You're no good, baby, you're no good

CNBC will never be considered as anything but wildly supportive of the investor class and anti-labor/common people.

Yet even by their Gordon Gecko standards, Carly Fiorina was too greedy:

A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She 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.

THE STAT: HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.

And then there's her little Iran problem:

Fiorina's having a rough time of it. Her latest problem: defending herself against charges that HP made loads of money during her tenure by selling its products in Iran despite a U.S. trade embargo. "To her knowledge, during her tenure, HP never did business in Iran," Fiorina's campaign told the San Jose Mercury News.

Really? Fiorina had no idea? That's odd, since...

• Fiorina in 2003 noted Middle East sales were defying global trends, and, as theMerc notes, HP's partner there issued a press release saying sales topped $100 million and that "the seeds of the Redington-Hewlett-Packard relationship were sowed six years ago for one market - Iran."
  
• Three of the three HP partners in the Middle East contacted by Christopher Stewart for a story in Portfolio magazine's August 2008 issue readily agreed to ship printers to Iran. Portfolio notified HP of the incidents, but the company didn't condemn them, instead refusing comment. Fiorina was gone as CEO at this point, but Portfolio noted that diversion of American products to Iran trough Dubai had been going strong for many years.
• HP had an office in the Dubai free-trade zones notorious for funneling American goods to Iran, Portfolio reported — so it had ample means to be aware of how its products were being shipped.
  
• After the SEC noticed the prevalance of HP products in Iran, it asked the company about the matter, and got back a letter from the company saying its Dutch subsidiary sold $120 million to Iran in 2008.
• Finally, in January 2009, HP severed ties with Redington Gulf, the distributor that had publicly bragged about its Iran trade six years earlier.

Yep, Carly was selling to embargoed/Demonic Iran while most people, especially conservatives, thought we should be invading/bombing Iran back to the Stone Age.

Making a profit from blood and tears and American lives. A good conservative, Carly is.

Nice work if you can get it, And if you get it --Won't you tell me how?

Carly Fiorina is the gift that keeps on giving. Sam Stein writes at HuffPost:

Carly Fiorina, a key surrogate for John McCain on economic issues, said on Tuesday that Sarah Palin does not have the experience needed to run a major company like the one that Fiorina formerly headed.

"Do you think [Sarah Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?" asked the host.

"No, I don't," responded Fiorina. "But you know what? That's not what she's running for."

As Howie Mandel used to say,'No, wait!"

Fiorina went on MSNBC to defend her comments and decides to double down, arguing that John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joseph Biden couldn't run Hewlett Packard either. The Obama campaign, seeking to compound the fallout of her earlier statement, highlights just the portion where she talks about McCain.

"If John McCain's top economic advisor doesn't think he can run a corporation, how on Earth can he run the largest economy in the world in the midst of a financial crisis? Apparently even the people who run his campaign agree that the economy is an issue John McCain doesn't understand as well as he should," said Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor.

Problem is, Fiorina couldn't run HP either. Oliver Willis sets the record straight:

She was brought on board to grow HP, but instead laid off people then pushed the company into a merger with Compaq that turned into a mess and was opposed by Walter Hewlett, son of HP co-founder and tech pioneer Bill Hewlett. A little after that she was effectively fired by the board of directors.

And yet, this is the leading voice on the Republican side for business and economics. She must have some freaky pictures of someone or something, because even the McCain people can’t be this stupid.

Here is a chart of HP’s stock performance during Fiorina’s tenure (July 19, 1999 - February, 10, 2005):

And here is HP’s chart post-Fiorina (July 19, 1999 February, 10, 2005 - present):

So how's this all playing for Carly? Not well:

"Carly will now disappear," this source said. "Senator McCain was furious." Asked to define "disappear," this source said, adding that she would be off TV for a while – but remain at the Republican National Committee and keep her role as head of the party’s joint fundraising committee with the McCain campaign.

Fiorina was booked for several TV interviews over the next few days, including one on CNN. Those interviews have been canceled.

A third source said "it was another bad day for her, and important people are mad because the timing is horrible… But I would not necessarily buy the Siberia storyline."

It's like standing in the rain, while dismissing the idea of gravity. You look stupid, and you get wet.

Here's a great movie version of the title song "Nice Work If You Can Get It" from A Damsel In Distress (1937) featuring some guy named Astaire:

Here's 50 million dollars - go'n leave us alone (Do U wanna, do U wanna - golden parachute)

Evidence continues to mount: If you want something to fail, you hire someone who knows how to fail. GWBush has done this throughout is mal-administration.

Carly Fiorina's presidency of HP (Hewlett-Packard) was an Epic Fail. Yet in another example of right-wing economics, she was rewarded with a Golden Parachute valued at $42 million.

Marcy says today:

John McCain and Sarah Palin both came out today to condemn CEOs who get golden parachutes. Here's McCain:

We will stop multimillion dollar payouts to CEO’s who have broken the public trust.

And here's Palin:

We're going to reform the way Wall Street does business and stop multimillion-dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust.

Seems to me McCain could put that campaign promise into effect right away. One of his top advisors, Carly Fiorina, who laid off 20,000 HP workers, oversaw huge losses, and engaged in corporate spying. Sure sounds like she "broke the public trust" to me. And for her troubles, HP gave her $21.4 million in severance pay, plus another $21.1 million in stock options and other benefits.

Over $42 million for--as John McCain describes it--breaking the public trust.

Call John McCain's campaign at (703) 418-2008 and demand that McCain stand by his promise to stop this practice. Ask him to demand this his campaign advisor, Carly Fiorina, give back her loot to HP's stockholders.

Indeed.

Marcy & I have started a Facebook group: Make McCain Close Carly's Golden Parachute.

Please join, wake the neighbors, tell the kids. We'd like to get other bloggers, and anybody else on board, who think that McCain and the Republicans surrounding him are hypocrites.