Carolina Politics Online

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is a taxpayer watchdog group that for years has been tracking and monitoring the wasteful spending being undertaken by our members of Congress. When I say waste I mean real waste, things that most all of us regardless of political ideology and views could likely agree on. Wasted spending like $1,454,000 for mosquito trapping research or $2,573,000 for potato research. Better yet, right here in our own backyard, UNC Charlotte received $762,000 for interactive dance software.

CAGW has a searchable database containing the 9,129 pork-barrel projects in the 2010 Congressional Pig Book. They also do a ranking of every member of Congress with a score of 100 indicating a taxpayer superhero and a score of 0 being a wasteful taxpayer abuser. Unfortunately, here in the Carolinas we have several big fat zeros. That list is below:

By a vote of 63 – 37 the U.S. Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan as the next Supreme Court Justice.  Kay Hagan and Lindsey Graham voted in favor of the nomination.  Richard Burr and Jim DeMint voted against confirmation.

The latest poll of South Carolina’s U.S Senate race shows Senator Jim DeMint receiving 62% of the vote compared to a paltry 20% for Alvin Greene.  My first thought was, who in the hell are these 20%?  It is a shame, however, that we can’t have a real race here.  I’m supporting DeMint for reelection so I’m glad he’s going to win, but no representative should ever just walk back into office.  Competitive races are good for government and that’s good for the American people.

Predictably, two amendments of Senator DeMint’s voted on in the U.S. Senate yesterday were rejected.  One would have barred the Obama administration’s ability to sue the State of Arizona over their illegal immigration crackdown law and the other would have permanently repealed the Estate Tax.

The illegal immigration amendment was defeated 55 to 43.  It would have barred funding for the Federal government to prosecute the law.  Democrat Kay Hagan voted against the amendment, while Republicans Lindsey Graham and Richard Burr, along with DeMint, voted for it.  A few Democrats from other states crossed over to support DeMint’s efforts, but not nearly enough and that was expected.  The left has been particularly outspoken against Arizona’s efforts to protect their state from the harm caused by mass illegal immigration.

Permanent repeal of the Estate Tax was nothing but a pipe dream and only 39 Senators voted in favor of it, about what I would expect.

The repeal movement has lost some steam in recent years as former enthusiasts in the business community have sought compromise with the Democratic majority on a plan that would lower the tax, not eliminate it.

But a core of groups representing small businesses and conservatives continue to push repeal, arguing that the tax is an unfair government intrusion and that it serves as a disincentive for individuals to build family businesses.

“What right does a government have to take someone’s property because they die?” DeMint said on the Senate floor.

NASDAQ

Great question, huh?  That is the one that has always rankled me.  Why is the government entitled to anybody’s property simply because they die?  It’s absurd.  The property should stay in the family where it rightfully belongs.  Family business owners and family farms get clobbered by this.  Just because one’s estate is valued at a few million dollars does not mean they are millionaires bathing in golden bathtub of 100 dollar bills.  Pieces of farm equipment can cost a few hundred grand alone and that is all added into the value of the estate.  It’s not uncommon for the children of a family farmer to have to sell off the farm in order to pay the inheritance taxes on the estate.

The Estate Tax is nothing more than another weapon used in the Marxist tactic of class warfare.  It was established by politicians seething with envy, jealousy, and greed.

Naturally, the financial “reform” bill passed the Senate this afternoon.  There was no expectation for it not to once they had enough votes for cloture.  As I wrote earlier today, it’s a bad bill overall and contained many provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the financial markets, but promoting a leftist social agenda.

Kay Hagan (D) of North Carolina voted for the bill.  The three Republican Senators in the Carolinas:  Richard Burr, Lindsey Graham, and Jim DeMint voted against it.

Speaking from Afghanistan, GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina lambasted Michael Steele for the comments, which McCain called “wildly inaccurate” and Graham characterized as “uninformed, unnecessary, unwise, untimely,” while follow Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina said Steele should apologize to the military.

Both McCain and Graham questioned Steele’s ability to keep his job, but said it was up to Steele and the RNC to make that decision.

“I think that Mr. Steele is going to have to assess whether he can still lead the Republican Party as chairman of the Republican National Committee,” McCain said on the ABC program “This Week.” Graham said in a separate interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation” that Steele’s comments did not represent mainstream GOP thinking.

“It’s not the Republican Party’s position, my Republican Party’s position,” Graham said.

At the same time, Graham joked that “the good news is Michael Steele is backtracking so fast he’s going to be in Kabul fighting here pretty soon.”

DeMint, in an interview on “FOX News Sunday,” called Steele’s comments unacceptable.

Steele “needs to apologize to our military, all the men and women who’ve been fighting in Afghanistan,” DeMint said, adding: “This is a war we can win and we must win.”

CNN

If you haven’t seen the video yet, here it is. Steele was speaking at a fund raiser in Connecticut and while there referred to the war in Afghanistan as a “war of Obama’s choosing” and suggested that it is not winnable.

I think anyone with an ounce of common sense agrees that claiming that Afghanistan was Obama’s war of choice is utterly asinine. Being that this is one of many gaffes Steele has made since his election as RNC Chairman, several prominent Republicans are calling for his resignation, though DeMint and Graham have stopped short of that. Steele has since backtracked on his remarks. He is becoming the Republicans’ Joe Biden.

I don’t believe Afghanistan was a war of choice, but I don’t find it unacceptable to question exactly how effective we are being over there these days. We’re going on nine years now that we’ve been spending billions of dollars and losing American lives trying to stabilize that country. I am certainly no military strategist, but is nine years not enough to form a stable government and an effective law enforcement for the Afghan people to keep the Taliban and other terrorists at bay without so much investment from us?

Charleston businesswoman Linda Ketner is trying for an independent bid for South Carolina’s Senate seat that is currently held by Senator Jim DeMint.  Ketner ran for Congress in 2008 against Henry Brown in the First Congressional District and gave him quite a scare.  Brown won by a small margin of 52-48, the closest Brown has ever come to being defeated.  I imagine her campaign is fueled by the angst many Democrats have over their less than polished nominee, Alvin Greene.

I envision two scenarios here.  One, Ketner and Greene end up splitting the Democratic vote and maybe Ketner attracts some more moderate independents who feel DeMint is too conservative, but have no confidence in Greene.  In that case DeMint wins just as easily as he would just facing Greene.  On the hand, something could happen to Greene’s candidacy between now and November.  The man is facing felony charges and there is talk of investigating where his $10,000 filing fee came from.  If for some reason Greene is found unable to legally be a candidate prior to the election then I can see the Democratic Party rallying around Linda Ketner, in which case Jim DeMint will have a much tougher race on his hands.

I am all for having as many candidates on the ballot as possible because the voters deserve more than just one or two choices.  Ketner is currently collecting the signatures required to get on the ballot.  You can visit her Web site at http://www.ketnerforsenate.com/ if interested in assisting.

Senator Jim DeMint is on good footing for reelection this year.  In a match up between he and Democrat Vic Rawl, DeMint leads 49% to 30%.  He could use a bit of work on his approval rating, which is currently at 43%.  Typically, incumbent politicians are considered vulnerable when they fall under 50%.

The plan will explode the national debt, raise $569.2 billion in new taxes, force taxpayers to fund abortions, and impose unconstitutional mandates on every American.

All of this was done in the face of overwhelming public outrage and bipartisan opposition in Congress. This process has been an insult to our democracy and threatens our nation’s prosperity and freedom.

Government bureaucrats will now dictate the terms of our health care system. Americans must purchase Washington-formulated insurance plans or pay stiff penalties, a requirement that defies the Constitution and is a boon to the insurance companies the Democrats pretend to despise.

This plan raids $52 billion from Social Security. It cuts nearly $500 billion from Medicare and doesn’t count the hundreds of billions needed to compensate doctors who treat elderly patients. A portion of this trillion dollar bill is paid for with a government takeover of the student loan industry. The government will shut down private lenders, sell expensive loans to 19 million college students and use the profits to finance “ObamaCare.”

It adds millions of people to Medicaid, a failing program that many doctors and pharmacists refuse to participate in. Medicaid won’t do its patients any good if a doctor won’t treat them or a pharmacist won’t fill their prescriptions.

Even the bill’s most strident supporters doubt its effectiveness. Many admit to not understanding the bill they voted on. Some voted “yes” out of fear a “no” vote would hurt the president.

USA Today

An amendment sponsored by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) was defeated in the U.S. Senate by a vote of 68-29.  15 Republicans joined with the Democrats to defeat the amendment that would have temporarily banned earmarks for a year.

Since I know a lot of conservatives come here and read, I pose this question to you.  Do you still believe the Republican Party is a party that embraces small government and fiscal responsibility?

Victor Rawl, a Democratic member of the Charleston County Council and a former circuit court judge, announced his Senate candidacy Monday at events in North Charleston, Columbia, Greenville and Spartanburg.

Rawl, 64, served briefly in the state legislature and retired as a lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina National Guard.

In running against the first-term DeMint, Rawl gives Democrats at least the prospect of a competitive race. Chad McGowan, an attorney who had raised about $250,000, dropped his campaign against the incumbent last month.

Read more: Politico

Are you kidding me?

Few kill. But many rant.

The litany that made accused Pentagon attacker Joseph Patrick Bedell smolder and rant is varied, and still coming to light. His history was one of mental illness, not fringe-group agitation.

In an Internet posting, Bedell had suggested an act like the 2001 terrorist attacks could have been the work of a criminal organization controlling the U.S. government, accepting a “sacrifice of thousands of its citizens … as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control.”

His poisonous view of the government appears well out on the extreme—until you see what some people close to the center of power are saying these days.

“America is teetering towards tyranny,” Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told the Conservative Political Action Conference last month. He accused the governing Democrats of peddling socialist policies “that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world.”

Republicans have been branding Democratic policies as some form of socialism for generations, par for the course.

But tyranny? America has real issues with that—it violently overthrew that enemy at the start.

The AP

My God, I don’t even know where to begin on this.  First of all, the Democrats’ policies are a form of Socialism.  That is simply not up for debate particularly since we have a president in the White House who has succeeded in partially socializing the auto industry, the banking industry, and is attempting to take complete control of the health care industry.

Secondly, let’s discuss tyranny.  We have a president and a Congress trying to ram a government take over of health care down the throats of the entire nation that the people have soundly rejected and yet the Congress doesn’t give a damn.  That’s the latest tyrannical actions of the Federal government in a list of hundreds, if not thousands more going back decades.  Redistribution of wealth, compulsory education, radical environmentalism, all of these things and more are actions of a tyrannical government.  The Founders of this country revolted against the British for a hell of a lot less than what we put up with today, but let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of this absurd juxtoposition.

Senator DeMint said, “America is teetering towards tyranny.”  That’s it.  And according to the dynamic douche bag duo Calvin Woodward and Eileen Sullivan of the Associated Press, those words drove Joseph Bedell to open fire at the Pentagon subway station.  They glossed right over an inconvenient truth for them, however, that Bedell was a registered Democrat.  Bedell also despised George W Bush and was a 9-11 truther.  He was also diagnosed bi-polar and manic depressive.  Does this sound like a loony right wing militia wanna be clinging to God and his guns to you?  This fits the bill of an anarchist and they don’t like government regardless of who is controlling it.  He was also clinically nuts.

You would think that two experienced “journalists” would have been able to find these facts that dozens of other folks in the alternative media were able to track down in a matter of hours following the incident,  but it’s clear that Woodward and Sullivan were more concerned with pushing a biased political agenda than being honest couriers of  the news.

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior’s real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to “avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.”

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a “center of climate change scientific research.”

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development.”

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states’ freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That’s why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

Read more at The Washington Times

The Antiquities Act of 1906 was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt (R) initially to stop the raping of American Indian artifacts in the southwest.  It gave the President the power by executive order to declare any government owned public land as restricted.  The problem is that it’s since been used over 100 times since its conception and one person should not be allowed to have that kind of authority.  The Office of President was purposely made weak by the Founders for a reason.

I can see instances in which the Federal government may need to restrict public land use at times, but that should be done by a vote of the full Congress so that there is input from the American people.  The proposals shouldn’t be sealed away in a secret document and then carried forth through executive order by one man.  That’s simply not the way America was designed to work.

Winthrop University here in Rock Hill released the results of their latest political polling for the state.  The conclusion?  Most people really don’t much about the people running for governor on either side of the aisle.  I guess that’s not overly surprising.  Most people really don’t start paying attention until the last couple weeks before an election.  Over 75% of people polled knew very little about any of the Democrats running.  When it came to favorable ratings among all candidates of both parties, Lt Gov. Andre Bauer squeaked out through the top of the pack.

Regarding other questions that were asked, people in the state like Michelle Obama better than her husband.  Jenny Sanford is held in fairly high regard and Republicans are far more fond of Senator Jim DeMint than they are of Senator Lindsey Graham.

Erick Erickson from the conservative organization RedState wrote a piece this morning explaining why it’s futile for grassroots conservatives within the Republican Party to depend on conservative party “leaders” to make the first move in getting behind a quality candidate.  He cites Nikki Haley’s candidacy as an example.

In Pennsylvania, again Jim DeMint showed real leadership. He came out for Pat Toomey when everybody else went with Specter. Now it looks like Toomey has a serious shot at winning. Conservatives took real risks in going with Toomey. But with that great risk is coming a great reward.

That’s not happening so much any more.

In South Carolina, Nikki Haley struggles to get momentum. Republicans like Sarah Palin and others could come in and endorse her. But then if she loses these potential 2012 Presidential candidates might have to face a South Carolina Governor who they didn’t endorse. But Haley is the one who is most right on the most issues. She is the dream candidate with the compelling narrative.

RedState

I don’t know that I’d consider Sarah Palin to be a grassroots conservative leader considering that she required a $100,000 fee to be a speaker at the recent national tea party event in Nashville, but conservatives around the country seem to have an infatuation with her.  Her example aside, I do agree with Erickson when it comes to Nikki Haley.  Of all candidates on both sides of the aisle Haley is the one I am most confident in when it comes to bringing this state forward and achieving positive results.  The fact that RedState has endorsed her candidacy tells me that she should be the ideal candidate for most conservatives as well, yet leaders of the conservative movement are MIA when it comes to getting out in public and pushing her candidacy to Republican primary voters.  Is Erickson correct in his assessment that Republican presidential wannabees are reluctant to weigh in on the gubernatorial race due to a fear of not backing the eventual winning candidate and losing support of the future governor of the first in the south primary come 2012?  After all, historically the Republican candidate that has won the South Carolina presidential primary has gone on to win the party nomination at the convention.

A true principled leader would certainly not let politics sway their voice.  As Erickson pointed out, political convenience did not stop Senator DeMint from publicly stating that he would not back the reelection of an incumbent seeking reelection in his own party.  That, my friends, is true leadership, so where are the movement “leaders” for Haley?

The Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, began this morning and continues through Saturday.  Senator Jim DeMint spoke there earlier today.  Here is his speech.

From McGowan’s website:

“I’ve come to the conclusion that now is the wrong time for me to mount a successful campaign for the United States Senate. The demands of a young family place a premium on every minute. There is nothing more important to me than my wife and three small children. In order to fulfill my duties as a husband and a father, I’ll be leaving the race for United States Senate effective immediately. A few years from now, the kids will be older and in a phase of life that can tolerate the demands of a successful run. In the meantime, I’d like to thank my supporters for standing tall with me thus far, but ask that they understand that my kids comes first and they need me at home. I am still very much committed to the cause of fixing our broken political system, and will be fighting from the sidelines to defeat Jim DeMint and others who think South Carolina’s best days are behind us.”

Jim DeMint thinks S.C.’s best days are behind ya, huh? Yeah… you made the right call by dropping out. The Mighty Jim DeMint is gonna wipe the floor with anyone the Dems put up against him this year.

(h/t: The Campaign Spot)

Senator Jim DeMint Twittered that across the World Wide Web this afternoon.  I was in Florida the past few days for work and as I was at the airport in Fort Myers this morning catching my flight home all of the flights to Washington D.C had been canceled due to the second brutal snow storm to hit them in a week.  D.C. already received about 30 inches a few days ago and they are expecting another 14 inches.  In fact, today’s Senate global warming (hehe) hearing has been canceled.

Man made climate change is the hoax of the century and most Americans now reject the belief that man is responsible for the weather patterns.  It’s conventional wisdom that you can only keep a secret for so long and so it’s no surprise that the scam is unraveling.  For the past five years we’ve seen record setting snow and colder temperatures across the country and around the world.  Folks in the north barely saw much of a summer this past year and even down here in the south we didn’t reach the usual number of sweltering dogs days we usually suffer through.  People only need to go outside to know that Al Gore is in serious need of a body cavity search compliments of Nurse Ratched.

It sure feels like the White Witch has taken hold of the throne and in the midst of her reign the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has pretty much lost all its credibility.  What many of us have known for years is finally being revealed.  They’ve been lying.  It began in November with the hacked emails from East Anglia University in England in which climate “scientists” admitted on paper that they had cherry picked evidence that supported their beliefs and excluded that which did not.  Just two weeks ago it got even more embarrassing when the world discovered that U.N. “scientists” based their climate change claims on a student dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.  Liars and shysters and frauds, oh my! Despite these “errors” in judgment the IPCC insists its work is sound.  The universe is laughing behind their backs.

Let it be known that for the believers in man made climate change, it is their religion and Al Gore is the pope.