Fabricator's staff were A**holes to parent callers

(reposting from my diary at dkos)
Pay close attention, America: this is how Governor Fabricator treats the people who calls his office as he continues to traipse around the country with his BS about how he's 'real' and he's 'honest'. (see for yourself, last line in the NYT).

In February, CA state PTA organized their parents to call Sacramento on Advocacy Day to tell the Governor that he has broken his promises about funding education, especially his promise to fund Prop. 98.

The Governor's new proposed budget just about decimates all school district budgets when he nonchalantly and blithely reneged on a 2 billion dollar handshake deal to schools for this coming school year.

His Sacramento staffers were apparently instructed to bully and antagonize parent callers.

Not surprisingly in retrospect, the Governor has forgetten that we, the people of CA, pay the freaking salaries of his staff.

If he wants to continue to be the bully, then he needs to take that big "People's Governor of California" sign off his website in order to be authentically truthful but it's clear honesty is not something he values.

Finally, the most maddening thing has been the complete silence from the media: it's been a virtual news blackout from February 17th, the day of the calls, until March 7th when LAT published this mild treatment, buried within a long column by Peter McGreevy:

State Staffers' Response Upsets Some PTA Moms

After 25 years of calling elected officials for one cause or another, Diane Levitt knows the drill: You either leave your message on an answering machine set up to take constituents' comments or talk to a staffer who listens and thanks you for your call.

Imagine the Manhattan Beach resident's surprise and that of other PTA moms when staffers in the governor's Constituent Services Office argued with them.

The California State PTA had asked members to observe the venerable organization's Founders Day by calling to register their unhappiness with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed education budget and his change of mind on a promise to restore money due under Proposition 98, a voter-approved measure that guarantees schools state funds.

Cecelia Mansfield, the organization's volunteer director of legislation, said she encountered an argumentative staffer when she called and soon began hearing complaints from others with similar experiences.

The callers were told they were misinformed, and some said they got a pitch for the governor's plans to alter Proposition 98, a move the PTA and other education leaders strongly oppose.

"It's a scandal," Levitt said. "The governor is supposed to be listening to what constituents think and instead his office is using this as an opportunity to politic."

A governor's spokeswoman said the constituent services office welcomes Californians' views and offers information only if a caller asks for clarification.

That last part was BS, btw.

For all I know, Governor Fabricator can add parents to the ever growing list of 'special interests' who are pissed about what he's doing to California.