A spokesman for Robin Carnahan tells our friends in St. Louis that she is “supportive” of the Employee Free Choice Act, which allows workers to unionize without a secret ballot (although they can request one.)
The story says “some reporters indicated they weren’t sure of Carnahan’s views” on the subject.
In case anyone wonders about the source of that confusion.. here’s a transcript of our entire interview with Carnahan on EFCA:
Nicotine chewing gum, lozenges and inhalers designed to help people to give up smoking may have the potential to cause cancer, research has suggested.
Scientists have discovered a link between mouth cancer and exposure to nicotine, which may indicate that using oral nicotine replacement therapies for long periods could contribute to a raised risk of the disease. A study led by Muy-Teck Teh, of Queen Mary, University of London, has found that the effects of a genetic mutation that is common in mouth cancer can be worsened by nicotine in the levels that are typically found in smoking cessation products.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Verizon Hub, a new kind of home phone with some Web add-ons like weather and traffic reports, will soon come with an applications market, following a trend among cellphone makers such as Apple (AAPL.O) to open up to third-party apps.
Verizon Communications (VZ.N) has been selling the Hub to its wireless customers since February 1 as it looks for new ways to keep growing while U.S. consumers rapidly disconnect their traditional home phones to save money in the weak economy.
KMBC:
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Almost a week has passed since the Royals unveiled the newly renovated Kauffman Stadium to fans at the home opener.Many Royals fans told KMBC’s Nick Griffith that they love the new “K.”"On the stadium, I’d have to give it an ‘A,’” one fan said.”It’s fantastic. It’s beautiful,” another fan said.Marks are high, but there is still some tweaking to be done.”There’s about 21,000 punch-list items to do,” the Royals’ Kevin Uhlich said.Some of those things include painting baseboards and renumbering seats.
Harvard professor in NY Times:
The problem today, it seems, is that the Federal Reserve has done just about as much interest rate cutting as it can. Its target for the federal funds rate is about zero, so it has turned to other tools, such as buying longer-term debt securities, to get the economy going again. But the efficacy of those tools is uncertain, and there are risks associated with them.
In many ways today, the Fed is in uncharted waters.
So why shouldn’t the Fed just keep cutting interest rates? Why not lower the target interest rate to, say, negative 3 percent?
At that interest rate, you could borrow and spend $100 and repay $97 next year. This opportunity would surely generate more borrowing and aggregate demand.
The problem with negative interest rates, however, is quickly apparent: nobody would lend on those terms. Rather than giving your money to a borrower who promises a negative return, it would be better to stick the cash in your mattress. Because holding money promises a return of exactly zero, lenders cannot offer less.
Unless, that is, we figure out a way to make holding money less attractive.
Chalk up a point for RedState.com’s Operation Leper. If the NY Post gossip column Page Six has its facts straight, she’s political toast:
SARAH Palin’s campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace - who was blamed for the GOP veep hopeful’s notorious $150,000 clothes-shopping orgy - is through with politics. “My professional life will never involve working on a campaign again,” she tells next month’s Marie Claire.
According to the column, she’s going to start a family. Now, now… no snarky comments about who will pay for the wardrobe. As Bob Dylan sang so many years ago, “Goodbye is too good a word, babe. So I’ll just say fare thee well.”
(CNSNews.com) - While the Treasury Department is allowing another bank to return money loaned to it under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it is still keeping one institution - TCF Financial - in the lurch, declining to tell it or CNSNews.com why it has taken more than the required 30 days to process the money-return request.
As isolated as Republicans appear to be in Washington, they often find allies in the struggle to keep the federal government from becoming the command-and-control center of American life. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have stymied organized labor’s drive for legislation (”card check”) to unionize workers without a secret ballot election. Moderate Democrats in Congress have joined the opposition to the perilous plan (”cap and trade”) to limit carbon emissions at the expense of a growing economy.
But there’s one issue on which Republicans are alone and President Obama and Democrats have the upper hand: health care. Indeed, the prospects have never been better for expanding Washington’s role in even the smallest decisions made by doctors and patients. Thwarting this won’t make Republicans more popular. Their efforts might be in vain. But at least they’ll be heroes in the cause of defending private health care and preserving individual freedom. They’ll vindicate their existence as Republicans.
RCP:
Speaking in Mexico, President Barack Obama signaled Thursday he will not seek renewal of a U.S. assault weapons ban but instead will step up enforcement of laws banning the transfer of such guns across the border.
I arrived in Austin, Texas, one evening recently to give a speech about academic freedom at the university there. Entering the hall where I was to give my speech, I was greeted — if that’s the word — by a raucous protest organized by a professor and self-styled Bolshevik, Dana Cloud. Forty protesters hoisted placards high in the air and robotically chanted “Down With Horowitz,” “Racist Go Home,” and “No More Witch-hunts.”
Fortunately, a spokesperson for the administration was present to threaten the disrupters with arrest if they continued on this course. (The threat was administered very carefully, with three formal warnings before any action could be taken.) This quieted the crowd enough that I could begin my talk, which proceeded without further serious incident.
The California Assembly will soon consider proposals to “protect” residents from two of Silicon Valley’s most successful innovators. Google and Facebook help form the backbone of the state’s high-tech economy, but some lawmakers see them as a threat to privacy and security.
Looking back, 59% of voters nationwide believe the federal bailouts for banks and other financial institutions
were a bad idea. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 26% think they were a good idea.
The numbers are similar for the bailout loans given to General Motors
Public opposition to the bailouts has been strong right from the start. In September, right after Lehman Brothers collapsed, just seven percent (7%) of voters thought the federal government
Quinnipiac University
4/14-20/09; 2,222 registered voters, 2.1% margin of error
486 likely Republican voters (4.5%), 460 likely Democratic voters (4.6%)
Mode: Live Telephone InterviewsNew Jersey
Job Approval / Disapproval
Pres. Obama (D): 67 / 24 (chart)
Gov. Corzine (D): 37 / 54 (chart)
Sen. Lautenberg (D): 47 / 38 (chart)
Sen. Menendez (D): 41 / 32 (chart)Favorable / Unfavorable
Gov. Corzine: 39 / 50 (chart)
Chris Christie (R): 31 / 11
Steve Lonegan (R): 20 / 72009 Governor
Republican Primary
Christie 46, Lonegan 37%, Merkt 2%, Brown 1%, Levine 0% (chart)Democratic Primary
Gov. Corzine 70%, Boss 2%, Bergmanson 2%, Bacon 3% (trend)General Election
Christie 45%, Gov. Corzine 38% (chart)
Gov. Corzine 41%, Lonegan 41% (chart)(source)
Florida voters’ enthusiasm for President Barack Obama is waning a bit, but his 60 - 32 percent job approval remains strong, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Voters approve 55 - 36 percent of the President’s approach to fixing the economy.
Closer to home, Florida voters prefer 42 - 26 percent that Gov. Charlie Crist seek another term in Tallahassee rather than the U.S. Senate. The feeling is consistent across the political spectrum and across the state.
Other potential U.S. Senate candidates on either side of the aisle are virtual unknowns, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
President Obama’s job approval rating among Floridians is down slightly from 64 - 23 percent in a February 19 Quinnipiac University survey. The biggest change is the increase among those who disapprove of what he is doing. Obama goes from a negative 33 - 47 percent score among Republicans in February to a negative 22 - 70 percent today.
New data out of the indispensable Gallup polling organization shows that President Obama’s average job approval during his first 90 days in office is 63 percent, the highest rating in its surveys during that critical time period in more than three decades.
Since Jimmy Carter scored an average of 69 percent approval rating in his first 90 days in office, the ratings for the subsequent presidents have steadily declined from Ronald Reagan (60 percent), to George H.W. Bush (57 percent), to Bill Clinton (55 percent). George W. Bush’s 58 percent average in the Gallup poll for his first quarter in office was only a slight improvement over his direct predecessors.
Put in a broader perspective — all president since World War II — Obama’s numbers are slightly less stratospheric.
John F. Kennedy led the way in the modern era with the approval of 72 percent of Americans during his first 90 days in office and Dwight D. Eisenhower also crested the 70 percent mark (71 percent) during his early days in office. Heck, even Richard Nixon was at 62 percent job approval in the Gallup survey in his first quarter in office.
What should we take from these numbers?
First and foremost, context matters.
Jeb Bush is the first to acknowledge he’s no political animal.
The seeming lack of ambition to return to state or national office, however, also recommends Bush as a major player in the issues debate going on within the Republican party. Unlike former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman or South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Bush isn’t mentioned as a candidate for president in 2012, a status that, coupled with his former office and famous last name, gives him a bit of high ground from which to orchestrate the conversation.
“My interest isn’t [in] the politics of politics but the policy-making [aspect] of politics,” the former Florida governor said in a recent interview with the Fix.
The RisingIt’s that disinterest in the rough-and-tumble, who’s up-who’s down, point-scoring part of the political game that likely led Bush to take a pass on a slam-dunk Senate candidacy to replace Mel Martinez (R) in 2010.
AFP:
California’s unemployment rate soared to its highest level in more than 30 years in March, climbing to 11.2 percent as 62,100 jobs vanished, official figures showed Friday.
US Department of Labor figures showed the number of unemployed increased sharply from 10.6 percent in February, giving California the highest jobless rate in the nation behind Michigan, Oregon and South Carolina.
Clearly, then, Johnsen refused to state her view on the power of the United States to preventively detain terrorist suspects. Professor Kinkopf relied on her answers to different, though related questions about what to do with those already detained at Guantanamo Bay and whether we can hold enemy combatants.
Johnsen’s claim that she has not studied the legal questions raised by Sen. Specter sufficiently to form an opinion seems disingenuous. These are matters with which the OLC, where she served for years, has a central involvement. As Kinkopf notes, Johnsen was willing to opine on several related matters and, indeed, was willing publicly to denounce the Bush administration’s handling of terrorist detention issues in a number of contexts.
Johnsen’s unwillingness to affirm the basic proposition that “the United States has the power to preventively detain terrorist suspects” should weigh heavily against her confirmation.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Phishing scams have grown up from the unsophisticated swindles of the past in which fake Nigerian princes e-mailed victims, who would get a big windfall if they just provide their bank account number.
Even as authorities try to stamp out that con and other e-mail and online scams, scammers are getting more wily and finding new loopholes to exploit.
The vast majority of e-mail is spam and an unknown percentage of that is meant to defraud. The scale of electronic fraud means that that the criminals can make huge profits even if only a small percentage of people are duped.
But beyond these two topics, the Republican Party is facing changing demographic forces that present a challenge to its long term growth. This is not a new notion, and I am obliged to give credit where due: Ruy Teixeira and John Judis’ 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority looked at political and population trends and predicted that in 2008 these trends would come together produce a Democratic majority.
While I haven’t looked extensively at whether or not Teixeira and Judis’ predictions have come to pass (2008 Democratic victory aside), I can certainly agree that the racial makeup of young voters supports their conclusion. In short, young voters are less likely to be white than voters overall and are becoming increasingly more diverse. While 77% of voters overall in 2004 were white, only 68% of voters under age 30 were white. By 2008, that number was only 62%. Both African-Americans and Hispanics were found in higher proportions among young voters. In 2004, African-Americans made up 15% of young voters while making up 11% of voters overall; 13% of voters 18-29 were Hispanic compared to 8% of voters overall. By 2008 those numbers had increased, with African-Americans comprising 18% of voters 18-29 and with Hispanics comprising 14%.
If you think black is a hot color for a car, you’re not alone. The California Air Resources Board thinks the same thing. And that’s a problem.
The CARB believes the air conditioning systems in black cars work harder and waste more energy than the ones in lighter colored cars.
It also wants the car companies to come up with new, more energy efficent paints.
But they haven’t been able to come up with a new black paint.
The best the carmakers can do, so far, looks like “mud-puddle brown.”
HT Planet Gore.
A voter-approved measure that has Arizona’s minimum wage above the federal requirement is forcing some restaurant owners to lay off and reduce health benefits for employees, industry leaders told state lawmakers Tuesday.
“Local restaurants support our communities, and right now we’re in trouble,” said Matt McMahon, owner of 19 Outback Steakhouse locations in Arizona. “The economy is not the problem; bad laws are the problem.”
And:
Arizona’s minimum wage rose to $7.25 per hour this year from $6.90 in 2008.
The federal minimum wage stands at $6.55 but will rise to $7.25 in July.
Members of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association told the Senate Commerce and Economic Development Committee that the state requirement is hurting their industry.
