Del.icio.us Links

links for 2010-09-08

  • A senior aide for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was arrested Tuesday for attempting to bring marijuana into the Hart Senate Office Building, according to U.S. Capitol Police reports.

    Marcus Stanley, who served as a senior economic adviser and at one time worked on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — chaired by Boxer — was stopped by a police officer Tuesday morning when he allegedly tried to “remove and conceal” a leafy green substance from his pocket during a security screening at the Constitution Avenue door of the Hart building around noon, according to a Capitol Police report.
    +++++++
    OOPS

  • Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is omitting critical details as she has criticized her GOP opponent, Carly Fiorina, over past sales of Hewlett-Packard Co. equipment to Iran.

    Boxer issued the latest attack on Fiorina during a campaign event this week. The three-term incumbent said HP was "skirting American law at the time" and that the products could have ended up in the Iranian military.

    She also directly accused Fiorina of attempting to get around a U.S. trade embargo.

    But Boxer is not telling the complete story. No federal agency has sanctioned HP for the sales of printers and printer supplies. Fiorina herself has never been implicated as having any knowledge of them.
    ++++++
    Boxer is behind and getting desperate.

    Fiorina has said she was unaware of the sales, which were made through a distributor and started before she became CEO in 1999.

  • There’s been a lot of talk about how we have to support the “moderate” in Delaware, like good little prags. (I’m just being snarky. Supporting Castle is the right thing to do. I guess.) And everybody’s quoting WFB about why we have to do it.

    I thought readers — especially newish ones — would like to know where WFB got it. Many years ago, Bill’s friend John Kenneth Galbraith was asked which Democrat he would like to see win the presidential nomination. He replied, “The leftwardmost viable candidate.” So Bill picked that up, in his own terms: “the rightwardmost viable candidate.”

    End of history lesson . . .
    ++++++++
    WFB did get it and the boats did rise.

  • The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
    The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.

    "Now what're we going to do?" said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.

    During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.
    ++++++
    Green jobs for China

    (tags: unemployment)
  • Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats' efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections.

    Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators.

    These and other insurers say Congress's landmark refashioning of U.S. health coverage, which passed in March after a brutal fight, is causing them to pass on more costs to consumers than Democrats predicted.
    ++++++
    Not surprising at all. Obama's health care reform was always about redistribution and who pays.

    (tags: Obamacare)