CA Dopers - What do you think of "The Governator"?

[blowero]

O.K., iamme99 and Sam Stone both need to take a chill pill, please. Is it past you people’s nap times or something?

[MonkeyMensch]

To quote Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless.

[groo]

Just a cite to add; from the LA Times, October 12, 2003 (sorry, registration required) subtitled, "During his campaign for governor, Schwarzenegger promised an ambitious agenda for California, which was a listing of the governor-elect’s campaign promises:

…
Among all those taxes, he has named only one he would reduce.

“I will repeal the car tax increase immediately upon taking office,” he said in a written response to a Times questionnaire published Sept. 28. “The car tax hurts working Californians. The tax is harsh and regressive. I will replace these revenues and eliminate the operating deficit by reducing wasteful spending and bringing jobs back to California.”

…

On Wednesday he reaffirmed his pledge not to increase taxes.

“I campaigned that I would not raise taxes, and I say this again that I will not raise taxes,” he said.

Still, in the past, he has outlined two possible exceptions.

“Because we can have, you know, next year an earthquake,” he said. “We can have a natural disaster. We could have a terrorist attack or something like that. So we can never say never, no.”

…

“What you have to do is, and what I have to do when I go into office, is have an audit, like I said, a 60-day audit with an independent company to really look at that,” he said.

A few days later, he shortened the schedule.

“First of all, I don’t think it would take that long,” he told O’Reilly. “I think it would take a month to really figure out what’s going on.”

But three days before the election, Schwarzenegger outlined a more expansive plan with a much longer time frame. In the Jennings interview he said that “easy solutions, fast solutions, are not always the good solutions.”

“You have to take your time,” he said. “This problem was created over a period of years, and it would take months and months and months to start working on it and really solving some of the problems. The first thing that you have to do is open up the books. Let the people see the waste that’s going on in there. And the second thing you have to do is put a spending cap on it. Say, ‘Stop spending.’ There’s no signing of new programs and bills or anything like this. Let’s just stop right now. We only have this much money. Let’s redo the current operating deficit. Let’s work on that, and then slowly start thinking about the inherited debt.”

(Bolding mine) Sorry for the big-time quoting, but since most of it is verbatim quotes from a public official, I think it’s not a copyright violation…

For most of the campaign, he promised only one specific tax cut: the vehicle registration fee. When clarifying things, he did paint himself slightly into a corner by making exceptions only for natural disasters and terrorists. But to support the OP, his last quote above certainly says that he’ll open the books to us regular citizens so we could see the waste. He also gave himself some wiggle room by mentioning that it might take months and months, though one could argue that there’s an implicit limit defined by the end of his term.

[blowero]

@groo

He also gave himself some wiggle room by mentioning that it might take months and months, though one could argue that there’s an implicit limit defined by the end of his term.

That same article also points out how much Arnold waffled on the time frame. IIRC, he originally said one month, then told Bill O’Reilly that it would only take 30 days, THEN changed it to months and months. I’ll try to find the exact cite tonight.

[blowero]

Oh, I’m sorry - never mind. You already quoted that part. I just missed it. First he said 2 months, then he said 1 month, then he said “you have to take your time”. :smack: