Oops! I Appointed A Special Interest!: A Closer look at Arnold's Cabinet

Schwarzenegger pledged to stand up to special interests in Sacramento. He must have missed a few key bullet points on the resumes of some of his chief appointments.


Garrett Ashley,Deputy Chief of Staff

Ashley was previously executive director of Tech Net - Orange County. TechNet is a network of high-powered corporate executives (think Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, NASDAQ and AOL Time Warner) that lobbies in Sacramento and Washington D.C. for high tech interests.


Cassandra Pye, Deputy Chief of Staff, External Affairs

For the past 12 years, Cassandra Pye has worked at the Chamber of Commerce, where she was most recently vice president of corporate affairs. In that capacity, Pye was responsible for the Chamber’s political activities and running its Political Action Committees (PACs), which means that she spent time soliciting money from big businesses for the Chamber and its campaigns.


A.G. Kawamura, Food and Agriculture Secretary

Kawamura donated $21,200 to Arnold. He is a past chairman of the Western Growers Association, which has been a vocal opponent of legislation protecting farmworkers and the environment enacted over the past several years.


James Branham, undersecretary at California Environmental Protection Agency

Branham was previously director of external relations for the Pacific Lumber Company. His appointment to a critical environmental post state raises eyebrows, as his company has a reputation for being environmentally unfriendly.


more at:

http://arnoldwatch.org/special_interests/oops.html

Notice his accent is not so much from not having been born here. It's more from spending all his time in a gym or grumbling through a B movie.

What a country.