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Intro­duc­tion: High­light­ing the cyn­i­cism of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “pop­ulist” image, this pro­gram sets forth the inter­ests behind the man and the pow­ers whose bid­ding he will do. Begin­ning with Schwarzenegger’s asso­ci­a­tion with direc­tors of a Las Vegas gam­ing com­pany, the pro­gram notes that his cam­paign tar­get­ing of Indian gam­bling casi­nos smacks of con­flict of interest—he is fronting for com­pet­ing orga­ni­za­tions. A cen­tral ele­ment of dis­cus­sion is Schwarzenegger’s “con­sen­sual inter­course” with Enron, one of the Texas-based energy com­pa­nies that par­tic­i­pated in the gigan­tic rip-off of Cal­i­for­nia elec­tric­ity con­sumers. That rip-off—engineered by polit­i­cal allies of George W. Bush and enabled by the elec­tric­ity dereg­u­la­tion passed by Schwarzenegger’s cam­paign man­ager Pete Wilson—is the focal point of a law­suit by Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Cruz Bus­ta­mante. In addi­tion to the fact that the “elec­tric­ity cri­sis” desta­bi­lized Cal­i­for­nia, the pro­gram sets forth Der Terminator’s 2001 delib­er­a­tions with Enron (and Bush ally) Ken Lay on the sub­ject of side­track­ing the law­suit. No sooner did Schwarzeneg­ger get elected, than he pro­posed dereg­u­lat­ing California’s elec­tric­ity mar­ket once the “cur­rent” long-term con­tracts expire—an appar­ent pay-off to his con­trollers. Doc­u­ment­ing exten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion between Schwarzeneg­ger and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the broad­cast under­scores the piv­otal role of W’s allies in the Schwarzeneg­ger cam­paign and tran­si­tion team. Among the mem­bers of that tran­si­tion team is one Viet Dinh, who authored the Patriot Act for Attor­ney Gen­eral John Ashcroft. Tellingly, Schwarzeneg­ger brought in Florida Gov­er­nor Jeb Bush’s bud­get super­vi­sor to audit California’s budget—a prob­a­ble har­bin­ger of impend­ing fis­cal sleight-of-hand. Flesh­ing out Schwarzenegger’s role as a shill, the broad­cast points out that the peo­ple han­dling his cam­paign are ex-aides to for­mer Gov­er­nor Pete Wil­son, who were instru­men­tal in pack­ag­ing for­mer Russ­ian pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin. Far from being the “everyman“elevated to Olympian heights by his Niet­zschian will to power, Schwarzeng­ger is a front man for the very spe­cial inter­ests he allegedly opposes.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The busi­ness rela­tion­ship between the tabloid news­pa­pers and Schwarzenegger’s busi­ness part­ner Joe Wei­der; Schwarzenegger’s idol­iza­tion of Adolph Hitler; Der Terminator’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in US English—an orga­ni­za­tion linked to White Suprema­cist ele­ments; the author­i­tar­ian, Machi­avel­lian con­trol Schwarzeneg­ger exerts over pub­lic­ity about him; Schwarzenegger’s heavy handed (and at times ille­gal) maneu­ver­ing to quash the Wendy Leigh unau­tho­rized biog­ra­phy “Arnold”; a com­par­i­son between pop­u­lar Ger­man per­cep­tions of Hitler and the media pre­sen­ta­tion of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

1. Although he pro­fesses to be pop­ulist, Schwarzeneg­ger is, in real­ity, a shill for pow­er­ful and cyn­i­cal inter­ests. The pro­gram begins by high­light­ing his campaign’s con­nec­tions to Las Vegas-based gam­bling inter­ests that com­pete with the Native Amer­i­can gam­bling casi­nos Schwarzeneg­ger tar­geted dur­ing his cam­paign. “A top polit­i­cal adviser to Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger serves on the board of direc­tors of a com­pany that owns two Las Vegas casi­nos and has inter­ests in two South­ern Cal­i­for­nia card clubs that com­pete with casi­nos run by Cal­i­for­nia Indian tribes. Schwarzeneg­ger has made attack­ing tribes and their polit­i­cal influ­ence a major tenet of his cam­paign, prompt­ing the actor’s top Repub­li­can oppo­nent in the recall elec­tion and a tribal gam­ing group to raise conflict-of-interest ques­tions about Schwarzeneg­ger Fri­day. At issue is Bon­nie Reiss, a long­time Schwarzeneg­ger ally who has taken an increas­ingly pub­lic role in his bid to be gov­er­nor. Reiss earns $30,000.00 a year as a direc­tor of Pin­na­cle Enter­tain­ment. The com­pany owns casi­nos in Reno and Verdi, Nev., and earns money from leases on two Cal­i­for­nia card clubs, includ­ing the Hol­ly­wood Park casino, located in Ingle­wood (Los Ange­les County) and one of the largest card clubs in Cal­i­for­nia.” (“Schwarzeneg­ger Adviser Linked to Card Clubs, Las Vegas Casi­nos” by Mark Mar­tin; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 9/27/2003; p. A19.)

2. As set forth in FTR#422, Schwarzeneg­ger met with Enron CEO Ken Lay in May 2001 (at the height of the state’s “energy cri­sis”) to dis­cuss run­ning for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia. (For more about the “Cal­i­for­nia energy cri­sis” and the desta­bi­liza­tion of Gray Davis, see FTRs 280, 420.) This pro­gram presents insight into the nature of the discussion—Schwarzenegger’s brain­storm­ing with Lay about how to derail a law­suit filed by Cal­i­for­nia Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Cruz Bus­ta­mante. That law­suit tar­geted the Texas-based energy cor­po­ra­tions (and Bush allies) that were the vehi­cles of elec­tric­ity rip-off that cost the state 9 bil­lion dol­lars.) ” . . . The wannabe gov­er­nor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Penin­sula Hotel in Los Ange­les, he had con­sen­sual polit­i­cal inter­course with Enron chief­tain Ken­neth Lay. Also frol­ick­ing with Arnold and Ken was con­victed stock swindler Mike Milken. Now, thirty-four pages of inter­nal Enron mem­o­randa have just come through this reporter’s fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Maria’s hus­band and the cor­po­rate con men. It turns out that Schwarzeneg­ger know­ingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a cam­paign to sab­o­tage a Davis-Bustamente plan to make Enron and other power pirates then rav­aging Cal­i­for­nia pay back the $9 bil­lion in illicit prof­its they car­ried off.” (“Arnold Unplugged—It’s Hasta La Vista to $9 Bil­lion if the Gov­er­na­tor is Selected” by Greg Palast; 10/3/2003; p. 1;.)

3. “Here’s the story Arnold doesn’t want you to hear. The biggest sin­gle threat to Ken lay and the elec­tric­ity lords is a pri­vate law­suit filed last year under California’s unique Civil Code pro­vi­sion 17200, the ‘Unfair Busi­ness Prac­tices Act.’ This lit­i­ga­tion, head­ing to trial now in Los Ange­les, would make the power com­pa­nies return the $9 bil­lion they filched from Cal­i­for­nia elec­tric­ity and gas cus­tomers. It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who’s the plain­tiff tak­ing on the bad guys? Cruz Bus­ta­mante, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor and reluc­tant lead­ing can­di­date against Schwarzeneg­ger.” (Idem.)

4. ” . . . One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron’s Lay calls an emer­gency secret meet­ing in L.A. of his polit­i­cal buck-buddies, includ­ing Arnold. Their plan, to under­cut Davis (accord­ing to Enron memos) and ‘solve’ the energy crisis—that is, make the Bus­ta­mante legal threat go away . . .” (Idem.)

5. ” . . . While Bustamante’s kick­ing Enron butt in court, the Davis Admin­is­tra­tion is simul­ta­ne­ously demand­ing that George Bush’s energy reg­u­la­tors order the $9 bil­lion refund. Don’t hold your breath: Bush’s fed­eral Energy Reg­u­la­tory Com­mis­sion is headed by a guy pro­posed by . . . Ken Lay. But Bush’s boys on the com­mis­sion have a prob­lem. The evi­dence against the elec­tric­ity barons is rock solid: fraud­u­lent report­ing of sales trans­ac­tions, megawatt ‘laun­der­ing,’ fake power deliv­ery sched­ul­ing and straight out con­spir­acy (includ­ing meet­ings in hotel rooms). So the Bush com­mis­sion­ers cook up a ter­rific scheme: charge the com­pa­nies with con­spir­acy but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they have to pay only two cents on each dol­lar they filched.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

6. “Prob­lem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won’t sail if the gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia won’t play along. Solu­tion: Re-call the Gov­er­nor. New Prob­lem: the guy most likely to replace Davis is not Mr. Mus­cle­head, but Cruz Bus­ta­mante, even a big­ger threat to the power com­pa­nies than Davis. Solu­tion: smear Cruz because—heaven forbid!—he took dona­tions from Injuns (instead of Ken Lay). The pay-off? Once Arnold is Gov­er­nor, he blesses the sweet­heart set­tle­ments with the power com­pa­nies. When that hap­pens, Bustamante’s court cases are prob­a­bly lost. There aren’t many judges who will let a case go to trial to pro­tect a state if that state’s gov­er­nor has already allowed the mat­ter to be ‘set­tled’ by a reg­u­la­tory agency.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

7. As soon as Schwarzeneg­ger sealed his elec­toral bid, he floated a pro­posal to dereg­u­late the state’s elec­tric­ity market—a move strongly sug­ges­tive of a pay­off to the energy com­pa­nies for which he shills. (His cam­paign manager—former gov­er­nor Pete Wilson—presided over the dereg­u­la­tory poli­cies that under­mined Gray Davis.) “Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger is prepar­ing a push to dereg­u­late the state’s elec­tric­ity markets—a move embraced by busi­ness lead­ers and some energy ana­lysts but crit­i­cized by many Democ­rats and con­sumer advo­cates as a return to the failed poli­cies that sparked California’s energy cri­sis. . . .The actor-turned-politician made lit­tle men­tion of his plan to reduce state reg­u­la­tion of energy mar­kets dur­ing the recall race, devot­ing his time instead to bash­ing Gov. Gray Davis for sad­dling the state with expen­sive long-term con­tracts for power. . . . Schwarzenegger’s energy strat­egy is being dri­ven by some of the same mem­bers of for­mer Gov. Pete Wilson’s team who led the push for energy dereg­u­la­tion in the mid-1990’s. The governor-elect, for exam­ple, picked for his tran­si­tion team Jessie Knight, a for­mer Wil­son appointee to the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sioner and a lead­ing pro­po­nent of dereg­u­la­tion.” (“New Push to Dereg­u­late Energy” by Zachary Coile; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/11/2003; pp. A1-A13.)

8. “‘Dereg­u­la­tion has already cost the state $50 bil­lion, give or take,’ said Mike Flo­rio, senior attor­ney for The Util­ity Reform Net­work. ‘Why on earth any­one would want to do that again is mys­ti­fy­ing to us. Flo­rio also said he was sus­pi­cious of Schwarenegger’s idea because for­mer Enron Corp. chair­man and CEO Ken Lay met with the actor and oth­ers in the spring of 2001, when Lay was push­ing dereg­u­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia. Schwarzeneg­ger has said he doesn’t remem­ber details of the meet­ing.” (Ibid.; p. A13.)

9. Another sus­pi­cious move by Der Ter­mi­na­tor was his selec­tion of the Florida State Bud­get direc­tor to con­duct a review of California’s budget—a mat­ter of pub­lic record over­seen by a staff of 200. Florida, of course, is the state gov­erned by Jeb Bush and the site of the sub­ver­sion of the 2000 Florida elec­tion. “Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger announced Thurs­day that a fis­cal adviser to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would over­see the audit of California’s spend­ing that the newly elected gov­er­nor says is needed before he lays out his plan to fix state finances. The task will fall to Donna Arduin, who will take tem­po­rary leave as Florida’s state bud­get direc­tor, to con­duct the review. . . .” (“Audit Falls to Florida’s Bud­get Chief” by Chris­t­ian Berthelsen, Lynda Gled­hill and John Wil­der­muth; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/10/2003; p. A17.)

10. ” . . . But Schwarzenegger’s insis­tence on an ‘out­side’ audit is caus­ing many in the Capi­tol to scratch their heads. Cal­i­for­nia has a highly pub­lic bud­get­ing process each year, and the state’s spend­ing plan is avail­able to any­one who wants to see it. The state also has both a state audi­tor who con­ducts a review of state spend­ing every year and a non­par­ti­san ana­lyst who exam­ines the governor’s annual bud­get. Another statewide offi­cer, the state con­troller, employs 200 audi­tors that reg­u­larly con­duct spend­ing inquiries . . . .” (Idem.)

11. Schwarzenegger’s expla­na­tion was as unsat­is­fac­tory as it was inar­tic­u­late. “Asked what he thought an audit would reveal that could not be found in read­ily avail­able state doc­u­ments, Schwarzeneg­ger said: ‘Well, we don’t know. . . . We will know very soon of what is in there that we don’t know. As you know that every day there are new sur­prises that we find. And so we want to really open up the books and not have any sur­prises, because the only way that you can make good deci­sions is if you have all the infor­ma­tion avail­able.’” (Idem.)

12. Fur­ther cement­ing the recall elec­tion as a Bush/Republican coup d’etat against the Demo­c­ra­tic admin­is­tra­tion of Gray Davis, the broad­cast doc­u­ments the piv­otal role of Bush Repub­li­cans in Schwarzenegger’s “tran­si­tion team.” ” . . . Schwarzeneg­ger asserted Thurs­day there was ‘no White House con­nec­tion’ in his tran­si­tion team, and Bush had insisted through­out the recall cam­paign that he was only a spec­ta­tor watch­ing a ‘fas­ci­nat­ing polit­i­cal drama.’ Nev­er­the­less, the tran­si­tion team announced Thurs­day con­tains many of Bush’s clos­est Cal­i­for­nia con­tacts, includ­ing four of the seven lead­ers of Bush’s 2000 Cal­i­for­nia cam­paign: Ger­ald Parsky, the chair­man, Rep. David Dreier of San Dimas (Los Ange­les County) and state Sen. Jim Brulte of Ran­cho Cuca­monga (San Bernardino County), who co-chaired the cam­paign, and Eloise Ander­son, who served on the Bush 2000 Cal­i­for­nia com­mit­tee.” (“Ties to Bush Clear in Tran­si­tion Team” by Zachary Coile and Marc San­dalow; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/10/2003; p. A18.)

13. “The tran­si­tion team also includes Bush con­fi­dante George Shultz, Matt Fong, the for­mer state trea­surer who raised in excess of $100,000 for Bush’s 2000 cam­paign, and Viet Dinh, a for­mer assis­tant attor­ney gen­eral in Bush’s Jus­tice Depart­ment. John Cogan, a Hoover Insti­tu­tion fel­low instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing Schwarzenegger’s eco­nomic plan, was among Bush’s top eco­nomic advis­ers dur­ing the cam­paign and the early days of his admin­is­tra­tion.” (Idem.)

14. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of Viet Dinh on Der Terminator’s team. Dinh was the pri­mary author of the Patriot Act. ” . . . Mar­garet Warner: Now for a closer look at the man at the helm of the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the act that has stirred such con­tro­versy, we’re joined by Viet Dinh, the for­mer assis­tant attor­ney gen­eral for the Office of Legal Pol­icy at the jus­tice Depart­ment. He helped draft the Patriot Act; and he now teaches at the George­town Uni­ver­sity Law Cen­ter.” (“Con­sid­er­ing the Patriot Act”—discussion with for­mer Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Viet Dinh and Laura Mur­phy of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union, mod­er­ated by Laura Warner; Online New­shour; from ; 8/19/2003; p. 2.)

15. Per­haps the most strik­ing aspect of this coup d’etat against Cal­i­for­nia con­cerned the extra­or­di­nary pack­ag­ing of Schwarzeneg­ger by what the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk calls “the opinion-forming media.” Rig­or­ously pack­aged by those media inter­ests, the “action-hero” was craftily guided by for­mer aides to his cam­paign man­ager, for­mer Gov­er­nor Pete Wil­son. These same aides had sculpted the media image of for­mer Russ­ian pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin in 1996. ” . . . That spring [1996], three for­mer staffers for then-California Gov. Pete Wil­son slipped into a hotel room near the Krem­lin and got to work teach­ing Russia—a nation with an 800-year his­tory of coups, poisonings-disguised as heart attacks and exile to Siberia, but almost no expe­ri­ence in free elections—how to run a mod­ern cam­paign. Enter George Gor­ton, Joe Shu­mate and Dick Dres­ner. You may have heard of them, not because they helped keep Yeltsin in office and pre­serve democ­racy in Rus­sia, which they quite pos­si­bly did, but because in recent months all three have been work­ing over­time to put Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger in the Cal­i­for­nia governor’s office.” (“Rus­sians Won­der Who’s Spin­ning Whom in Film” by Kim Mur­phy; Los Ange­les Times; 10/4/2003; p. A3.)

16. Prior to the elec­tion, observers spec­u­lated about what the tabloids would have to say about Schwarzenegger’s numer­ous sex­ual pec­ca­dil­loes. The busi­ness con­nec­tions between Schwarzenegger’s patron Joe Wei­der and Amer­i­can Media—the lead­ing tabloid conglomerate—apparently led to a delib­er­ate deci­sion to “lay off” Schwarzeneg­ger. ” . . . Last week, the San Jose Mer­cury News turned over a few pieces of the puz­zle when it reported that, in Jan­u­ary, Schwarzenegger’s men­tor and early busi­ness part­ner, Joe Wei­der, had sold his pub­lish­ing empire—including Mus­cle and Fit­ness, Shape, and Men’s Fit­ness magazines—for $350 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Media, the tabloid con­glom­er­ate that owns The Enquirer, The Star, The Globe and The News of the World. . . .”

29. The pro­gram con­cludes with a pas­sage excerpted in FTR#268. A Ger­man uni­ver­sity professor’s obser­va­tion on the appeal of Hitler to the aver­age Ger­man should be instruc­tive. It was appar­ently the media-driven image of Schwarzenegger-the-action-hero that gen­er­ated the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the aver­age voter with Der Ter­mi­na­tor. “What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­ated in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cated that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­ity secu­rity, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of national secu­rity. And their sense of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Hitler, their trust in him may have inci­den­tally have reas­sured those who would oth­er­wise have wor­ried about it. Their trust in him made it eas­ier to reas­sure oth­ers who might have wor­ried about it.” (They Thought they Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945; by Mil­ton Mayer; copy­right 1955 [SC]; Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press; ISBN 0–226-51190–1; pp. 166–167.)