Sunday, May 31, 2009

As Arnold’s Political Career Dies, How Many Californians Will He And DiFi Sacrifice To His Three Big Lies?

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-by Dr Kirk Murphy


As Arnold Schwarzenegger's failed political career flames out, he's demanding California sacrifice thousands of human lives for his Three Big Lies. Arnold's First Big Lie was the one he used to win office in 2003: he used all his celebrity star power to promise voters he could slash CA's revenues by $4 billion and everything would be great. In the real world, Arnold's cut did exactly what CA's budget analyst predicted: starve the state budget and grow deficits. Over the next years, the annual loss from Arnold's First Big Lie grew to $6 Billion. With the state's deficit now swollen to $24 billion (thanks to Prop 13 and Arnold's First Big Lie), in the May 19 California voters overwhelmingly rejected Arnold's special election, rejecting his stealth attempt to further destroy California's public sector. Arnold's Second Big Lie pretends that when CA voters refused the Rethugs' plan to smash public services for the future, they actually wanted to slash those services. Before that election, Arnold vetoed the Legislature's budget: a budget that partly restored the revenue cuts the Rethugs created to destroy public services. Arnold's Third Big Lie is to pretend he never vetoed non-lethal budget solutions, and to pretend the only solution for thirty years of the Rethugs' war on California's government is Shock Doctrine.

With a personal net worth somewhere between $100 and $800 million, Arnold's demanding the rest of us allow him to sacrifice thousands of Califonians' lives. Yep, when it comes to Grover Norquist's Chub Club For Growth, movie-hero Arnold shows his inner girly-man: he'd rather kill off sick people and seniors than stand up and fight. How many Californians will this real-life coward sacrifice to fan the embers of his dying career?

On Thursday a panel of California's legislators heard from one of Arnold's intended victims:

[T]hey heard from a woman named Lynnea Garbutt who has lived with AIDS all of her 24 years.

She has survived with the help of a state program that provides the expensive antiviral drugs she takes. Now, with that program facing elimination, she pleaded with lawmakers to save it -- and her life.

"If these cuts take place, you're not just cutting money from the program -- you're cutting my life," she told the panel, her voice shaking and tears falling. "I choose to live. Please don't make me die. My choice is life."

You see, unlike Arnold with his personal Gulfstream, the desperately poor patients who rely on California for the medications they require to stay alive can't just jet off to find better services in some other state. From working with those patients, I know most of them don't even have the money to pay for new substandard housing somewhere else, much less the funds to travel there.


But hey, why stop with killing off young people? To keep on the good side of the Rethug lunatics who've spent the last three decades waging open warfare on California, movie-hero Arnold also demands California kill off seniors. When hundreds of thousands of disabled folks and seniors rely on in home health workers (IHSS) to remain alive and to stay out of nursing homes (where their care would cost the state even more), Arnold will deny in home health assistance to most of California's disabled people:

Limit IHSS Domestic and Related Services To the Most Functionally "Impaired" - Governor proposes, effective October 1, 2009 (if Legislature approves), to limit the provision of domestic and related services to persons with the "highest level of need" in the IHSS Program.

Matthew Yi from the SF Chronicle's Sacramento bureau describes the real consequences:

Restrict the In Home Support Services program to the most severely disabled such as those who can't breathe on their own and are partially paralyzed.

What will this do to seniors and the disabled?

Gary Passmore, who represents the Congress of California Seniors, an advocacy group for the elderly, said the cuts would be life threatening.

"These cuts and the ones that were announced earlier this week are cruel, they are heartless, and they will literally kill people," he said. "It's no longer a question about whether these folks will end up in nursing homes. There aren't enough beds in nursing homes. They will end up on the streets and die."

While they're sacrificing seniors and the disabled, movie-hero Arnold and the deadly radicals who run CA's Rethug party also want to go after pregnant mothers. His Shock Doctrine attack demands

Elimination of remaining General Fund for Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health

Rather than stand up to Grover Norquist's death cult, Arnold wants to sacrifice women with cancer...and people with kidney failure:

Cuts Medi-Cal coverage for breast and cervical cancer treatment and dialysis.

Arnold and the Rethugs' Cult For Death even want to destroy Californians' future:

Schwarzenegger's plan to dismantle the Cal Grant program - considered one of the nation's best programs to help poorer students cover full fees or tuition at public colleges - would make California the first US state to eliminate student financial aid while raising tuition....A CalWorks program providing medical, dental, and vision care to 90,000 children will be eliminated.

Why stop with killing off people and their futures? Arnold's death wish for California's budget includes special hell for our pets:

Kiska Icard, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said suspending the state requirement on animal shelters to hold strays at least six days to save the state $24.6 million would result in euthanizing more animals.

In order to kill off California's people and government with his Shock Doctrine on steroids, Arnold's frantically repeating his Second Big Lie: the voters made him do it. Brian Leubitz and his colleagues at Calitics explode the lie:

The people did not say anything about cuts. In fact, they spoke out strongly against cuts by rejecting Props 1D and 1E that cut social services for children and the mentally ill, respectively. The people are saying they want a functional government that is responsive, not demanding, of the people.

Brian Leubitz also spotlights how SF Gate's Carla Marinucci caught DiFi parroting Arnold's Second Big Lie

"And what [the voters] said is, in so many words, take the cuts, because that's the alternative. And nobody wants them, but people have to understand.''

Marlinucci also caught DiFi parroting Arnold's Third Big Lie: California's only choice is the Shock Doctrine.

And the hard part of it is where the cuts have to come from. People don't like it. But they didn't seem to know that when they voted no on these propositions, so it left the Governor and the State Legislature with really no alternative other than to make the cuts.

Hey, why should a California Democratic Senator remember California's Republican Governor vetoed the anti-Shock Doctrine budget her fellow Democrats passed out of the State's Legislature?

In the real world, a few months ago California's beleaguered Legislature did an end run around the Rethug's Cult For Death and passed a budget with choices that don't kill people: Arnold vetoed it. In the world where DiFi, Arnold and CA's Rethugs rush to please the Club For Growth's suicide cult, why bother with reality?

In the real world the rest of us live in, how many Californians' lives will Arnold sacrifice as his political career dies? And how many Democrats in Sacramento and Washington will spin the Big Lies required to make Shock Doctrine his weapon?

[h/t Calitics for their coverage, which this post uses extensively.]




UPDATE: A Rescue Plan

Aeolus has a great idea which is elucidated over at Daily Kos. President Obama needs to ask Schwarzenegger to resign as a condition for loan guarantees for short-term debt. The Governator has failed California and failed the nation.

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16 Comments:

At 11:03 AM, Blogger EvilPoet said...

I'm reminded of a quote by our govenator...

"My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it... People need somebody to watch over them. . . . Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave." (source: Wikipedia)

 
At 12:17 PM, Blogger Mystery Editor said...

Arnold is just doing what his Austrian father taught him to do. He is implementing a modern-day version of the Nazi SA protocols for building the "perfect society."

 
At 12:53 PM, Blogger Samay said...

Schwarzenneger's hardly the only one responsible for this mess.

Take a harder look at Feinstein, but at the rest of the CA Dems as well.

None of this would have been possible without a complete pro-deregulation atmosphere in every part of Sacramento.

 
At 1:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't forget the other even-a-broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day truth in this debate:

California wouldn't be in this fix if it didn't have to live with Proposition 13. THAT'S the real reason they're suffering financial havoc--conservative true believers who want the social services (or don't care who dies) but refuse outright to pay for them.

Either way, Arnold is a goddamned fucking liar, just like the rest of the modern day Republicans, when he SWORE outright that he would 'terminate the deficit'. We all knew he was lying when he said it; he had nothing to back it up with.

But he sure has style, man!

--Beatnik Bob/Daddy-O

 
At 1:59 PM, Blogger JD said...

Anybody remember how, just a few short years ago, they were talking about amending the US Constitution so Ahnold could run for President?

 
At 2:06 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Know what? Californians voted for this shit, and have been messing with their futures out of self-interest since forever.

Now they get to pay the piper.

 
At 2:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am sorry, but I am not willing to pay more taxes to fix the mess in this state. The following needs to be done:

1) Marijuana should be legalized and heavily taxed

2) Non violent drug offenders should be released from prison

3) State workers should take salary cuts in line with the public sector, and vacation and retirement should be realligned to be at place with the private sector

 
At 2:49 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Anonymous said...

I am sorry,
That much is true, and not in the apology sense.

but I am not willing to pay more taxes to fix the mess in this state.

So come up with realistic solutions. California's tax structure has for years been predicated on a lie.

The following needs to be done:

1) Marijuana should be legalized and heavily taxed

sure, why not? Retroactively legalize possession for personal use quantities and stop busting medical marijuana users. Tax it so hard that poor people can't afford it either, just like Celebrex. That'll fix the mess in your state.


2) Non violent drug offenders should be released from prison

Dude, non-violent offenders period. Also, your state's Three Strikes law needs amending: violent offenses only. Nobody should do life without parole over a pizza, let alone a slice.

3) State workers should take salary cuts in line with the public sector, and vacation and retirement should be realligned to be at place with the private sector

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGHT -- have you checked what those salaries are and how they compare, as well as retirement? Oh, and by the bye -- KEEP YOUR PAWS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY. Clear?

2:26 PM

 
At 3:17 PM, Anonymous Bil said...

And let us NEVER forget the only place Republican Arnold Campaigned for the George W Bush the worst president in US History was OHIO.

Arnold not only elected Bush in Ohio he has finished California.

Maria has to be out the door any day, she can do better, and we know what steroids do to the little terminator.

 
At 5:53 PM, Blogger pygalgia said...

And I was worrying about parks.

 
At 9:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Grover Norquist is NOT with Club for Growth. He is head of Americans for Tax Reform...get your story straight!

 
At 10:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why is it that fetuses have a right to life, but people who are already born do not?

 
At 10:49 AM, Anonymous CaptainVideo said...

The Democrats need to play hardball with the Terminator. Refuse to go along with his cuts and repass the budget plan that he vetoed making it clear that it is going to be that budget plan or nothing, so that if he were to veto it again, the California government would be unable to pay its bill and dare him to veto it again.

 
At 11:07 AM, Blogger Tenn. said...

When the people of America,California included figure out that there are more of us than there are politicians , USE that power and take to the street and demand real change , things might change, otherwise its down down down from here. I cant figure out whose worse, the Republicans for being the worst bunch of theiving Nazi pigs or the Dems for being spineless wishy washy Jekyll & Hyde liarmouths. its time for a 3rd party in US politics.

 
At 7:50 PM, Anonymous Bill said...

the article talks about how he has a huge personal networth well to play devils advocate he has donated shit loads of his own money to charities and such....and he pays for his own housing food etc.... he doesnt even recieve a salary he donates it...
So you cant bring his personal wealth into the discussion...

 
At 4:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Arnold is taking a wrecking ball to this state and the federal government won't help us. I want my tax dollars spent on education and healthcare in CA, not on criminal bankers and war contractors.

By the time Arnold leaves in a year and a half, he will probably have left us 100 billion in debt. He needs to resign or be impeached!!

Moreover, I will not vote for DiFi ever again, nor will I vote for Obama. They are both liars and a disaster for CA.

 

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