California Treasurer Phil Angelides has announced his candidacy for Governor of California. Here's part of his announcement, made yesterday in San Francisco, in in which he takes on the Predator:

We're the richest state in the wealthiest nation in human history. Yet we're 48th out of 50 states in student achievement, and we have a Governor who wants to cut 15,000 dollars out of every public school classroom. A Governor who broke a 40-year-old covenant, by telling 25,000 hungry young minds -- kids who worked hard, made all the grades -- that there was no room for them at our state colleges and universities.

We're the richest state in the wealthiest nation in human history. Yet the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. And we have a Governor who thinks it's fine to cut assistance to children, to the poor -- that somehow, if we just shower more fortune on the fortunate, the crumbs will reach the rest, like the leftovers of a Hollywood dinner party....

And I'll tell you why: unlike Governor Schwarzenegger, I don't believe in a Charles Darwin fiscal policy, and I don't believe in a Marie Antoinette tax policy. I don't believe a great state's economy should be a race to the bottom, where we reward quick profiteering at the expense of long-term growth and opportunity.

So I pushed the State's major pension funds to dump all their tobacco stocks, because it's wrong to reward companies that target and poison our kids. I led the fight against the Enron-style fraud that ransacked the hard-earned savings of millions of Americans. And I've worked to end investments in companies that use sweatshop labor and child labor. These are billions of dollars of your pension money. I want them invested in ways that make your lives better, not worse.

I've led this state to invest in our neglected communities -- because I believe we will never achieve our full potential if anyone is left behind.

I've pushed the State to invest in technologies that clean up the environment and combat global warming -- so we can be the State that sells them to the world and creates good jobs.

Schwarzenegger and his goons and apologists -- the Murphys, the Kauses and the Kurtzes -- will be on the attack soon. That will be Angelides' first test.