An angel in trouble: Schwarzenegger's war chest is massive! Please help Angelides win in California!

"Campaign contributions for Phil Angelides, California's Democratic candidate for governor in November 2006," the KPFA morning news told me, "are running behind campaign contributions to Republican gubernatorial incumbent Arnold Schwarzenegger at a ratio of two to one."

Try saying THAT sentence ten times as fast as you can.

Okay, let's simplify. Let's just say "Arnie" and "Angel". Arnie's got big bucks coming his way. Angel does not. Which of these candidates is going to be in a position to buy the leadership of the fifth largest economy in the world? You got it. Arnie will make the high bid for sure.

Unless we get a really startling surge in grassroots contributions to Angel, Arnie is gonna buy the governor's mansion. Again. Plus if his advertising blitz doesn't buy the great state of California for him this time, he can always fall back on Plan B again. Those pesky programmers at Diebold seem to really like Arnie. They all voted for him last time. Why would they vote differently now?

Have you SEEN the freaking ads that Arnie is running? "If Angelides is elected, he is planning a TEN BILLION DOLLAR tax increase." That's not a "True Lie". That's an out-and-out lie. Arnie, who has already committed Californians to a horrific 15-billion-dollar debt that we can never pay back -- one that Angel fought against tooth and nail -- is trying to make ANGEL out as a spendthrift. That's mean. That's unfair. That sucks eggs.

According to the L.A. Times, "[Arnie's] ad campaign is expected to run statewide in every major TV market, at an estimated cost of $3 million." And we know who will pay for that. Arnie's biggest donors. Oil executives, insurance companies and Wal-Mart.

And Arnie will get away with it, get re-elected [sic] and continue to lead California taxpayers down the garden path towards the ultimate Bush-Cheney corporate welfare state.

Folks, we gots an Angel in trouble here. What to do? Send money? Help out?

You say that you are tired of giving money to yet another grassroots campaign in order to buy our country back? Me too. I have no more money left to give. On my below-the-poverty-level income, I am already donating a whole bunch to MoveOn, Barbara Boxer and Cynthia McKinney. "Jane, NO ONE can buy back the United States from the neo-cons -- let alone you." You're right. I can't even afford to give my cat canned cat food. And boy is he angry about that!

Okay. I'll send Angel $20. But only if you do too.

But even more than I can't afford to give big bucks to Angel, I can't afford to live in California if Arnie is going to be running the state for the benefit of corporations receiving taxpayers' welfare -- for another four years.

PS: My friend Leona just wrote me, "Regarding your candidates, if what you had to say does not convince enough folks, tell readers to beg, borrow or steal a copy of 'Armed Madhouse' by Greg Palast and go straight to Page 292. Topic: When Ahnold got Lay'd. It's about howArnold nixed the giving back of the nine billion dollars that was comingto the state, settling with a deal with Reliant, Williams Company, Dynergy, Entergy & others for 10 to 20 cents on the dollar -- and Enron got off with giving back almost nothing."

What! Arnie just cost California taxpayers nine billion dollars?

Why am I not surprised.