Michael Hiltzik, LA Times - Even before her 2010 campaign against Boxer could get off the ground, it was poleaxed by the revelation that [Carly Fiorina] had failed to cast a ballot in 75% of the California elections for which she was an eligible voter.
In an Orange County Register op-ed announcing her Senate candidacy in 2009, she explained lamely: "I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn't think my vote mattered because I didn't have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result."
I observed at the time: "During
her reign at Hewlett-Packard, according to public records, her
corporation spent $4.7 million to lobby Congress and donated more than
$390,000 to political candidates through its political action committee.
Fiorina and her husband, Frank, a former AT&T executive, have made
more than $100,000 in political donations personally since 2000.
"That suggests not that Fiorina 'felt disconnected' from what was going on in Washington, but rather that she understood all too well that in politics, money talks. Why bother to vote when you can get what you need with greenbacks?"
... Fiorina received her health coverage through her husband's AT&T retirement plan, but for everyone else she advocated allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, which would be a boon to the insurers and a disaster for buyers.
As I observed: "If she were an average person who lost that AT&T coverage and had to replace it in an individual market where the insurers could sell it to her on their own terms, subject to the rules of the most lenient and consumer-unfriendly states ... as a cancer survivor, she'd be uninsurable."
The Affordable Care Act, which she opposed in its cradle and now says should be repealed, bars discrimination against applicants based on their medical conditions. What's her answer to that? We don't know, because she wasn't asked at the debate. She has, however, advocated defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive health services to middle- and low-income women unlike her.
The foundation stone of Fiorina's political pitch is her business career. It's impressive on paper, underwhelming in reality. She was CEO of Hewlett-Packard from mid-1999 to early 2005, a period in which the company's stock sank 49% to 60% (depending on how you count), making it one of the worst-performing high-tech firms.
CEO Fiorina talked a lot about "innovation" while pursuing corporate strategies displaying a striking lack of imagination. She cut HP's payroll by 10,000 employees in 2000 while surrounding her glamorous self with clouds of image and strategy consultants. She marketed overpriced knockoffs of other companies' consumer technologies and then, disastrously, doubled down on the PC business by acquiring Compaq in 2002, when the right move would have been to exit that low-margin business altogether.
The Fiorina running for office today is a package of conventional Republican policy wrapped up in earnestness and poise. She opposes a government mandate for paid maternity leave, which would be very important for middle-class families but not so much for holders of corporate golden parachutes. She blames the California drought on "liberal environmentalists," which is about as uninformed as one can get about water in the West but fits seamlessly with GOP orthodoxy.
"That suggests not that Fiorina 'felt disconnected' from what was going on in Washington, but rather that she understood all too well that in politics, money talks. Why bother to vote when you can get what you need with greenbacks?"
... Fiorina received her health coverage through her husband's AT&T retirement plan, but for everyone else she advocated allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, which would be a boon to the insurers and a disaster for buyers.
As I observed: "If she were an average person who lost that AT&T coverage and had to replace it in an individual market where the insurers could sell it to her on their own terms, subject to the rules of the most lenient and consumer-unfriendly states ... as a cancer survivor, she'd be uninsurable."
The Affordable Care Act, which she opposed in its cradle and now says should be repealed, bars discrimination against applicants based on their medical conditions. What's her answer to that? We don't know, because she wasn't asked at the debate. She has, however, advocated defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive health services to middle- and low-income women unlike her.
The foundation stone of Fiorina's political pitch is her business career. It's impressive on paper, underwhelming in reality. She was CEO of Hewlett-Packard from mid-1999 to early 2005, a period in which the company's stock sank 49% to 60% (depending on how you count), making it one of the worst-performing high-tech firms.
CEO Fiorina talked a lot about "innovation" while pursuing corporate strategies displaying a striking lack of imagination. She cut HP's payroll by 10,000 employees in 2000 while surrounding her glamorous self with clouds of image and strategy consultants. She marketed overpriced knockoffs of other companies' consumer technologies and then, disastrously, doubled down on the PC business by acquiring Compaq in 2002, when the right move would have been to exit that low-margin business altogether.
The Fiorina running for office today is a package of conventional Republican policy wrapped up in earnestness and poise. She opposes a government mandate for paid maternity leave, which would be very important for middle-class families but not so much for holders of corporate golden parachutes. She blames the California drought on "liberal environmentalists," which is about as uninformed as one can get about water in the West but fits seamlessly with GOP orthodoxy.
2 comments:
Living in California I can tell you quite definitely that this state has badly mismanaged its water management and supply, due largely to a strategy of emphasizing the environment over human activity through restricting growth. The State has not built any significant water-saving infrastructure for about 40 years, environmental policies protecting species mandate the loss of a substantial amount of water lost to the Pacific. Its as if the planners just believed in the face of all growth estimates that the population would remain static indefinitely - or would even be reduced! It is ironic that is Governor Brown presiding back over this disaster, and his emphasis on punishing the citizenry over the monied agricultural and environmentalist interests.
The State's water mismanagement mirrors its traffic mismanagement, which also seeks to displace millions and threatens to make everyday life here in Southern California a living hell.
In addition, the State has not pursued Primary Water, which consists of deep well drilling below the normally drawn aquifers. This is something Qaddafi pursued in Libya in the desert and was having success cultivating desert before he got removed. It has been proven that there is actually more water beneath the Earth's surface than on the surface.
But then again, it plays into the agenda (Agenda 21) of low or negative growth, mandated by the phony "human-caused" climate change - which is nothing more than population control and reduction in the guise of saving the planet. Saving the planet for who?
The people behind these regulations and controls never suffer. Indeed, these policies are all designed to benefit them at the expense of the many formerly middle class who will be reduced to rubble and forced to flee.
To paraphrase Orwell, Think of a carbon bootprint stomping on a human face - forever.
Carly vs Hillary would certainly be an fascinating contest that would draw millions who would otherwise not be interested - not as presidential candidates (they're both pretty standard neocon and neoliberal), but as mud wrestlers.
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