Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks he’s got a “hook” for the budget crisis.  It’s so stupid it’ll probably work.

In between vetoing acceptable solutions for the budget crisis, Schwarzenegger directed his staff to create a YouTube video of a Senate hearing held today on SB 135, which would ban animal cruelty and the practice of tail docking of dairy cows.  Simply because it’s mildly annoying to have a tail in their faces while working, farmers chop them off of cows, for no material benefit to hygeine or anything else, and to the potential detriment of milk production by increasing stress.  It’s illegal in much of Europe and opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association.  There’s an article here.  

Apparently the 63% of the voters who passed Prop. 2 last November were wrong – animal cruelty is a secondary issue to the very important work of wasting billions of dollars through stubbornness.  

So in the YouTube video Schwarzenegger cuts back and forth from the hearing to his schoolmarmish denunciation in his press conference to create the impression that “in the midst of the budget crisis, the Senate is debating cow tails.”

Hey Arnold, this is something called “governing.”  I know you know nothing about it, since you spent a month dithering with different budget solutions while the legislature was holding a month’s worth of public sessions on the budget.  But lawmakers actually can do more than one thing at a time.  Some have standing committees, while others, in the leadership, can run into the brick wall that is the California budget process over and over, a brick wall you just applied with a new coat of paint by vetoing real solutions that would have stopped $7 billion dollars in additional cuts and the issuance of IOUs.  For anyone who has been this much of a failure to say one word about how OTHER people govern is absurd.

By the way, Darrell Steinberg has already cancelled all future policy committee hearings to focus on the budget, which I think is a silly and unnecessary reaction to the rantings of a dullard Governor.  But as long as we’re going down this road, here are a few tweets I contributed exposing the Governor’s horrible inattention in the midst of a budget crisis:

Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger actually slept for EIGHT HOURS! That’s not leadership #cabudget

19 minutes ago from web

Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger had dinner… at a restaurant! That’s not leadership #cabudget

19 minutes ago from web

Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger excused himself to go to the bathroom! That’s not leadership #cabudget

19 minutes ago from web

Right now, in the midst of a budget crisis @Schwarzenegger breathed both in and out! That’s not leadership #cabudget

18 minutes ago from web

Join in with your own if you want.

This is just idiotic grandstanding from the Governor, who appears to know nothing about public policy or the American system of government.  Any reporter who runs with this should be ashamed of themselves.