Arnold keeps doing embarrassing stuff. 

Defending donor-paid junkets for California state legislators, he said it was good for folks from small towns to get out and see the big world.

“And that’s why I always encourage the legislators in Sacramento, because some of them come from those little towns," Schwarzenegger said [to laughter]. "You know what I’m saying? They come from those little towns, and they don’t have that vision yet of an airport. [Applause] Or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes. Or of putting a highway on top of a highway. They look at you and say, ‘Well we don’t have that in my town, what are you talking about?’ So they are kind of shocked when you say certain things." 

One small-town California legislator is shocked that Arnold would talk smack about them in front of an appreciative and elite Beverly Hills audience. He wants Arnold to prove he's prepared for the great big world, by taking the California high school graduation test.

Sen. Dean Florez, who took offense to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's comments earlier this week about small-town lawmakers, today announced he was introducing a resolution calling on the governor to take the high school exit exam.

"Given the governor’s distasteful comments, what’s unanswered is whether he can make the grade," said Florez in a long and chiding statement.

"For the leader of our great state to suggest that rural Californians have no vision -- of an airport or of a highway -- is demeaning in a very personal way for the people who live in rural California," he continued. "The Governor’s comments were unwelcome and at worst hurtful, especially to our children. I’d like to remind him that there are many kids in rural towns who work and study hard day in and day out and yet, according to the Governor, are considered closed-minded simply because of where they live.

Like every other kid around the state, small town students take the same graduation tests as big city kids to show competency. Rural kids can make the grade. Given the Governor’s distasteful comments, what’s unanswered is whether he can make the grade.

That’s why, today, I’m introducing a senate resolution asking the Governor to take the high school exit exam. If the Governor fails the test, then we certainly have a capable Lt. Governor who can assume his duties until the Governor successfully passes the exam."

Florez's office proudly noted the senator is from Shafter, population 14,000, in the Central Valley.

I'm with David on this. He says:

I would pay money to sit in while Arnold fills in the bubbles on the Scan-Tron sheet. Can we get this on television?

Proving he's left his own small Austrian town behind and thus is not standing athwart big business and its proposed "progress," Arnold also moved recently to do his donors' bidding by ridding the State Park and Recreation Commission of two troublemakers. The commission chairman and vice-chairman not only opposed a highly controversial toll road through San Onofre State Beach, an Orange County coastal park. These two commissioners also opposed a plan by the San Diego Gas & Electric Company to build a multi-billion dollar power line through twenty-two miles of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which covers 600,000 acres of eastern San Diego and Imperial counties.

The Schwarzenegger administration sees the power line as an essential component of its effort to reduce greenhouse gases, because it would hook 650,000 homes in San Diego County to electricity that could be generated by a solar power plant being built in the desert and geothermal energy from the Salton Sea.

A number of alternative routes have been identified that would bypass Anza-Borrego, but San Diego Gas and Electric says all of them would make the 150-mile project far more costly and difficult to build.

Who are these tree-huggers and nature-lovers who oppose Arnold's donors' plans to befoul our state parks? Fellow movie guy, noted Monterey County mega-developer and former Carmel mayor Clint Eastwood for one.

Bobby Shriver, brother of the state's first lady, is the other; he is also a member of the Santa Monica city council.

Shortly after, the Santa Monica city council voted unanimously to ban planes just like Arnold's from their airport, citing safety concerns.

The Santa Monica City Council voted in March to ban large private jets from using its airport for fear that planes like Schwarzenegger's Gulfstream IV could crash into neighboring homes if they overshoot the 4,987-foot runway. Shriver is on the council, which voted unanimously for the prohibition.

The new ban, stayed by a plutocrat-friendly FAA, will double Arnold's ground-travel distance during his daily commute from Sacramento to Santa Monica. Bobby has heard from other jet-setters, but what he expects from Arnold made me laugh:

Shriver said he hasn't heard from Schwarzenegger yet, but he expects to.

"Arnold will come up with something like, 'Now I have to go all the way to Van Nuys because of Bobby and his communist friends,' " Shriver said, doing his best Schwarzenegger impression with an Austrian accent.

He said he's not sympathetic with the people who've complained to him: "You know, get in the back of your limo and make your calls."

Arnold pays for his own daily commute, although when he leaves the country to get "a vision of an airport or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes," his big-bucks donors pay.

The governor's plane has come under fire previously for its impact on the environment and for its $12,800 hourly cost, paid for by donors, when he goes on trade missions and campaign trips. Schwarzenegger pays for his own daily flight costs and for carbon credits that finance environmental projects to offset his emissions.

Schwarzenegger routinely flies between Santa Monica and Sacramento, about a 50-minute flight. Each hour, his Gulfstream jet emits as much as 4.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the online luxury journal Helium Report. That's roughly equivalent to what a small passenger car produces over the course of 8,000 miles.

Bobby Shriver seemed surprised when a reporter asked if the airport vote to ban the big private jets was connected to his brother-in-law bumping him from the commission chairman's seat earlier that month.

He said he wasn't bitter about his removal from the commission – and he said it had no impact on his decision to vote for the airport ban.

Heh.  Indeed.

{YouTube courtesy KindGreenBud}