back to article eBay Meg bitchslapped by Governor Moonbeam

Meg Whitman's expensive bid for the governorship of California has failed: she lost out to Jerry Brown - aka "Governor Moonbeam" - who last held the job in 1975. Democrat Brown, previously the youngest person to hold the state's top job, is now the oldest elected governor. He inherits a state with serious budget problems. And …

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  1. Jason Hall

    Pocket-lining

    "Whitman spent $140m on her campaign, $119m of it from her own pocket - which would win a lot of auctions at the online tat bazaar eBay which she used to run."

    If there was anything more needed to show that being in office is absolutely nothing to do with public service and more with a politician lining their own pockets then I'm not sure what is.

    1. Andrew Norton
      Pirate

      brewsters Millions

      "Heller and Salvino are both just a couple of overgrown Wharf Rats. Why else would anybody spend $10Million to get a $60,000/year job, unless he planned to steal it back with interest."

      ahem, vote Pirate!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Jobs Horns

      Meggy thinks she is Lord, the Audience say Fraud

      http://nomeg2010.com/the-campaign/meg-whitman-booed-after-refusing-to-take-down-attack-ads/

      I just loved this bit in the video....

      2.37 - 2.45.

      "Meg Whitman was at a womens conference.

      She was the only woman on stage.

      There were 14,000 women in the audience

      And they were booing her."

      1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

        Re: Meggy thinks she is Lord, the Audience say Fraud

        Yeah, but why is that a thing? Some women don't like another woman. We don't all blindly think all women are awesome. If that were the case I would be cheering Ann Widdecombe on in Strictly. And I am not.

  2. Number6

    No Merger

    I guess that puts any plans to merge California with Nevada on hold. Better luck next time, Carly.

  3. Steen Hive
    Thumb Up

    Jerry Brown!

    See: Dead Kennedys - "California Über Alles"

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Steen Hive

      Jello "shock people to make a buck" Biafra's lyrics are just as much theater as any politician's commentary ... something lost on most pseudo-Punk rockers ;-)

    2. Bryce Prewitt

      Such a killer tune, though.

      Jello actually came out to say years later that Brown wasn't "all that bad" of a governor.

      I guess that's akin to Iggy Pop coming out and endorsing a car insurance provider but still. Or coming out and endorsing Sum 41.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Bryce Prewitt

        Agreed. Biafra & Co. are regularly featured when I want to annoy the neighbors.[1]

        I first heard the tune "live" here in the SF-Bay Area within a couple weeks of it being written. The DKs opened for The Ramones, and The Cramps hit the stage un-announced to round out the evening ... I *think* it was at The Philmore in SF, but it might have been in one of the East Bay clubs. It's not that I don't like the genre, it's just that people take it out of context so often.

        Brown wasn't a bad Governor (ignored the executive mansion, instead rented a small apartment within walking distance of The State Capitol; drove an aging Plymouth (when not walking, which was rare), which was later sold off for charity, etc.). He's a reasonable bloke. He'll do a good job again ... Hopefully Newsom pays attention.

        [1] Not really. I'm far enough from anyone else here that the neighbors can't hear me on the rare occasion that I want to let loose :-)

  4. TeeCee Gold badge
    Unhappy

    The tea-potty woman lost?

    Shame, I rather enjoyed the eclectic selection of "WTF?" moments she caused and was hoping that she would stick around to entertain me in the future.

    1. Maverick128

      No worries

      I'm sure you'll still hear from her. Those tea bagger loonies don't really know how to shut up or go away. We still have that Sarah Palin one spouting sewage on a daily basis even though she lost 2 years ago.

    2. Tom 13

      That woman was no tea party candidate

      She just tried to spin it that way, and the LSM (John Oates included*) are more than happy to spin it that way to legally slander an honorable group of people. Rand Paul was a tea party candidate, as was Marco Rubio. They both won their races handily.

      *Why? Because in an election even the Washington Post is admitting is a historic victory for the Republican party and the Tea Party people who brought them to it, he has chosen to focus on two losers from the land of fruits and nuts. He'll make some lame excuse about these are the only two people with an IT angle, but it really is just what I called it: a lame excuse.

  5. breakfast Silver badge
    Alert

    The problem with democracy

    It looks from here as though the problem California has is so much democracy they end up paralysing themselves. It may be democratic to ask the public about every single budgetary decision, but it seems like the public are very reluctant to make any tough choices or work in the long term. Admittedly, politicians don't have the knack of that last one either. Really brings home the whole "least worst option" aspect of democratic governance.

    Nice to see the Billionaires Tea Party have done well though- a great day for the average American billionaire in the street.

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Whitman was on the ballot?

    And here I was wondering why Alternet.org was slamming her in at least two articles.

    Damn lefties...

  7. Dunstan Vavasour

    Snatching defeat...

    If the Republicans had put up more mainstream candidates for the senate, they might have taken a majority. Getting hijacked by fruitcakes (the label "Tea Party" seems to be a flag of convenience rather than a coherent political philosophy) has cost them dearly.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    HA hHA HA HA HA HA HA

    There's something very suspicious going on when someone is prepared to spend 120 million for a job that pays around $200 thousand.

    I said I'd be laughing for a week if she loses and so I've just started.

  9. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Happy

    Looking at the election results

    words fail me.

  10. fartbox

    Wasting money...

    How on earth is it possible to spend $140M on an election campaign? Are trashy TV ads and pretentious political advisors/consultants really that expensive?

    1. Graham Marsden

      @Wasting money...

      Have a look at some of the election episodes of the West Wing and you'll find that, yes, it really *is* that expensive to run for office in the USA, you need to pay huge amounts for "media buys" (ie advertisements) pay lots of staff to phone (and irritate) lots of people to find which issues you need to campaign on, have lots of advisers, do lots of travelling and much more besides.

    2. Tom 13

      They are in

      the land of fruits and nuts. Major tv markets there. No freebie airtime unless you are union goon.

    3. PT

      TV ads

      Maybe individual ads aren't very expensive - though I imagine the rates double as election day looms - but it's the number of them. 8 breaks an hour, times as many as 100 channels, times sometimes three to five in a row, times many weeks - it adds up. Then there's the direct mail. On average I received 12 ounces a day of political trash for the last 4 weeks.

      If America ever wants to get serious about campaign finance reform, instead of making it harder to raise money, they should make it harder to spend it.

    4. LateNightLarry
      Paris Hilton

      Wasting money...

      It's easy to spend $160M (only $140M was her own money) if you:

      1. Start your campaign 18 months before the election.

      2. Run many television and radio spots nearly every day. California has more than a dozen major and many more "minor" media markets in a state that is more than 800 miles long and 200 miles wide... and she placed her TV and radio spots in all of them.

      3. Hire "big name" campaign experts to manage you and your campaign and give them a free hand in doing their job.

      4. Hire massive banks of robocallers and the staff to man them. I received more than a dozen of her d*** phone calls in the last five days before the election, and I'm registered Decline to State (DTS); maybe that's why I got so many calls.

      5. Try to single-handedly erase the post office deficit with dozens of state-wide mailers, and dozens more targeted mailers, including many in both English and Spanish.

      6. Never meet with the newspaper editorial boards unless your campaign advisors are present to spin everything, in fact never meet with the newspapers at all, and don't take questions at "press conferences"

      7. Spend, speeeeeend, speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend

      I heard one estimate that she was spending $1,000,000 a day during the last two months of the campaign. I think that estimate was way low. Her campaign mailers undoubtedly kept printers all over the US busy the last several months, as well as demolished several entire forests, and will keep the paper recyclers busy for another month.

      She claimed late in the campaign that she had to spend that much money to match the money that Jerry Brown and all the unions supporting him were spending... she outspent them by maybe 400%

      Paris, because she could have spent far less money and gotten more votes.

  11. jake Silver badge

    I wouldn't say bitchslapped by Brown ...

    I'd say bitchslapped by the general public.

    Kinda the point of elections, no?

    1. Ron Luther
      Coat

      Close ...

      More of an own-goal in Meg's case.

      1. LateNightLarry
        Paris Hilton

        Close

        The running joke on several blogs and/or forums was that thought EVERYTHING has a "Buy It Now" button on it, including the governor's chair. She was just trying to outbid everybody else for the job. She outbid everybody, but still didn't win the bid.

        Paris, because even she knows that you can't buy certain political offices by throwing money at them... just Congress critters.

  12. ian 22
    Paris Hilton

    Meg & Carly are gone, BUT

    we'll always have Sarah Palin and Paris!

  13. RW
    Boffin

    @ Dunstan Vavasour

    The US political system does not place great power in the national parties. In particular, and *afaik* every candidate has to be chosen by the state party. Generally speaking, party politics in the US is far more open and less controlled by wannabe central committee bolshevists.

    I am always astonished to read how in the British system, Labour's central committee can dictate who will run in what riding. In the US, rather than a show of raw power, the equivalent is done by channeling campaign funds, though the bolshevists at the center are still bound by the choice of the state party organization.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not even chosen by the state parties per se

      Ever since the Progressives came in to "clean up" politics, every political candidate declares his or her intention to run for office, files the paper work and pays his money, then runs in a primary campaign. Some are closed meaning you can only vote for a candidate in your party, some are open, meaning you can vote for any candidate in any party. Most registered voters have never been to a party meeting, and campaigning is almost exclusively by tv ads, FaceBook, and Twitter. The end result is the primaries are a weeding, and the general election is sort of a run-off election. Except in districts (like DC, most of Maryland, or Chicago) where one party has such an overwhelming registration advantage that the primary effectively is the general election (hence Robert Novak [DC resident] being registered as a Democrat even though he was clearly in the Republican camp philosophically).

  14. Bryce Prewitt
    Go

    California really dodged a bullet last night.

    Whitman lost her bid for DAS GOVERNATOR and Fiorina lost her bid to LAY OFF SILICON VALLEY... I mean for Senate.

    Really dodged a bullet, Cali.

  15. JaitcH
    FAIL

    Hooray! No more US electioneering for a few months.

    The US election seasons are very, very long but you really get to know all about those who run.

    That is what happened to both Whitman and Fiorina, we found out that they were simply a couple of really bitchy women who were so shallow. And Whitman fired her Mexican home help - in a state with 30% Mexican ethnic population.

    1. LateNightLarry
      Joke

      Hooray! No more US electioneering for a few mont

      Guess you haven't heard... the campaigns for 2012 will start later this week, after everybody considering running recovers from their hangover. I would love to see the campaigning period limited to six weeks, no more. I get too much political junk mail, and too d*** many robocalls for politicians. Next time, I'm turning my answering machine OFF for the month before the election, or get one that allows me to set it for only an outgoing message.

      The whole election process in the US has become a joke... a VERY BAD joke...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Meggy Whitman.....

    I have had an intense dislike for Whitman and her "dishonest policies" when she ran Ebay - for a long time.

    "The way I ran Ebay" - as the CEO - makes me a success! - Does it?

    Rigging the 3 card shuffle - No contact numbers, no customer service, formula emails by a hopeless predictive auto-responder; and the all under the guise of "We only run the site - and we don't get involved in the interactions" excuse for not providing any customer service.

    That all pumps up profits - by minimising expenditure.

    So the global trade in FAKES really kicked in - with Ebay trafficking in 30% of the words fakes...

    Meg Whitman rigged it for Tax Avoidance - so that the Ebay head office was in California - AND the head quarters were in Bern Switzerland - thus shovellling gobs of money into her own hands, instead of "Broke and Bankrupt" California - that she was she said, intent on saving.

    She also intended to "save California" by giving tax breaks to people like herself - so she paid none and everyone else paid double..

    The other way that Ebay was "run on the scum" level of cheap by by providing virtually NO security to the site - now it's hacked and phished by the squillions for millions.

    Shill bidding is NORMAL and illegal, and the people who run Ebay (i.e. Whitman) did nothing about it, so that people buying stuff were getting scammed by the seller or their network bidding against themselves.

    The purchasing of penny credits - for getting "feed back reputation" by selling and buying worthless and non existant "fluff" so that one could trump up "I am a great seller with 99.9% positive feedback" on 10,000 items, for selling little more than the cash for that - and then they could start to move some big ticket items - that after taking the money - never got delivered....

    Meg Whitman was only too happy to make money from other peoples deceit, misfortune and corrupt pratices; and she would never get the bad sellers thrown off the site - no matter how many people had reported them for theft and criminal activities etc.

    Ebay has earned a bad reputation for giving the police and consumer protection services the run around.....

    Organised rings of fakes and counterfeiters worked through Ebay and unless it became a huge public embarrasment for them or they were court ordered to take action, the people who managed Ebay never once pulled the crime gangs from Ebay.

    Meg Whitman profited from all of this.

    And you can see it in how she operated with her house keeper.

    First she decides to go into politics - so she fires her housekeeper with the forged papers.

    She and her husband KNEW she was an undocumented worker.... so when caught out, they said "OH we did not know that her papers were forged"

    That was fine until the lawyer pulled out some Social Security type papers with Whitman's husband's signature on it.

    Whitman spouted all this shit "Oh the maid was like our family - we cared for her so much"...

    So when the opportunity arose to help her get US citizenship - did she? Nope Whitman kicked her out on her ass on the street - for political expediency and when Whitman got nailed on all the issues, she says, "The maid should be deported" - and then when the string of lies and deceit and nastyness did not go over very well with potential voters - Whitman back pedaled again by saying it's a federal issue and nothing to do with her...

    There was the womens conference in California - and in the video Meg refuses to pull her never ending stream of wall to wall, 24/7, all media, saturation NEGATIVE advertising - and the women - all 14,000 of them...... well Whitman showed her true, "nasty and stupid" colours - and they booed her......

    http://nomeg2010.com/the-campaign/meg-whitman-booed-after-refusing-to-take-down-attack-ads/

    I just loved this bit in the video....

    2.37 - 2.45.

    Meg Whitman was at a womens conference.

    She was the only woman on stage.

    There was 14,000 women in the audience

    And they were booing her.

    This guy has an interesting take on the situation.

    http://www.calbuzz.com/2010/10/emegs-historic-meltdown-woman-booed-by-women/

    Sleazy in business - equals sleazy at home - equals sleazy in politics.

    So goodbye Whitman.

  17. mhenriday
    Pint

    The best democracy money can buy -

    but sometimes 140 million USD just doesn't cut the mustard. Back to the drawing board - or the kitchen !...

    Henri

  18. VulcanV5
    Unhappy

    Quite a revelation

    And there was I, thinking that every political position in the USA was available as a BIN.

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