Mr. Schwarzenegger has a history of strained relations with the civil servants unions. He refused to take money from the unions when he first ran for office, and later pushed for a state referendum that would restrict unions from making political contributions. (Sounds like my kind of guy!) He reduced funding for public schools, which became a huge scandal. He irked the unions even more when he created CaliforniaVolunteers, allowing volunteers to do for free what state workers get paid to do.
And then of course there is the debacle about the legislature’s refusal to pass a balanced budget. Ahnold threatened to veto every bill the legistlature could give him until they pass a balanced budget, a threat he later reneged on. He also ordered for thousands of state workers to be fired, and others to receive minimum wage. Now, everybody thinks the governor is “heartless” for “endangering the livlihood of thousands of innocent workers” and needs to “do the right thing”–and give them money the state doesn’t gave. State Controller John Chiang refused to follow the governor’s wishes, and flippantly answered that “We’ve always done the borrowing to tide us over anyway …and are prepared to do so again.”
I don’t think Ahnold is someone to be praised, but less so is the socialism in Calif. that this Chiang will obviously come to defense for in the future.
Not even the Terminator, eh? He should travel back in a time a bit…
I agree that Arnie is a rhino, but it would seem from how he has handled this that he is tired of usurpation of power. This whole mess just further proves my belief that California should just be blown up. Nothing good comes from there, it is just where the failures from the rest of the country went to get away from their problems.
I don’t have anything against unions per se, so long as they don’t try to use State power to their advantage. Now, I do dislike “civil servant” unions that attempt to recall a governor and put one in who will give them a bigger share of the loot.