Where’s Arnold in the governor’s race?

Where’s ex-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the primary election races decided today? By far the most successful GOP candidate in California in the last 15 years, he is nowhere to be seen in this important election.

He has endorsed nobody for governor, and nobody for any other races. Just as before his $550 million Proposition 49 socialist “midnight basketball” initiative in 2002 — a practice run for his his ego-driven 1993 campaign for governor during the recall election — his presence in California politics is close to zero. He has sponsored the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Politics at USC. But that’s just another ego booster.

He just praised President Obama’s edict to destroy the coal industry, shredding tens of thousands of middle-class jobs in Appalacia. Here’s what Obama’s fellow Democrat, Rep. Nick J. Rahall of West Virgina, said:

This is an unprecedented use of the Clean Air Act to wage war on an entire industry. Rather than requiring individual plants to meet pollution control standards by installing pollution controls, EPA is now interpreting the law to give it the ability to set standards across fleets of coal-fired power plants, seeking to make reductions in a nebulous fashion.  This is overt bootstrapping and makes this proposal even more attractive to legislate or litigate against.

But here’s Schwarzenegger’s statement, from his website:

Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger today issued the following statement after Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy’s announcement that the EPA will use the Clean Air Act to carry out President Obama’s Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants:

“You only need to look at the decades of scientific research and at the epic droughts and superstorms to know that we can’t wait any longer to take action on climate change.

I applaud President Obama for using every tool at his disposal and not waiting for Congress or a new international treaty. California and nine eastern states have used similar policies, including an effective cap-and-trade system, which can serve as a national model to help our country achieve the President’s goals.

The experiences of those states also prove that this is not a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s a people issue. I hope that the President’s action today is just the first step toward a sustainable energy future.”

As California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger used executive action and signed laws that made the state cleaner, more sustainable, and more prosperous. He championed large new solar and wind energy projects; the Million Solar Roofs Initiative; the Hydrogen Highway for clean cars; and the Low Carbon Fuels Standard to make cleaner fuels available to everyone.

In 2006 Governor Schwarzenegger signed the Global Warming Solutions Act, which set a goal of reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 to the 1990 level.  A centerpiece of the law was a provision requiring polluters to cap emissions.

Yeah, sure, “large new solar and wind projects” like Solyndra, which got a $34.5 million tax break subsidy from Schwarzenegger before it went belly-up. In addition, of course, to the $535 million subsidy from President Obama.

Connected capitalists

That’s how things work. The “connected capitalists” get massive subsidies paid by middle-class taxpayers. The middle-class gets higher costs from inflation and jobs destroyed — followed by EBT cards and Section 8 housing — its independence destroyed.

The whole “sustainable energy”-AB 32-“global warming”-“climate change”-Solyndra-“Hydrogen Highway” schtick is just to enrich Arnold, Al Gore and their pals.

And Arnold, of course, doesn’t care that Obama’s edict is unconstitutional. The president just can’t destroy an entire industry by himself.

Arnold used to boast he was a free-market advocate, and touted his friendship with the late free-market economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. Arnold would mention that he came to America because it had a free economy, unlike the socialist Austria of his youth in the 1950s and 1960s.

But all along I said his real mentality was back in that socialist Austria (which actually became much more capitalist in the early 1970s after he left). He used American capitalism to get rich, but beginning with his governorship he has done little more than impose socialism on his adopted country. Achtung, baby!

Put that on your ballot today and smoke it.