Inside the Governor’s Head

Re “Schwarzenegger Has His Head Examined,” Opinion, March 27: As an admirer of Kevin Starr, our preeminent California historian, and an avid reader of his volumes of California history, it is with trepidation that I suggest he may be wrong in his uncharacteristically dogmatic assertion that “given a choice between cutting programs and raising taxes, the majority of Californians would come down on the side of cutting.”

Former Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson did not think so, as they raised taxes rather than cut essential public services. Is it not possible that Starr is wrong, and that Californians might prefer to raise taxes on the richest 10% who gained so much under George W. Bush’s tax cuts rather than tolerate decline in the quality of our schools, highways, mental health treatment, law enforcement, libraries and so on?

Richard E. Tuttle

Mokelumne Hill, Calif.

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As a taxpayer, I can only hope that the governor is truly willing to negotiate with the Legislature. Based on what I have witnessed firsthand, I am not hopeful.

Earlier this month I sat through a lengthy state Senate hearing on the pension “reform” bill being pushed by the governor. Schwarzenegger’s director of finance refused to discuss details of the plan with the senators. Instead, he stated over and over again that the Legislature must first accept the governor’s “principle” that 100% of the stock market risk must be shifted away from government, presumably to the individual teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers etc. who serve the public. Only after the Legislature approves this “principle” (regardless of its human impact or cost to the taxpayer) would he be willing to discuss the effect of the proposal on the individuals who serve us 24/7 who are all too often called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice.

This is not negotiation; this is dictatorship by celebrity.

Barbara Maynard

Los Angeles

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No matter how hard Starr may try, the present governor is no champion, nor is he a reformer, as his own administration’s policies amply demonstrate, or a populist. However, Starr is correct in this: A political dialogue about “redefining the private and the public sectors” is long overdue. In this regard Starr has no equal. But given that the sole “sum of [Schwarzenegger’s] ideas and orientations” appears to be about one thing -- the power of money -- it “behooves us as Californians” instead perhaps to think about another not so oblique notion -- a Sacramento Capitol sans cigar-smoking tent and Michelangelo’s stand-in.

James Andrew LaSpina

Tarzana

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Honestly, Mr. Starr, what do you take us for anyway? Did you seriously believe that your litany of truly stellar European intellects would then somehow confer upon “Conan” an intellectual aggrandizement merely by association? I am more than certain that the governor has honed that rapier-like intellect of his on such great thinkers as Aquinas and Barzun.

I was almost OK until I got to that absolutely classic analogy between Ismael/Pequod/Melville /Harvard and Gold’s Gym. I am truly embarrassed for you, Mr. Starr. Your apple-polishing, sycophantic boot-licking was utterly disgusting.

After all, taking his degree from the University of Wisconsin-Superior by correspondence certainly speaks volumes to the governor’s “suspicion of received wisdom.”

Arnold, the Euro-American champion of the people! Maybe your people, Mr. Starr. Certainly not mine.

Terry Weatherby

Ontario

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Starr’s “Americans and the California Dream” was the most incoherent and poorly reasoned book I read in college, so I am never surprised by the inanities that he regularly puts forth in your Opinion pages.

But he really outdid himself with the following assertion about our current governor: “By coming of age as a Roman Catholic in Western Europe, he couldn’t help but absorb a measure of social democracy, an orientation no doubt strengthened by his marriage to Maria Shriver, an informed and articulate Democrat of impeccable social democratic lineage, with whom the governor shares a powerful intellectual connection.” As usual, the star-struck Starr offers no actual evidence to support this assertion.

What Arnold Schwarzenegger really wants to do is balance the budgets on the backs of hardworking policemen, teachers, nurses and firemen. This is something that no self-respecting European social democrat would ever dream of.

Richard W. Bray

San Dimas