If you turn to page 15 of the Governor’s recommendations coming from his California Performance Review that he undertook after winning the recall election in 2003 with a mandate to “blow up the boxes,” you will see that one of the Commissions that the Governor had slated for elimination was the Integrated Waste Management Board.

These days, the California Performance Review and the Governor’s proposed revisions to state government that were part of its roll-out are just growing electronic dust, occasionally linked-to by an online columnist like myself.  Never mind the fact that had the Governor achieved the revisions he sought, as opposed to a wholesale abandonment of the whole project, our budget deficit issues would be significantly mitigated.

Well, we’ve certainly come a long was in just five short years.  There is nothing left of the Governor (1.0) who was swept into office after a recall of former Governor Gray Davis was successfully qualified after Davis outrageously hiked the state car tax.  In fact, rather infamously, the Governor has said that if the legislature were to place a car tax on his desk as part of a “solution” to the budget shortfall (which we have said about a hundred times is specifically due to over-spending, not under-taxing), he would sign it!  Good grief.

Anyways, I am not quite sure what to say about the Governor’s appointment, yesterday, of ultra-left wing ex-State Senator Carol Migden to the Integrated Waste Management Board, one of these non-essential, plum appointments that come with a huge six figure salary and very little work-load.  Migden, a Democrat who represented San Francisco for many years in the State Legislature (she was defeated for re-election last June) is so liberal that it is beyond me how the Governor could appoint her to anything at all.

Governor Schwarzenegger, when he ran for office both times, leaned heavily on the state’s GOP apparatus – including donors and activists – to get elected and re-elected.  Funny, he never told us at the time that he would use his office to extend the political careers of those who hate capitalism, despise the free-market system, and think that America should emulate the failed socialistic policies of Eastern Europe.

FR friend Jim Boren, the Editorial Page Editor for the Fresno Bee, does such a good job at making the case for why this is the worst appointment that Schwarzenegger has made to date that we’ll end this rant with a link to his piece, here.

P.S.  I did ask the Governor’s office if they had a comment on this appointment for FlashReport readers.  I got this quote back, that I don’t think will excite our readers (unless we have a lot of closet Steinberg supporters out there)…

“Senator Steinberg recommended Senator Migden to serve on the Integrated Waste Management Board because she has held several elected positions throughout local and state government for nearly 20 years and her background will serve well in this new role to promote zero waste in California in partnership with local governments, industry officials and the public.” — Rachel Cameron, Office the Governor

Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?

Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.