Arnold fired those who opposed him

You know, I live in California, a liberal state to be sure. One would expect if any media had a liberal bias, it'd be here. So why is it that today is the first time I heard this?

At CalSTRS, four of the governor's own appointees voted against his plan, which led Schwarzenegger to retaliate by firing them, a move his critics dubbed the "Thursday afternoon massacre."

CalSTRS in the state's teacher retirement board, the third largest public pension fund in America.

Sure enough, here's the story:

A week after they voted to against his plan to privatize the state's public pension system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday ousted four of his appointees to the board of the California State Teachers Retirement System.

The sudden firings of Mark Battey, James Gray, Miguel Pulido and Gloria Hom, who were appointed by Schwarzenegger to the board last year, leave one-third of the 12-member board vacant.

(snip)

Gray, a longtime banker, said he was surprised by the action, but added, "You don't appoint somebody to act like a fiduciary who's been a fiduciary most of his adult life unless you want them to act like a fiduciary."

"I never had a governor say, 'You walk lockstep with me or you're out,"' said Gray, who had been appointed to state service by Republican Govs. Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson and served nine years as a California State University trustee.

(snip)

Treasurer Phil Angelides, a CalSTRS board member, called the firings "outrageous" because the appointees "stood up for taxpayers, for teachers and school children."

The firings were "particularly troubling because trustees of pension funds sit there as fiduciaries with a legal obligation to do what's right from the financial perspective and they rejected the governor's proposal on its merits," said Angelides, a Democrat who's considered likely to run for governor next year.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said he was "extremely disappointed" by the firings. "The STRS board has a record of acting in the best interest of teachers, rather than blindly following political agendas," he said in statement.

And not a peep of outrage since. Amazing. Arnold, it seems, can get away with almost anything out here.