Tag: Barbara Boxer

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folly ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Fiorina Fires Back

Fiorina, employment, HP, CEO, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, jobs, Presidential, collage, photomontage, illustration, JGill, Common Sense

Politicians love talking up job creation. Presidential candidates, especially, pretend to a Svengali-​like virtuosity in producing paychecks and, if only handed the keys to the White House, creating — presto! — a bunch more.

This year, Republican Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-​Packard, has been repeatedly attacked by Democrats, democratic socialists and her Republican opponents for firing 30,000 workers during her tenure running the company. As if she did so out of meanness.

Sunday, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd went at her again.

“I find it very rich,” Fiorina fired back. “Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, all the Democrats who are attacking me, they’ve never created a job, they’ve never saved a job, and their policies destroy jobs, including Mrs. Clinton’s latest position on Keystone Pipeline.”

Mrs. Fiorina offers context for her “failure”: “I led HP through a very difficult time. The NASDAQ dropped 80 percent. Some of our strongest competitors went out of business altogether, taking every job with them.” As she sees it, her team “saved 80,000 jobs. We went on to grow to 150,000 jobs. We quadrupled the growth rate of the company, quadrupled the cash flow of the company, tripled the rate of innovation of the company. And went from lagging behind to leading in every single product and every single market. I will run on that record all day long.”

I’m not endorsing Fiorina, either as candidate or as CEO. Just sayin’ that those attacking her on 30,000 jobs don’t know anything at all about actually creating even one real one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fiorina, employment, HP, CEO, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, jobs, Presidential, collage, photomontage, illustration, JGill, Common Sense

 

Categories
nannyism

Five Senators for Death

“Beware: Second-​hand stupidity kills.”

That’s just one of the killer lines from Greg Gutfeld’s rant against the five Democratic senators who introduced a bill to ban marketing e‑cigarettes to teenagers. (It’s from The Five’s e‑cig segment I linked to on Saturday.) Gutfeld called the e‑cig “the greatest medical device since The Clapper,” arguing that it signifies the “first real progress for ending smoking … for good.”

To Barbara Boxer’s claim that there is no way of knowing whether e‑cigs are harmful, Gutfeld responded: “Science, you bozo.”

Boxer and her comrades are, by my lights, far worse than bozos.

They fixate — like the puritanical Nanny State thugs they are — on the “Ooh, bad people get addicted to bad substances” aspect of the issue, rather than on the tremendous leap forward the new technology provides existing smokers. They fear, they say, kids starting with e‑cigs and then taking up smoking tobacco. An unlikely scenario. Nicotine via water vapor is not a likely “gateway” to nicotine-​with-​deadly-​tars via smoke.

E‑cigs aren’t for everyone. The guy who puts these Common Sense episodes up online for me has tried it, and failed. Not a smoker, he wanted to see if he could swap some caffeine over-​use with some controlled nicotine use. But he could not breathe the hot steam in.

The gateway was closed.

For smokers, however, the device serves as a wonderful substitution, swapping deadly tar-​producing smoke sticks with a much cleaner nicotine rush. It will save lives.

Regulating it, taxing it — discouraging its use — would, as Gutfeld says, “make Death smile.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability local leaders national politics & policies

Mysteriously Missing Politicians

I almost feel sorry for politicians so afraid of angry freedom-​loving constituents that they couldn’t even hold a townhall meeting this summer to spout reassuring lies about the Democrats’ medical reform proposals.

I say, “almost feel sorry” … well, not quite “almost” — Okay, I don’t feel sorry for them at all.

Neither does blogger Leslie Eastman. Recently, Leslie and 300 other nefariously well-​dressed California citizens visited the local offices of U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. They merely wished for these office-​holders — who until now have strenuously abstained from conducting public meetings to defend their plans for more government intervention in medical care — to emerge from their hidey-​holes and defend their notions. Live and in person.

No luck.

In fact, an office supervisor admitted that Senator Boxer had not graced her San Diego office with her presence in over two years. Says Leslie, “I think there was a revolution [once] because of taxation without representation, but I digress.”

Maybe we can help Leslie find the missing politicians. Another blogger, Ed Morrisey over at hotair​.com, is hot on the trail, being very helpful with a post entitled “Who Are Your Milk Carton Politicians?” During the August recess, many politicians across the nation headed for the hills, unwilling to squarely face constituents and defend their pro-​government takeover of American medicine. 

Is your congressman on the list?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.