By Rebecca Bowe
Naomi Klein showed a portion of this film clip during her lecture at UC Berkeley last night. In it, Arnold talks about how Milton Friedman changed his life.
Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley yesterday evening, award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein lamented the sweeping budgetary cuts to education, women’s shelters, and a host of critical social services that have rocked California in recent months.
“When these cuts are imposed, it’s constantly portrayed in the media as if it’s an unfortunate and painful necessity,” she said. On the contrary, she argued, the gutting of the public sector in California is no coincidence.
Klein pointed to an overarching conservative agenda that touts free-market capitalism and limited government, and resists raising revenues with tax increases. (We referenced Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in our cover story last week. So it’s also not a coincidence that our cover package, “The California Nightmare,” touched on many of the same themes.)
Klein showed a brief film clip that included footage of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praising the ideas of conservative free-market economist Milton Friedman. “What you always have to remember in this discussion is that your governor is a hardcore ideologue,” Klein said after showing a clip in which Schwarzenegger is seen gushing, “Dr. Friedman changed my life!”
“These pet Republican policies have been lying around,” Klein said. “These ideas are still incompatible with democracy, still deeply unpopular.” Nonetheless, they’re being rolled out in uncertain times and unstable places, according to Klein, while masquerading as emergency measures.