Ninety-one years ago today in 1919, the 19th Amendment was passed. YIPPEE to all women who were finally given the right to vote. It was hard earned and a long time coming. How can women today NOT participate in this most important activity that affects them at every level of their lives?
I’m talkin’ to you, Meg “Dim” Whitman.
Meg DimWhit is running for Governor of California. This is clearly a case of somebody who rose to her highest level of incompetency at EBay, retired with a billion dollars, and is bored. Nobody wants to hire her so she decides to run for elected office.
Politics might seem like a reasonable step IF she had ever been the slightest bit interested in the political system before. Here’s a hint. When you’re interested in the political process: You VOTE! In 28 years, Meg DimWhit voted only twice.
In 2003 a special election was held for the office of Governor of California (after the incumbent Gov. Davis was recalled.) It was a kooky race. There were 135 candidates on the ballot, including three actors: a TV star, a Hollywood action star, and a porn star. First you got to vote if the recall was just. Then you got to vote for someone in case the recall passed.
Ms. DimWhit didn’t bother to vote. Her excuse for her lack of registering and voting in general: “I was focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career, and we moved many, many times,” she said. (Contra Costa Times 10/05/09)
Meg Dahling, in 2003 you were CEO of EBay. As the boss, couldn’t you have taken fifteen minutes on your way to work to stop and vote? Guess not. Making billions of dollars at work to pad your own wallet is waaaay more important than making democracy work. Civic duty be damned when there’s money to be made! Or perhaps you were too busy making dubious (and now illegal) stock deals while on the Goldman Sachs BOD?
BTW, you weren’t that effective a CEO. Maybe missing a few hours (days, weeks, months) would have been beneficial to the company? Remember Skype, the botched PayPal purchase, and the brouhaha with CraigsList?
BTW, as an average person from the Silicon Valley area, EBay will LOSE in the court of public opinion against CraigsList any day. Given that CraigsList allows a category called “Adult Services” to flourish—a cover for prostitution/human trafficking/child sexual abuse—AND that site is still viewed more favorably than EBAY, just shows how badly YOU Meg DimWhitman screwed up EBay, tarnished its reputation, and most importantly, damaged the trust of its users.
That fact that DimWhit didn’t think voting was worthy of her time is problematic for someone running for political office. But what’s worse is the platform on which she’s running for office: As a “successful businessperson” who can successfully run a state government.
Her supposed kick-a business career is highly over-rated. There is plenty of evidence that her tenures at EBay, Hasbro, Disney, and FTD were NOT the glory days as she claims. (The info is out there.) The fact that she touts her business history as a big success is about as true as the number of years she claims to have lived in California or as true as her claim to have always been against off-shore drilling.
And speaking of lying, the biggest liar in America, Dick “Yes I am a dick” Cheney is endorsing her candidacy. (Yikes! Maybe he’s teaching her how to waterboard her opponents?)
Back to DimWhit’s so-called “business acumen.” It has been slammed in mainstream media, such as The NY Times, Fortune magazine, the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News (and others). But I didn’t have to read the negative press about her alleged glorious business career. All you had to do was be an EBay user back in the day to know that Ms. DimWhit is a LOUSY businesswoman.
I started buying (no selling) on EBay about ten years ago. There was “good stuff” to be had (for instance inexpensive designer clothes, like Christian LaCroix —yeah!) but it was a crap shoot if you would get the stuff as described and be treated well in the process. EBAy made it very difficult for a buyer to get a dispute resolved in his/her favor. Sellers were always given the better treatment.
The WORST part of EBay in the olden days under DimWhit’s draconian rule was the ability of a seller to leave negative feedback for a buyer. HUH? This made no sense to me. All a buyer has to do is pay the money. That fulfills his/her obligation. Why should a seller then have the ability to slam him/her?
Why? Because Ms. DimWhit valued sellers over buyers. This makes NO SENSE. (This creates an intimidating atmosphere where a buyer fears complaining about a dishonest seller. Bad for EBay users. Good for DimWhit who promoted that sceanario? Or was she just too dumb to notice?)
This policy is the equivalent of Macy’s Department stores valuing its vendors over the people who actually buy the goods in the store. Those people are called CUSTOMERS. It is not hard to find vendors. The hard part of any business is getting and keeping customers.
NEWSFLASH to Meg DimWhitman: CUSTOMERS are the most important equation in any business model. Business is about relationships. If you have a crappy relationship with your customers, you will have no more customers and no more business.
In Ms. DimWhit’s thinking, the Calvin Klein sales rep is more important than the woman who opens her purse to buy the jeans. But having heard enough complaints from EBay sellers as well, DimWhit didn’t value the sellers either! (Burdensome regulations, greedy profiteering, etc.) No wonder she got the boot!
And Dear Meg, if you are such a fantastic businessperson as you claim, how come no one offered you a job when you left EBay? (Same goes for Carly Fiorina from Hewlett Packard, but that’s another blog.)
BTW, after DimWhit left, the policy at EBay changed so that sellers are NOT ALLOWED to leave negative feedback about buyers. That’s as it should be. But DimWhit didn’t get it! She doesn’t know how to serve customers.
And this woman wants to run California? So on election day, let Californians say to Meg DimWhitman, “Sorry, you’ve been outbid!”
P.S. In California’s special gubernatorial election in 2003, one of the actors won that race. No, not the porn star. It was the action star. I can’t remember his name, but I really like his wife Maria Shriver!
