CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 20, 2010 | Robin Abcarian
Eleven years ago, Carly Fiorina, who proudly touts herself as a one-time secretary and law school dropout, was hired as chief executive of tech giant Hewlett-Packard Co. Her mission: to breathe life into the slumbering electronics giant, which was missing out on the technology boom going on around it. Fiorina was by then a seasoned AT&T and Lucent Technologies executive who had been named the most powerful woman in business by Fortune...
BUSINESS
November 5, 2009 | MICHAEL HILTZIK
The most cherished American credo is that anyone can grow up and run for high office. Carly Fiorina's candidacy for the U.S. Senate, which she formally announced Wednesday, will put this notion to the test. Specifically: Can someone who has spent the last few years running from her checkered record as a big-business CEO, shown so little interest in politics that she consistently failed to vote and has at best a tenuous grasp of such major issues as healthcare reform prevail in a statewide California election?
NATIONAL
October 15, 2009 | Associated Press
Maneuvering to improve prospects for sweeping healthcare legislation, Senate Democrats hope first to win quick approval for a bill that grants doctors a $247-billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade but raises federal deficits in the process, officials said Wednesday. By creating a two-bill approach, Democrats can contend that the more comprehensive healthcare measure meets President Obama's conditions -- that it will neither add to deficits nor exceed $900 billion in costs over 10 years.
NATIONAL
October 5, 2009 | Noam N. Levey and Janet Hook
Despite months of outward ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea for a final vote in the coming weeks. President Obama has cited a preference for the so-called public option. But faced with intense criticism over the summer, he strategically expressed openness to health cooperatives and other ways to offer consumers potentially more affordable alternatives to private health plans.
NATIONAL
September 15, 2009 | Peter Nicholas and Josh Drobnyk
President Obama wades into an intramural fight among Democrats today by attending a high-dollar fundraising dinner for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), demonstrating an unusual measure of personal commitment in a primary battle whose outcome is far from clear. As leader of his party, Obama had the option of following a more neutral course and staying out of the primary race between Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). But the White House has opted to double down on its support for Specter, a longtime Republican who switched parties in the spring partly to avoid an anticipated defeat in the GOP primary next year.
NATIONAL
September 8, 2009
Returning from their summer recess, congressional lawmakers are facing a climatic showdown to the yearlong struggle over healthcare. At issue are scores of competing provisions scattered through half a dozen bills. And no final decisions have been made on any of them. In the House, Democratic leaders are synthesizing the proposals of three committees, but floor debate has not begun. In the Senate, a bill close to the expected House blueprint has been approved by the health committee formerly headed by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.