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The Shenzhenian Candidate: Meg Whitman Wants to be Governor of California
A couple of years ago, someone was trying to sell Vietnamese women on eBay. The auction went on for three days before eBay closed it down. EBay policy strictly forbids the sale or purchase of humans, living or dead. (Sorry, Owners of Ted Williams' head.) But you can see where the slave trader had gotten the wrong impression. The CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, had built a career on one job after another exploiting Asian women, the younger and more vulnerable the better.
That's real world business experience she'll bring to Sacramento as your governor.
Yesterday Meg Whitman resigned from the board of directors at eBay and from two other corporate boards. A last step, we're told, before formally announcing that she's running for governor of California. She'll be campaigning as that most Republican of icons, the Successful Business Leader Who Can Get Things Done. And you can see why:
- She has a billion dollars. (True, it used to be $1.4 billion, but there's a lot of that going around.)
- She ran eBay. (Okay, and it kind of stinks of death lately, but that's not her fault. Or entirely her fault.)
- She saw the future and bought the cutting edge Internet phone service Skype. (eBay just took a $900 million write-down on it. But still.)
And if that's not enough -- if you don't love and trust her already -- she used to be on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs.
"Meg Whitman is one of the most dynamic and forward-looking leaders in business today. She is an outstanding addition to our Board, and we look forward to working with her." -- Henry Paulson, 10/1/01.
"We are grateful to Meg for the contribution she has made as a director. We have benefited from her insight and dedication, and thank her on behalf of Goldman Sachs and its shareholders." -- Henry Paulson, accepting her resignation, effective immediately, fourteen months later.
(And the strip search was just a formality.)
But she's not just a titan of industry. She brought that same gimlet-eyed vision to the world of politics. In the last year, since she changed her party affiliation from "decline to state" to "Republican," she served as finance chair for Mitt Romney ($86.1 million spent / 133 delegates / $647,000 per delegate) and then appeared at the convention to electrify a nation for John McCain.
(Don't remember her? She opened for Carly Fiorina, best known for laying off 18,000 workers at Hewlett-Packard. The theme of the night? "Prosperity." I'm not making that up.)
Meg Whitman will probably buy a lot of television commercials, and you probably won't hear the word "Republican" much. You'll hear the words "manage," "solutions" and "success." Which is a nice way of saying "She's rich."
And they won't talk about where Meg Whitman got rich before eBay. Her real expertise is in globalization. Which is the nice way of saying Asian sweatshops.
Here are some highlights from her résumé. See if you can spot a pattern.
"Prior to eBay, Meg was the General Manager of Hasbro Inc.'s Preschool Division. In this position, Meg was responsible for global management and marketing..."
Young workers in China who make holiday toys for Disney, Hasbro and RC2... report that their bodies are often covered with red welts from the bug bites, which can easily become infected if the wounds are scratched... Workers are at the factory 93 hours a week, toiling 13 and a half-hour shifts, seven days a week...
-- National Labor Committee Report
"Meg served as President of the Stride Rite Corporation's Stride Rite Division... She had also been Executive Vice President for the Keds Division..."
Sixteen-year-olds put toxic glue onto Keds sneakers with their bare hands. When we visited the factory in July 1999, they were producing Keds sneakers for Stride Rite... When you went through the adhesive department where they worked your eyes stung from the strong chemical vapors. There was no special ventilation, nor were gloves or masks provided to the workers. The company general manager said they came to China "for the cheap labor" and "to get away from the unions in South Korea." According to the company the average wage was 42 cents an hour.
-- Another National Labor Committee Report
"Meg spent 1989 to 1992 at the Walt Disney Company, highlighted by her work as the Senior Vice President of Marketing of the Disney Consumer Products Division. During this time, she... developed the strategy for Disney's entry into the book publishing business..."
NEW YORK (CNN) - The National Labor Committee... made new charges Thursday against The Walt Disney Company, releasing a videotape alleging that two Chinese factories making books for Disney operate under unsafe conditions. "There's blood on this book," Kernaghan said as he held up a copy of a child's book made in China and published by Disney.
I'm not saying everything Meg Whitman touches turns to slave labor, I'm just not saying it doesn't.
Also, in fairness, she's worked for at least four companies that didn't take whatever she was in charge of and move it to the Pearl River Delta.
Where she could pay people forty-two cents an hour.
Also, I feel legally compelled to say that Hasbro and Disney and Stride-Rite know a lot better than I do whether they're behaving ethically. I've never even been to China.
And maybe the National Labor Committee just doesn't like Meg Whitman.
My point is, you can't simply write off Meg Whitman as another egomaniac stooge, set up to fail by a Republican party that needs a candidate who can finance herself. She's a real person. With a genuine record. Of callous indifference not just to the dignity of labor, but to suffering in general.
Getting back to the Vietnamese girls who weren't, in the end, sold on eBay. Hung Nguyen of the National Congress of Vietnamese Americans thanked Meg Whitman by name for eBay's quick action. But he didn't think that would be the end of human trafficking in Asia.
"The only real alternative is to give countries opportunities for people to educate and better themselves. If we could improve the economic conditions in places like Vietnam and Cambodia, there would be less likelihood that people would sell themselves or their children into slavery or brothels.''
Obviously he didn't know who he was talking to.
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I'm surprised that no one has brought up the fact that she publicly endorsed Prop 8. That's enough for me to not give Whitman another thought.
Hi Chris - it shows that you have never been to China and especially to Shenzhen. Its a beautiful city, with lots of factories too, a place where young Chinese flock to in huge numbers because they can have a share in the new and more prosperous China. There is poverty and immense wealth side by side. Like any mega city - such as NYC - one can find anything - the best and the worst, I know, I lived in both places for years. I prefer Shenzhen.
Meg Whitman: Like James Brown once said in a song title, talking loud and saying nothing.
I am upset about this expose. I find it to be premature. If we lambast her too much, she might not even become the nominee. The Republicans might find somebody better or more suitable. The Democrats shaping up to run for governor in 2010 are Gov. Jerry Brown or Senator Diane Feinstein. If the best the Republicans can come up with to face either of these two is a Meg Whitman, then our task is to encourage everyone who would care to listen, including Whitman herself, that she is indeed the next great hope for California.
Charidan
Too true..with DINO Diane thinking she can actually run and get elected after her many lousy votes and stands..and the Repub's popularity very questionable at best (especially after Ahnold's consistent slash and burn budget tactics)..it becomes very interesting whether Jerry Brown could once again become the Guv! Don't think that has happened before? Yes..we definitely encourage little Meg to run for office!
I thank Almighty God that I do not live in California and sympathize with those who do. I hope you find a solution to your problems but this elitist is not it.
The root of the problem is not race, not religion, nor culture. It has always beeen, is, and will likely always be about the haves vs. the have nots. Those who have want it ALL and those who don't just try to survive. This makes it very difficult for anyone of integrity to make any constructive changes for the benefit of the majority. Unfortunately, also finding people of integrity is getting more difficult as party ideology and greed rank at the top of the priority list. One man, no matter how good, can do it all.
Globalization is a concept breeding disaster for this country. As far as I and some others are concerned, our only interest is what is good for America. We are Americans first and foremost. I have no relatives or friends outside of this country and want none. The top priority of this government should be the welfare of its citizens. We are not our brother's keeper, unless our brother is in a zoo. Those who put the well-being of other countries ahead of our own should be charged with treason.
Meg Whitman should be called sweatshop Annie. Well California elected Arnold twice, lets see if they are dumb folks or just plain stupid.
I happened to catch a few minutes of her on TV the other day. I think it was on ABC in San Francisco on their second HD channel. It looked like a broadcast of a speech at the Commonwealth Club. Anyway, she was yammering on about innovation and "empowering the use community" at eBay and seemed quite proud of her "bottom up" style of running the company. Her example was the "user driven innovation" of selling used cars on eBay. It just happened!! Folks wanting to sell their cars used the "miscellaneous" category because there wasn't one for cars on eBay. For some reason, Whitman was proud of this, almost breathlessly proud. You see, this sort of adaption just wouldn't happen "in a top-down organization". Oh, no. No MBA would come up with it. It's better to let the masses solve problems!
Now, I seriously doubt that California needs a pseudo-populist from the right. Goodness knows, we have too many of them on the national scene as it is. But I know for sure that we do not need one who managed to run eBay without having had the sense to at least peruse the categories one routinely finds in any want-ads section of any newspaper on the planet.
What are the chances we could get a SMART populist to run?
She is wholly unsuitable to be Governor of California or any other state. The less said about this person the better.
She is unsuitable, but I diagree: the MORE SAID, the MORE EXPOSED, the MORE SCRUTINIZED, the better.
Actually, I find this expose premature. We should wait and let her become the nominee, and then drop the hammer. Then she will be sitting duck to either Gov. Jerry Brown or Sen Diane Feinstein, either of whom will be the Democratic candidate.
Charidan
CA is on the verge of bankruptcy. Let's see what her plan is. The problem Arnold is having is the same one Grey Davis had before him: Not enough Tax Revenue with some of the lowest property tax rates in the country (Thanks Prop 13!). Problem is, Repubs will never admit they have to raise taxes to balance the budget (cutting spending alone won't get it done). Instead, they try to assess high feees for services in lieu of calling them taxes, and every single initiative has to be funded by a bond measure which costs the state hundreds of millions in interest charges, further draining resources. If she has a magic bullet for that, I'd say fire away. Otherwise she will have a significant uphill climb in a state that despite the Prop 8 result, doesn't break Republicans way in the current election cycle.
It'll never happen...
I hope the people tell her where to stick it. and run her outta California. She would fit in better in Oklahoma, or Mississippi.
Run her out of the country-she and her kind are an affront to everything decent this country has stood for. And to hell with globalization and all those who support it-there are the anti-Americans!
Keep the blogs and words flying and we can take down any over-valued, under-talented, business exec with aspirations to make "change that matters". She, Carly and most of them who made oodles of cash over the past 15 years are not suitable for public office as they mainly got rich by gambling on others hard work. Yes, they gambled well and struck it rich but their only motive was profit. The words "sustainability" and "compassion" were never used. Screw her and screw them all!
Her true legacy is wrecking e-Bay. She pulled down millions as she helped turn e-Bay from an auction site to a site that gives preference to large companies dumping cheap products, many of which might emanate from the very sweat shops you cite. Where does buy.com gets its products from? And why does buy.com have advantages over other sellers, even power sellers who helped build e-bay over the years.
Reporters should have attended every recent e-bay convention and taken the time to research vendor complaints, especially those from power sellers.
She and Carly Fiorina are high-flatuin' superstars for the GOP. Too bad, the men of the GOP never get beyond surface impressions. Carly wrecked HP. Meg wrecked e-Bay. And, Sarah .... nuf said.
What California needs is a governor that believes in prison reform. So anybody who is beholden to the
prison guards union is out (Davis, Pete Wilson and especially Feinstein and quite possibly Jerry Brown).
Unfortunately every political race these days is one-upsmanship on who can be tough on crime...
It's painfully obvious that NOBODY is tough on crime at the federal level. If they were, Bush. Cheney, and MANY members of Congress would be behind bars., not to mention most of the criminals on Wall Street that they just bailed out. Crime doesn't pay?-GET REAL!
all of this should be a reminder to buy american made products... oh, yeah, people like her are part of why we can't find much anymore made in america...
which is one of the reasons the american economy is in such desperate straits - we don't MAKE anything
pay attention, people to where your money is and isn't going after it leaves your hands, and act upon your values
Why do you think making things is important?
Are there any American made products anymore?
So we don't have to buy from the Chinese Communists while our people are out of work! DUH!
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