CA-GOV: Random Notes

• Robert Salladay pens an interesting piece about political mythology as it relates to the Schwarzenegger-Angelides campaign. I noticed this during the debate, with both candidates stressing their immigrant roots and their stories of their rise to prominence (as if everyone can follow Arnold's path by winning 11 Mr. Olympia titles). This is such a false equivalence. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Weider athlete, financed by Joe Weider much like any other government subsidy.

During his early years in America, friends say, Schwarzenegger was a defiantly hard worker. He talks frequently about being a bricklayer in Santa Monica and working to repair fireplaces after the 1971 Sylmar quake rolled through the San Fernando Valley.

But he was hardly independent. As his bodybuilding career flourished, he received financial assistance not from the government but from Joe Weider, the bodybuilding promoter and pioneer, who provided him with an apartment, a car and a weekly salary.

It's that peculiar sense of "individual self-reliance" like the conservative columnists who are bankrolled by big-money patrons to write for money-losing publications. To his credit, I think Arnold has recognized that not everyone is blessed with a financial patron. But ideologically, that selfish, "I got mine" view of the world still drives the Republican mindset, and it's both dangerous and insensitive.

By contrast, Phil Angelides understands that expanding opportunity and giving the middle class a chance to survive and stabilize will inevitably help lift the society into prosperity. You cannot leave the vast majority of your citizens behind, ensure massive corporate profits and call the economy strong. The economy only works when it works for everyone, and that's where we become a stronger state and a stronger nation. Phil Angelides is not constrained by the conservative feeling of selfishness, and the dogma that government is a problem to be stopped rather than a tool to be used. Why would you turn over the reins of government to people who have nothing but contempt for governing? Phil Angelides understands that by providing affordable health care, by restoring tax fairness so that the middle class' burden is relieved, by lowering tuition and fees to ensure that students can pay for college, by stopping the constant borrowing that has given every family in the state a birth tax, by allowing the midle class to succeed, the consequences would be a state whose talent is harnessed into creativity and innovation rather than the daily struggle to survive. This is the choice in this election.

• Arnold continues to run a celebrity campaign by going on a celebrity talk show in violation of FCC equal time rules. Rep. Xavier Becerra has lodged a formal complaint. The Fairness Doctrine doesn't exist anymore with regard to news programming, but so-called "entertainment" shows are prohibited from favoring candidates. The Leno show is claiming it will be a straight news interview. Jay Leno is the guy who emcee'd the Governor's victory party after the recall election in 2003. Forgive me if I don't believe it.