For a long time, “moderate” Republicans considered California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a member of the “saner” Republican guard. Arnold drove his state to insolvency, and insolvency, you see, can shore up a moderate’s credentials.
Schwarzenegger has pumped up his state’s bloated bureaucracy and ballooning parasitical class. Now, in a referendum, California voters have rejected milquetoast measures that would allow The Terminator to continue to hobble along with his $21 billion deficit.
The Republican governor made sure he was out of town during the vote. “He was not the public face of the effort,” reports the New York Times. But rather, Arnold “let teachers and firefighters do his talking for him in advertisements, and indeed was not even in the state the day of the vote.”
“Representative democracy,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in Bureaucracy, “cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.”
One of the causes of inflation and debt is the public sector—with its capacity to hire while the public sector must fire—and award its members with inflated wages and benefits, the kind we can only dream of.
Update (May 20): Arnold gave it a bash; he tried to peddle a “package of budget-balancing measures that he promised would temporarily fix the state’s financial crisis.”
MSNBC: “Schwarzenegger said the state’s residents have had to sell off motorcycles, second cars and hold garage sales to make ends meet in recent months. Now, they’re telling state officials that the government has to shrink, too.
“Don’t come to us for extra help. That was the message.”
Me: Moocher-in-chief, however, knows how to try and prolong the party, with some leverage against the moochers he governs:
“Still, Schwarzenegger said the budget cuts to come may be more painful than California voters realize. While they may not want to pay more for services, they can’t say specifically which services they would pare, he said.
He said cuts will certainly come in education, health care and in prisons by transferring undocumented immigrants to federal facilities and transferring more non-violent offenders to local jails. He plans to meet with state lawmakers in the afternoon to discuss the state’s options.”