Opinion: Arnold -- governor of a girlie-man $tate?

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Arnold Schwarzenegger has been complaining about the fact that for every buck we Californians send to the federal coffers, we get back about 78 cents in federal benefits.

Now, this is not unusual. The disparity is something of a red-state, blue-state thing. In the main, Democratic-leaning blue states are ‘donor states’ – they put more into the federal kitty than they get back in benefits. Who gets that difference? Red states. Republican-voting, complaining-about-the-federal-government states such as Alaska, Mississippi, Alabama, North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma. They suck a lot more from the federal teat than some more azure states. They’re making do on tax-welfare handouts from those horrible, anti-American, anti-capitalist blue states, a good number of which have somehow managed to be more prosperous than some red ones.

This disparity is nothing new, even though Gov. Schwarzenegger has recently taken it up as a cause as California’s state budget stumbles.

It occurred to me, if not to our governor, that California’s 78-cents-back-per-buck difference is almost exactly the dollar difference between what women and men make for doing the same work. Over the last couple of decades, it’s a wage gap that has been as stubbornly resistant to closing as a pair of True Religion jeans would be over Alec Baldwin’s ‘’It’s Complicated’’ belly.

So, governor, here’s your entire state, inadvertently getting in touch with its feminine side. Believe me, we women know exactly how you feel.

If you find a way to close that dollar differential, let us know. Women have been trying to get our fair share for decades. If it takes a macho guy’s girlie-man epiphany to make it happen, for California and for women – we’ll take it to the bank.

-- Patt Morrison