Will The Arnold Turn into The Terminated?

From The Desert Sun:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must be wondering if someone gave him the wrong script. In the movies, our action figure governor gets to trample over anyone in his way.

In real life, those he tries to brush aside as the annoying "extras" on his set are not robots but the real-life heroes of our society - firefighters, teachers and nurses.

While some pundits try to pigeonhole the current debate into the more familiar terrain of a narrow partisan Republican-Democrat spat, the stakes are far greater for the most fundamental values of our society - quality education, patient-safety standards, retirement security for our families, respect for the rights of working people, dignity for our most vulnerable neighbors, and preservation of our democracy.

Schwarzenegger waltzed into office marketing his celebrity and a self-fashioned image of a "populist" who would root the money grubbers out of Sacramento and "could not be bought" due to his own personal fortune.

But the façade has undergone an extreme makeover. Californians today see a typical politician mouthing the rhetoric of reform while shattering all records for the fundraising he once mocked, virtually all of it coming from wealthy interests who benefit financially from the tsunami of dollars they bestow on the governor.

Those $100,000-a-plate dinners (each of which would pay for a $10 meal every day for the next 27 years for the rest of us) come with a steep price - the promise of deregulation, privatization, increased corporate control over our daily lives, and the wholesale auction of our health, education and public protections to the highest bidder.