Tag: California

Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that he would cancel his multimillion-dollar consulting contract with a publisher of health and bodybuilding magazines, amid complaints of a conflict of interest.

The announcement came a day after his top aide dubbed the controversy “much ado about nothing” and rejected calls for Schwarzenegger to end his relationship with American Media Inc. The company publishes Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, as well as the tabloids National Enquirer and the Globe…

[…]

Since the 1980’s, rumors have circulated in Hollywood about Arnold Schwarzenegger that would curl the blue hair of your average Republican true-believer. If any one of these rumors were to make headlines in the supermarket tabloids, the governor’s political career would be over within hours.

During his campaign for governor in 2003, a lot of folks in this town were on the edge of their seats waiting for one of the tabloids to score big and drop the dime on Arnold. It never happened. In the last week or so before the election, the Los Angeles Times published an article detailing numerous complaints by women who claimed to have been fondled and groped by Schwarzenegger, mostly on the job at movie and television studios.

These incidents were fairly well known but they had nothing to do with the escapades that have had the town buzzing for so long about Arnold. Those incidents were all, um, consensual.

And then, on November 15, 2003, two days before he was sworn in as governor, Schwarzenegger signed a five-year “consulting” deal with American Media Inc.

Based in Boca Raton, Florida, AMI owns Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, as well as – you guessed it – National Enquirer, the Globe and the Star tabloids.

Now details of the governor’s consulting gig have come to light:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted a consulting job paying an estimated $8 million over five years to “further the business objectives” of a national publisher of health and bodybuilding magazines.

The contract pays Schwarzenegger 1% of the magazines’ advertising revenue, much of which comes from makers of nutritional supplements. Last year, the governor vetoed legislation that would have imposed government regulations on the supplement industry.

What is that stank? It smells like “conflict of interest” and “corruption.” Indeed:

[…]

Here’s an interesting turn of events. With his poll numbers in the basement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is now faced with appointing a justice to the California Supreme Court seat vacated by ultra-rightwing judge Janice Rogers Brown, who was appointed to the federal judiciary by Presdient Bush.

Schwarzenegger’s polls are especially bad among the independent voters – a group who, as much as any, put the governor in office. As one of the nation’s most liberal Republican leaders, independent voters are very important to the governor’s political future. However, a recent poll found that only 35 percent of independents approved of his job performance.

[…]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got no love from the crowd at the inauguration of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Friday:

Former Vice President Al Gore; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver; and former California Govs. Jerry Brown, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis were there.

When many in the crowd booed Villaraigosa’s introduction of Schwarzenegger, the new mayor brusquely silenced the protesters. “Angelenos, excuse me,” he said. “There will be civility today.”

Other dignitaries who witnessed the governor’s indignity included New York mayor Michael Bloomberg; the current and former mayors of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome and Willie Brown; the Mexican ambassador Carlos de Icaza and actor David Hasselhof.

I’m told that Natalie Cole brought the house down with “God Bless America.”

With a year and a half left in his term as governor, it isn’t practical to start a Recall campaign against Arnold Schwarzenegger – and if I recall, the statute prohibits Recalls within 18 months of the officeholder’s next scheduled election. If there were a Recall right now, a new poll shows that Das Guber would lose:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has lost the support of nearly every segment of the California electorate, with a majority of voters now saying they are not inclined to re-elect him, a new Field Poll has found.

The governor’s once broad-based support has shrunk so much that just 39 percent of voters now say they are inclined to re-elect him, while 57 percent say they are not. The only groups willing to re-elect Schwarzenegger, who has yet to announce whether he plans to run next year, are conservatives and Republicans.

“He looks almost like a typical partisan politician in that profile, whereas last year, he had a unique standing most observers were marveling at,” said Mark DiCamillo, who conducted the poll from June 13 to 19. “He squandered the political capital he once had.”

What is really jaw-dropping is that Schwarzenegger is losing to both Democrats who have announced that they will run against him next year – state Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly. Neither of these guys are even remotely household names.

Reuters:

The percentage of Californians who believe the state is headed in the wrong direction has climbed, propelled by those who disapprove of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance in office, according to a Field Poll released on Tuesday.

The Field Poll found that 59 percent of Californians believe the state is on the wrong track, compared with 51 percent in February and an average of 52 percent in 2004.

Only 28 percent believe the state is on the right track, compared with 40 percent in February and an average of 36 percent last year…

It noted that among the 58 percent who disapprove of Schwarzenegger’s performance in office, 78 percent believe the state is “seriously off on the wrong track.”

By contrast, among the 31 percent who back the Republican governor, there is “considerable optimism” about the direction of California, with 64 percent saying it is on the right track.

The leading reason volunteered by pessimists for why they believe the state is headed in the wrong direction can be summarized as “the governor is taking the wrong positions, oppose his positions,” followed by the state’s lawmakers and elected officials are not doing a good job, and schools are performing poorly, according to the Field Poll report.

A Field Poll released last week found Schwarzenegger’s approval rating among registered voters plunging to 37 percent from 55 percent in February.

You think it can’t happen here? It already has, baby! California elected a governor whose father, an Austrian policeman, was (at best) a Nazi sympathizer – and who has himself expressed admiration for the Nazi cause. Now comes this:

Last month, a group of anti-war activists, including the parents of American soldiers killed in Iraq, held a small Mother’s Day rally at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial near the California Capitol to call for the return of all National Guard troops by Labor Day.

Three days before the rally, as a courtesy to the military, an aide in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s press office alerted the Guard to the event, according to e-mails obtained by the Mercury News.

The information was passed up the chain of command directly to [Maj. Gen. Thomas] Eres and other top Guard officials including Col. Jeff Davis, who oversees O’Neill’s operation.

That would be Col. Robert J. O’Neill, a veteran intelligence officer who is director of a new California National Guard survelliance unit called – get this! – the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program.

Guard officials said the new unit would not collect information on American citizens, but, as it turns out, it already has:

“Sir,” Guard chief of staff Col. John Moorman wrote in the e-mail to Eres that was copied to Davis and other top commanders. “Information you wanted on Sunday’s demonstration at the Capitol.”

In response, Davis indicated that Guard intelligence officers were tracking the rally.

“Thanks,” Davis wrote. “Forwarding same to our Intell. folks who continue to monitor.”

That rainy Sunday, the protest organized by Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and CodePink drew about three dozen supporters.

Guard spokesman[Lt. Col. Stan] Zezotarski said the monitoring did not involve anything more than keeping tabs on the protest through the media and that no one went to observe the demonstration…

“It’s nothing subversive,” Zezotarski said. “Because who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up? After all, we live in the age of terrorism, so who knows?”

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.

It may seem farfetched to suggest that Arnold Schwarzenegger has fascist tendencies. For one thing, it gives him credit for being a much deeper thinker/strategizer than he shown himself to be over the years.

A better (or real) politician would go out of his way to avoid drawing attention to his crypto-fascist background by sending his military surveillance unit to monitor grannies at a war protest. Why does he care who goes to war protests? This is another ham-fisted, tin-eared action by Das Guber – but it’s a development with a dark undercurrent that ought to give even his most ardent Republican supporters pause.

Faculty members turned their backs on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger while he gave the commencement speech last week at his alma mater, Santa Monica College. Marc Cooper from the LA Weekly was in the stands:

As I watched the governor give the commencement address at Santa Monica College, I started to wonder if Arnold, and his political handlers, have completely lost touch with reality.

I emphasize the word “watched” instead of listened because the jeering and hissing and booing and chanting were so overwhelming that neither I nor the couple of thousand graduating students and their families could actually hear much of what he said.

And, frankly, the catcalls (including the sewer-level sing-song Spanish jeer “culero” [asshole]) were more interesting than the text of the 15-minute address that Arnie struggled to finish. Here we were on the first campaign day of a five-month run-up to a November 8 special election that, according to the governor, is so crucial to our future it’s worth its $50 million to $80 million cost and worth holding a year before regularly scheduled balloting. But what was the governor’s chosen topic? Well, himself, silly!

Talk about girlie-men. Arnold plain didn’t have the walnuts to as much as broach any of the issues raised by the special election he decreed the day before: the state budget, redistricting or the dreaded e-word – education. Instead, Schwarzenegger clumsily droned out a canned Horatio Algerish homily about how he hard he worked to become a world-class bodybuilder, an internationally beloved movie star (and something far less of a politician). “I never lost sight of my goal,” was the tin-plated advice from the governor now threatening to further shrink state education spending.

He either chickened out completely on arguing his new crusade or he’s so detached from ground-level politics that he still believes he can skate by as a controversial governor plagued with plunging popularity ratings by rolling out one more vacuous celebrity-driven appearance. Pretty pathetic either way.

Associated Press:

State Controller Steve Westly used the Internet to launch his campaign for governor Saturday, becoming the second Democrat to enter the race in hopes of unseating Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger if he seeks re-election next year.

The former Silicon Valley executive announced his candidacy during an online chat and conference call with supporters, pledging to create an innovative government to return prosperity to the state.

“Today that dream is fading,” he said. “I’m running for governor to restore that dream.”

Westly, 47, joins the race for the Democratic nomination against Treasurer Phil Angelides, who announced he was running in March. The governor has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election.

Westly, who earned a fortune at the online auction house eBay, wrote a $10 million check to his gubernatorial account last month and has said he would spend more of his own money if necessary.

Angelides had raised $12 million by April and rounded up a long list of endorsements.

Westly emphasized that he would run a positive campaign, but he slipped in a few digs at the actor-turned-governor, saying he was running on his record, “not my one-liners.”

Campaign Websites:

Westly: http://www.westly2006.com

Angelides: http://www.angelides.com

(If you want a link to Schwarzenegger’s site, please click HERE.)

Yesterday was the day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his team had set to launch of their campaign to create a “phenomenon of anger” against California’s teachers and firemen and state legislature, in order to pass ballot initiatives specifically designed to hurt those groups and others in special election to be held this November.

Remarkably, the governor’s team had even lined up coverage from the local television stations across the state. These stations do not normally cover politics – especially here in Los Angeles, where stories like car chases and the bloody aftermaths of crime scenes may not be more important but are definitely get better ratings than ho-hum stories about budget deficits, legislative bills and political horse races.

But das Guber’s big day was a big bust. The launch rally for his anger campaign was set to go live on the local news at 5 PM – but at about 1 PM came the announcement that the verdict in the Michael Jackson trial would be read at within the hour. Local news all up and down the state went wall-to-wall on the verdict in Santa Maria for the rest of the day, leaving Arnold all alone at the ball.

On C-Span this morning, Chuck Todd of “The Hotline” said that of the nine local stations in Los Angeles, on KCBS Channel 2 covered the governor’s announcment in its entirety but that was on a tape delay much later in the evening.