Our (soon to be ex-) governor sure does have a knack for predicting problems before they happen :

Just as the Southern California wildfires were beginning late last week, the Bush administration quietly turned down a six-month-old emergency request by Gov. Gray Davis for help in removing dead and dying trees in the same forests now being consumed by flame.

In April, Davis asked for a federal emergency declaration in three counties where bark beetle infestation had left thousands of acres of dense woodland vulnerable to fire.

If approved, the presidential proclamation would have paved the way for millions of dollars in federal support for clearing dead trees in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“We made the request in the hope of making a horrific situation less serious and we were turned down,” Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio said.

Of course, that’s not the first time the pleas of our embattled governor have fallen on the deaf ears of the White House. Remember the energy crisis? Not only did Davis forsee the troubles to come back in 2000, but like with these fires, but he was also rebuked during the peak of the crisis :

Last week, Cheney said conservation is a “sign of personal virtue” but not a sufficient basis for a “sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

Davis said the new administration has “helped us on every matter I have asked, except for the biggest” — helping reduce wholesale electricity prices, which he said increased by 450 percent from 1999 to 2000.

“We need help from Washington today to reduce the extraordinary prices for power we are paying,” he said. “The product isn’t any better. We aren’t using any more electrons. It’s just Texas and Southwest energy companies charging outrageous prices to our utilities that eventually get passed onto our customers.”

Of course, Davis ended up being, what Gephardt would call, a “miserable failure”. Now that it’s out with the old and in with the new, our Governor-elect will surely have some bold new ideas on how to help California :

The day after his election, Schwarzenegger promised that when they met this week, he would ask for “a lot of favors” in an attempt to get more federal money, particularly to pay for incarceration and services to undocumented immigrants.

Those comments mirrored vows Schwarzenegger made repeatedly during the recall campaign. He said he would be the “Collectinator” who delivers California more bang for its tax buck from the federal government. “For each dollar that we have been paying in federal taxes, we only have been getting back 77 cents. So I want to collect some of that money,” he said often.

Even after his first post-election congratulatory phone call from Bush, Schwarzenegger emphasized to reporters that “I need the federal government’s help. They have to come in and really help us straighten out California.”

But Schwarzenegger’s eager tone apparently irritated White House aides, putting the president on the defensive and appearing to shake down a cash- strapped federal government.

By Thursday morning, White House insiders were downplaying the sit-down to “a greeting, a congratulations meeting,” and they stressed that no lists of demands would be delivered by the governor-elect.

“There will not be any bags of money,” said one. “The ability of the federal government to hand out money is limited.”

I guess when Arnold was saying “California needs leadership” he meant “California needs someone to kiss the President’s ass.”