Organized Labor

By Robert L. Balgenorth, President,
State Building and Construction Trades
Council of California

The primary is over and during the next five months working people from Eureka to Chula Vista will be forming their opinions on the candidates they want to lead California for the next four years.

In the contest for Governor, it isn’t even a close call.

If you want a California that prepares its children for productive working lives, provides affordable access to quality health care, and protects the state’s beauty and resources, Phil Angelides is your candidate. If you want a role-playing actor who will turn the state into Bush-afornia, you’ll love Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“This is a governor who said he’d protect education, and then he slashed money to the classroom,” Angelides told a crowd of enthusiastic supporters at Universal City the day after the primary. “This is a governor who said he’d balance the budget, and then he borrowed billions. This is a governor who said he would be the people’s governor, then at each and every turn, he has sided with the most powerful interests against the interests of hard-working Californians,” Angelides said.

The oil industry is one of those powerful interests. Just weeks ago, while California’s attorney general was subpoenaing oil executives over the high price of gasoline, Schwarzenegger put on his ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots and flew off to Bush-land – Houston, to be precise – to raise money from “big awl” as they say in Texas. For that little fundraiser, he got help from a guy who worked with the disgraced and felonious Washington lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

The “good ol’ boys” in “big awl” have given more money to Arnold than any politician in the country except Dubya. According to ArnoldWatch.Org, Arnold has collected $2.2 million from the oil industry since 2003, while Bush has sucked $2.6 million from the crude oil “bidness” over that same period.

Meanwhile, California’s motorists finance oil’s contributions to Arnold by paying 50 cents or more per gallon for gasoline than drivers in the rest of the nation.

Not long ago, Arnold tried to smooth over the fact that he owns a fleet of gas-gulping Hummers by promising to run them on vegetable oil. Guess what? His Hummers are still burning gasoline. He’s trying to play the role of an environmentalist, but he’s counting on us not to pay attention when he’s putting green from corporate polluters in one pocket as he spouts “clean green” rhetoric.

Look at what he did the day after the election. He hops into a big green bus that’s decorated with a picture of Yosemite and begins a tour of the state playing the part of an environmentalist. That’s the illusion. Here are the facts.

 

• Arnold was the mouthpiece in favor of Proposition 64, the 2004 ballot initiative that limited the ability of environmental groups to take polluters to court and reduced workers’ ability to file lawsuits against companies that violate health and safety standards. It passed.
• Arnold appointed a former utility executive as the environmental advocate on the Energy Commission, made a former lumber exececutive deputy secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, and attempted to place a former lobbyist for polluting industries on the Air Resources Board (ARB). The state Senate blocked the ARB appointment.
• During his campaign for Governor, Arnold said he supported smart land use practices, but after he was elected, he allowed his staff to draft legislation which would have threatened the California Environmental Quality Act.
• Arnold has been in lock-step with the Bush administration’s effort to weaken a national conservation decision by former President Clinton that protects 58.5 million acres from commercial logging.
• Arnold vetoed a bill to strengthen pesticide protection and to prevent air pollution at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles from exceeding safe levels.

That’s only a small sample of Arnold’s shameful environmental record, but it shows why no one should fall for anything he says while he’s on a tour in a green bus with a big picture of Yosemite National Park on the side. All image and no substance, or, as they say in George Bush’s Texas, all hat and no cattle.

In contrast, Phil Angelides has a “Clean California” plan to reduce oil consumption. It calls for investment in public-private partnerships to make California the global leader in developing and selling clean fuels, vehicles and renewable energy. Under the Angelides plan, California’s state and local pension funds would invest $1.5 billion in clean technology. It would convert all state and local government vehicle fleets to clean, efficient vehicles, and it would use smart growth principles to curb sprawl and reduce driving miles.

That’s a real plan with real goals.

Schwarzenegger takes his campaign strategy from the Bush election team that he has hired: Play the role of a good guy until November 7, then get busy turning California into Bush-afornia.