Meg Whitman hasn’t had the best history with knowing what she’s talking about in the governor’s race.  And her latest approach to save $15 Billion, by wishing it were so, isn’t exactly going to win any Big Thinker prizes. Basically she plans on cutting 40,000 state jobs, but doesn’t exactly explain where the other 12.5 billion or so will come from:

“What everyone agrees on is that we have a government we can no longer afford,” said Whitman, a billionaire who has donated nearly $40 million to her campaign. “We have to take a different approach.”

Asked how that message would play in San Bernardino, where state and county government agencies are some of the largest employers, Whitman said many public employees agree that something has to change. She also said she would try to cut most of those 40,000 jobs through retirement and attrition.

“Not everyone will be supportive,” she said. “But my obligation (as governor) is to run the state efficiently.”

She later added, “This is a tough job – you haven’t have a huge need to be liked.”

Other than by cutting the state’s payroll, Whitman said she wants to cut state spending by finding fraud and abuse in public assistance programs – something that’s already been a focus for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – and by privatizing parts of the state government, possibly including prisons. (SB Sun)

Ah yes, waste fraud and abuse. The right-wing panacea when you don’t have anything real to say. It must be waste fraud and abuse. Not people who can’t find jobs. Or students trying to get an education. But waste fraud and abuse.  Despite every audit showing that “waste, fraud, and abuse” accounts for a very small percentage of the budget, Whitman’s still going to go there.  Perhaps she has no personal experience with defrauding the government, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising opposition researcher came up with some juicy morsel. But, you can’t deny that Meg Whitman has personal experience with mass layoffs. Now, there’s a leader with experience that California can really use: a layoff artist. I wonder if George Clooney’s character from Up in the Air is available too.

More puzzling is this web video trying to position herself as the more conservative of the two Republican candidates.  If I read this right, Meg Whitman is anti-choice and opposes stem cell research. I wonder if Whitman knows anything about the position of vast majorities of Californians on those two issues.  If not, Meg Whitman  should look back to some of the elections in which she did not participate. Perhaps the one that sold bonds for stem cell research, or the three constitutional amendments to endanger the lives of children. (Props 73, 85 and 4)

But, I guess you’d have to vote to be up on those issues. And voting is for the plebes.