| DaveSZ |
| quote: | Originally posted by whiskers
YES! LIFE IS GOOD. for once. now if only i had my goat to cuddle with :)
/stupid people-killing dreams |
*Backs away slowly*
Ahnult is at it again lol:
| quote: |
Published on Thursday, February 5, 2004 by KPIX/KCBS (San Francisco)
Schwarzenegger Jokes About the Poor
by Tony Russomanno
Linda Gold is the CEO of M3iworks, a San Jose-based web development and design company with a total of seven employees.
Bruce Chizm is CEO of Adobe, a San Jose-based software company with a total of 3500 employees.
They are two very different CEOs, but they have a common goal: reducing the costs of doing business in California. In fact, every one of these 150 or so Silicon Valley CEOs who gathered at Adobe Thursday had the same goal. They wanted to tell Governor Schwarzenegger all about it, hoping he would pick up their cause and help.
"This governor, unlike probably no other governor in our history, can grab on to that bully pulpit with more authority and influence than anyone," said Carl Guardino of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group.
So what did the governor do with that bully pulpit? Did he embrace the concerns of the CEOs? Not for a second. In a quick appearance, Schwarzenegger put in a pitch for Propositions 57 and 58, then left. The only time he seemed to start discussing the economic downturn, he turned it into a joke.
"People are poor in this state now. With the economy going down, people have no clothes anymore. Look what happened to Janet Jackson," he said.
If the governor reads the manufacturing group's 28-page report, he will learn that a large percentage of Silicon Valley CEOs say the greatest challenges of doing business in Silicon Valley are workers' compensation costs, followed by health care costs, the cost of hiring and keeping workers, business laws and regulations, and taxes. If the governor talks to Gold, he will hear her explain why Silicon Valley jobs are being lost to other countries.
"There's no way with the cost of local labor and the cost of doing business in California that you can compete with a $10 an hour employee in India," she said.
For Adobe, which still has 2000 of its 3500 worldwide workers in Silicon Valley, better schools are crucial.
"If the quality of education doesn't increase, those employees -- the ones who are the best and the brightest, the ones who we would want to pay a premium for -- won't want to live here," Chizen said.
Governor Schwarzenegger says he is on a campaign to fix the state's economy. But Thursday, he gave no indication that the CEOs he joked with run companies generating $650 billion a year.
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved
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