CA Special Election Update I

Over the next few weeks you'll be hearing a lot about this at D-Day. There's a special election in California, a dangerous one in which the incredible shrinking Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger (I still can't get used to that), is attempting to hijack the budget process, silence his critics, redraw the legislative map, and basically consolidate power in the hands of the fuhrer (did I say fuhrer? I mean... well, you get it).

Nobody in this state wants to even hear about the special election. The only election that should have been called is whether we needed this special election at all (and it would have lost by a wide margin). Everybody is burned out on direct democracy. We hire the legislators to do this work, to separate the spin from the truth. An electorate getting most of its information from TV advertisements shouldn't be making decisions this vital.

But there's something larger at work here. After falling from grace and slipping to miniscule support in the polls, Gov. Schwarzenegger sees this election as his only chance to regain what's left of his stature. There's no doubt in my mind that if he manages to pull off a victory on his "reform agenda" (a dangerous agenda which I plan to pick apart in the coming days), he'll immediately christen himself "The Comeback Kid" and ride the wave of popularity to another term in office. Voting down this agenda is synonymous with stopping the Governator in 2006.

The public employee confederations (the nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers) have been fighting for their rights and taking the governor down at every turn. That's the whole rationale behind the odious Prop. 75, which would subject public employee unions to an unfair, unprecendented standard of having to annually ask their members if they could use their dues in political activities. If you're a public employee, you can already opt out of having your money used for politics, per the Supreme Court; 1 out of 4 do. Shareholders don't get to opt out of having their cash used by corporations to fund initiatives like these. The point of the proposition is to slow down union money, to silence union voices.

And the Governor is simply shameless about it:

BURBANK, Calif. (CBS/AP) Firefighters who battled a 24,000-acre blaze last week say they were forced to participate in a news conference with Governor Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger's appearance at a command center in Thousand Oaks came as he pushes ballot initiatives opposed by firefighter unions, including Proposition 75, which would require unions to get members' permission before dues could be used for political purposes.

A few firefighters were bold enough to complain they were ordered to stand behind the governor against their will on the day of the news conference, KCAL 9’s Linda Breakstone reported. Seven more came forward Wednesday.

“We did not want to do it,” Los Angeles County firefighter Greg Alldredge said. “Then it came down as an order directly from above.”

Firefighters were "ordered and forced" to participate, Alldredge said. Rank-and-file firefighters were very displeased with "having to shake hands with somebody who really doesn't support us.”

According to the LA Times, this was Arnold's response:

Rather than dispute the contention, Schwarzenegger said everybody is ordered to do things at one point or another. Someone was ordered to put up the podium, he said. Someone was ordered to bring in the microphone.

"I'm a big friend of the firefighters," Schwarzenegger said once his "buddies" had gathered round. "As a matter of fact, in one of my movies, I played a firefighter."

Smile at them one minute, stab them in the back the next. Force them to stand behind you for a photo-op one second, try to silence them the next. This is the way this a-hole operates. To him, it's all about appearances. It doesn't matter how fake they are. And how ominous is the idea that "everybody is ordered to do things" at one point or another? He's pretty much advocating the crushing of dissent. There's only one way to beat this back, and that's at the polls on Nov. 8.

NO on Props. 73-78, YES on 79 and 80. I'll look at each one in depth in the coming days.