Thursday, January 10, 2008

Orwellian Political Speak of the Day

From Governor Schwarzenegger's state budget press conference:

QUESTION: How are you going to respond to criticisms that this budget would seem to be very inconsistent with other goals of your administration, particularly things like the health care reform? I mean, you're proposing a major cut to Medi-Cal while you're going to be asking voters later on to expand the system. You also have agendas surrounding infrastructure, flood control. This year was going to be the year of education, talking about a major hit to education. It would seem that these two are extremely inconsistent in terms of logic for the voters and the taxpayers. Please respond to that apparent inconsistency.

GOVERNOR: Well, I think, as you remember that I mentioned during my State of the State Address as an example, Roosevelt. And the reason why I mentioned him is because even though there was a depression, he did not just wait and hope for something to happen. He was acting, he was making a move. And he started building bridges, he started building highways, 650,000 miles of highways, and 78,000 bridges, and 125,000 buildings and all this. All of the things we still enjoy today. He went out and made a move forward. He did not say because this is a temporary problem people should suffer permanently because of it. No. He wanted to do things, and that's what we have to do.


The answer continues, but the rest of it is just as responsive as that paragraph. This is the second time this week the governor has invoked FDR; one marvels at how he is managing to equate massive cuts to just about every critical public program in the state with what FDR did in response to the Great Depression.

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