Slashdot Mirror
Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Announces Bid For White House
seven of five writes: According to Reuters, "Former Hewlett-Packard Co Chief Executive Carly Fiorina announced on Monday she is running for president, becoming the only woman in the pack of Republican candidates for the White House in 2016. ... Fiorina registers near the bottom of polls of the dozen or so Republican hopefuls and has never held public office. But she has already attracted warm receptions at events in the early voting state of Iowa where she is positioning herself as a conservative, pro-business Republican highly critical of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Fiorina was forced by HP to resign in 2005 as the tech company struggled to digest Compaq after a $19 billion merger."
As part of her announcement, she said, "I think I'm the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works. I understand the world, who's in it, how the world works." I'm sure we'll soon begin hearing from all the HP employees, current and former, who have nothing but love for Carly F.
As part of her announcement, she said, "I think I'm the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works. I understand the world, who's in it, how the world works." I'm sure we'll soon begin hearing from all the HP employees, current and former, who have nothing but love for Carly F.
Yes, as everyone with three gray cells to rub together knows, she would make a terrible choice for president and she has just about zero chance of being elected.
I think it's safe to say that she's actually running for a cabinet position, and to stroke her own ego.
But beyond that, this is bad news, because it slightly lowers the odds of having a meaningful debate or dialog about the many issues facing the US, simply because she's such an ill-prepared candidate. And the further to the right the Republicans swerve (largely in order to assuage their wingnut base in order to get the nomination), the easier it is for Democrats to run as Republican Lite. As many others have pointed out, Bill Clinton and Obama would be considered right wingers in most modern democracies; we need an election pitting true conservatives against true liberals, with first-rate media coverage, debates, etc.
The odds of that happening are approximately the same as those of Linux passing Windows in desktop market penetration in the US this year.
She could have said, "most likely they are going to nominate Hilary, and to balance the ticket you are going to look for a woman VP candidate, so let me throw my hat in the ring, for VP candidacy, I am a woman and I may be able to force them to spend money on California instead of taking it for granted". I don't think she can deliver CA for the red team anyway. But at least that is a plausible pitch. Instead of quietly contacting the candidates and letting them know she is running for VP she goes about it this way. Republicans won't run a senator or corporate CEO again, not after McCain and Romney. Thinking of Dubya and St Reagan they will go for a governor. Christie is out, that is why Walker is the front runner.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Another narcissist whose business failures are repeatedly blamed on others. (HP's market cap rose by billions on the day she was ousted.)
We need to diagnose narcissists early and send them all to Empathyless Island, where they can prey on each other instead of us.
A good article on why narcissism is bad, even in the cold, sociopathic world of capitalism.
Fiorina's biggest fault is that the thing she's best known for, the thing which built her reputation, is a failure. Clinton is more of a mixed bag. Her tenure as a Senator and as Secretary of State have no glaring failures that define her time in those roles. She has some scandal building lately, but I'm not really sure how much of that is scandal, and how much of that is mudslinging now that the next political season is brewing.
I tend to stop paying attention to the media regarding political candidates once the campaigning begins, short of comparing their statements pre-candidacy with their statements after they've announced. Typically this is just to look for hypocracy as if a candidate is changing their platform simply to get elected then perhaps they should be passed over.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Since human behavior has not changed all that much over time, medieval history is actually a really good starting place for analyzing modern political structures. It is not unusual to take test cases from hundreds of years ago (where we know the factors and outcomes) and plug them into models to see if they produce the expected results.
Though on the whole it is kinda sad how little respect we have for specialization that does not feed into consumer culture.
She was a regular on Meet the Press for a while, and she could always be counted on to parrot whatever talking points the American Enterprise Institute was distributing at the time. She always came across as an opportunist, trying to build her brand, with nary a thought of her own construction.
People criticized Romney because he ran on his business record, and that record included the elimination of many American job. In fairness to Romney, though, his job at Bain was to save companies, not jobs, and in this he was successful. In Fiorina's case, she presided over a disastrous merger of Compaq, basically destroying that brand, as well as seriously damaging HP's; and in the process, opened the door for lesser players, like Dell, to successfully infiltrate the enterprise. Her utter failure as a business leader, coupled with a near lack of independent political philosophy, are easy pickings for her primary competitors. If she somehow does make it to a VP candidate, she will serve only to galvanize the liberal voting base to organize against a failed corporate wolf in false feminist sheep's clothing.
That's a very revisionist look at it. The fact of the matter is they sent a lot of people to Wasilla because she was an unknown and they kept finding newsworthy things. By 2008, if you didn't know anything about Barack Obama I would have to assume you were in a coma. He had been covered by the national press since the 2004 DNC convention.
The other thing about Palin that encouraged more reporting was her penchant for saying things that were blatantly untrue. They weren't shades of gray that another politician might get away with. They were facts she disregarded. Case in point: During the election, she repeatedly said she was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Alaska Legislative Council which was factually untrue. The council had found she abused her power. After the election a different board found that she reached an opposing conclusion and said she did not violate ethics rules.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Her actual fault was that she came from marketing; didn't understand technology and never tired to understand it. She poured tons of money into drumming up how great HP is; and little to none in innovation; and made HP from market leader into a mediocre company. IBM ate their lunch in the high-end machines and Dell in consumer products; the only thing that was profitable were their printers; thankfully she had the presence of mind to leave that one alone.
There is a wide consensus that as a CEO of a technological company she was a failure (fairly easy to research if anybody is interested).
Exibit A: HP's stock took an upward trend on Feb 2005 (when she was ousted) after languishing for years.
You don't reach a position like she had at HP by failure and incompetence. Whatever your problem is with her, I wish you would just state it openly rather than chucking stones. Disclaimer: I don't know anything about her.
Carly spouted off on Saturday about net neutrality, and claimed that it was forced down our throats by lobbyists from Verizon and Comcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And she says this as a former CEO of HP. I hope her campaign fails soon because her voice gives me faceslapping injuries.
And when individual companies do this, like, oh, HP, they pay the price. So, it may be a widespread problem, but it is self-correcting.
While Carly was CEO, HP lost 65% of its market value. But she walked away with more than $100 Million. So how is that going to self correct?