forward as actual legislation.  Politically, it would need to be introduced by a Republican and that simply will not happen.  The Republican legislators are far to the right of Arnold on this issue.  His plan is quite business friendly, with an unworkably low percentage of pay roll tax designated for health care.  It is what one would expect from a pro-business moderate Republican, no matter the state.

Budget
This has been the hot topic in the past few weeks, following the revised budget he submitted to the legislature.  No Democrat would have ever proposed the type of cuts Arnold is promoting.  It is “mean-spirited” and completely unacceptable.  Arnold has proposed cuts to aid for the aged, blind, disabled, children and poor.  He has proposed illegally funneling money out of the public transportation budget, just weeks after he was promoting public transit as a response to the bridge collapse in the Bay.

He is also promoting selling off or long-term lease of state assets for short-term gains.  The ultimate goal of these proposals is to free up cash to be able to pay down the state’s debt early.  That would free up the state to be able to issue another round of infrastructure bonds.  Arnold really, really wants to build two new dams.  Selling EdFund and leasing the lottery for 40 years would make it easier for Arnold to borrow more money on the state credit card, which he supposedly cut up back in 2003.

More generally, Arnold has taken the Norquist pledge.  He will not raise taxes.  California has a structural budget deficit.  Either you have to cut spending (like he did on the most vulnerable this year) or raise taxes to close that gap.  He has lucked out in recent years, with the state taking in more revenue than expected, allowing him to take a hope and pray approach to budgeting.  Arnold has failed to make any hard decisions and actually fix this problem.  Thus far the Legislature has shown little willingness in addressing the structural reasons for this deficit.  Arnold is being a coward on the budget, intentionally pushing cuts he knows the Democrats will not stand for, simultaneously sucking up to the Republicans.

For more on Arnold and the budget see my past 10 posts in the last two week.

Environment
Arnold has done a great job slathering on the green paint, despite his fairly pedestrian environmental record.  He only scored a 50% on LCV’s scorecard last year, despite all of the hype and public statements.  Arnold has aggressively promoted some environmentally progressive efforts, while simultaneously undermining the implementation.

It has been useful to have a high-profile Republican talking about global warming, ostracizing those who continue to deny its existence.  But a Democrat would have signed the bill to clean up the LA Ports and a Democrat would not have tried to pass off a cap-and-trade bill as a no cap one.

Prisons
In five years California will be spending more money on our prison system than our state university system.  Our prison system is a disaster and verging on total judicial takeover.  A federal receiver already has full control of the prison health care system.  Arnold’s solution is to throw more money at the problem, and build 53,000 new beds.  He has completely failed to take on his party’s get tough on crime mentality that has put us in this situation in the first place.

Public transportation
The other week an highway interchange collapsed and Arnold’s solution was to promote public transportation.  A few weeks later he introduces a budget that would pull $1.3 billion out of the transportation fund to go to other gaps in the budget.  The Legislative Analyst has indicated that his cuts to transportation may well be unconstitutional.  He is completely hypocritical.  He has talked about supporting high speed rail, but has consistently pushed it off to the side.  It is due to be on the ballot next year, but he has indicated that he would slough it off for another year.  His rhetoric does not match his actions.

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Let me go back to Arnold’s overall performance.  He started off strong when first elected, then went way off course in 2005.  He is now back to governing as he promised, but tackling large issues and actually getting a few things accomplished in the past year.  However, he has never disavowed the basic philosophy behind the anti-teacher, nurses, cops and firefighter year of reform agenda.  That Arnold is just lurking beneath the surface.  He has a much better team in place, pushing him to focus on the issue that get him the most kudos, rather than his more conservative leanings.  He is talking like a progressive, governing like a moderate Republican and yet I can’t trust him further than I can throw him (which is admittedly not very far).

Arnold’s biggest motivation is attention.  He wants to do big things that get him lots of magazine covers.  He talks in a way that brings laudatory praise and wants to cement his own legacy.  The details matter less than getting something done.  The Democrats in the legislature have taken full advantage of this attitude.  They, as kos notes, have been pleased by his willingness to deal and ostracize the Republican legislature to as kos says “an irrelevant sideshow”.  The legislature has been more productive as a result.

We will see a real test of this dynamic in the next several months as they work towards a budget.  The two Democratic leaders, the two Republican leaders and Arnold (aka the Big 5) will be holed up hammering out a compromise.  The 2/3rds requirement means that the Republican legislators must be a party to the discussions.  If Arnold has so soured his relationship within his own party, then he is not particularly useful. 

It is much better to have Arnold working within his own party, rather than switch parties.  That is true from a public relations front as well.  Having a Republican talking about universal health care (even if his proposal isn’t very good), combating global warming (even if he tries to undercut it with signing statements) and high speed rail (even if he never puts it on the ballot) is useful to move the public debate.

Then of course, we should talk about his future ambitions.  There is no reason to clap loudly for Arnold, if it further advances his election prospects for future offices.  Barbara Boxer is preparing herself for a Arnold challenge.  While I am not convinced he would actually be happy in the Senate, it is still a real possibility.

So praise Arnold for his rhetoric, clap loudly when the legislature actually passes something, but don’t tell me that Arnold is a Democrat.  He is a Republican and has no desire to switch parties, nor the record to support such a switch.

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Presidential Campaign Comes to California

4 Comments

Kos weighs in:

With California moving up its primary, my vote will actually matter next year. And now I can officially narrow down my choices to Edwards, Obama, and Richardson. […]

Not only is the Clinton campaign pig-headed, they are also remarkably out-of-touch. They are “surprised” at the anger this war is generating? Has she been living in a cave the last four years (yes, the Senate apparently is a cave). The last thing we need in the White House is another out-of-touch, tone-deaf Bush-style presidency, unable or unwilling to admit mistakes and change course as a result.

Hillary will now see her campaign events hijacked by anti-war protesters, with people demanding she defend her vote at every corner. Iraq will dominate coverage of her campaign, and she’s on the wrong side of the issue. And by going this far without admitting her mistake, she has painted herself into a corner. Any attempt now to back off and apologize would be met with the proper scorn.

This is the emerging conventional wisdom and I expect the California Hillary events that are “hijacked” will be some of the most memorable.

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Blogosphere: We need Kos like we need a hole in the head.

4 Comments

Ever since the primary, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, aka Kos, has been talking down the chances of one Phil Angelides for Governor. He was pro Westly during the primary and now he seems to be happy to talk down Angelides’ chances at every turn.

We don’t need your pessimism, Kos.

More after the flip.

This is my official resignation from Daily Kos, a move which I have been pondering for months. I post as “MamasGun” on Daily Kos.

For the past couple of months, I have been cut off from my Trusted User status on Daily Kos, just in time for a big wave of troll diaries and pie fighting over the Lamont/Lieberman primary. I thought this was an accident of the new website interface, which is a ponderous monstrosity that uses tons and tons of AJAX. When Google does AJAX, they do it with grace and in a way that doesn’t weigh down FireFox. However, when Kos does AJAX, it becomes a crashy thing that crashes FireFox quite often.

However, I am not so sure now that it was an accident that left me without my “Mojo.” Since I have yet to get my “Mojo” back after two months of losing it, never mind that I have had many double-digit rated posts in the past two months, I am beginning to suspect that I had my Trusted User status taken away from me by Kos himself because I had the guts to call him on first his support for Westly in the primary and then his consistent anti-Angelides tone since the primary.

What does he want to do? Does he want Arnold for four more lousy years? What is his freakin’ problem?

If Kos put as much energy into cheerleading for Angelides as he does for cheerleading for Ned Lamont, Angelides would have all the “big mo” he could use. Instead, he brays, Eeyore-stylee, that Angelides doesn’t have a chance against the steamroller that is Herr Ah-nuld der Gropenfuhrer.

Thing is, last time I checked, Kos is a Californian, not a Connecticut-person. What are residents of Connecticut called? Connecticut Yankees? See, I’m Californian, second generation Californian even, I don’t know. Anyway, Kos is from California. The Angelides/Schwarzenegger race is in his own freaking back yard.

I don’t want Ah-nuld’s signature on my Masters of Social Work when I get my Masters in hopefully 3 years. I am freaking tired of his face and his attitude. I want that bastard OUT OF OFFICE. I would really like to see him drummed out of the state and sent back to Austria where he belongs with his goose-stepping Nazi-nostalgic buddies like former UN Secretary/Austrian Chancellor Kurt Waldheim.

If Angelides loses, and Ah-nuld gets 4 more years to play Fuhrer here, the best goddamn role the hack’s ever gotten, then there will be more than enough blame to go around. I am not saying that Kos will be even an important person to blame for the failure: the way the campaign is going Angelides will have more than enough people on his staff to blame. But as the old ’60s saying goes, you are either part of the SOLUTION or part of the PROBLEM. And Kos is part of the PROBLEM right now.

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A response to Kos on the Governor’s race.

2 Comments

Kos let out one of his patented rants today.  This one regards the state of our Governor’s race:

So what do you do when your two gubernatorial aspirants, Steve Westley and Phil Angelides, let their primary battle degenerate into a disgusting, slimy pit of bullshit attack ads and surrogate whisper smear campaigns?

I quit. I hate them both. Someday, California Democrats will have the option to choose from candidates who inspire, not the Gray Davises, Cruz Bustamantes, and the two candidates currently stinking up the Democratic side of the ticket.

The sad thing is that we need a strong turnout for this race to help Francine Busby win in CA-50. But the way this is going, if I want to vomit and throw out my absentee ballot, I can’t imagine what it’s doing to less tuned-in and political Californians, especially in that district. (dKos 5/30/06)

So, first of all, one thing that you can say is that Kos is completely independent of his advertisers.  Steve Westly has been running ads on Kos for a while now.  In fact if you go the page I linked to you will find an ad for Westly right next to the rant about how he sucks.  So, well, good for you Kos.  On the other hand, I think his frustration is somewhat misplaced.  I posted a comment, but well, you know those get lost.  So, I thought I would talk about it a little here.  Here are snippets of my comment:

The lack of funds (caused mostly by the ridiculous concept of homeowners paying a far larger share of property taxes than businesses) is hampering how we do business.  The obvious result of the shortfalls on cash and the fact that a minority has a veto power leaves us with an ALMOST ungovernable state.  Toss the initiative process in there and then you have a hulablaoo.

That being said, I have to disagree with Kos.  Yes the race has turned ugly.  I’ve been bitching about it for a while over at Calitics (mandatory plug here: We’re a scoop community blog focused solely on California politics).  The funny thing is that it started off really well.  They were both going after Arnold.  But then fricking “serpent-tongued” garry South had to start opening his mouth.  He started with that “Positive campaign pledge” that made Westly look foolish because South was attacking Angelides at every turn.  Angelides  responded and the race to the bottom was on.

But there are some good, exciting politicians in California.  Just look down the ballot: the Lt. Governor’s race is great.  Speier and Garamendi are both great candidates, and Figueroa…well she’s exciting.  Look past Governor Moonbeam and you’ll see a lot more interesting people running.  The Contorller’s race has been a very well run race.  Joe Dunn has run a great campaign focusing on his investigations of Enron, and John Chiang has run a fairly clean campaign as well.

Angelides and Westly are victims of the system that has developed in California.  They let their consultants convince them that they needed to go negative.  I don’t think it will make a huge difference in the general, but it certainly won’t help.

I think what I also need to include in that response is that these guys will be much better governors than Arnold.  Yes, they have run poor campaigns for the last 3 months or so, but is that a reason to just give up?  Hardly.  I mean, didn’t we all want to scream at Kerry sometimes in 2004 (say…the time when he didn’t bother to release his military records to end the Swift Boat crap).  Yet, we didn’t give up on him.  I think it’s easier for people to give up on state races, perhaps because they don’t feel like it’s quite as important as the presidency or a Senate seat or something like that.  But thinking that the states don’t matter contributed to our downfall on the federal level.  We are naive if we think that we can build a party without the states.

California is a leader in so many ways, and could be a leader in so many more ways.  Schwarzenegger has been impeding California’s leadership in the global community.  It is not the time to abdicate our leadership or throw our hands in the air and just give up.