Free Republic

She won’t be leading the Crimson, but green shouldn’t be a problem. Outgoing Harvard President Claudine Gay will still likely earn nearly $900,000 a year despite being forced to resign her position as the school’s top administrator. Political Science professor Gay — who stepped down amid a tempest of allegations she did not do enough to combat antisemitism and academic plagiarism Tuesday — will now return to a position on the Cambridge, Mass., school’s faculty. Prior to being named president just six months ago, Gay earned $879,079 as a Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean in 2021 and $824,068 in...

Ted Cruz launched a searing critique of Capitol Hill's bipartisan budget deal on Tuesday afternoon, slamming outgoing House Speaker John Boehner for leaving Congress via a "golden parachute" and accusing GOP leaders of capitulating to President Barack Obama."It is complete and utter surrender," Cruz said. "We now have a GOP Congress, but no one watching this budget surrender would know it." Though dozens of Capitol Hill Republicans have knocked the compromise legislation, Cruz's criticisms stood out from the rest of the pack just a day before he will take the GOP debate stage in Colorado. And they continued his running...

It’s enough to make any Wisconsin taxpayer sick. For 40 years, state legislators have enjoyed a special benefit that not only grants them sick leave but also allows them to bank all unused sick days and use the cash value of those days to pay for health insurance after they retire from the Legislature. “It’s a health-care golden parachute for legislators,” said State Rep. David Steffen, R-Green Bay. Because lawmakers aren’t required to call in sick when they miss a day in the Capitol, few ever use any of their sick leave. The unused days pile up over the years,...

Out of the thousands of people she worked with, why are only two giving Fiorina a reportable amount of cash? The employees at Hewlett-Packard, where Carly Fiorina was CEO for six years, don’t seem interested in seeing their old boss become commander-in-chief. Of the 302,000 employees at the company, not one has given a reportable amount to help Fiorina fund her 2016 presidential campaign, according to the campaign’s most recent FEC filings, which lists all donations over $200. HP’s corporate leadership also doesn’t seem keen on the idea of Fiorina in the White House. Among the 12-member board of directors,...

The table festooned with red “Carly for America” placards arrived hours before the candidate. Political operatives took up positions outside the front door to catch supporters of Carly Fiorina, the corporate executive-turned-Republican contender, and gather their contact information before steering them inside to the room where she would speak. But the table, the placards and the workers didn’t belong to Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign. They were there thanks to the “super PAC” supporting her run for president. The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of...

Carly Fiorina is surprising many Republicans with her meteoric rise to the top tier of the 2016 GOP race. But here in California, her sparkling performances on the campaign trail look more like a case of déjà vu. Before plummeting to a 10-percentage-point loss during a wave year for Republicans in 2010, the former chief executive mounted a fierce challenge to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer with all of the same assets she is displaying now. She dazzled voters, particularly women, with her secretary-to-CEO life narrative. She impressed them with her toughness -- from her well-placed jabs at Boxer to her...

When Carly Fiorina ran for U.S. Senate, opponents depicted the former corporate executive as a cold-hearted job killer, using her past statements like a noose around her neck. Americans have no God-given right to a job, said the former Hewlett-Packard chief. When you’re talking about massive layoffs, sometimes they’re warranted. Off-shoring — shipping American jobs overseas — was “right-shoring.” Now, though, running for president, Fiorina has softened her tone, acknowledging the human toll of lost jobs and explaining at greater length and depth the actions she took as a powerful Silicon Valley executive, including overseeing tens of thousands of layoffs....

Carly Fiorina said on Sunday she had plenty of job offers after being fired as the CEO of Hewlett Packard, including posts in the George W. Bush administration, but she decided against them. "I didn’t want to go back to work as a CEO," the Republican presidential contender said on NBC's "Meet the Press," rejecting suggestions her lack of private-sector employment after leaving HP is an indictment of her leadership. "Yes, I was offered many jobs – as a CEO, in the Bush administration. I wanted a break, and then I wanted to give back."

At a polished New York press announcement in 2001, Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, then the most powerful woman in American business, unveiled an immensely risky mega-merger whose success she promised with her signature showmanship: “If you don’t believe it, watch.” But 3 1 / 2 years later, after HP had shed half its market value and slashed more than 30,000 jobs amid what rivals called “the dumbest deal of the decade,” Fiorina was quietly fired from her first and still only job as a CEO. She succumbed to a brutal battle with the founders’ families, a worker uprising and,...

Carly Fiorina may come from the executive suite, but that hasn’t stopped other executives from slamming her record. The latest critique comes from Steven Rattner, a former Wall Street banker and private equity executive. Rattner, in an opinion piece in the New York Times on Saturday, called Fiorina’s time as the CEO of HP “short and disastrous.” Rattner said HP’s acquisition of Compaq, pushed through by Fiorina, caused an amount of divisiveness at the company that Rattner says he never saw in his 33-year career on Wall Street. He said that while Fiorina did serve during a tough period for...

In late 2010, polls showed Carly Fiorina within a point or two of beating California’s Democratic incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer. The Republican candidate was impressing on the trail and gaining traction with voters, much like she is now as a Republican presidential contender. And then the attack ads began. “Thirty thousand Californians lost their jobs,” the narrator of an ad released in mid-September said of Fiorina’s legacy as CEO of the Silicon Valley tech giant Hewlett Packard. “Fiorina tripled her salary, bought a million dollar yacht, and five corporate jets.” Her poll numbers dipped — and they never quite recovered....

In 2010, Fiorina's Senate campaign was severely undermined by a series of attack ads that emphasized her failure as a Hewlett-Packard CEO. Could this happen again? Carly Fiorina is doing well in polls. As Donald Trump saw his support drastically diminish following the second GOP debate, the businesswoman swiftly rose to No. 2 with 15 percent of Republican support. But critics are skeptical that her success will persist. The reason? Her dismal tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, during which 30,000 employees were laid off. In 2010, Mrs. Fiorina ran for Senate in California, against Democratic incumbent...

HER silver tongue honed by decades in corporate marketing, Carly Fiorina has used two debates, and a steely determination on the campaign trail, to climb near the top of the polls for the Republican nomination. But Americans should pause on her biggest professional credential for our highest office: a short, disastrous stint atop one of America’s iconic technology companies, Hewlett-Packard. The clearest measure of her performance — and the report card preferred by Wall Street — is H.P.’s stock price, which dropped by 52 percent during her tenure of almost six years. Yes, Mrs. Fiorina served during the worst fall...

That Carly Fiorina was a one-woman wrecking crew during her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard was never in doubt. But what follows is a tale that is now being picked up and distributed as the Republican Party seeks a nominee who combines business savvy and executive know-how. Sadly, the former executive who most closely fits this particular bill also has exhibited the kind of corporate arrogance and blind certitude that came close to sinking what had been considered among the world’s best technology companies: Hewlett-Packard. At HP beginning in the mid-1990s, Fiorina was responsible for the ill-fated merger with Compaq,...

Fiorina, pictured in 1999, says on the campaign trail that she had to burn down Hewlett Packard in order to save it. Carly Fiorina’s business background is an essential part of the story she tells on the campaign trail, offering an “only in America” biographical tale of her journey from secretary to CEO. Yet the crowning achievement of her corporate career -- her tenure as a Fortune 500 CEO at Hewlett-Packard -- isn't central to her stump speech. Repeating the same lines from stop to stop, Fiorina rails against an "inept, corrupt bureaucracy." She offers herself up as a leader...

Barack Obama is targeting a John McCain advisor's former compensation as a Fortune 500 CEO in a new television ad running nationally. The 30-second spot goes after executive pay and is specifically critical of Carly Fiorina, the current McCain advisor who was ousted as the head of Hewlett-Packard in 2005. The company doled out $21 million in severance to her, and reportedly another $21 million worth of stock and pension. "John McCain's advisor, Carly Fiorina. The fired CEO who left with $42 million," the ad's narrator says. "Barack Obama says it's got to change." -snip- Fiorina had been a prominent...

Carly Fiorina’s campaign is defending her record as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. In a post published on Medium, Fiorina’s Deputy Campaign Manager Sarah Isgur Flores took on criticism about the candidate, pushing back on recent reports characterizing the retired tech executive's tenure as a failure. “There’s a lot of armchair CEO’ing going on around here. And some folks seem to have taken the ‘Invent’ motto to mean they get to invent their own facts,” Isgur Flores writes, referring to the HP motto during Fiorina’s tenure. Fiorina was fired in 2005. Isgur Flores then goes on to list 10 things she...

Carly Fiorina said on The Tonight Show that her track record at HP included improving market share. But that’s not true. Carly Fiorina’s latest defense of her track record at Hewlett Packard doesn’t quite add up. Monday night, on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the GOP Presidential hopeful stepped up her effort to paint her time at the top of one of the nation’s largest technology companies as a success. Fallon remarked that her rise from a secretary at a small real estate company to the head of HP HPQ -2.42% was remarkable, but he also mentioned critics who...

The woman who fended off Carly Fiorina to retain her Senate seat in 2010 says when America learns more about Fiorina's business record and "mean" spirit, she will no longer be riding high in the polls. As Fiorina soars in recent surveys for the Republican presidential nomination on the back of two strong debate performances, the race between the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and California Sen. Barbara Boxer is coming back into the spotlight. -snip- "When you examine her record and the fact that she shipped 30,000 jobs overseas and forced those beautiful employees to even train their foreign replacements, when...

So as CNN ginned up its debate format to boost its ad rates from $5,000 per spot to a dense $200,000 and more, the three hour descent into the successful male versus female, exercise in futility played out. Here is how another female saw the stage show. Donald Trump began his campaign with a theme of “Competence,” rather than “Political Correctness” and that is what we saw. Trump ran the table. He was split-screened with the other speakers, thereby increasing his optics meter. We saw The Donald in front of Ronald Reagan’s Air Force 1. We saw him respond with...