[corp-focus] Governor Tough Guy, At It Again

[robert weissman]

Governor Tough Guy, At It Again
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

You may have heard the story.

You probably haven't felt the outrage.

You should.

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger garnered another
round of media attention by denigrating a group protesting outside of a
conference at which he was speaking.

"Pay no attention to those voices," the muscleman governor told the
audience at the conference. "Those are special interests. They're just
angry because I kick their butts everyday."

Just more jocularity from the governor who Time magazine notes stands in
sharp contrast to his aptly named predecessor, Gray Davis? (Says Time,
"At a typical event, he comes crashing onstage, delivers a macho
statement of intent, metaphorically flexes his muscles, then roars away.")

The governor uses his rather sophisticated brand of self-mocking,
self-parodying machismo to present the image of a take-charge,
independent-minded, no-politics-as-usual, principled public servant.

Unfortunately, the reality is that he is a blustering,
corporations-first, favor-returning servant of Big Business.

So, why should you feel outrage?

First, about those special interests whom the governor so heroically
confronts: They are the California Nurses Association.

Not the hospital association. Not the insurers association. Not the
HMOs. The nurses association.

As it happens, the California Nurses Association represents exactly what
is best in the labor movement. The union explicitly identifies the
interests of the workers they represent -- nurses -- with the broader
public interest in high-quality patient care. It fights hard for its
members and for the public interest.

The governor certainly does know something about real special interests
-- that is, how to coddle them. To take one example among many, the
governor backed the business-contrived Proposition 64 in the November
election, which gutted the state's unfair competition law, a vital tool
used to stem the activities of polluting companies, corporations selling
dangerous products, and tobacco companies marketing to kids. Arnold has
taken millions from the same companies that poured funding into the
deceptive Prop 64 campaign.

Second, even in these sophisticated post-modern times, we should all be
able to generate a little fury over the governor whose fairytale
campaign was almost derailed by sexual harassment charges saying that he
kicks nurses' butts.

Even more so because the governor made the comments at the annual
Conference on Women and Families, a star-studded event that reportedly
attracted a crowd of 10,000, overwhelmingly women.

"For the Governor to denigrate nurses -- a historically female
profession -- while speaking to an audience of women is an affront to
women everywhere," says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the
California Nurses Association. "We expect more from the state's top
officer than just pre-pubescent comments and blatant pandering to
corporate donors."

Finally, anger should be boiling at the governor's action that prompted
the nurses' protest.

In November, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order delaying
implementation of new nurse-to-patient ratio rules for California.

California's landmark nurse-to-patient ratio law is the product of a
long-running campaign by the California Nurses Association. The law was
enacted in 1999, and started to go into effect early this year. The
five-year phase-in gave hospitals plenty of time to accommodate themselves.

The nurses lobbied the bill through the state legislature in response to
tight-fisted, cost-cutting hospital practices that were putting
extraordinary burdens on nurses -- and endangering patient care.

Prior to the act coming into effect this year, DeMoro told us, "there
were higher rates of infection, and higher rates of re-admission,
because patients who were discharged too early had to come back --
patients who didn't get the full care they needed in the hospital,
couldn't get the care at home."

"Since the ratio has been adopted, we've not only seen more nurses in
the hospital, but those nurses who are in the hospital really have the
time to care for their patients," she says.

In the rest of the country, DeMoro explains, the problem remains very
severe, with nurses handling as many as a dozen patients each.

In California, the nurse-to-patient rules mandate varying ratios for
different kinds of care. The present requirement in medical/surgical
units is a one-to-six ratio. Under previously existing rules, hospitals
were scheduled to reduce that ratio to one-to-five starting January 1 of
next year. Arnold's action gives them until 2008.

The governor took the action at the specific request of a real special
interest, the state's hospital industry.

The California Healthcare Association, which represents the industry,
has taken out television ads praising the governor for his courageous
action.

Siding with big business against patients and nurses. He's a real tough
guy, alright.



Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of On the
Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.commoncouragepress.com).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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