On Meet the Press, Meg Whitman’s consultant, Mike Murphy, laid it out for all the Californians that are getting extremely annoyed with Whitman’s incessant ads:
MR. ASLAN: My question, Mike, is, why does Meg what to be governor of California? Why would anyone want to be governor of California?
MR. MURPHY: Because…
MS. MYERS: Let alone spend 140 million of their own money to get it.
MR. MURPHY: Yeah, but the money is about getting–California is so expensive, $3 million a week for television, it’s about getting a message out against the entrenched public employee unions.
MR. GREGORY: OK.
MR. MURPHY: I’m mean, I’m…(unintelligible)…but I believe it. I live there. I care about it. (Meet the Press, h/t to LA Times)
So, the reason that she wants to buy the governor’s office? Well, we didn’t really get an answer to that one, now did we. But what did we get an answer for? Well, apparently Meg Whitman needs to spend 3 million per week to fight the unions that put up…a grand total of around $8 million this summer. And there’s not going to be a lot more than that.
The truth is that Meg Whitman is using the state of California. She wants to decimate the middle class by crushing the organization of labor in the state and to use the gig as a jumping off point for her further national political ambitions.
But when you come down to it, there is no there there. Her plans, even according to her Republican “friend”, the current Governor, are nothing more than cheap campaign promises. And when she does come close to laying out a plan, she gets the facts wrong in her haste to make state employees the face of all that is wrong in California.
What is wrong is that we have stopped investing in our state. We have stopped building infrastructure, reduced our investments in K12 and higher education, and stopped planning for the future, instead coasting on the success of the master plan legacy. That will not be sufficient if we are to compete in the 21st century. Maybe Meg Whitman knows that, maybe she doesn’t. But either way, her stated goals are just wrong for California.
Meg wants the Governorship as a springboard to a presidential run – either in 2012 or 2014.
Her platform is simply wealth protection and tax avoidance.
David Gregory is too stupid to consider ask t you answer the question Mr. Murphy, voters have a right to know how a personally wealthy but civically lazy former business women intends to steer this ship of state.
She and Carly keep talking about how the Texas business climate is preferable to ours. Why neither one has moved to Texas, set up a business there, or run for office there is a question I’d like to hear the answer to. My expectation is that both like all aspects of California living except for the workforce who expects to earn a wage that one can live on.
Her history with BAIN Capital leads me to believe that Mitt Romney may be positioning his old business partner for a presidential run with him as Veep due to his slim chances of getting the party nomination.
Wall Street would fund that race as she’s funding this one.
Not only have neither of them started a business, their records were less than stellar at the last businesses they ran. It’s that old joke about being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple.
People who like Texas don’t move there because the air and water are filthy, the schools are awful, and the government doesn’t work. It’s almost impossible for workers or ordinary consumers to get justice in their court system. But it’s pretty common for workers to get hurt or killed there. This is what you would expect in a state that lets companies run wild, has no regulations to speak of, and no tax income to pay for anything. Molly Ivins used to call it “the national laboratory for bad government.”
No wonder corporate honchos love it as a concept, but wouldn’t want to live there.