When In Doubt, Buy Your Way Back Into Their Hearts

Californians woke up today with a new governor. After being the populist fiscal conservative, the hard right anti-worker ideologue, and the pro-Bush shill, last night Arnold Schwarzenegger turned into Sir Spend-A-Lot:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday launched a super-sized plan to rebuild the very foundations of California — a $222-billion construction project to fortify freeways, schools, jails, ports and waterways.

Schwarzenegger used his annual State of the State speech to outline a decade-long blueprint for reshaping California to its core. If successful, he would be author of the state's largest public building program since the 1960s, when former Gov. Edmund "Pat" Brown helped California absorb millions of new residents during a postwar boom.

The governor's aides said earlier Thursday that he wants a series of public bond issues, starting with $25 billion this year, placed before voters in five elections through the year 2014. In total, $68 billion in new government debt would be incurred to pay for the building program.

You don't have to be an economist to understand why $68 billion in new debt on top of the already wide revenue gap in the state would be, to put it charitably, a bad thing. And these are proposed bond issues, which means that by the time the state paid them off, they would owe far more than $68 billion. It's the same "spend-now, borrow-now, let our children and grandchildren pay for it" mentality that's taken hold on the national stage, and it reflects a real selfishness among our most prosperous citizens. We can't have it all, folks: low taxes (the lowest in the developed world) AND high government spending. You have to be able to pay for things as you go. Until the Governor and his Republican allies face this political reality and offer a fair system of taxation (which would close corporate loopholes and enable everyone to pay their fair share), we run the risk of enjoying the present while destroying the future.

And let me just add that I don't think one single solitary dollar should be spent on a new road in California. You can fix the old ones and add carpool lanes. Highways will just fill up, and traffic will just be as bad as ever. If you're going to fund transportation it HAS to be public. I would sell my car tomorrow if I knew I could get around on buses and light rail. And I thought it was eerie that the Governor wanted to build two new prisons to house "83,000 new prisoners." That's way too specific a number. It's like he had their names on a list.

Finally, this is the ultimate is big talk from the ultimate hypocrite, a man who's changed his governing style at least 3 times, whose seen his popularity collapse and is now trying to buy votes. Anyone who trusts this guy ought to have their head examined. The ultimate opportunist is going to have a hard time wearing a new sheepskin in front of the voters in November; they're going to see the same old wolf.