California Senate GOP candidate Carly Fiorina on Tuesday called for scrapping the national health care law passed by Congress, citing it as an example of out-of-control regulation that's preventing businesses from creating more jobs.

"I would like to see it all repealed," Fiorina told reporters in Washington.

Labels: assholes, Carly Fiorina, Greedy Republican Bastards

Here’s a fact for you, Portfolio magazine named Fiorina the “19th Worst CEO of All-Time”—placing her in the top 20 along with the likes of Dick Fuld, Ken Lay, Roger Smith and Bernie Ebbers.  Why? Because her tenure as CEO of Hewlett Packard was a disaster.

The magazine described Fiorina as “a consummate self-promoter” who “paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005.”

While promoting herself as a job creator, the reality is Fiorina proved much more adept as a jobs killer.  In fact, she referred to offshoring as “right-shoring”, and fired at least 18,000 people.  Fiorina told Fortune she “should have done them all faster."

Her so-called business acumen—the very one a chorus of pundits are praising along with Fiorina—was there for all the world to see in the $24 billion HP-Compaq merger that she pushed through in 2002. According to the International Herald Tribune, Fiorina used “hardball tactics to suppress the opposition” to the merger by the company’s founding families.

The Washington Post reported that Fiorina also understated the company’s own projections of the number of jobs at risk in the merger, and overstated the expected profits, according to Walter Hewlett, the company’s largest shareholder at the time and son of its co-founder.  Fortune reported that in hindsight, Fiorina wished she had been “more transparent,” but that “candor…would have also further damaged the company…and probably the stock price.”

So how did the Fiorina-fueled merger pan out?

“A flop” and “disastrous,” according to the London Observer.

“A big bet that didn’t pay off,” wrote Fortune.  “Didn’t even come close to attaining what Fiorina and HP’s board said was in store.”

Less than three years later Fiorina was fired.  The Associated Press reported that the company’s stock “has gone nowhere for two years,” and “rose almost 7 percent after earlier soaring almost 11 percent on the news of her ouster.”

Massive layoffs, jobs shipped overseas, and failed merger aside, Fiorina certainly did get one thing right: her severance package, reportedly worth $42 million.

Labels: Carly Fiorina, corporatism, Greedy Republican Bastards, phonies

Let's continue to look at the contrasts between Sarah and other parents with children with DS. Catherine pointed out to me that actor John C McGinley, who plays one of the doctors in the series Scrubs, is the father of another Max, who also has Down syndrome. John was just as overwhelmed as any other parent when he learned that Max had DS. Did he say Max is an adorable miracle and stop at that? No. He and his wife tried to learn everything they could about the condition, joined groups, used his fame to promote events to raise money and awareness about DS; John C. gave numerous interviews and wrote articles where he pulled no punches regarding the irresponsible use of the word "retard."

John C. is committed to building awareness and acceptance of people with Down syndrome. In 2002, he joined the National Down Syndrome Society as the National Buddy Walk Spokesman, providing significant national visibility for the program. He served as the 2005/2006 national spokesperson for the Society's annual Buddy Walks, advocacy walks that take place in hundreds of cities across the United States and Canada.

A simple google search will return results pointing to countless blogs written by parents of children with special needs. I had a quick look at some of them and noticed that they share a few things: Networking, supporting special needs organizations, supporting other parents, asking readers to pray for a particular child going through a bad patch. They all celebrate their children and are proud to share their achievements and landmarks with their readers. They share resources, united in their quest to make their children's lives richer and the path a bit smoother.

A bunch of unknown people do their best for their children and hope to raise awareness about their conditions, share what they know with others, giving tips and linking to helpful organizations. These parents want to make a contribution and make a difference in any way they can. Some of the contributors to Palingates, like StephiLou, tXdAd and others generously shared their experiences in the comments section. We learned from them and our little community was enriched, we became more aware in the process.

Please note that I refer to parents of children with special needs simply as parents of children with special needs. They don't like to define themselves or their babies by their diagnoses. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, wears Down syndrome as a badge, using Trig and his condition to serve her own skewed agenda. That's why I refer to her as a "DS mom." She likes to point out that she "chose" to have Trig, knowing he was going to be born with Down syndrome. So did many other parents. The big difference is that they saw the child first and the condition was secondary in their choices. Some other parents were not aware of DS before the birth of their babies, but again, they fell in love with their babies, not their diagnoses. They see themselves as parents and don't feel special because their children are a bit different.

[snip]

Sarah Palin is the most famous "DS mom" in the country. But apart from parading Trig all over the place in inappropriate attire, spouting some soundbites in her speeches and giving a token donation to NADS, she has done absolutely nothing for children with special needs and their families. She uses her Facebook page to attack people and not much else. There are so many avenues open to her if she really wanted to support families raising children with special needs... What's stopping her from creating a Facebook group dedicated to sharing stories about Trig, how he's making progress thanks to early intervention programs, giving links to resources, having a forum where other parents could tell their stories, talk about their triumphs and their struggles?

If she would put a fraction of the energy she uses to attack people (in a very aggressive manner) into promoting a group dedicated to children with special needs instead, she could make a greater impact than all the little known blogs put together.

But Sarah Palin is not about the positive. She's not for solutions or anything constructive.

Labels: Carly Fiorina, narcissism, reproductive rights, Sarah Palin

The action was a stunning blow to Fiorina, 50, one of the most powerful women in business, and a repudiation of her leading of H-P's controversial 2002 acquisition of Compaq Computer

Fiorina pushed through the $19 billion merger as part of a bold plan to remake the Silicon Valley icon into a computing and services giant that could challenge IBM. Yet the merger never produced the results promised, and as Fiorina worked to integrate the two huge companies, Dell Inc. leapfrogged past H-P to become the leading seller of PCs.

And H-P shares lost more than half their value during Fiorina's tenure, underperforming Dell's by a wide margin and also lagging IBM's stock performance.

[snip]

Investors rallied behind H-P's stock after learning of Fiorina's departure. The shares climbed $1.39, or almost 7 percent, to close at $21.53. The Dow component was the most heavily traded issue on the New York Stock Exchange, with volume of more than 102 million shares.

[snip]

Controversy surrounded Fiorina from the beginning of her H-P tenure, which included laying off thousands of workers in a painful restructuring.
But the most divisive move was her acquisition of Compaq, which she spearheaded despite fierce opposition from board member Walter Hewlett, the son of H-P co-founder William Hewlett.

Hewlett argued that acquiring Compaq, at the time the largest maker of PCs, would dilute H-P's profitable printing business, kill shareholder value and lead to massive layoffs.

The bitter fight prompted a proxy battle that raised questions about H-P's business direction and became a major distraction for the company's management. When the acquisition was completed in 2002, it led to the firing of more than 17,000 employees and the acrimonious departure of Hewlett from the board.

"H-P has been a great company," Hewlett said in an e-mailed statement after Fiorina's departure was announced. "We all look forward to H-P fulfilling its promise." The Hewlett Foundation still owns about 10 million H-P shares.
Missing expectations

In August 2004, Fiorina had to deal with H-P missing its third-quarter estimates. She blamed the results on poor performance in the company's enterprise servers and storage business, and fired three executives from the division.

While Dunn said on the conference call that there was no connection between those results and Fiorina's firing, investors believed Fiorina was to blame for the company's poor results.

"Now the business unit leaders will have the autonomy to run them properly," said Hillman.

At HP, Fiorina developed the reputation of a manager who knocked heads together—or who chopped them off. And there were massive layoffs during her tenure. In 2003, the company announced it would dismiss almost 18,000 people. (That year, the firm posted a $903 million loss on $56.6 billion in revenue.) When the outsourcing of jobs turned into a national political issue, Fiorina became the poster-girl for an industry campaign aimed at blocking any legislation that would restrict a company's ability to can American employees in favor of workers overseas. She and executives from seven other tech companies issued a report that argued that any such measures would hurt the U.S. economy. The best way to increase American competitiveness, they declared, was to improve schools and, yes, reduce taxes. At a Washington press conference, Fiorina said, "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore. We have to compete for jobs." The remark did not go over well with critics of outsourcing, who have ever since used it as an indicator of corporate insensitivity.

Fiorina's stint at HP was marked by other moments of controversy. In March 2004, after HP shareholders voted 1.21 billion to 925 million to expense stock options, she opposed the move, essentially opting to stick with accounting practices (that were used by other corporations) that did not reveal a company's true value. That same year, Forbes reported that Hewlett-Packard was "among many other U.S. companies that kept offices in Dubai and were linked to Iranian traders there." The article suggested that HP and other countries were skirting export controls to trade with Iran. And in early 2005, Fiorina announced that pop star Gwen Stefani would join the HP design team and work on the company's line of digital cameras.

Fiorina wasn't around long enough to see her Plan Stefani to completion. In February 2005, she was pushed out of HP. The company's board, with which she had been battling for years, had had enough of her. The Compaq merger had not yielded the benefits—improved shareholder returns and greater profits—she had promised. At the time of her dismissal, Hewlett-Packard stock was trading at about the same price as when she first unveiled the Compaq deal. Eighty percent of the company's operating profits were coming from its old-line printing business. She had not succeeded in reviving HP as a computer-selling powerhouse. The day she was dumped, the company's stock price rose 7 percent. That was Wall Street exclaiming, Hooray. As Robert Cihra, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners told Money magazine, "The stock is up a bit on the fact that nobody liked Carly's leadership all that much. The Street had lost all faith in her and the market's hope is that anyone will be better."

Labels: Carly Fiorina, economics, John McCain