We come from all walks of life. Some of us are students, some are workers, and some are jobless. Some of us are laden with student debt. Some of us work to support our children, some work to support our parents. Some of us have had to postpone starting a family, and some of us have had to move back in with our parents just to make ends meet. But we all have one thing in common — we are the young voters of California. And it’s time for us to flex our muscle at the polls, take control of California’s future and fight off the right wing’s attempt at a hostile corporate takeover of our state.

Our generation has been hit disproportionately hard by the recession. According to a recent report from the AFL-CIO, a third of all adults under age 35 cannot pay their bills, and 70 percent don’t have enough saved to cover even two months of living expenses. We just can’t afford to sit back and wait for things to get better, because if corporate candidates like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina triumph on Tuesday, things will undoubtedly get worse.

These Wall Street candidates have spent hundreds of millions in order to buy this election, and if elected, they plan on doling out massive tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and corporations in California, while at the same time slashing the vital services, education, health care, unemployment benefits, civil liberties and much-needed jobs for young people trying to enter the workforce.

So what’s at stake in this election?

Our jobs. Both Whitman and Fiorina have extensive track records of outsourcing tens of thousands of jobs as corporate CEOs, and Whitman’s plan for California centers around laying off 40,000 state workers, which could cause our unemployment rate to jump a full percentage point. Whitman also believes in the categorically untrue concept that giving tax breaks to the rich will somehow create jobs. It didn’t work when Bush did it, and economists agree that the concept is totally bogus.

Our education. Meg Whitman plans to cut another $15 billion from the state budget, and nearly half of the budget goes to K-12 and higher education, which would inevitably mean more draconian cuts to schools and universities that have already been decimated under Schwarzenegger.

Our health care. Carly Fiorina vowed to repeal the new health care law that has allowed so many of us to go back on our parents’ health insurance while we finish school and look for work in this tough job market.

We can’t allow these extreme right-wing candidates to trample all over our generation. We’ve got to take matters into our own hands, and the best way we can do that is to hit the polls en masse on Tuesday, just like we did in 2008. Let’s not forget, it was the young people – both voters and volunteers — who secured Obama’s triumphant victory. And we have the power to do it again, if we commit to vote and getting others out to vote as well. As the President said last week to more than 37,000 Californians at a rally at the University of Southern California:

You’ve got to talk to your friends.  You’ve got to talk to your neighbors.  You’ve got to make phone calls.  You’ve got to knock on doors.  You have to make sure that you are as fired up and as excited now as you were two years ago – because the work is not yet done.

If you’re like me, you’re sick of the tired rhetoric from the media that young people just don’t vote as often as older adults. It seems like that message has become a self-fulfilling prophecy – many young people mistakenly feel like their votes don’t count as much, and subsequently they’re less inclined to vote.

But with an election as close as this one, our votes are more valuable today than ever before. If we do the expected and stay home on Election Day, we’re essentially handing the reins over to the mega-wealthy corporate shills whose Big Business agenda will make their super-rich friends even richer, while the rest of us are left fighting for the crumbs. It’s on every single one of us to vote, and do everything we can to get out the vote to our friends, family, co-workers, classmates and neighbors.

Writer Mike Hardcastle said it best:

Don't vote and you effectively kiss away your ability to have any influence as to how the issues play out in your world, and dude, that's just lame.

Today was the second Boxer-Fiorina debate, and though they weren’t in the same room, it was still rather lively.  Shane Goldmacher has a good recap of the issues discussed.

Once again, Carly Fiorina had very little of substance for the people. Oh, but she does want to end the right of women to control their own health decisions and apparently Sen. Boxer is in the pocket of “Big Enviro” b/c there is such a thing. Who knew? It’s almost like there are multiple big environmental organizations making billions of dollars trying to maintain the status quo…oh, wait, that’s Big Oil. It’s hard to keep track.

Yesterday, we got the Field Poll’s take on the Governor’s race, and today we get the state of the Senate race.  While there wasn’t any major movement in the head to head, Sen. Boxer picked up 3 points to open a 47-41 lead, there were some other interesting statistics.

First, as you would expect, both candidates are doing similarly well within their own party, hovering in the upper 70s.  But while nonpartisans are split at the Governor level, Boxer holds a 6 point lead here, 46-40.  

But what is worth noting is that while Carly Fiorina hasn’t really inspired anybody, Sen. Boxer gets people moving one way or the other.  2/3 of her supporters are voting for her, for her.  Meanwhile, over 60% of Carly’s supporters are motivated by their dislike for the incumbent.  In California, Boxer has been an occasional lightening rod, but one thing that you can say for her is that she has the support of the grassroots base.  What is expected and nurtured in the Republican party, is typically shunned within the Democratic Party.  But Senator Boxer embraces the grassroots. She supports marriage equality, and has worked passionately for years on the climate crisis.  She is giving Democrats something to fight for.

Meanwhile, Carly Fiorina’s unfavorables continue to rise. Since July she has hovered at 34% positive, but her unfavorables have grown from 29 to 38.  There is still a lot of room for growth with 28% undecided, but California voters have not liked what they have heard about the failed CEO of Hewlett-Packard.  

The Bee has a pretty picture of much of this data here.

While Meg Whitman was hobnobbing with Condi, Carly Fiorina is getting ready to do a big fundraiser in DC tomorrow.  It’s being headlined by that Tremendous Trio of Senators McConnell, Cornyn and Kyl.  What a bunch.  But the more interesting message comes on that left hand column, where just near the bottom comes “Koch Industries PAC.”  More from Talking Points Memo:

Republican Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina will attend a high-dollar fundraiser Thursday night that includes Koch Industries PAC, a conservative megadonor that has been the subject of some high-profile magazine pieces of late.

The Koch brothers have become conservative super-villains for Democrats this year, igniting Democrats in the same way George Soros’ spending on liberal causes enrages the right. … Koch has a storied history. TPM has followed the brothers’ involvement in funding tea party groups, among other conservative causes.

The New Yorker recently published a 6,000-word exposé detailing the Koch brothers Charles Koch and David Koch and their involvement in conservative causes aiming to defeat President Obama and his agenda. The latest iteration comes as Koch spars with the White House over corporate donations.  In addition to their role in the conservative movement, Koch Industries has long been pegged as a top outsourcer.(Talking Points Memo)

Is there any doubt about Carly Fiorina left. She favors Prop 23, and decimating our climate regulations. She is in the pocket of the Tea Party funders and Big Coal. She wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.  She is a fan of “right-shoring” American jobs oversees, and will continue to favor and advocate for that. Oh, and yeah, she was fired for poor performance at HP.

California, Carly Fiorina is unqualified, and all wrong on all the issues.

Even your standard right-wing Carly fan has to accept one thing, they are going to spend the next 6+ weeks trying to defend the record of a failed CEO.  Over the flip you’ll find a long listing of remarks, mostly from right-wing business types about just how bad she really was. I’ll skip past much of the list of ranking her in the top 10 or top 20 worst CEOs of all time, to something said in a book by Steve Forbes:

“Examples of business leaders who rise to the heights of corporate power only to be brought down by their egos include Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco, and Carly Fiorina, former head of Hewlett-Packard.” – Steve Forbes and John Prevas, Power Ambition Glory, Crown Business, 2009, page 7

This is a CEO who, in the words of another right-wing Republican in the form of a former GOP presidential candidate, was too ego-driven to successfully run a company.  She was a great self-promoter, but not so much on the actually getting the job done at HP thing. The board hated her, after all she was spying on some of them.  The employees hated her, she laid off thousands of them, so no surprise there. And, oh yeah, the stock value of HP halved while she was the CEO.

Certainly we can agree that the last thing California needs is somebody too concerned about their own ego to focus on the very real problems we have to deal with today.

And this ad by Senator Boxer does nothing other than turning a mirror on Carly Fiorina’s career.  She’s running as the former CEO of HP, so she has to face those facts.  She was fired as CEO, and as David W. Packard, a son of one of the founders of HP, said, nobody has hired her since.

Let’s not let Carly Fiorina use the Senate as a rebound gig.

“Let’s not forget that the HP board fired Fiorina  early in 2005, and no company has hired her since.” – David W. Packard, former HP board member and son of HP founder Dave Packard (San Jose Mercury News, “Opinion: Neither of HP’s founders would have endorsed Fiorina,” April 22, 2010)

“…Carly Fiorina was a failure at Hewlett-Packard.” – Michael S. Malone, ABCNews.com columnist and former Hewlett-Packard employee (ABC News/Money, “Carly Fiorina’s HP Legacy,” October 10, 2006)

“Fiorina’s reign at H-P…makes a great case study of exactly what not to do.” – TheStreet.com, “The Nation’s Worst CEOs,” June 10, 2004

“[H-P’s board members] lost faith in Carly…It is difficult to find anyone involved with H-P today — board member, shareholder, employee, customer, analyst — who isn’t happy that Ms. Fiorina is gone…” – Wall Street Journal, “H-P lost faith in Carly, but not in merger,” May 24, 2006

“Fiorina was bad.  Everyone seems to agree on this now… All in all, our judges seem to think Fiorina should win [the ‘Worst Tech CEO’ title].” – USA Today, “Can Fiorina trump competition for ‘worst tech CEO’ title?” February 16, 2005

“[Fiorina is] the worst because of her ruthless attack on the essence of this great company.  She destroyed half the wealth of her investors and yet still earned almost $100 million in total payments for this destructive reign of terror.” – Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale University (USA Today, “Can Fiorina trump competition for ‘worst tech CEO’ title?” February 16, 2005)

“Mass layoffs were announced at a time when we began to hear tales of lavish corporate jets and personal grooming assistants, and engineers were rumbling that they were being pushed out of decision making.  And then came Compaq…Finally the board had enough.  The value of the company had halved, staff were demoralized and sales were still not up to scratch.  Fiorina refused to resign so they gave her the boot, with a suitably huge payout.” – V3.co.uk, “Top 10 worst chief executives,” November 22, 2008

“A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered.” – CNBC Portfolio.com, “The Worst American CEOs of All Time,” April 30, 2009

“Examples of business leaders who rise to the heights of corporate power only to be brought down by their egos include Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco, and Carly Fiorina, former head of Hewlett-Packard.” – Steve Forbes and John Prevas, Power Ambition Glory, Crown Business, 2009, page 7