Schwarzenegger

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named his next, and potentially last, finance director Monday, filling a post that is crucial to shaping California's deficit-plagued budget during the governor's final year in office. Ana Matosantos, currently in the finance department's No. 2 position, will take the reins as Schwarzenegger's chief budget writer Dec. 31, with California facing an estimated $20.7-billion deficit through June 2011. That yawning gap, combined with Schwarzenegger's lame-duck status, makes the job less appealing than in more flush times.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's final State of the State speech was his best. The budget proposal he'll send the Legislature on Friday almost certainly will be his worst. The budget will be full of wishful assumptions, sleights of hand and cuts into the bone. Facing a $20-billion deficit over the next 18 months, the governor will have no other choice unless he's prepared to raise taxes again, which he isn't. Not yet anyway. We'll see how the year unfolds -- how receptive Washington is to Sacramento's pleas for more bailout money, and whether the courts wind up accepting the governor's previous budget remedies.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday backed off his threat of a court fight over his choice to fill the vacant lieutenant governor job, asking the state Assembly to vote again on whether to confirm state Sen. Abel Maldonado for the post. The governor said he would withdraw and resubmit Maldonado's nomination "to avoid wasting time and energy on litigation that should be spent passing a jobs package that will get Californians back to work." The maneuver resets the 90-day clock for lawmakers to approve or reject Maldonado, a moderate Republican from Santa Maria who was approved by the state Senate.

Regarding Schwarzenegger's remarks to a Mexican stuntwoman about the "alignment of her breasts": To embarrass a woman publicly by joking about her breasts is unconscionable. Does a right to offend come with being rich and famous? JOAN ROSS Fullerton

No self-respecting politician wants to be one. The phrase itself is utterly demeaning. But with a year left in office, there are signs that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has begun his transformation into a lame duck. This status, defined by the weakness of a politician whose term will soon expire, may be difficult to swallow for a former Mr. Universe known to legions of moviegoers for vanquishing opponents as Hercules, Conan and the Terminator. Even as a pregnant man in "Junior," Schwarzenegger reflected a particular kind of strength.

For much of his life, Arnold Schwarzenegger the celebrity has lived above the fray, immune to the little annoyances most other people face. But over the last few days, Arnold Schwarzenegger the taxpayer ran headlong into two of them -- the IRS and the post office -- in what his business manager said was a snafu involving payroll tax filings and undelivered mail. The nearly $80,000 federal tax lien the Internal Revenue Service lodged against the governor of California in May resulted from confusion caused by a disparity between the reference number used on his personal tax returns and the one on the payroll tax forms for his household employees that were filed with the Social Security Administration, according to his business manager, Paul Wachter.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today will lay out plans to spend $500 million on worker training in an effort to create 100,000 jobs, along with other measures to stimulate the economy, as a centerpiece of his policy agenda for his final year in office. Schwarzenegger is set to announce the proposal this morning in his last State of the State address to lawmakers, in an attempt to stem the bleeding of jobs in a state that had a November unemployment rate of 12.3%. The new spending to train workers is part of a five-pronged proposal Schwarzenegger is calling the California Jobs Initiative, according to a draft obtained by The Times.