The beginning of the end for Schwarzenegger

July 14, 2005

Arnold Schwarzenegger has picked enough fights and been just incompetent enough to drive his approval ratings down and dim his re-election chances, but it’s recklessness like this that makes one wonder if he’s completely lost his mind.

Two days before he was sworn into office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted a consulting job paying an estimated $8 million over five years to “further the business objectives” of a national publisher of health and bodybuilding magazines.

The contract pays Schwarzenegger 1% of the magazines’ advertising revenue, much of which comes from makers of nutritional supplements. Last year, the governor vetoed legislation that would have imposed government regulations on the supplement industry.

According to records filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Schwarzenegger entered into the agreement with a subsidiary of American Media Inc. on Nov. 15, 2003. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company publishes Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, among others.

Taking millions from an industry to represent their interests and then vetoing a bill in order to help the industry is criminally stupid. Legislatures write conflict-of-interest laws for just this kind of situation.

Did Schwarzenegger assume no one would ever notice? Dd Schwarzenegger really need another $8 million? For that matter, wasn’t Schwarzenegger’s entire campaign platform specifically geared to tell voters he’d expose and eliminate just this kind of corruption?

It’s also worth noting that the two parties involved went to some lengths to keep the contract secret.

As recently as a few days ago, American Media refused to say anything about Schwarzenegger’s pay. The company filed an 83-page annual financial statement with the SEC last month that, in one paragraph, mentioned a consulting agreement with an unnamed “third party.” Stuart Zakim, an American Media spokesman, refused to say whether the third party was Schwarzenegger.

American Media, which also owns the National Enquirer, the Globe and the Star tabloids, made public the terms of Schwarzenegger’s contract in a separate SEC filing Wednesday.

Well, it’s probably a good thing that Schwarzenegger doesn’t seem to enjoy being governor anyway, because he’s toast.

The only thing I wonder now is whether some other California Republican will step in to either challenge Schwarzenegger in a GOP primary or just push Schwarzenegger out of the way entirely.

But CB, remember: IOKITAR!!

On a serious note, though, this is unfortunately way too typical of Rethug politicians, who feel they are entitled to their “just desserts” because they finally won a few elections. What happened to the (manufactured) outrage at the Dems in the 1994 so-called Contract with America? We’ve seen countless examples of the rank hypocricy and this just seems to be even more egregious because of its audacity and the attempts to keep it out of the public square.

Even bedrock can be eroded by the steady, relentless drip…drip…drip of a small trickle of water. Methinks that Schiavo, God rest her, will do to the Rethugs what the CCCP (Compliant Complicit Corporate Press) could/would not: expose them for the craven, soulless opportunists that they are. Hope, it is said, springs eternal!

  • Maybe soon he will return to acting and make the King Conan movie I’ve long anticipated. 🙂

  • Would it be too risky at this point to try to impeach Ahnold?

    If memory serves, California has a pretty low threshold for recall elections. Schwarzenegger might have some recollection about that…

  • Nah, impeachment is the better route here–or at the very least censure. CB, you’re waaaay understating it when you call this “criminally stupid.”

  • This is not news.

    Last Summer, the “hard-hitting” Los Angeles Magazine published an expose on this by a real journalist, Ann Lousie Bardach. The real upshot, though, was not the money – it was they way this deal silenced the tabloids in the run up to the elections, a point which the Times article only touched on. Here’s the intro:

    Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life was made for the tabloids. Hollywood and the Kennedys. The allegations of sexual harassment, the steroid use, the tales of extramarital affairs. But just as the recall began, the stories in the tabloids stopped. How a hush-hush deal cleared the way for Schwarzenegger to become the Conan of American politics

    Go read it at: http://www.lamag.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=14D5B253DB1D499F9AD38F459D8E926A&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=1A0D679965E3478AB926D9E7ADA0BE96

  • What happened to the (manufactured) outrage at the Dems in the 1994 so-called Contract with America?

    Sure, it was manufactured, but no matter how much you may not like the results, Newt was right. There was widespread corruption, and the American People would turn Dems out of office if offered an alternative.

    The lesson is to offer that alternative now.

  • I worked in the toy business for awhile and we had a term for a specific type we called “the Christmas morning toy.” Basically it was a piece of shit that looked good in the box, most likely used batteries and had subesequent bells and whistles, was trendy and only got played with for about 3 hours. Remember the Robo-Dog craze? Yeah, kids are really going to play with a Robo-Dog for the entire year. ‘Sit-boy’. Robo-Dog takes 90 seconds to sit. ‘Bark-boy’. Robo-Dog expels a computer bark. ‘Roll-over boy’. Robo-Dog painfully falls to one side, makes a lot of mechanical noise, extends a part that no real dog has, tilts to the other side, repeats the painful noise and voila, 3 minutes later Robo-Dog has rolled over. Meanwhile, Johnny takes off, probably to get a hammer and see what’s inside Robo-Dog. Kids aren’t dumb, they know a piece of shit when they see it in action. Parents aren’t dumb, that’s why the $99.95 Robo-Dog sells 100 units and the $19.95 Robo-Dog sells a million. Yeah, it’s fun to unwrap, fun to put the batteries in, but really everyone knows it’s a piece of crap from the get-go.

    Arnold, and Jesse Ventura, and all those other celebrity politicians always reminded me of Robo-Dog and other Christmas morning toys. Problem is, Christmas morning toys sell every year, and good advertising will continue to push this shit out there. The adults have lost control of the situation, and we’re just going to get more Robo-Dogs.

  • On a serious note, though, this is unfortunately way too typical of Rethug politicians…

    Agreed. And the more we push this meme the better off we’ll be in November 2006 and 2008. “Honey, I just can’t vote for the GOP candidate. W made me feel safe and I never did trust that Kerry, but the rest of the GOP sure don’t seem trustworthy. All they seem to want is money…I just don’t trust them. Its time to give the other guys a chance.”

  • Eadie,

    Did the Dems abuse their power before 1994? Of course. But what now passes for “democracy” in the House and thoughout America is much more akin to a military junta in Central America or South America. Clearly, today’s Rethugs have changed the rules (both officially through the Rules Committee but also in how politics is practiced in D.C., especially on K Street) to make the Dem’s behavior while the majority party seem like childish pranks by comparison.

    I fully agree that all politicians are by nature lazy, craven, and self-serving. Would a committed volunteer do the things they do? Of course not. That said, though, to not see that the outrage was wholly manufactured, and not real at all — the Dems provided MUCH more input by the minority than is ever possible on the best days under DeLay and Frist — is to buy into Newt’s frame as if it was the substance, too. You, Eadie, of all people here ought to understand and appreciate that.

    There is a clear qualitative difference to the thuggish behavior of Bush, the Party, and all who carry their water, that has never been approached in modern times — not even by the Nixon White House. To believe that Dems committed the same sins — to the same vast extent — while in power defeats us at the start, because the Dems clearly did not.

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