Carla Marinucci takes a look at how the four major statewide candidates would create jobs and, although she provides a good discussion of the details, her article seems to miss the bigger picture.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina's approach to job creation is quite different from that of Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. These differences have a number of aspects, but can be boiled down to this:

Brown/Boxer believe that the government has a clear role to play in creating jobs by providing by investing in both working people and in creating the 21st century infrastructure they need to prosper - whereas Whitman/Fiorina believe mass unemployment and further concentration of wealth in the hands of the small elite that already dominate the economy will provide "growth," even at the expense of our basic social and physical infrastructure.

Here's how Marinucci describes the Whitman/Fiorina approach:

Republicans Whitman and Fiorina, two former CEOs, decry what they say has been California's unfriendly business climate and call AB32 a job killer. They emphasize tax cuts and regulatory reforms to help small and large businesses and argue that they have direct experience creating jobs.

Both Whitman and Fiorina are calling for voodoo economics tax cuts - slashing capital gains and other taxes for the wealthy in the belief, in spite of the evidence, that this will create jobs. In fact, all it will do is fuel the collapse that is starting to occur, especially since Whitman and Fiorina both oppose new government spending and have pledged to make deeper cuts to core government services.

They both also pledge mass layoffs, a tool they employed at their own companies to try and produce more profit. In Fiorina's case it failed; in Whitman's case the success is more uneven. Either way, in a state with over 12% unemployment, mass layoffs - whether of public or private workers - is an extremely bad and reckless idea.

Further, both Whitman and Fiorina believe we should actively undermine efforts to position California for the 21st century economy. Whitman doesn't want to fund the high speed rail project and like Fiorina believes that action on climate change, which creates and sustains a green jobs economy, is bad - both preferring to instead prop up the failed 20th century economy and the oil companies that are vehemently opposed to new innovation.

In contrast, Brown and Boxer both prefer to invest in working Californians and in the infrastructure and policies needed to spur a 21st century economy. As Marinucci describes it:

Democrats Brown and Boxer argue for green-tech and clean-energy jobs that they say represent California's best hope for employment for decades to come.

They say their government experience is a plus. Brown said he put Californians to work in his two terms as governor as the state led the way in alternative energy. Boxer touts her efforts to secure funding and jobs for major projects such as BART extensions, and her co-authorship of legislation to give small businesses more access to credit, capital and tax advantages.

There's more to it than just that, of course. Boxer voted for the stimulus and to extend unemployment benefits, both of which have helped many Californians avoid the worst during this long recession - whereas Fiorina has said she opposes both and would have done nothing at all to help the unemployed and the suffering, instead focusing her efforts on making the rich richer.

Jerry Brown's jobs plan is fundamentally oriented around positioning California for the 21st century, pledging to accelerate development of clean technologies from solar panels to high speed rail, while ensuring our schools have the support and resources they need.

The choice this November could not possibly be clearer. Whitman and Fiorina are determined to channel even more wealth and power to their CEO friends, at the expense of the jobs and prosperity the rest of us desperately need. Brown and Boxer are proposing to continue investing in us and in our infrastructure so that California is well-positioned for the 21st century.

US Senator Barbara Boxer brought her "Jobs for California" tour to Monterey this morning, where she fired up the crowd with a very strong and robust defense of her record in the Senate, her role in bringing jobs back to California, her plans to improve and speed up economic recovery - and some damning attacks on her opponent, Carly Fiorina.

Boxer has been touring the state touting the jobs created by the stimulus act, which Fiorina opposed. Yesterday she was in San Francisco at the Doyle Drive project which is getting under way this year thanks to $100 million in stimulus money. Fiorina has been attacking the stimulus, which has been conservatively estimated to have saved or create 150,000 jobs in California.

Fiorina's entire campaign plan, in fact, appears to be geared around calling for higher unemployment. Fiorina's spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said the jobs created by the stimulus weren't worth it, and at today's Monterey event about five Fiorina supporters showed up with signs reading "Government Jobs aren't Real Jobs."

Boxer's speech this morning, which was both lively and fiery, took direct issue with Fiorina's arguments. Boxer challenged Fiorina to come with her to Fresno later in the day where she would be meeting with police officers whose jobs were saved by the stimulus, or go with her to the project building the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, where private sector jobs are being created with public funds.

Boxer also slammed Fiorina's own record on jobs. Fiorina has opposed ALL jobs bills that have come before the Senate, including extension of unemployment benefits. And of course, Fiorina laid off 30,000 workers at H-P, a company she ran into the ground and was fired from in 2005. Fiorina memorably called offshoring "right-sourcing" and said "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore" - an indication that she is totally uninterested in actually creating jobs here in California.

In contrast, Boxer made her own job creation solution clear. She said her plan has three key elements: 1) rejecting Prop 23 and protecting California's ability to lead the recovery through green jobs, 2) using transportation projects from highways to high speed rail to put people back to work, and 3) stop the corporate offshoring of American jobs.

Boxer strongly opposed Prop 23, which would repeal AB 32, calling it a "job killer." As to the deficit, Boxer drew loud cheers when she said that Bush's tax cuts for the rich and his two wars were responsible for undermining the work she and President Clinton had done to produce a surplus in the 1990s.

In fact, that last argument could be Boxer's secret weapon. Boxer was there in the Senate in 1993 when she helped pass President Clinton's jobs and deficit reduction bills. By 2000 there was a record $230 billion surplus, which Bush promptly destroyed through his reckless tax cuts and destructive wars.

The 1990s economy wasn't perfect - far from it. In fact, Carly Fiorina was perhaps one of its highest-profile products, and one of its most obvious failures. But there's no doubt that Boxer helped produce a budget surplus and real economic growth and job creation in the 1990s.

Judging by her tour of California this week, Boxer is more than ready for the task.

Photo: Lynne Frey, Monterey County Democrats

Apparently Carly Fiorina believes she has the Republican US Senate nomination locked up, because now she's going after Barbara Boxer in this ridiculous ad airing on TV stations across California.

The ad features Carly Fiorina saying "Terrorism kills - and Barbara Boxer's worried about the weather." In other words, Fiorina thinks global warming is nothing more than mere weather, that its potential to flood part of the Bay Area, devastate our wine and agricultural industries, worsen fires, and produce statewide water shortages is just mere weather.

Fiorina's attack is intended to mock Boxer's statment that climate change is a national security issue. But do you know who else sees climate change as a national security issue?

The Pentagon:

The National Intelligence Council, which produces government-wide intelligence analyses, finished the first assessment of the national security implications of climate change just last year.

It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments.

The assessment warned that the storms, droughts and food shortages that might result from a warming planet in coming decades would create numerous relief emergencies.

“The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said.

Fiorina's attack shows not only that she is anti-science and apparently supportive of the crippling effects of global warming on California's economy - but that she is also totally delusional about the threats facing this country. She is, in short, as unfit to be in the US Senate as she was unfit to be the CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

She's Silicon Valley's Sarah Palin. No wonder the former Alaska governor endorsed Fiorina.

We've all had a good laugh at Carly "Failorina" and her completely inept campaign, particularly the lame websites and shockingly bad ads. But those are merely the surface reasons why Fiorina needs to be kept as far away from elected office as possible. Today she reminded us just how harmful she would be to Californians and their economic fortunes.

The Senate today passed its version of the Jobs Bill which, while far weaker than it should have been, is a good start. Even 12 Republicans voted for it, including Fiorina's new hero Scott Brown. Fiorina immediately criticized the bill's passage in a press release:

Today’s vote represents yet another missed opportunity to pass a real jobs bill that cuts taxes or institutes a real suspension of the payroll tax – either of which would free up small businesses to hire people. Instead, the Senate opted to pass what amounts to nothing more than an expensive extension of the failed stimulus plan.

You mean this failed stimulus? The one that's created or saved over 2 million jobs?

Of course, that IS the real reason Fiorina believes the stimulus failed - that it created jobs. To Fiorina, job creation is actually a bad thing. Higher unemployment is a very good thing, since it benefits the wealthy and corporate interests she represents. She claims the stimulus is a problem because it adds to the deficit, but the deficit is only a problem if you think raising taxes on the wealthy to deal with it is undesirable, as Fiorina surely does.

As we saw when Fiorina ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground as its CEO, she believes jobs are bad for the economy. She called offshoring "rightsourcing" and said that there is no "god given right" to a job. As with her former CEO counterpart Meg Whitman, Fiorina appears to be making higher unemployment as a core element of her campaign.

With Fiorina's statement today, her stance is clear: she thinks Californians should have fewer jobs, because anything we might do with government to help create jobs would wind up hurting the wealthy, and they're the ones that really matter in Fiorina's world. Good to know.

As heavyweight Democratic gubernatorial candidates jockey for position, the Republican side of the aisle appears to be a race with no clear cut favorite. Keeping in line with the "yacht party" mantra, the GOP will likely field several candidates wealthy enough to fund their own campaign, but not nearly represent the majority of the state's citizenry.

Once these folks go public with their stances on social issues the right-wing of their own party will eat them alive. Cant wait.

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