Free Republic

SACRAMENTO - When Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, he vowed to whack away at a tangle of California regulations he blamed for choking the frail state economy. In one of his first acts as governor, Schwarzenegger put an immediate six-month freeze on hundreds of pending rules and directed his staff to get rid of anything that was putting a crimp on business. Consumer groups braced for the worst. They expected the Republican governor to take aim at hard-fought protections for everything from the environment to consumers. Instead, during his first year in office, Schwarzenegger embraced the kinds of rules he railed...