What happened to governating?

The Los Angeles Times has an exclusive this morning about a conference call strategy session between Governor Schwarzenegger's "media expert" Don Sipple and several of the governor's anti-union corporate backers:

In the latest such call, a few days ago, Schwarzenegger's media expert, Don Sipple, outlined a strategy "based on a lot of polling" to create a "phenomenon of anger" among voters toward public employee unions. Firefighters, police officers, teachers and other state-paid workers have become the governor's harshest critics this year.

The unions aren't going to back down, of course. Above is a picture from the "Action Day for a Better California" (May 25) that I meant to put up earlier (I'll add a couple more later today). The union sponsored rallies in Los Angeles and Sacramento (this photo is from LA) drew tens of thousands of the ordinary middle class professionals that Schwarzenegger is targeting with his ugly media campaign.

"The process is like peeling an onion," Sipple said, describing a multi-step plan for persuading voters that public-worker unions are "motivated by economic self-interest" instead of "doing the best job for the state."

The superficiality of the Schwarzenegger administration is being noticed. He is raising and spending millions of dollars--$8 million on TV ads so far, some of which advertise products made by his corporate backers--on a media campaign to sway public opinion, while traveling the state doing stunts like filling in fake potholes.

And in a sign Arnold may be feeling the heat, last week he announced goals to significantly cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions, which of course is a great thing.


UPDATE: