CA: Schwarzenegger, Angelides stage rival events about nothing

Sac Bee ^ | 10/05/04 | Dan Walters

[NormsRevenge]

Jerry Seinfeld's very successful television sitcom, its creators said, was a "show about nothing." Seinfeld, playing a fictional version of himself, and his friends would confront the vicissitudes of daily life and often place themselves in embarrassing social pickles. There was a dust-up Monday between Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Treasurer Phil Angelides that was the equivalent of a show about nothing.

Schwarzenegger met with his newly appointed Council of Economic Advisors, most of whose members are supply-side economists out of the Milton Friedman school. Friedman, in fact, was one of the attendees, thus giving Schwarzenegger an opportunity to joke about their widely disparate physical statures. "This is 'Twins 2,' " he said as he wrapped his arms around the diminutive Friedman, a reference to Schwarzenegger's movie with Danny DeVito. What Schwarzenegger and the economists said to each other in private was not reported, but apparently the governor got some advice about how the state might approach its problems from a free-market standpoint.

George Shultz, the former Ronald Reagan adviser who chairs the council, told reporters later that they talked about such things as altering the pricing of electricity to reduce peak demand and thus lower the need for more power plants. And they got a briefing on California's deficit-ridden budget.

Did they talk about raising taxes? Shultz wouldn't go into specifics but said he hoped that "we could go the other way" on solving the budget dilemma. "California is actually a very high-tax state," he added.