Bill Bradley

This Budget Hurts

With the Iraq-plagued George W. Bush sliding down the toilet in California, the main thing going for Republicans in the Golden State is the action superstar turned fusion governor. Arnold Budget 2.0, more formally known as the governor’s May revision, is getting mixed reviews. (Arnold Budget 1.0, in January, was......

Blowing Up Government

Now that he’s back from his presidential-style trip to open the new Museum of Tolerance in Israel, visit with the King of Jordan and cheer up wounded troops from California at one of the U.S. military’s major staging areas in Germany, our action guv returns to the next group of......

Arnold and the Indians

Arnold Schwarzenegger has the hottest hand in California politics in many years. Even the L.A. Times has ceased its dogged pursuit of its great white whale. The ex–Mr. Universe’s carefully brokered deal on workers’-compensation reform is just the latest in a string of political victories for a man who one......

The New Energy Governor

Gray Davis had a very appropriate story to tell. The former governor was in Sacramento last month to be feted by the state’s environmental groups for having signed into law an impressive array of environmental bills. He recalled an incident during his days with former Governor Jerry Brown as his......

Arnold the Taxmanian

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the Governor’s Office, hefting the massive sword from Conan the Barbarian, slicing it through the air for the edification of a distinguished visitor (as distinguished from me) as he talks playfully about cutting the budget and slaying the beast that is strangling Kah-lee-fohr-nyah’s future. But will......

Unfinished Business

State Finance Director Donna Arduin, usually ultracool and buttoned-down, practically shook with excitement. Her boss, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, headed to the stage to declare victory on his twin initiatives to refinance the state’s debt with $15 billion in bonds and require a balanced state budget. As the über-guv did his......
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Two Sides of JFK

There are two Democratic front-runners to be the next president of the United States. One is a poster boy for America’s Statue of Liberty myth, the grandson of Eastern European immigrants, a man who worked his way through school doing hard labor on fishing boats, volunteered for combat duty in......

Scream IV

It’s the latest big week of the Arnold Era, his first State of the State address and first budget. Think of the budget as Scream IV. But if you think this is how things will end up, I have a bridge to sell you. It figures to be a long......

Capitol Gains

As we embark on the Era of Arnold, here are 10 delightful and appalling, often delightfully appalling, things to mark the occasion: 1 No More Gray Davis Joy Rides Conservatives would say that the Davis joy rides of the last five years involved spending tens of billions of dollars that......

A New Sheriff in Town

The 38th governorship of California launched like a movie premiere, with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in between movie star and politician mode, projecting his image to teeming masses and swiftly greeting elites in classy, closed-door parties. It may mark the start of an era of political renewal in the tarnished Golden......