Posted on 07/12/2006 2:07:29 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you, Monica Lozano for the wonderful introduction; I really appreciate that. It’s great to be here today. As a matter of fact, I want to thank Monica and Janet Murguía for inviting me here to this great conference, and I want to thank also some people that are working for me in my administration for being here today and inviting me to come here today.
First of all I want to just thank Rosario Marín, my Secretary of State in Consumer Services. Where is Rosario? Right here. Give her a big hand. (Applause)
Thank you very much, Rosario, for the great work you’re doing for our administration. And I also want to say thank you very much to Hector Ramirez, who is in charge of the First Five Commission and is also in charge of the Para Los Niños, which is a multi-service organization for children. Where is Hector? Right here in the front. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Both are very hardworking people, and of course it’s great to have you as part of my administration.
And it is great to be here today. Now, I have to tell you, I don’t have an organized, or a prepared speech here today, because I did not know that I’m speaking to you today until just six months ago. But one thing I can tell you, that it is great to speak to the Latino community and to all of you, because the Latinos gave me 50 percent of all the votes when I was running for governor in the recall. (Applause)
And the other 50 percent I guess just never forgave me for my movie Hercules in New York, which I totally can understand. I totally understand. No, but I love speaking to you today. I like to give speeches anyway, but this I mean this in particular.
The other day I gave a speech and my wife came up to me afterwards and she says, “Arnold, you’re becoming more and more Kennedyesque.” And I said, “What do you mean, I’m speaking now like John F. Kennedy, or like Robert Kennedy?” And she says, “No, you’re gaining weight like Teddy Kennedy.” So you know, you can never win. It’s like it’s unbelievable. (Applause)
But anyway, it is nice to be here. I will talk a little bit about education, which is not always good news, education here in our state, because I don’t know if you just saw the latest statistics in the LA Times-—I don’t know if you saw that. They say now 82 percent of all 2nd graders-—82 percent of all 2nd graders—-cannot even spell simple words like Schwarzenegger. I mean, it’s like, what is going on with our education, I say to myself.
But anyway, all jokes aside—-I just wanted to lighten you up a little bit, because it looked a little stiff in the beginning here, but now we are lightening up the group a little bit. I just want to say that it is really great to be here today at the National La Raza Conference. And La Raza has been doing a terrific job for the last 40 years, and now they have been organizing this conference here, and their big convention downstairs is really spectacular. It is like you’re having this now being organized for the last 25 years.
And today I had the great pleasure to do the ribbon cutting with Mayor Villaraigosa, and like I said, with Rosario Marín and with Hector Ramirez and everyone, and Monica and Janet and everyone. It was really terrific, and it’s a great honor for me to be there and be part of this ribbon cutting. And it’s great to have you also in Los Angeles and in California. And as you are spending some time here, make sure to spend a lot of money, because we need it for our revenues.
But it was great just to walk around today at this convention hall and to see all the great displays, and to see the great booths on health care, on food and beverages, insurance, automotive, military, travel, and entertainment, and to see all those great companies, from General Motors, Ford, UPS, ConAgra and Goya Foods, Disneyland, Pepsi, Johnson & Johnson, and the list goes on and on and on. So I want to say thank you to all of those companies for being here today and supporting the Latino community. I want to say thank you very much to all of them. And one thing that I loved—-you can give them a big hand, it’s great to have them here. (Applause)
And one thing that I loved about the displays was the hands-on health van. What a great idea, to have vans like that to take health care to the children, to the local communities, that travel all around the state and provide and help kids with their health care issues. I think it’s a fantastic idea. I think that—I did a movie one time about cloning. I think we should clone this van and have it all over the country. What a great service that is, so congratulations on that.
Now, your work also promotes Latino businesses and families. And your advocacy in civil rights issues is really fantastic, because it talks about inclusion, about tolerance, and also fighting prejudice. And I like also your effort that you make, your outreach, on health care and employment. It’s all about helping people be able to have a better life. And I also want to congratulate you on your almost 40 years of services and creating nearly 300 La Raza affiliates all over the country here with the sole mission of improving opportunities for individuals and for families. You’re basically helping people realize their dream. This is what this is all about, because every person has a dream, and every person ought to be helped in order to make that dream become a reality.
And there is no one that knows better about dreams than myself, because I had big dreams when I was in Austria, when I was 14, 15 years old, dreams to come over to America, a dream to be successful here and to be a bodybuilding champion, a dream to become then an actor and do Hercules movies and so on. And I was very fortunate to not only be able to realize my dreams but to go way beyond my dreams—way beyond, to go into doing Conan The Barbarian and Terminator and all the action movies, and to do comedies with Danny DeVito and to do Kindergarten Cop and all this. So I was very fortunate to go way beyond all of those things.
And the only reason why I was able to do that was because I had a lot of help. I had a tremendous amount of help from a lot of people, if it is in bodybuilding, the coaches that have helped me, the training partners, everyone reached out and helped me when I first came over to this country. And I remember very clearly one day when I had no money, I went to visit somebody that was a big idol of mine, his name was Sugar Ray Robinson. I don’t know how many of you remember Sugar Ray Robinson. He was a great fighter, a world championship fighter. (Applause)
Extraordinary human being. And he had a foundation, the Sugar Ray Robinson Foundation, and I went to him and I said, “I have no money.” And I sat in his office and he asked me for an hour questions about my dream, what I wanted to accomplish. And I told him about the education, what I wanted to accomplish in education, I wanted to go to school, educate myself, and that I wanted to be a world champion bodybuilder many times over, and I wanted to get into acting. I said, “But I don’t have any money.” And he will go and write out a check for me for 2,500 dollars. Now, this is in the early ‘70s, may I remind you. This is an equivalent of getting today a check for 25,000 dollars. And he wrote out that check and he gave it to me, and he said, “I believe in you.” So unconditionally he gave me that money. That’s the kind of help I got. He never asked me if was here legally. He never asked me any questions about my papers or anything like that. He just gave me that money unconditionally. (Applause)
That’s the kind of help that I got when I came over here. And so no matter where I went, if it was in bodybuilding, or if it was in education, getting help from the counselors and teachers at Santa Monica City College, or if it is then getting help with my acting business, which was something that I loved very much. But I remember the kind of obstacles I faced in the beginning, when people said, “You will never make it in acting, you can never be a leading man. You know, you have a strange name, Schwartzenschnitzel or whatever it is. No one can pronounce that.” They said, “You have an overdeveloped body and no one understands your accent,” and so on.
And I had people that would help me, and they would make me get in the right direction and help me to achieve my goals. So again, it was the help.
And then on the set, there are 300 people on the set. I mean, it’s one thing to be up there on the screen and to shine like, you know, like a hero. But there are 300 people that make you shine, if it is the producers, the set directors, if it is the stunt coordinators, the writers, the producers, the directors, the co-actors. Everyone there is there to support you to shine on that screen. So again, I got all the help.
So of course that created the desire, because I was so successful, that I wanted to give something back to this great country, to this great state. And I was very fortunate that at that time that I met Maria, my great wife, the greatest wife anyone can ever dream of. (Applause)
And I met her father, and I know that a lot of you are familiar with Sargent Shriver, who worked in the Kennedy administration and in the Johnson Administration. And Sargent Shriver, he also ran for Vice-President in ‘72, and then for president in ‘76. But he’s a very smart guy, and great public servant. He started the Job Corps, he started Peace Corps, he started Legal Aid to the Poor, he started Head Start and all of those different organizations and things to help people. And when I met him, he inspired me. He said, “You should give something back to the community. You’ve gotten so much from California and from America, give something back.” He said, “The most honorable profession is to a public servant. The greatest thing you can do is to be the servant of the people.”
Now, at that time I didn’t quite know what he was talking about, that it’s the greatest thing, because I thought the greatest thing is to have a sword in your hand and be Conan the Barbarian. But I understood what he was talking about, and he inspired me so much that I went out then and I started working with Special Olympics. I remember I started becoming the coach, the National Coach for Special Olympics, an organization for people with mental disabilities. And it gave me such great satisfaction to train those kids, and to give them the confidence and to make them feel equal, and to promote tolerance and inclusion, and to go then all over the country and promote that, and then to become the international coach and to travel all over the world, to China and to Africa and Europe and everywhere, and to promote Special Olympics.
And then eventually I remember that I heard a speech that he gave at Yale University. Sargent Shriver gave this great speech where he challenged the young kids at Yale University, and he said, “Tear down that mirror in front of you. Tear down that mirror that always makes you look at yourself. And when you tear down that mirror you will be able to look beyond and you will see the millions of people that need your help.”
Now, when he said that, that inspired me so much that I went out there and I said, “I’ve got to even help more.” And I got involved with the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, traveling through all 50 states promoting health and fitness amongst our youngsters.
And I remember we started After School Programs with Danny Hernandez right here in East Los Angeles, and then started expanding After School Programs all over the State of California and all over the country, to reach out to more than 200,000 kids, to teach those kids to say no to drugs, no to gangs and no to violence and to say yes to education, and yes to life, and yes to hope, and yes to sports and all of those things. So it made me feel good to be able to do that and to give something back again to the community and to our state.
But let me tell you something, there is nothing like becoming the governor of the great State of California, which like I said earlier, was not my dream, was not part of my dream. People always asked me in the beginning, “Why would you do that, why would you leave a job you made 30 million dollars for Terminator 3? Why would you leave that to go and do a job where you get paid nothing?” By “paid nothing” I mean the 175,000 dollars they give you as governor I gave back to the State because I felt someone else can use that money more than I could use it. (Applause)
And people did not understand why I was doing that. And I always said that I would not be able to have this kind of a success—I wouldn’t have my bodybuilding career, my movie career, my great family, the four kids, the millions of dollars I made—if it wouldn’t be for California.
California was in a disastrous situation. California’s economy two and a half, three year ago, was going downhill like an avalanche. Jobs were leaving the state, companies were leaving the state. We had the worst credit rating. We had a 22 billion dollar debt, a 16.5 billion dollar structural deficit. No matter where you looked—we couldn’t even keep our lights on—we were in a disastrous situation. I said, “This is the time for me to go in. I think that I can bring both of the parties together, and I can turn the economy around.”
And I tell you that this is the most satisfying feeling that I’ve ever had, when you become governor, to be able to keep that promise to the people and to turn the economy around and to bring jobs back. We have created almost 600,000 jobs since I have come into office. And we created—we increased our revenues by 20 billion dollars without raising taxes, and that enables us to put that money into education, and for the first time now fund 55.1 billion dollars in education, and to put more money into After School Programs, .5 billion dollars in After School Programs. More money into our kids, and those that have English as a second language, to hire more teachers for those kids, more tutors and so on, and to increase the amount of money for the teachers in the inner-city schools and the low-performing schools.
Or to have the United Farm Workers come to me and they say, “We are having people die in the fields because of the heat stress. Can you help us?” And then for us to have the Emergency Heat Regulation, to have an executive order and work together with the United Farm Workers that once and for all we protect those poor workers that are out there in the fields—(Applause)
-- so that they can take a break, so they can drink some water and get in the shade when they feel dizzy. So those are the kinds of things. This is so satisfying.
Or when you walk into a classroom where the arts teacher comes up to you and whispers in your ear and says, “Please protect the arts programs, bring them back into our classrooms.” And then to be able to put 500 million dollars more into the budget and to bring the arts classes and the music classes and physical education back to our classrooms and to our schools. So that is a satisfying feeling.
But this is what it is all about, because in the end we are not judged by how much we make, we are judged by how much we give. And for me this is the greatest pleasure in the world, to give now something back. And this is so great. When someone asks me today, would I change again for the acting profession, I would say no. I would rather go to an inner-city school and to play chess with a nine year-old kid than going down another red carpet of a movie premiere. I love working and reaching out to the people and helping people. (Applause)
This is why it is so satisfying to me. And I want to tell you that this is why it is so great for me to be here today with all of you, because that’s what you do. You are all about reaching out and helping people. And think about it, what we can do together. I want to work with all of you together to make life better for the people of California. We can defy mathematics that one and one is three, not two. Believe me, if you and I work together—and this is something that I’m looking forward to.
And I just want to tell you what is important here is that as you work and try to help people, make sure that you reach out to both parties. Don’t just reach out to one party, because you need both parties in order to be successful. You need the Democrats and you need the Republicans.
I’ll just tell you a brief example. I remember when the famous musician Bono from the U2s came to me several years ago and says, “Arnold, can you help me? Can you help me, because I want to do something for debt forgiveness for the Third World countries, and I want to go and get some help from you?” And I said to him, I said, “Bono, don’t make the mistake to just go to Democrats when you go to Washington.” I said, “Go to the Republicans.” I said, “I will set it up for you.” And I connected him, after he said, “Okay, I will do that,” I connected him with Congressman Kasich from Ohio. And Congressman Kasich in Ohio, he received him in Washington and took him around to all the Republicans, Congress and Senators.
And one of the guys that he took him to was Senator Jesse Helms. Now, they had nothing in common, Bono and Jesse Helms, my I remind you, other than that Jesse Helm’s grandchildren loved Bono’s music. That was it. Everything else they didn’t have in common. But what happened was, because he reached out to him, in the end when he couldn’t get everything done that he wanted to get done from the Bush Administration, he called Jesse Helms. He called the Senator and said, “I need your help.” And Jesse Helms called the White House and he said, “If you don’t give him the money that he wants for the debt forgiveness and for AIDS, to help the AIDS children in Africa, I will not sign your bill.” And all of a sudden that money came through and became a reality.
So that’s the kind of—just to give you an example of how important it is to have Democrats and Republicans work together in order to achieve the ultimate goal. Because there are so many issues that we all are fighting for here that have nothing to do with parties at all. It has nothing to do with Democrats versus Republicans. I think that’s a big mistake for the politicians to always draw the line in the sand on every single issue. What does this have to do, what party does it have to do with, when you build more roads out there so that you have not this traffic congestion? What does it have to do with party when you want to build more classrooms for the children that need smaller class sizes? What does it have to do with parties to help the migrant workers in the fields? What does it have to do with parties when you talk about helping people that want to really reach their goals and make their dreams become a reality? Nothing. It has nothing to do with party at all.
And this is exactly the way I govern the State of California. I have Democrats and Republicans working for me because I don’t care about what party anyone belongs to as long as they bring a great idea to my team. That’s what it’s all about. I have a great mixture of Democrats and Republicans, and because of that I think we have been very effective. (Applause)
So I’m looking forward—I’m looking forward to working with all of you. I believe very strongly in what my father-in-law said many years ago, and he says it all the time. He said, “Serve, serve, serve, for it is the servant that will save us all.”
Thank you very much. Thank you, and I’ll be back. Hasta la vista. Thank you.
UGH.
That is two times in two days I have had to empty the barf bucket next to the computer...
Bet they can spell Fox, Bush and Rove tho.
No, really?
Wow, how long has it been since a politcian pandered to me, a straight, white, working, taxpaying legal male ???
I think that must become the new rule...hey Repubs, if you want my vote, start acting like YOUR OWN COUNTRY MATTERS. Then you will again get my vote.
i wouldn't bet the mortgage on it... : )
Don't empty it next to the computer. Put it in an envelope and send it registered mail to the cause of the barf.
"Wow, how long has it been since a politcian pandered to me, a straight, white, working, taxpaying legal male ???"
Since it became political suicide to do so or about 30 years. I'm not even sure it's legal anymore. Likely to be described as a hate-group. Oh, they want your vote, they just don't want everybody else to know it.
ping
"That is two times in two days I have had to empty the barf bucket next to the computer..."
Not too much makes me LOL but this did. Thanks for a good laugh.
Complete bullsh!t but pretty darn good for an off the cuff speech. That's what he claimed it was.
Very interesting. I wonder what he will say to the Aryan Nations.
The Rac-ists.
Yuck! Talk about your brown nosers!
I doubt it was off the cuff. He was listed as an "invited" speaker for weeks, at least, on the La Raza website.
Did you catch the slip--either in his speech or in the transcript? LOL.
I don’t have an organized, or a prepared speech here today, because I did not know that I’m speaking to you today until just six months ago.
Are we now Mexico North?
Might as well start to get used to it.
still nothing more than a phony overpaid actor
I do believe you snagged the Terminator. I do know that Latinos are in awe of his macho screen roles thus will vote for him. I also like his action movies
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