National Nurses United

8 M A Y 2 0 0 5 C A L I F O R N I A N U R S E wholesale auction of our health, education, and public protections to the highest bid- der. An example is the pharmaceutical industry, whose top 50 companies made $55 billion in profits last year. Schwarzenegger last year vetoed bills to assist the import of affordable prescrip- tion drugs from Canada. He's now promot- ing "voluntary" reductions by an industry that is notorious for a lack of restraint. In return, Big Pharma is a major donor to Schwarzenegger and is bankrolling an initiative to restrict the ability of unions, " 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. " who have dared to challenge the governor, to participate in the political process. Review some of the governor's other "reforms": ■ Privatization of pensions for public employees, a transfer of hundreds of mil- lions of dollars to Wall Street, a model to be quickly followed in the private sector in concert with the Bush administration's bid to privatize Social Security. Though the governor in April announced plans to pull back this initiative, the proposal is still on the table and could be placed on the ballot next year. ■ Rollback of minimum safety protec- tions for hospital patients, part of a larger goal of deregulation of all healthcare pro- tections to swell the profits of his health- care industry donors. ■ Reduced funding for education and employment security for teachers, some- thing likely to further undercut our schools and widen the chasm between those who can afford quality education and those who cannot. ■ Mean-spirited attacks on the poor, the disadvantaged, and the sick, symbol- ized by a plan to seize the homes and other assets of the families of deceased Medi-Cal recipients and cut the number of nursing beds available to ill residents of veterans' homes. ■ An offensive against working people, including restricting the right to meals and breaks, vetoing a raise in the minimum wage, and the much ballyhooed workers compensation plan, which cut disability payments by up to 70 percent. Schwarzenegger has usurped the role of the Legislature through bogus "emer- gency" regulations and cynical manipula- tion of the initiative process through threats to legislators to cave in to his proposals or face elections in which he can overwhelm opponents with massive fundraising. The governor has also worked to manipulate the media with Hollywood-style staged events and the production of fake video news releases, and demonized unions in an effort to silence the collective voice of working people. This is not just a bad infomercial. In Schwarzenegger's world, no one is safe when democracy and our basic protections and rights are under assault—except for the big corporations, who are abetted by their cheerleader in Sacramento. Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the California Nurses Association. G ov. 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 soci- ety—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 soci- ety—quality education, patient-safety stan- dards, retirement security for our families, respect for the rights of working people, dig- nity 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 per- sonal 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 dol- lars 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 cor- porate control over our daily lives, and the Rose Ann DeMoro CNA Executive Director Corporate Actor Schwarzenegger plays a moderate, but his agenda is as bad as it gets for working Californians. By Rose Ann DeMoro

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