Tales from the Trail

Memoirs, maybe movies, but no political office.

That’s what the immediate future holds for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s leaving office in January.

After seven years running the most populous state the in country, Schwarzenegger seems to have soured on politics and partisanship.

“Politics destroys everybody,” he said in an “ABC World News” interview on Wednesday. “The more you can take the politics out of things, the more you can accomplish. Because otherwise, it becomes kind of like, ‘I’m representing my party. My party is not happy with this. We’re doing it this way.’”

Schwarzenegger called politicians in Washington “wimps” for not tackling energy and environment policy and he spoke against Proposition 23.

Here’s a video clip from the interview.

If approved, the measure on next Tuesday’s California ballot would scuttle many of the governor’s clean energy and environmental policies. Specifically Proposition 23 would suspend California’s landmark climate change law until the state unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent or lower for one year.

Sarah McBride takes a look at the campaign ads in the California race.

California’s gubernatorial frontrunner Jerry Brown pledged Tuesday to remove all negative ads one week before the November 2 election, but only if his rival went along. Meg Whitman, the billionaire Republican with a big self-financed campaign, wasn’t willing to go quite that far.

At first, neither candidate seemed crazy about the proposal from Matt Lauer, moderator of the candidates’ on-stage conversation at the annual Women’s Conference in Long Beach, with current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sitting in the middle. As the audience clapped and cheered at the suggestion, the two hopefuls sat stonefaced on stage, their hands motionless in their laps.

“Sometimes negativity was in the eye of the beholder,” said Brown. But perhaps remembering his lead in the polls, he quickly turned generous and said he would if Whitman would.

The White House is stepping up its efforts to call out Republicans for what Democrats see as hypocrisy over the $787 billion stimulus package.

Republicans have slammed the bill as wasteful and ineffective at creating jobs but the Obama administration says some of the same politicians who have lambasted the package have lined up for a share of the money for their states and districts.

“Independent economists credit the Recovery Act with growing the economy and for two million jobs that otherwise wouldn’t exist,” President Barack Obama told a gathering of the nation’s governors at the White House.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger swears that the profanity spelled out when looking at his veto letter a certain way was pure coincidence.

The Republican governor was in Washington for an event with Vice President Joe Biden to praise the economic stimulus package as having successfully created jobs. He spoke afterward with reporters in front of the White House West Wing to tout it some more.

One question was about the veto letter he sent to members of the California State Assembly. Upon closer inspection, the first letters on each line in the second and third paragraphs spell out an epithet using the four-letter F-word that is usually hurled in anger.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spokesman insists it was just an innocent coincidence.

San Francisco state representative Tom Ammiano, tongue firmly in cheek, says it was “a very creative way of exercising veto power.”

The facts are clear: A letter on the governor’s website  explaining his veto of a bill to help finance the port of San Francisco is three paragraphs long. The letters that begin the four lines of the second paragraph and the three lines of the third spell out an obscene comment. See below:

Watch out Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, New York and California would love those dollars you turn down from the $787 billion economic stimulus plan.
 
A few governors, namely Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, have all said that they may turn down some of the stimulus money for their states, particularly aid aimed at bolstering unemployment benefit programs.
 
“We can’t pay for the benefits already in the program, but to get the stimulus money, we’ve got to increase the program’s size and scale,” Sanford said on “Fox News Sunday”.
 
That has some other states hard hit by the deepening recession calling for the money to be sent their way, especially New York where Wall Street has been laying off workers by the thousands.
 
“If any governor — Democrat or Republican — leaves stimulus money on the table, then we respectfully request that funds be distributed to New York,” the state’s two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, said in a letter to President Barack Obama on Monday.
 
Another New York lawmaker, Representative Anthony Weiner, plans to offer legislation that would redirect rejected stimulus funds to other states. 
 
“If some governors decide to reject the money, 45 other states should be able to use it to create thousands of jobs. We have plenty of projects across the country that will put people to work and help achieve long term economic growth and stability,” Weiner said in a statement.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Segar (Wall Street in New York City.)

California environmentalists are in tizzy this week, accusing Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of telling their governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, how to do his job.

At issue is a letter Palin sent to Schwarzenegger last month, asking him to veto a bill that would raise shipping container fees to pay for pollution-reduction programs at three major California ports.

The letter, which Palin sent to Schwarzenegger a day before she was announced as John McCain's running mate, began circling on the Web on Thursday.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to help kick off the opening night of the Republican Convention on Sept. 1, but the “governator” says his appearance is contingent on whether a state budget agreement is reached between Republicans and Democrats. 

In a press conference Wednesday afternoon where the governor rolled out his budget compromise plan, Schwarzenegger said he “made it very clear” to Arizona Sen. John McCain that he’s “honored” to speak at the convention — but the budget comes first. 

“The state of California and the budget is the most important thing,” Schwarzenegger said to reporters. “If I do not have a budget, I cannot speak at the convention.”

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Wednesday he’s likely to make another major speech at the Republican National Convention later this year, as he did in 2004, and that he’s going to join his buddy John McCain on the campaign trail later this year.

The governor spoke of his plans during a lunch session for participants at the Milken Institute Global Conference on the economy.

Schwarzenegger announced on Jan. 31 that he is supporting McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.