Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, now wants to run for president as a Republican and believes that she has diagnosed a major problem with the United States economy, and it has to do with the on-the-job online viewing habits of American workers.
While many potential voters may be wondering who Carly Fiorina is, exactly, business analysts will quickly recall the former tech chief as one of the “worst CEOs of all time,” as she was often characterized following her six-year tenure at the head of the Silicon Valley giant.
According to reports from that time, Fiorina tripled her own salary while CEO of HP, while at the same time rendering about 30,000 of the company’s workers jobless in layoffs and firings while presiding over a 50 percent plunge in Hewlett-Packard stock value. Morale reportedly became so poor within the once-great technology firm that employees would openly boo Fiorina at company meetings.
But the seeming lack of respect between workers and Fiorina remains mutual, even a decade after she was given a $42 million “golden parachute” by HP in exchange for leaving the company.
In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday morning, Fiorina gave her diagnosis of the problems she perceives with American industry in the present economy.
“How many Inspector General reports do we need to read that say, you know, you can watch porn all day long and get paid exactly the same way as somebody who’s trying to do their job?” she said to Wallace on the Fox News broadcast.
Fiorina did not specify, and Wallace did not ask, exactly which jobs these are that will pay workers to “watch porn all day long” while not only keeping their jobs but being showered with full salaries. But she did promise to cut the pay of public employees based on “performance.”
In the same interview, Fiorina lashed out at likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, saying that Clinton’s recent statements regarding her email usage while secretary of state display a lack of candor which “suggests her character is flawed.”
If indeed Fiorina follows through with her presidential candidacy, in which she would seek the Republican nomination — and Fiorina told Walace that there is “a higher than 90 percent chance” that she will, indeed, join the Republican fray — it will not be her first political rodeo.
In 2010, Carly Fiorina won the California Republican nomination for U.S. Senate after donating $5.5 million of her own money to her primary campaign. But she lost the election to incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer.
[Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images]