To be honest, I haven’t bothered to read them. I believe that Schwarzenegger actually wants to try and fix the State fiscally. When he first came in, he kicked some butt, but then he found that attempting to implement conservative fiscal policies in a state with a liberal-owned legislature, was a losing battle, and he became a regular ineffectual politician. He tried to get some policies through a few years ago, but the unions stopped him in his tracks and all the propositions were shot down.
This time he’s playing the game like any other politician, and is using whatever leverage he can get to fight the unions. He gave us State employees a 10% pay cut in the form of two furlough days per month (a drop in the bucket, but it makes a good impression with the millions of non-State employees). The unions fought back and got an agreement that would, if ratified by their membership, eliminate one furlough day. After the contract was ratified, he would not accept it until it passed through the Legislature. Then it had to go through committees. Finally, it was halted until after the special election in order to hold the unions at bay (if the contract were not in play, the unions would fight to get a “No” vote on the propositions).
Now, Schwarzenegger is talking of adding a third furlough day to State employees and has mailed out layoff notices to (I think) 5000 workers, about 95% of which are from the Dept of Corrections, meaning prison guards. This is meant to scare us into a “Yes” vote to fix the State’s financial problems so we don’t get a bunch of inmates released early to rape our daughters and kill our sons.
In summary, I hate unions, so I want to vote “Yes”. I cannot afford another 5% pay cut on top of my 10% pay cut, so I want to vote “Yes”. I am pissed as Hell about the way he is using politics and 200,000 State employees to extort a “Yes” vote, so I want to vote “No”. That’s 2–1 in favor, so I am voting “Yes” across the board.