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from this morning's LA Times:

'"I want to make the Legislature a part-time Legislature. Spending so much time in Sacramento, without anything to do, then out of that comes strange bills."

Schwarzenegger's comments came during an interview at the Four Seasons resort here on the island of Maui, where he is vacationing with his wife, Maria Shriver, and four children....

As the governor mixed work with golf, weightlifting and swims off a stunning Pacific beach set against mountains, lawmakers and their staffs in the California capital worked to prepare bills on one of Schwarzenegger's overriding causes, reform of the state's $20-billion workers' compensation system.

'While I'm out here working my ass off, he's pontificating from Hawaii?' Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) quipped in Sacramento.

...Schwarzenegger used his movie background to illustrate the point. The best work got done in compressed time frames, he said. "Pre-production is three months," he said. "You don't have more than that…. Post-production is three months. And you have to be out next summer. Then people perform. 'Oh my God, now we have deadlines.' That's when people perform best. Same with legislators. You have a deadline…. Everyone works. Works like a jewel."

...Joking, he said that in reading about the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, he wondered whether California could export its troubled prison system.

He laughed. "Hey, we don't have to have prisons in California. What about having them in Vietnam? What about having them in Mexico?"

Shriver jumped in: "No, no, no, no," and said to a reporter, "Don't write that down."

Egads. Well, I can't say much for his obviously simple-minded logic, but I also didn't realize that California was one of only five states that has a full-time legislature...But, then again, it is the 6th largest economy in the world, and perhaps, more time does need to be spent on running the place....

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• #1 Comment from musenla 
  4/7/04 10:06 AM | Permalink

  Heh, he seems to be the walking example of what happens when you put a lot of effort to working up your body muscles and not your brain muscles.  He's treating the whole state of California like his personal gym, where he can hold court, flex his muscles and slap people's backs while he drops one-liners.  Figures.