SCHWARZENEGGER ACTION MAKEUP IS COMING OFF.

Byline: Rose Ann DeMoro

GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger must be wondering if someone gave him the wrong script. In the movies, our action-figure governor gets to trample over anyone in his way. But in real life, those he tries to brush aside as the annoying ``extras'' on his set are not robots but the real-life heroes of our society - firefighters, teachers and nurses.

While some pundits try to pigeonhole the current statewide political debate into the more familiar terrain of a narrow partisan Republican- Democrat spat, the stakes are far greater for the most fundamental values of our society - quality education, patient safety standards, retirement security for our families, respect for the rights of working people, dignity for our most vulnerable neighbors and preservation of our democracy.

Schwarzenegger waltzed into office marketing his celebrity and a self- fashioned image of a ``populist'' who would root the money grubbers out of Sacramento. He ``could not be bought'' due to his own personal fortune.

But the facade has undergone an extreme makeover. Californians today see a typical politician mouthing the rhetoric of reform while shattering all records for the fundraising he once mocked, virtually all of it coming from wealthy interests who benefit financially from the tsunami of dollars they bestow on the governor.

Those $100,000-a-plate dinners (each of which would pay for a $10 meal every day for the next 27 years for the rest of us) come with a steep price - the promise of deregulation, privatization, increased corporate control over our daily lives, and the wholesale auction of our health, education, and public protections to the highest corporate bidder.

Schwarzenegger likes to dress up his agenda as a 21st-century Hiram Johnson, but in reality he's the anti-Johnson, enriching the robber barons the Progressive Era governor fought and limiting the democratic institutions Johnson sought to expand.

An example is the ultra-rich pharmaceutical industry, whose top 50 companies made $55 billion in profits last year.

Schwarzenegger last year vetoed bills to assist the import of affordable prescription drugs from Canada and regulate pharmacy bills at primary care clinics. He's now promoting ``voluntary'' reductions by an industry that is notorious for a lack of restraint. In return, Big Pharma is a major donor to the governor and is bankrolling an initiative to restrict the ability of unions, who have dared to challenge the governor, to participate in the political process.

Review some of the other ``reforms'' the governor has either proposed or enacted so far:

--Privatization of pensions for public employees transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Wall Street, a model to be quickly followed in the private sector, in concert with the Bush administration bid to privatize Social Security.

--Rollback of minimum safety protections for hospital patients, part of a larger goal of deregulation of all health care protections to swell the profits of his health care industry donors.

--Reduced funding for education and employment security for teachers, likely to further undercut our schools and widen the chasm between those who can afford quality education and those who cannot.

--Mean-spirited attacks on the poor, the disadvantaged and the sick, symbolized by a plan to seize the homes and other assets of the families of deceased Medi-Cal recipients and cut the number of nursing beds available for ill residents of veterans homes.

--An offensive against working people, including restricting the right to meals and breaks, vetoing a raise in the minimum wage, and the much ballyhooed workers' compensation plan that cut disability payments by up to 70 percent, creating a backlog of 11 months or more for 100,000 injured workers waiting for the minimal payments for their pain.

Undergirding this program is a siege on many of the institutions that encourage and support political and economic democracy seen as an economic burden inimical to his ultra-corporatist agenda.

This is not just a bad infomercial. In Schwarzenegger's world, no one is safe when democracy and our basic protections and rights are under assault, except for the big corporations who are abetted by their cheerleader in Sacramento.