Archive for the ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger’ Category

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Calbuzz Secret Plan to Plug Gulf Coast Oil Gusher

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Along with the rest of the nation, Calbuzz finds ourselves in the unlikely position of rooting for the predatory greedbags at BP, desperately hoping they succeed with their latest half-baked scheme to stem the poisonous, filthy geyser of oil that their rapacious recklessness has sent spouting from the sea bottom in the Gulf of Mexico.

The avaricious thieves at BP are trying to stop the toxic torrent with a method called “top kill” which, as the New York Times explains, “involves pumping thousands of pounds of heavy fluids into a five-story stack of pipes in an effort to clog the well .”

Sounds good, but we have one important suggestion:

Instead of thousands of pounds of “heavy fluid,” why not jam up the hole with thousands of pounds of “ bungholes and bores,” the kind of self-absorbed pols and media celebrities who give Calbuzz a major pain, stuffing them down in there until the flow is stopped by the sheer mass and weight of every annoying and unbearable cretin, nitwit and schmuck we can round up.

Feel free to email us your own list of candidates, but for our money, here’s the Top 10 List of “Top Kill” nominees to squish down into the well.

1-Chris Matthews – How we wish this self-deluded pea brained, loudmouth putz, who keeps setting new standards of stupidity, would choke down a couple barrels of sulfurous crude, which might be just the thing to cure his chronic case of logorrhea. Of course, then we couldn’t watch him.

2-Glenn Beck – By itself, the combination of Beck’s fat head and fat ass could be enough to seal off the entire pipe, particularly if we throw his friggin’  blackboard in there with him. Plus: the phony tears this repulsive wiggler loves to shed on cue could take the place of that “heavy fluid” the Times keeps mentioning.

3-Gavin Newsom – The vast clouds of natural gas pouring from the well would help Newsom keep his over-inflated sense of self-importance at a high level, and he’d never even notice a couple thousand extra gallons of oil in his hair.

4-Sarah Palin – Corking up an oily hole would be cosmic justice for Ms. Drill Baby Drill and, given her latest whack job Facebook rant, she’d no doubt be well-pleased to escape the prying eyes of Joe McGinnis.

5-Arlen Specter – The ghastly and decrepit octogenarian has-been is well-suited to navigate any unexpected twists, turns and bends in the undersea pipe, given his sorry history of political contortions, not to mention his authorship of the Magic Bullet theory.

6-John Boehner – A good thick coating of rust-colored grease is just what the insufferable House minority leader needs to keep his unnatural skin color slick and shiny, not to mention that the federal deficit will likely plummet when taxpayers quit forking out for his daily spray man tans.

7-Lindsay Lohan – A mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico is just about the only place Lilo could possibly succeed in not having a drink, or getting a spoon stuck up her nose, for five minutes. The only non-pol to make the list, she’d also finally get a break from her monstrous father, Michael.

8-Bill Clinton – That massive pie hole of his is big enough to head off half the goo destined for the coast of Florida, and the cruel sacrifice of him not being able to hear himself talk for the first time in six decades is worth the chance he might win a special citation Nobel, finally getting even with that anti-fossil fuel goody-goody Gore.

9-Rand Paul – He’s no doubt right that Barack Obama’s bashing of BRITISH Petroleum is un-American, so here’s his chance to be a hero on behalf of private enterprise, nice and cozy in the one place he doesn’t have to worry about people who look different plopping down in a seat next to him.

10-Arnold Schwarzenegger – Putting aside the high-value, practical plugging worth of his bulging pecs, lats and glutes,  the guy ain’t good for much else, let’s face it.

Black Gold, the sequel: On Tuesday, we told you about Democrat John Laird whacking Republican Sam Blakeslee with an ad about offshore oil in the special election race in the 15th senate district, one of two  campaigns in the neighborhood where the issue takes center stage.

A little further south, a hotly contested primary battle in the 35th Assembly District, in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties,  has Democrats and environmentalists divided in their support for coastal advocate Susan Jordan and S.B. city councilman Das Williams.

The district has been ground zero in the long-running battle over the now defunct Tranquillon Ridge plan, and the Jordan-Williams match-up is the political manifestation of local polarization over the project.

Jordan is married to termed out 35th AD Assemblyman Pedro Nava, who led the successful fight against T-Ridge in the Legislature, and when she first announced her candidacy to succeed him last year, Williams said he was backing her.

But Jordan was fighting fiercely against the offshore proposal, which was backed by other local enviros, including Williams, who in short order  dropped his backing of her to declare his own candidacy, saying he was doing it because of T-Ridge, co-sponsored by several Santa Barbara green groups and PXP oil company.

Fast forward to the present, and the two are exchanging volleys of mailers and angry charges on the subject. Williams, seeking to inoculate himself, sent out a brochure  highlighting his past opposition to drilling, without mentioning the politically complicated PXP matter; Jordan counter-punched hard, with a mailer featuring a big ole color photo of the Deepwater Horizon exploding and burning, with a screamer headline: “Das Williams supported the PXP oil drilling deal – even after the Gulf spill.”

At which point the local Democratic county committee, which is led by a close pal of Williams, called a press conference to denounce Jordan for alleged dirty campaigning, a move that served to make it more likely that the PXP offshore drilling will be the decisive issue in the race.

We’re just sayin’: One of the big issues in the T-Ridge debate was whether or not the state would have the power to enforce end dates for PXP to stop drilling off federal platforms near Santa Barbara, a key feature of the proposal.

Jordan, among others, repeatedly insisted the authority on the federal leases would eventually rest with the U.S. Minerals Management Service. and that the agency has a natural pro-drilling bias that could upset the whole deal. After reading the new Inspector General’s report on the MMS, it’s hard to argue with that position.

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Politics, Das Williams, Gavin Newsom, Pedro Nava | 7 Comments »

Jean Ross: “The Battle for California’s Future”

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Today the Governor will release his final “May Revision” – the document that updates budget estimates and policy proposals.

Release of the May Revision traditionally signals the end of spring training and the shift of budget season into high gear. And as much as we might have hoped otherwise, we’re not surprised by Schwarzenegger flack Aaron McLear’s statement that the May Revision would include no tax increases and “absolutely terrible cuts.”

Since January, much of the smoke from the smoke and mirrors “solutions” proposed by the Governor has dissipated. The state is likely to receive $3 billion to $5 billion in federal funds – but not the $7 billion unrealistically assumed by the Governor in January.

The state has won some legal challenges to past budget-balancing actions, but lost others. Unrealistic hopes that strong April tax collections would ease pressures on the budget have also dissipated, and the harsh reality of the state’s fiscal situation has begun to emerge from the Capitol fog.

We generally try to avoid hyperbole, but this year, it is fair to say that the battle over the budget that will soon begin is nothing short of a battle for California’s future.

Our public institutions and structures are battered, some near the breaking point.

Per student spending in California’s public schools has fallen so deeply as a result of recent budget cuts that we now trail the rest of the country by a greater margin than at any point in the last 40 years. Student fees have more than doubled in less than a decade in the California State University and University of California systems and more increases are in store, while 2009-10 budget cuts closed the door to the CSU and UC for nearly 20,000 students.

Cash assistance grants have been cut to 1989 levels and purchase half what they did 20 years ago at a time when one out of every seven mothers in the labor market finds herself without work.

While a litany of budget facts can be mind-numbing, they are also informative. The state is on track to spend $18 billion less this year than it did just two years ago – yet an almost identical gap remains. Just how large is that gap? Almost exactly equal to what the state spends annually for prisons and all higher education from community colleges to the UC and CSU and student aid.

By taking revenues off the table, the Governor places California firmly on a fast track race to the bottom. The glory days of California’s past were the direct result of investments in public structures from schools to transportation and health care. The state has not, and cannot, compete in a global economy with a workforce made up of individuals who were homeless or lacked health care as children and who were turned away from college as young adults.

By taking revenues off the table, the Governor also ignores one of the two major causes of California’s current budget crisis.

While the still-pervasive impact of the economic downturn is certainly the primary source of our current fiscal woes, over the longer term, a systematic erosion of state revenues – the $10 billion plus annual cost of tax cuts enacted over the past 15 years – ensures that the state faces bad budget times even when the economy is strong.

This last point bears mentioning, since the Legislature kicked off this year’s budget battles by digging an even deeper hole, approving hundreds of millions of dollars of new tax breaks on top of the billions of dollars of tax cuts enacted as part of the 2008 and 2009 budget agreements. All of which brings to mind the cover art from an old New Yorker in which artist Edward Sorel reserves the deepest ring of hell for “politicians who promised to cut taxes and balance the budget.”

There will be no happy ending to this year’s story.

The problem is too big and the options available just too few. However, there can be a better ending than the one promised by the Governor’s spokesperson. Craft the inevitable spending cuts so that they preserve the core capacity of the structures and policies that have served California well in the past.

Start the state on the path towards doing what it should and must do right: building a healthy future and providing a safety net for those who need one when all else fails. Go back to Washington, again, hand-in-hand with governors and lawmakers from around the country to make the point that prominent economists have made: state and local budget cuts threaten to derail an already fragile economic recovery.

Finally, the Legislature should admit that it made a mistake and roll back recent dark of night tax cuts. Lawmakers should also close loopholes in the sales tax that reward businesses that don’t create a single job in California and allow resource extractors to go untaxed.

So as the battle begins, the question remains: if this is a battle for California’s future, who’s going to fight for the future?

Jean Ross is the executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based non-profit research group.

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Budget, California Deficit, California Economy, California Education, California Politics | 6 Comments »

The Secret Ads eMeg & Steve Don’t Want You to See

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

As Meg Whitman lobbed yet another stink bomb at Steve Poizner, Calbuzz rang up our friend Bill Carrick, the noted long distance runner who moonlights as a Democratic media consultant, to ask what he thinks of the escalating air war between eMeg and the Commish.

“I’ve had the alarming revelation that we have two dangerous left-wingers running in the Republican primary for governor,” he said. “I can barely sleep at night.”

With Carrick’s blinding insight fresh in our minds, we contacted sources close to our imagination to discover the secret plans of both campaigns for the final month of the race. Here’s how we see things playing out:

May 14 – Poizner launches a tough new weekend attack on immigration:

There are five million, border busting illegal immigrants in California.
Over half work at Meg Whitman’s house.

eMeg counter-punches hard:

Like goat meat in your tacos?
Then you’ll love Steve Poizner as governor.

May 18 – With three weeks left before the primary, Whitman consultant Mike Murphy rolls out a daring new theme, hammering Meg’s rival with a big swing on cultural values:

Left-winger Steve Poizner: Ever seen him in the same room as Castro?

After a quickly assembled, two-hour emergency focus group, Team Steve media strategist Stuart Stephens pulls an all-nighter producing a new spot to answer the assault:

Meg Whitman: The frappuccino-sucking, NPR-supporting, Bernie Sanders-loving, Lacoste-wearing East Coast elitist who Californians just can’t trust.

May 25 – eMeg’s tracking poll shows Steve still vulnerable on abortion, and her advisers take a huge gamble in airing a positive spot:

Meg Whitman has ALWAYS believed in the Immaculate Conception. The waffling Steve Poizner? Not so much.

Armed with fresh poll data micro-analyzing micro-targeted questions on the pro-life issue, Camp Poizner doubles down on their negative track:

Know what commie Meg Whitman and the Red Chinese have in common?
Just Google “same sex abortion” on your home computer.

June 1 – One week before the election, both candidates return to the bread-and-butter issue of taxes in making their closing arguments, as the Commish unveils a bold Prop. 13 message:

Ever wonder why Meg Whitman won’t tell us who killed Howard Jarvis? Hmmmm…

eMeg fires back fiercely:

There’s only one big-spending corrupt Republican insider who wants to drive  old folks from their homes and pick the carrion from the bones of our seniors: Say hello to Steve Poizner, grandma.

I’m Meg Whitman, and I approved this message.

June 9 - Final returns show that Whitman and Poizner win only 12 votes apiece, as most Republicans stay home and those who don’t cast write-in ballots for the late Evelle Younger.

A few hours later, Arnold Schwarzenegger issues an executive order proclaiming himself Governor for Life, announcing the move in a brief statement: “I’m baaack.”

Let Checchi be Checchi: When we saw that former Northwest Airlines co-chairman and 1998 candidate for governor Al Checchi has resurfaced at the San Francisco Chronicle, and read with interest his essay on political reform posted on Carla Marinucci’s blog, we couldn’t resist tweaking Al, who had written:

Only the national media has (sic) the infrastructure and reach to provide a national forum for catalyzing change. There is a unique opportunity for a media outlet to provide that forum, assume a leadership position within and for the industry, and provide a vital service to the American people and the country.

So we asked him: What are you going to do about it? Here’s his reply:

If I were younger, I would buy CNN and repurpose it.

1.  Provide the public a source of comprehensive, independent, and unbiased information about the substance of the critical issues that we face and the range of policy options available to address them.

2.  Employ public polling and new media to gauge public opinion and use the network to amplify the general public’s position on the issues to facilitate the building of national consensus.

3.  Provide similarly unbiased information to the public about the experience, character, qualifications, and positions of the people who stand for public office to improve the calibre of people to whom we cede political power.

In other words, I would get back to the basics of a comprehensive journalism that informs, educates, and provides a vital and constructive service to a Democratic society.

Since I am no longer young, I must content myself with half a loaf and try to develop programming and persuade a major media outlet to broadcast it.

Thanks, Al. No one ever called us “a major media outlet” before.

P.S. Checchi’s best one liner re. Meg Whitman’s business experience as a credential for governor:  She’s just  “a marketing person who ran an electronic auction house.”

With Apologies to TMZ


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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Advertising, Immigration, Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner | 2 Comments »

New Dem Party/Brown Whack at eMeg on Goldman

Friday, May 7th, 2010

The California Democratic Party, coordinating with Jerry Brown’s campaign for governor, is expected today to launch an attack on Republican front-runner Meg Whitman in the form of an “issues” ad calling on Congress to “stop special favors for wealthy Wall Street insiders,” sources told Calbuzz on Thursday.

The assault — which the Brown campaign would not confirm — comes as private polling by Republican Steve Poizner, by Whitman and various other candidates and initiative campaigns shows the Republican race for governor now within 10 points, with Poizner closing fast.

The CDP/Brown effort is aimed at weakening Whitman even further, especially among independent voters who will be crucial in the general election. If, as a side benefit, the ad campaign also erodes Whitman’s standing in the GOP primary, so much the better, sources said.

Whitman is struggling to douse the fires rising from attention focused on the fact that Goldman Sachs gave her access to initial public stock offerings that she “spun” or resold for personal profit while she was CEO at eBay. Goldman Sachs got eBay’s investment banking business and Whitman was, for a time, also a member of Goldman’s board.

The practice of “spinning” was legal at the time, but was outlawed shortly after a Congressional investigation and about the same time Whitman resigned from the Goldman board and returned $1.78 million in profits to settle an eBay shareholder lawsuit.

Calbuzz has not seen the CDP/Brown ad itself, but it has been described by media industry sources. According to them, the ad notes that a judge called Whitman’s spinning an “obvious conflict of interest,” that she was “forced” to return her profits and that she has “secretive offshore accounts, managed by Goldman Sachs, used by the rich to avoid taxes.”

In the same way the California Chamber of Commerce briefly used an “issues ad” to attack Brown, the CDP and Brown are using an “issues ad” to attack Whitman. The difference is that the Chamber is officially a non-partisan organization and the California Democratic Party and the Brown campaign are anything but non-partisan.

Official state parties may legally coordinate activity with candidates for partisan office which is apparently the framework in which this ad campaign is crafted. How much money the CDP will put behind the ad — money that was likely raised by Brown — is yet unclear. But the initial buy is expected to be about $1 million.

And Other Lies: The biggest canard in Governor Arnold’s dishonest crock of a disingenuous argument for scheduling the special election for Abel Maldonado’s former senate seat in the middle of summer is the purported need to have all legislative hands on deck to vote on a new state budget.

“We think it’s important to have a full complement of senators as soon as possible,” said Schwarzmuscle mouthpiece Aaron McLear said.

Puh-leeze.

Putting aside the fact that the $20 billion red ink budget will probably get voted on closer to Christmas, the clear-eyed Timm Herdt makes the very excellent point that if 15th SD front-runner Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee wins – an outcome Schwarzenegger is clearly trying to guarantee by setting the special for August 17 – there’ll be an open Assembly seat awaiting yet another special election, by which time the mendacious McLear will be well into his next million or so deceits.

Besides his little hissy fit of spite over the Dems taking their time to confirm Maldo as Lite Guv, there’s one and only reason that Conan set the date when he did – because the senate Republican leaders leaned on him to put his thumb on the scale so Democratic front-runner and former Assemblyman John Laird doesn’t capture the seat and put them on the brink of the two-thirds majority needed for budget votes.

The merits of consolidating the run-off vote with the Nov. 2 statewide are clear and overwhelming: sparing Central Coast counties the $2.5 million price tag of indulging Arnold’s whim, boosting voter awareness and turnout in the sprawling district, ensuring that military voters stationed overseas are full enfranchised – a matter that is resonating even with conservatives – as well as a batch of voting rights issue raised by newly-filed litigation that Schwarzenegger’s triggered with his partisan action.

Bottom line to Laird: “I think it was a political play, the Senate Republican leadership attempting to advantage themselves in the special election.” And what motivated Schwarzmuscle? “He was responding to the Senate Republican leadership in advance of the budget,” said Laird.

What hath Sarah wrought: While Sarah Palin’s Facebook endorsement of Carly Fiorina in the Republican Senate race offers iCarly a nice boost in the primary, the political backing of the Thrilla from Wasilla will reek like stinking fish by the time the general election comes around, should the Hurricane win the GOP nomination.

There’s not a lot of hard data available about how Californians view Palin, but polling from her stint as the 2008 veep candidate makes it clear what a polarizing figure she was even back when she was still a borderline wing nut, before she crossed the border and became a total whack job. Shortly after the Republican National Convention where she made her national political debut, the Field Poll found Palin’s favorable to unfavorable rating among Californians stood at 43-43; less than two months later her image stood at 37-53 favorable-unfavorable.

The big shift came among independents: In the first weeks after Palin’s launch, they viewed her somewhat unfavorably, 36-45; by the time they’d been more fully exposed to her charms, shortly before the election, DTSs had a 20-65 unfavorable view of her, a 36 point swing. All this, of course, before Palin resigned as governor of Alaska and evolved into a full time media bore.

Even California Republicans became slightly less enamored over time: they viewed her favorably 81-12 during the September survey and 74-19 in October, a net decline of 13 points.

Still her seal of approval is a big deal for Fiorina in the right-wing dominated primary, and even more of one, in an opposite way, for Orange County Assemblyman Chuck Devore, the true Tea Partier in the race, whose supporters took to Palin’s Facebook page to complain about her endorsement of Fiorina.

As for front-runner Tom Campbell, we have a feeling Palin’s gratuitous dis of Dudley – “a liberal member of the GOP who seems to bear almost no difference to Boxer, one of the most left-wing members of the Senate” – will find its way onto the air in the next four weeks.

Upadate 6:40 am: At 10:09 pm Thursday the Whitman campaign sent out the following statement: “This is a clear effort by the California Democratic Party and labor unions to defeat Meg Whitman, because she is the only fiscal conservative in the race who will reform the failed pension system and solve the fiscal crisis in Sacramento. The California Democratic Party, the public employee unions, and Steve Poizner have struck an alliance to defeat Meg’s effort to disrupt the status quo in Sacramento.”

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Posted in Abel Maldonado, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Democratic Party, California Governor's Race, California Politics, California Senate Race, Carly Fiorina, Chuck DeVore, Meg Whitman, Special Election, Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell | 3 Comments »

Yo, AP! What, Exactly, Does Meg Whitman Regret?

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

When we read the story by Juliet Williams of the Associated Press in which she wrote: “Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman said [last] Tuesday she regrets taking part in a now-banned stock sale practice at Goldman Sachs . . .” we searched for a quote to back up the statement that Whitman had expressed “regret.”

There wasn’t one. “The lesson learned about it is you have to be extra vigilant about seeing any actual or perceived conflict of interest,” Whitman said. “I missed the signposts here.”

Williams wrote: “Whitman, a billionaire, said she forfeited the profits from the stock sales as part of the settlement to end the distraction of the lawsuit. She said the practice was part of the ‘normal course of business’ at the time.”

“As I look back on it, would I do it again? No,” Whitman said. However, she was also quoted saying, “There was no link between accepting these IPO shares and funneling business to Goldman.”

We tried to speak to Williams about this to find out if she had a quote in her interview in which Whitman had expressed regret about the actions she had taken in regard to Goldman Sachs – not just the legal and political fallout. But we couldn’t get through to the reporter; we were cut off by John Raess, AP’s San Francisco Bureau Chief, who referred us to corporate AP in New York for a response. More on that later.

We were concerned that Williams had attributed “regret” to Whitman that the former eBay CEO herself did not feel. Let’s be clear, “regret,” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, is “1. to feel sorry about or mourn for (a person or thing gone, lost, etc.) 2. to feel troubled or remorseful over (something that has happened, one’s own acts, etc.) – n. 1. a troubled feeling or remorse over something that has happened, esp. over something that one has done or left undone . . .”

Our suspicion was confirmed when, in Sunday’s debate, Carla Marinucci of the Chronicle asked Whitman, and John Myers of KQED re-asked, whether she had done anything wrong in the Goldman Sachs spinning incident. Whitman replied:

“I did not do anything wrong. It was a legal and standard practice. With 20-20 hindsight, would I do it again? No, because it was called into question.”

By now it was pretty clear that Whitman didn’t regret what she’d done – she regretted what happened afterward. So we asked her spokesman Tucker Bounds whether Meg regretted having been involved in spinning IPOs that were made available to her by Goldman Sachs.

“Yes. I think the Associated Press report was completely accurate,” said Bounds, who sat in on the interview. “She’s expressed a lot of regret about the issue.”

But wait, we asked. If she did nothing wrong, what does she regret?

“That there was a perceived conflict of interest when one did not exist,” Bounds replied. “Perception is reality and that’s where the regret comes from.”

In other words, Whitman is not sorry. She’s not remorseful about what she did. She sees nothing unethical. No conflict of interest. No illicit insider advantage. She doesn’t think she did anything wrong (even if it was condemned and outlawed later on).

And that’s why the AP story was so  misleading. By writing that Whitman had regrets, Williams suggested that the former eBay boss felt some remorse about what she had done when nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing Whitman regrets is that what she did was perceived to be unethical. As far as she’s concerned it was not only legal, it was just fine.

Which brings us back to our complaint to AP.

Having been told we could not talk to Juliet Williams and that we had to speak to New York, we did and, after a long conversation with Jack Stokes in Media Relations, we were encouraged to send an email outlining our complaint.

Here’s some of what we said:

It’s my belief that unless Juliet has a quote in which Whitman expresses regret, then this was an over-interpretation by the writer of an emotion which the writer has no basis to know. How do we know Whitman “regrets” what she did? We know she says she wouldn’t do the same again because it was perceived to be a conflict of interest. But we have no way of knowing — at least from the quotes Juliet shared — that Whitman has any regrets.

The evidence suggests that Whitman strongly believes — because this is what she says — that she, in fact, did nothing wrong. What is there to regret, except that the whole thing was perceived to be a conflict of interest and has since caused her some political inconvenience?

I am not interested in seeking unpublished material from Juliet. I’d prefer if she published the material she has that substantiates what she wrote and that her editors would demand it. In fact, good editing here ought to dig down to the issue of whether a reporter has overstepped her knowledge base and written something for which she actually has no substantiation. This is a common problem in political reporting where writers characterize the motives and emotions of politicians instead of simply reporting the effect of their statements or actions. How does Juliet know that Whitman regrets what she did? How does AP know this?

Before we sent that note to AP we had received an email from Raess that informed us: “After talking with Juliet and with Tom Verdin [AP’s California political editor] I think we’ll let the story speak for itself. I’m confident it’s an accurate reflection of the interview. I’d be happy to discuss this with you personally.”

And now that Bounds has said the story is “completely accurate,” we don’t expect AP will do anything to repair the misimpression its story created. They’ll figure it’s case closed and that they’ve been vindicated.

They haven’t, of course. They were just used by the Whitman campaign.

Team eMeg wants the news media to say Whitman has expressed regret while, at the same time, never actually forcing their candidate to express genuine regret – which she can’t because as far as she’s concerned, she did nothing wrong.

SCHWARZMUSCLE PULLS PLUG ON T-RIDGE: As Calbuzz suggested almost two weeks ago, the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico kills plans to revive drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara with the Tranquillon Ridge project.

Monday, Gov. Schwarzenegger announced: “That will not happen in California . . . I’m sure that they also were assured that it is safe to drill,” he said. “You turn on television and you see this enormous disaster, and you say to yourself, why would we want to take that risk?”

Which kills the Houston-based PXP Co. project at the State Lands Commission. It’s dead. Done. Kaput.

Leaders of Santa Barbara’s Environmental Defense Center, the enviro sponsors of the PXP deal – which they’ve argued would lead to an earlier end to existing drilling in the region – said they were “very surprised and disappointed” in Schwarzenegger’s move.

Which is understandable, since the governor was still publicly backing the proposal as late as last Friday, and yesterday’s out-of-left field announcement totally pulled the rug out from under EDC. Still they continued to insist the T-Ridge plan is the way to go:

Our plan, negotiated as part of a settlement agreement, would have provided the only legal and available means to put an end to existing oil drilling off our coast…

In terms of next steps, we have no choice but to wait and see what unfolds.  We challenge those who have opposed our plan to tell us how they intend to shut down these platforms and thus reduce the threat of oil spills off our coast.  Maintaining the status quo only perpetuates the existing risks.

As a political matter, the biggest winner in the  situation is Pedro Nava, the termed out Santa Barbara Assemblyman who’s running for AG, who has fiercely battled the proposal since it surfaced more than two years ago. Said Nava:

I am pleased that Governor Schwarzenegger now agrees with me, Florida’s Governor Charlie Christ and, 110 other environmental organizations that the PXP proposal to drill three miles off the California coast is a bad idea and not worth the risk. We welcome the Governor’s change of heart. .

Now it’s time for PXP to pack up their tent and abandon their plans to open up the California coast to new, dirty, and dangerous offshore oil drilling.

This just in: Sarah Palin says she hopes the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico won’t lead to distrust of oil companies. Spill, baby, spill.

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Politics, Environment, Meg Whitman | 2 Comments »

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