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Oct 9, 2014 10:04pm

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PHILADELPHIA New grandmother Hillary Clinton made her first public campaign appearance of the year Thursday for Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf, giving passionate and personal remarks that if not for the Wolf for Governor signs prominently behind her could easily have been mistaken for a presidential stump speech.

While Wolf, a businessman from York County, has a strong lead in the polls against incumbent Gov. Tom Corbett, the star of tonights Women for Wolf event at the National Constitution Center downtown was clearly Clinton.

To a crowd of nearly 1,000 people and with the Ready for Hillary bus stationed outside, Clinton took the stage to roaring applause (and Katy Perrys Roar blasting overhead), and laid out a case that Wolf was the fresh start both Pennsylvania and the country needed, praising his Made in America success story and his commitment to working-class families.

Tom Wolf stands for families, for working people, for fairness, and for justice, Clinton said to a cheering audience.

Clinton went on to talk fervently about the need for affordable education, raising the minimum wage, equal pay, quality affordable childcare, reproductive rights for women, and even same-sex marriage equality, crying out: We will never compare the marriage of two loving and committed partners to incest.

But Clintons speech was also uniquely personal, with a number of her own anecdotes and Pennsylvania connections woven throughout.

When she championed for working families, she reminisced about her hard-working father who grew up in Scranton and the summers she spent with him in the Poconos.

When she talked about the importance of family values, she gave a shout-out to Marjorie Margolies, her son-in-laws mother who was in the audience, joking they both have the same grandmother glow.

Link:
Hillary Clinton Steals the Show at Philly Campaign Rally

The 2014 general election may be less than a month away, but Thursday it looked a lot like 2016 in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Democratic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were the marquee names at rallies in the region, aiming to energize each party's voters for the governor's race and to test out a few lines for the presidential bids that each is expected to be launching soon.

Both headliners stayed away from any overt references to their future plans. But at Democratic candidate Tom Wolf's "Women for Wolf" rally in Philadelphia, it didn't take any of the Democratic politicians speaking before him and Clinton very long to invoke the former first lady's name, drawing cheers each time.

Former Gov. Ed Rendell, who backed Clinton during her 2008 presidential bid, said he gets stopped on the street by people who want to know if Clinton will try again in 2016. He reminded the crowd how he often led cheers for her during that campaign and said he hopes "to do that again."

In Wayne, Delaware County, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett joked about Christie's star power in the voter-rich Philadelphia area. Christie gets as much, if not more, coverage from local newspapers, Corbett said.

"If the headline says 'governor,' they're talking about Christie," Corbett said. "If it says Corbett, they're talking about me."

The appearances brought star power to a race where some have expressed concerns that Wolf's apparent big lead could discourage voters from heading to the polls. Wolf led Corbett by 17 percentage points in a recent poll. Clinton and Christie both urged attendees to remind their friends and neighbors to cast a ballot.

The two presidential hopefuls are familiar figures with bases of support in Pennsylvania. Among Pennsylvania voters, Christie has a favorable rating, according to a Quinnipiac University poll in June. It's lower than Clinton's 55 percent favorable score but higher than other Republican presidential contenders.

The two were only separated by a few points in that survey's head-to-head hypothetical matchup, with 45 percent for Clinton and 41 percent backing Christie. Voters in suburban Philadelphia will be key to boosting either of those numbers.

"They're doing their due diligence for their parties and also doing their due diligence for their political aspirations," Muhlenberg College political scientist Chris Borick said.

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Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie stump for governor candidates in Philly area

CHICAGO (CNN) -

Hillary Clinton may be creating a problem for herself.

In over a year on the paid speaking circuit, Clinton has addressed recyclers, bankers, doctors, environmentalists, a fair share of Canadians and a number of other diverse groups. Her paid speeches have one thing in common: They are regularly to corporate or trade groups that disagree with Clinton -- or her former colleagues in the Obama administration -- on key issues such as health care, environmental policy or taxes.

While it would be impossible for Clinton to only speak to groups that agree with her on everything, speaking to organizations that openly disagree with Democrats on certain issues has proven problematic for Clinton. The appearances open the former secretary of state up to attacks from Republicans and create situations where she appears evasive.

That was the case again Wednesday when Clinton gave the keynote luncheon talk at AdvaMed 2014, the annual conference run by the medical device industry. One of the group's top issues is getting rid of Obamacare's medical device tax, a cause Wanda Moebius, the group's spokeswoman, called their "premier issue."

Clinton, the prohibitive favorite for her Democrats' presidential nomination in 2016, was less than committal about the issue on Wednesday, though.

She didn't mention the tax by name during her prepared remarks and offered little indication one way or another what she would do about the issue when Stephen Ubl, the association's president, asked her about it during a question and answer session.

"I don't know what the right answer about the tax is," Clinton said, "but I think we could, taking a look at everything and not standing there with out arms folding staring at each other across the partisan divide, begin to sort it out."

Clinton seemed to play both sides of the issue, acknowledging the United States needs to look at "the pluses and the minuses" of the law, but also stating that she thinks medical device companies "have an argument to make" against the tax.

The medical device tax is a 2.3% excise tax created in part to fund Obamacare; it went into effect at the beginning of 2013. The tax, which is a large component in funding Obamacare, is unpopular with Democrats and Republicans alike, especially those with ties to the medical devices industry.

See original here:
Hillary Clinton waffles on Affordable Care tax question

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the Economic Club of Chicago at Fairmont Hotel in Chicago on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a more powerful group than al Qaeda ever did because of its money and structure.

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Hillary Clinton describes how groups like Boko Haram and ISIS use violence against women as a terror tactic.

"It's a serious threat because this is the best-funded, most professional, expansionist jihadist military force that we have ever seen," Clinton told the Economic Club of Chicago during an interview, according to the Washington Post. "This is far more advanced and far richer than al-Qaeda ever was."

She made the remarks during an interview conducted by the national co-chairman of her 2008 presidential bid, Chicago venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker.

Clinton also backed President Obama's move to begin conducting airstrikes against the group inside Iraq and Syria saying they "will attempt to launch attacks against Western targets if it has the ability to do so."

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"Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer disagrees with pundits who say Clinton made an error in critiquing the president's foreign policy.

Despite her support of the current campaign, Clinton has previously suggested that ISIS' rise was aided in part by a failure to arm the moderate Syrian opposition earlier during the country's civil war, a strategy the former secretary of state pushed for but Mr. Obama rejected.

More here:
Hillary Clinton: ISIS more powerful than al Qaeda ever was

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg Politics) -- Hillary Clinton signaled she might be open to repealing a key component of Obamacare during a speech yesterday at a medical device conference in Chicago.

Since the passage of the landmark health care bill, Republicans have wanted to kill a 2.3 percent excise tax on devices such as defibrillators and pacemakers, usually paid by the devices manufacturer or importer. The money it raises - an estimated $29 billion over a decade is central to the financing of Obamacare, and the White House opposes its repeal.

In a paid appearance before the Advanced Medical Technology Association, or AdvaMed, Clinton told a ballroom filled with more than 2,000 industry representatives that they have an argument to make when it comes to repealing the tax. We have to look and see what are the pluses and minuses, she said. I dont know what the right answer about the tax is.

Lets look at what we need to do to make sure that the medical technology industry in this country remains innovative, profitable, effective, strongly partnering to lower costs and improve quality, she said.

AdvaMed includes some of the biggest names in the industry, including Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey; Medtronic Inc. of Minneapolis; Abbott Laboratories (ABT), of Abbott, Illinois; Boston Engineering Corp. of Waltham, Massachusetts, and Baxter International Inc. (BAX) of Deerfield, Illinois.

AdvaMed has consistently and strongly opposes the $30 billion medical device tax because it harms job creation, deters medical innovation and increases the cost of health care, the group says in a position statement on its website. Congress should repeal it before it can do more damage to American Innovation.

More broadly, Clinton praised Obamacare, saying its helping families avoid bankruptcy and ensuring that women are no longer charged more solely because of our gender. At the same time, she said there is more work to be done to improve the law and American health care delivery.

All of this work will be easier if we get beyond politics, she said. Too often our health care debates are clouded by ideology, rather than illuminated by data.

Over time, she said, the law will help the U.S. economy.

Clinton also praised the many contributions the industry has made, citing her husbands quad bypass heart surgery in 2004 and stents implanted in 2010.

Read more:
Hillary Clinton Open to GOP Obamacare Demand on Medical Devices