Contributor

John Campbell

John Campbell (R-Irvine) is an Assemblyman representing the 70th District in Orange County. Mr. Campbell is the Vice-Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. He is the only CPA in the California State legislature and recently received a national award as Freshman Republican Legislator of the Year. He represents the cities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Woods and Lake Forest. He can be reached through his Assembly website and through the website for his California Senate campaign. [go to Campbell index]

Girlie Men
Thin-skinned Dems...
[John Campbell] 7/26/04

I remember very well many of the great early Saturday Night Live skits. "The thing that wouldn't leave" and "the coneheads" were amongst my favorites. But so was the "Hans and Franz" skits which poked fun at then bodybuilder turned actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I remember lines such as "I start the day with a light 6 hour workout", which must be said with a faked Austrian accent in order to be appreciated. And certainly, hearing Hans calling people "girlie men" also with the fake Austrian accent" was a hilarious part of the skit.

These skits made fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he was never offended or shocked by them. In fact, I have heard him in private settings use the "girlie man" line more than once. When he does this, he is essentially a caricature of himself and it always succeeds in bringing a laugh. And it did so again during Governor Schwarzenegger's public appearances this week. It did with everybody except for the Gestapo of political correctness that calls itself the Democratic Party in California. If they were so offended by this now, why were they not offended when the joke first appeared on Saturday Night Live? Most comedy pokes fun at someone or something. By advocating the removal of comedy and personality, these elected Democrats continue their pursuit of a humorless society in which all of our behavior is regulated by the standards of political correctness that they set with secular omnipotence.

Their outrage over this remark was intended to distract from the Governor's message, which was that no Democrat in Sacramento is willing to vote against the unions and trial lawyers no matter how outrageous the demands of those special interests. Not one of them would vote to repeal the 25% pension increase for billboard inspectors. Not one of them would vote to limit frivolous lawsuit abuse. They won't vote to roll back huge salary increases for unions. The Governor could have accurately called them lots of things. "Girlie men" was funny, and very tame in comparison. Biased Reporting: Back during the recall, the Los Angeles Times came under great criticism for never running a story about Gray Davis' alleged violent temper tantrums while in the governor's office because their sources for this were anonymous. However, they ran daily front-page reports about Arnold Schwarzenegger's alleged 20-year old groping incidents with sources that wanted to remain anonymous.

In the current budget stalemate, Republicans and the Governor are demanding the repeal of SB 1419. Friday's LA Times describes that bill as "...restricts school districts from hiring bus companies that pay below union scale". Today's Wall Street Journal, however, describes this bill as "...makes it harder for school districts to contract out services that the private sector can perform at a lower cost".

The LA Times continues to describe the bill's repeal as having to do with bus companies only in order to make it appear as though the Republican demand is responding to a single special interest. That is flat wrong. The bill applies to contracting out of many services including gardening, maintenance, janitorial and other things. For example, under SB 1419 the Santa Ana Unified School District was unable to allow a computer company from which they had purchased new computers to install them for free because that would have been prohibited "contracting out". Instead, they are required to use in-house, union employees to do this work. This horrible law is unnecessarily costing school districts hundreds of millions of dollars that could be better utilized in the classroom.

So while Republicans are fighting to free up money for important programs like class size reduction, music classes, and after school activities, Democrats are protecting one of their largest contributors. In this case it is the California School Employees Association whose union members are the only people permitted to do any of the work under SB1419 regardless of the cost or quality.

It's amazing how little has changed with Sacramento Democrats or at the LA Times since the recall. So we need to send them another message this November. CRO

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