The Gov’s announcement today
that Susan Kennedy, Gray Davis’s Cabinet Secretary, will be his chief
of staff is all too consistent with the Schwarzenegger agenda of
turning the keys of state over to Big Business. Kennedy may be a
Democrat, but she’s no friend of the people. At the Public Utilities
Commission, at the behest of telecom companies, she led the drive to
repeal the Cell Phone Bill of Rights. One of her closest allies is
sleazy Sacramento lobbyist Darius Anderson, who had Gray Davis wired
for back room blunders. And the shady deals she and Gray engaged in –
including the Oracle pay-to-play scandal that helped push Gray out the
door – provoked the very recall that swept Arnold and his alleged broom
into office.
Kennedy’s sense of conflict of interest is hardly keen. While serving
on the PUC, she also served on the California Bay Delta Authority and
voted as a PUC member to give it more control over resources at the
expense of ratepayers. Making those decisions appears to conflict with
California law which prohibits any person from holding two or more
incompatible offices simultaneously. (Read more on Kennedy’s conflict of interest.)
If Conan’s hoping the addition of another Kennedy to his clan makes him
looks less like big business’s barbarian, then he’s once again asking
Californians to not look past the spin. Bipartisan isn’t about meeting
the lowest common denominator for common corporate interests in both
political parties, it’s about doing what’s best for the public
regardless of what those corporate donors have in mind.
