The fallout from Gov. Schwarzenegger's demeaning comments about small-town Californians continue to reverberate. Chairman Torres weighed in, and noted that rural Californians don't exactly use a horse and buggy to get around, and some of them even have the teevee and the Internets!
"The Governor's comments are insulting," Torres told PolitickerCA.com today. "California does not have villages. This is not Austria, this is California. Voters in Central California and others from small towns have more on the ball than Arnie!"
State Senator Dean Florez, from the small Central Valley town of Shaffer, went a step further, introducing a resolution to have the Governor take the high school exit exam.
Like every other kid around the state, small town students take the same graduation tests as big city kids to show competency. Rural kids can make the grade. Given the Governor's distasteful comments, what's unanswered is whether he can make the grade.
That's why, today, I'm introducing a senate resolution asking the Governor to take the high school exit exam. If the Governor fails the test, then we certainly have a capable Lt. Governor who can assume his duties until the Governor successfully passes the exam.
I hope that he accepts this challenge and that he doesn't cower behind some excuse. This is a serious effort to bring attention to the divisiveness of placing labels on people based on who they are, how they live or where they come from -- or even how well they do on a test.
If it is a good enough test for our twelfth graders, then certainly it is a good enough test for the Governor to demonstrate his competency.
And after he takes the exam, maybe he'll think twice about the massive cuts to education funding he's proposing -- he just may have to return to school to brush up for the test."
I would pay money to sit in while Arnold fills in the bubbles on the Scan-Tron sheet. Can we get this on television? It'd be the first time local news covered state politics all year!
The Assembly Session is now over and a special session for health care and water issues has been convened. The Senate is expected to conclude its session soon as well, but not before hashing out a few more obstacles. Hundreds of bills are headed to the Governor's desk (the Assembly sent 234 before it adjourned in the wee hours). But, it turns out that money does buy you love if you start astroturf organizations, but not so much for the real grassroots. So, the mothers of MOMS rising and other organizations that have been fighting toxic chemicals that are in our everyday environment will have to keep on fighting.
UPDATE: From the commnts, AB 706 is now officially dead. The vote count was 19 Ayes, 20 Noes, 1 Abstain. Dems who voted the wrong way: Correa (Orange County), Ducheny (San Diego), Florez (Bakersfield & Fresno), Machado (Stockton), and Vincent (LA...WTF?). Gloria Negrete McCleod abstained. Sen. Yee flipped his vote late last night. Thank you, Senator.
