Arnold dusted off his old recall election campaign theme of cleaning up Sacramento yesterday when he lambasted Senate Leader Don Perata for accepting $577,000 from the union that represents prison guards. Apparently the union is trying to get the Legislature to authorize a pay raise for prison guards. Don Perata’s defense, that he makes decisions only on policy and not on politics, is laughable — so much so that he is under a federal probe for his activitities.
But for Arnold to pull that spic-and-span attitude of yesteryear — "Any of those kinds of real big, powerful special interests, if you take money from them, you owe them something" — is equally laughable. Over the course of his five years as Governor he has taken more money from special interests than any California politician ever, and has done more for those donors than anyone. Chevron hasn’t given Arnold $765,800 in campaign contributions for the signed headshots.
Here’s a sampling of some of the ArnoldWatch.org entries that make it hard for us to take Schwarzenegger’s critique of Perata seriously.
