Carolina Politics Online

The so-called “jobs” bill passed the Senate by a vote of 70 – 28 and will result in throwing away another $15 billion in money we don’t have and in the end will do absolutely nothing to help our ailing economy.  It is estimated by some that the bill will create 250,000 jobs, a smidgen of the 8 million that have been lost, but what happens when the money runs out?  Well, so do the jobs and that’s the main problem.  These are temporary jobs that are nothing more than band-aids.  In the long run our economy will still be in the crapper.

Part of the incentive that will allegedly create these jobs is an exemption from the payroll tax for businesses that hire new workers and an extra $1,000 credit if they employ them for at least a year.  So let’s think about that.  If I hire a new employee for, say, $40,000 a year, I don’t have to pay the 6.5% payroll tax on their salary and I get a $1,000 credit from the Feds a year from now.  Perhaps my math is fuzzy, but I’m still out $39,000.  In a down economy the demand for my services isn’t picking up, so what good will it do me to bring on this extra employee?  Legislation like this is living proof that anybody off the street can run for office.

Your two North Carolina Senators, Richard Burr (R) and Kay Hagan (D), supported wasting your hard earned money and adding more to our already chronic national debt.

The U.S. Senate today voted to increase the nation’s debt ceiling another $1.9 trillion to continue to pay for entitlement programs, war mongering,  and other unconstitutional government spending that we can no longer afford.  The vote went down by a straight party line vote of 60 to 40.  This new debt increase amounts to $45,000 for every single American.  New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (R) summed up the situation nicely.

“It took 200 years to build the federal debt to a total of $1.9 trillion,” Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, said. “Now the majority wants to increase the current limit … by $1.9 trillion so that we can finance the government’s borrowing binge long enough to get us past the November 2010 elections.”

The AP

For those of you in North Carolina, call Kay Hagan’s office and ask why she is sentencing your children and grandchildren to lives of indentured servitude to the U.S. government in order to pay for her piggish greed today.  This woman is an unqualified embarrassment and that might explain her 29% approval rating across the state right now.

Washington D.C.
521 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-6342
Fax: 202-228-2563

Greensboro
701 Green Valley Rd; Suite 201
Greensboro, NC 27408
Phone: 336-333-5311
Fax: 336-333-5331

Raleigh
310 New Bern Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27601
Phone: 919-856-4630
Fax: 919-856-4053

Charlotte
1520 South Boulevard; Suite 205
Charlotte, NC 28203
Phone: 704-334-2448
Fax: 704-334-2405

Asheville
82 Patton Avenue; Suite 635
Asheville, NC 28801
Phone: 828-257-6510
Fax: 828-257-6514

Kay Hagan

Kay Hagan, like a lot of politicians, seems destined to go down as one of those accidents of history. She shows no great intelligence or political skill. There is no over-riding theme or rationale to her time in office. She has very few accomplishments to her name. And yet, through luck or destiny, she and many others like her somehow find themselves at the right place at the right time.

Pity the rest of us.

Because when Kay Hagan took her oath, North Carolina didn’t get a senator; Harry Reid got a marionette. Hagan campaigned as a moderate, but after a year in office it’s obvious that she isn’t. Conservatives accuse her of being a liberal, but I don’t think that’s accurate either. No, Hagan is really more of a political jello mold: she has no spine. She has no brain. Shake her with a hard question and watch her wiggle and jiggle around like an overweight hula dancer. Sure, she stays in roughly the same shape throughout, but it’s the shape her Democrat enablers made for her. I’d be very surprised if in the past year this woman has come up with a single original thought.

Hagan showed off her “moderate” credentials by criticizing a budget with an almost $2 trillion hole in it…  right before she joined the rest of her party and voted for it. Spineless.

Then she said the budget reins in fiscal irresponsibility. Brainless.

She feigned uncertainty about how she’d vote on the “We’ll Throw You in Jail if you Don’t Buy Health Insurance” Bill. Then joined every other Democrat in voting to bill your family $40,000. Spineless.

But when asked if it was unconstitutional, she wouldn’t give an answer. When asked if she would vote for the health care bill even if the majority of North Carolinians opposed it, she wouldn’t give an answer. When asked if she’d vote to raise income taxes or tax people’s health care plans in order to fund a public plan, she wouldn’t give an answer. I don’t think she can. I don’t think she’s capable of the thought processes that would go into answering those questions. Brainless.

Oh, to be fair, she was the only Democrat to vote against placing tobacco under the scrutiny of the Food & Drug Administration, marking the first time in perhaps her entire political career that she’s proven herself capable of independent thought. Somehow, I don’t foresee this becoming a trend.

And so for voting for several bills that not only harm her constituents, but her entire country; for being an empty shell with no clear convictions; and for being utterly incapable of independent or even rational thought, Kay Hagan (D-Harry Reid) is the 3rd Biggest Jackass of 2009. 

Tomorrow, the 2nd Bigggest Jackass of 2009.

The U.S. Senate voted to increase the public national debt to $12.4 trillion in dead of night last night.  They have to do these things under the cover of dark and close to the holidays when most folks won’t be paying attention.  In an almost party line vote it passed 60-39.  Senator Kay Hagan (D) in North Carolina was the lone Senator of the four in our two states to support this debt increase, now amounting to $40,000 for every man, woman, and child in our nation.

In another poll from Public Policy Polling, both Senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan are showing poor approval ratings from the voters of North Carolina.  Burr’s numbers shows a paltry 35% approving of his job in Congress with Hagan having relatively the same lack of popularity at 36%.  Hagan, of course, has another five years before she needs to worry about being reelected; Burr has only 11 months.

Despite Burr’s low approval rating, as every other poll that has been commissioned, he still leads all of his potential Democrat opponents, although the gaps have narrowed.  Burr leads Elaine Marshall by five points, Kenneth Lewis by six, and Cal Cunningham by nine.  This shows that either folks still aren’t sold on their selection of replacements to Burr, of which there is plenty of time to change, or that they feel even less confident in putting a Democrat in his place given the unpopularity of the party in D.C. right now.

It seems people feel like they have a choice between a giant douche or a turd sandwich.

I needn’t remind you of the necessity to kill this health care bill so that in the future true reform can be done. This bill will bankrupt the country by creating a whole new entitlement program we can’t afford, will oppress the freedom of the American people by imposing an unconstitutional Federal mandate on you and your family to buy health insurance or face jail time, and put your medical records in a national database, a clear violation of privacy.

Tonight the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on whether or not to begin debate on the Senate’s version of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The name itself is a lie because it’s not affordable and every American who currently has health insurance, which is 85% of us, will see a drastic increase in their premiums if this passes, making it more expensive and eventually forcing more of the people onto the government public option, which is the ultimate goal of the socialist Democrats in D.C.

Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) is allegedly on the fence about this bill. If the Senate cannot reach 60 votes for cloture they cannot begin debate and the health care theft act cannot go forward any further. If you live in North Carolina and care about your freedom as an American, call Kay Hagan’s office and demand that she vote NO to cloture! Her D.C. office number is 202-224-6342.

Apparently the over $300 million in promised incentives from your wallet by the State of North Carolina and Forsyth County just didn’t cut it.  After opening a plant in Winston-Salem Dell will close its doors after only a few years.  The government subsidized economy once again fails in North Carolina.  Fortunately for all North Carolina taxpayers Dell has only received about $15 million so far and they have pledged to return the money.  On the same note, guess who lead the effort back in 2004 to give your money to Dell to open their plant?  Why that would be none other than former State Senator now U.S. Senator Kay Hagan (D).

Dell’s decision Wednesday to close its Forsyth County plant left 905 employees, business leaders and a community confounded by a reality that simply did not compute.

Losing one of the Triad’s corporate prides and joy shocked and surprised those who had embraced the plant as a bright sign for a new economic future.

Dell opened its desktop computer assembly factory just four years ago. North Carolina and Triad counties waged a pitched six-month battle among themselves to woo a corporate treasure.

In return, Dell was offered its own treasure: nearly $280 million in state and local incentives. More than
$37 million of that was promised from Forsyth County and Winston-Salem.

The company quickly pledged to abide by its contracts and repay much of the money it had received. In a news release, Winston-Salem said that Kip Thompson, a vice president for Dell, met with Mayor Allen Joines on Wednesday to say the company would repay $15.56 million the city had provided since Dell agreed to build a plant.

News & Record

Sen. Richard Burr is an ardent free-market Republican strongly opposed to Obama’s plan, while Sen. Kay Hagan is a Democratic moderate who is keeping her options open.

Continuing her political balancing act during a visit to the Triangle on Thursday, Hagan voiced support for Democratic-backed health care legislation that includes a government-backed insurance option for people who can’t or don’t want to purchase private insurance – called a community health initiative.

But Hagan also expressed willingness to compromise, underscoring why she has been the target of a major lobbying campaign by both sides of the issue.

Asked whether she thought such a public option was necessary for health care overhaul, Hagan said she wants more details on a public option’s potential cost.

The News & Observer

North Carolina voters really had the pick of the litter when voting for Senate last year, didn’t they?  It was either “Do-Nothing-Dole” or “Hair-Brained-Hagan.”

This woman has no clue.  She has no clear principles of which she can dig her heals into the ground and not budge.  She represents a conservative leaning state and is clearly struggling with the idea of having to either support her constituents or the radical leadership of her party and the President.

I’m also still amused by the media continuing to pimp the myth that she is a “moderate” Democrat.  I thought I debunked that a while ago.

Keith Larson on WBT this morning had an interview with her and she for the most part couldn’t give a straight answer to most questions.  She basically admitted by dancing around the question that the government running health care is unconstitutional, but she wouldn’t actually say it.  When asked if she would vote for the health care bill even if the majority of North Carolinians opposed it she wouldn’t give a yes or no answer.  She wouldn’t give an answer as to whether or not she’d vote to raise income taxes or tax people’s health care plans in order to fund a public plan.  She refused to say when she’d next be available in the Charlotte area  for people to come in and talk to her.

Kay Hagan is clearly out of her element when it comes to her new job.  She shouldn’t have had a hard time answering these questions directly, but in order to do that she’d have to admit that she supports policies that the majority of the state she is representing do not.

WASHINGTON – States would be required to ban driving while texting or face the loss of highway funds under legislation being pushed by a group of Democratic senators.

Aimed at reducing driver distraction and highway deaths and injuries, the proposal follows a series of studies showing the dangers of drivers taking their eyes off the road to operate the handheld electronic devices.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal.

“The federal government ought to pass a law banning this dangerous and growing practice to protect the millions of Americans on our nation’s roads. It is a matter of public safety,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who was to unveil the legislation Wednesday along with Democrats Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

Associated Press

Here we go again with the Federal government attempting to over reach its authority by black mailing states with their own money to do its bidding.  I am not against a ban on texting while driving.  I would support such legislation, but that has to be the decision of each state.  The Federal government has no Constitutional authority to regulate this which is why they are using their traditional extortion tactic of denying the states their own money back for highway funding.  This is how they forced every state to raise the drinking age, mandate auto insurance, and pass seat belt laws.  In the private sector this would be considered a crime.  Why then does Kay Hagan support extortion in the government?

Senator John Thune (R-SD) has sponsored an amendment to the hate crimes legislation that will be voted on tomorrow (July 22) that will allow citizens with concealed carry permits in their state to legally carry in any other state in the country that also permits concealed carry.  Call our U.S. Senators now and tell them to support this amendment.

South Carolina

UPDATE: The bill failed 58-39 (it needed 60). Both N.C. Senators, Burr and Hagan, voted for it.

Senator DeMint handled this with absolute class.  He tried to attach an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would require an audit of the Federal Reserve.  The amendment, S 604, sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the Senate counterpart to Ron Paul’s HR 2918 in the House.  Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) blocked a vote on the amendment citing Senate Rule 16 which does not allow for legislating on an appropriations bill.

DeMint, with all his cool and collectiveness was quick to point out the hypocrisy of Nelson envoking Rule 16 by citing GAO audits of other government entities already attached to the same bill as well as a $200,000 earmark for a museum in Nebraska, Nelson’s state, the only earmark in the bill.  Our dear Senator Kay Hagan in North Carolina who was presiding over the Senate at the time points out that DeMint is correct in that all of these other provisions in the bill directly violate Senate Rule 16, but they weren’t removing them and were still going to disallow DeMint’s Amendment.

Over half of the members of the House of Representatives have cosponsored Ron Paul’s bill.  It will definitely pass if voted on.  So the bigger question that hangs out there is why are Senate Democrats so terrified of a Federal Reserve audit?  Who and what are they protecting and will the American people let them get away with this?

Today the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted to put tobacco under the scrutiny of the Food & Drug Administration.  I am pretty much opposed to just about anything that gives the government more power than it has today and while I naturally oppose this move, it’s not a huge sticking point with me.  The idea is that the Feds can now hamper marketing and other such activities and that will, in turn, reduce the number of kids that start smoking and end up dying of lung cancer 40 years later.  Whatever.  I doubt that this move will do anything to curb smoking in teens or adults, but I guess the less people that smoke, the better.

Along those lines, just to glorify myself a bit, my opposition to this bill helps prove how very principled I am.  You see, I am a shareholder of Altria Group (NYSE:MO), the parent company of Phillip Morris USA who has been lobbying the Feds for this legislation.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They are for it.  The reason is that the restrictions on advertising and marketing that will be placed on all tobacco companies by the FDA is good news for Phillip Morris USA because this locks them into their share of the market and will make it incredibly more difficult for their competitors to compete.  So you see, in theory the stock should go up and I should make money off of this, yet I still oppose it.

In case you’re wondering, all four Carolina senators voted against this regulation, including Kay Hagan.  Interestingly enough, Hagan was the only Democrat to vote against this showing that for the first time upon entering the U.S. Senate she has actually exhibited and is capable of individual thought.  So now we know it is possible.

Check out a new website called KayHaganTracker.com.

I met the author of this site at the Take Back Our State TEA Party on Wednesday. He worked on Elizabeth Dole’s campaign last year and started this site to keep N.C. informed on how Sen. Hagan is voting.

RALEIGH – North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan says she would like to cut the amount of international aid provided in President Barack Obama’s budget plan.

Hagan said Tuesday she would increase the amount of money dedicated in the budget to a program that helps law enforcement agencies offset the cost of jailing illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

Hagan mostly praised the budget, including increased investments in teachers and more money for rural health care. She says the budget reins in fiscal irresponsibility, even though she said two months ago the administration’s long-term budget plans included deficits that she said were completely “unacceptable.”

Statesville Record & Landmark

Is this woman smoking crack???  This budget has a deficit of $1.8 trillion!!  That is unfathomable.  No amount of reckless spending and waste in this country’s 200 plus year history even comes close to matching this abomination.  This is four times higher than the largest deficit Bush ran up and the Democrats were peeing their pants over his spending during the 2006 elections (well not really, they were just pretending to care).  I don’t know how more obvious it can be at this point that sending this woman to the U.S. Senate has been an absolute catastrophe.  Not that I want to see Elizabeth Dole back there any time soon, but I guarantee she would not have gone along with this disaster.

Hagan has three kids.  Someone ask her why she hates them so much.  Why, you ask, would I say something like that?  Because it’s the only conclusion I can come to.  She has her hands in the making of an enormous cataclysm for this country.  These deficits the government has run up and is currently raising to an exponential amount are going to collapse our entire economic system at some point and I don’t think it’s that far down the road.  I am talking a real collapse, not this child’s play recession we are in right now because that is exactly what this is compared to what is coming if this doesn’t stop.  Why does Kay Hagan want to destroy her childrens’ futures and that of their children?  Why does she want to ruin this nation so badly that we end up resembling a banana republic?  That’s what’s going to happen when China and other nations eventually refuse to back up our debt.  The Great Depression will be a cakewalk.

Either this woman hates her children or she is a spineless imbecile.  I guess all of this is another example of her “moderate” credentials.

What a snow job.  Sure, Hagan campaigned as a moderate during her election, but since she’s been in the U.S. Senate she has voted in lock step with the far left of her party.  Barrett only cites one example of her supposed moderate leaning and even that doesn’t support the notion of Hagan’s so-called moderate credentials.

But since taking the oath of office, Hagan has signaled repeatedly that she won’t fall in lockstep with her president.

Charlotte Observer

Except she’s done exactly that.  What has she bucked her party on other than the tobacco regulation bill?

In her first three months in Congress, Hagan has criticized Obama’s budget

Oh yeah, she criticized the hell out of it, right before she voted for it.

sponsored an opposition bill to a piece of tobacco regulation legislation that he supports

So that’s what makes her a moderate?  She opposed Obama on one piece of legislation?  Opposing tobacco regulation doesn’t make Hagan a centrist in any way.  Tobacco is a major cash crop in North Carolina so her stance on this is to protect the industry in her state.  Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) has opposed auto emissions standards for years, but he is certainly no moderate.  He just happens to represent a large constituency who works for the automotive industry in Detroit.  Other than that, he’s just as far left as the rest of the freedom haters in his party.

and joined a conservative-leaning group of Democrats calling themselves the “Moderate Dems.”

Oh, that must be it.  She joined a coalition calling themselves moderate and they’ve accomplished absolutely nothing.  In fact, Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) was the only “Moderate Dem” to vote against the reckless 2010 fiscal budget they just passed last week.

After all of this fluff, Barrett more or less admits that she can’t point to anything at all to back up her claim.

Still, she has voted with Obama on every major piece of legislation so far.

So what the hell was the point of this entire article, just to remind people that Hagan is a “moderate” because she says so?

In fact, Hagan has cast “yes” votes on all of Obama’s major legislation: the new bailout bill for banks, the economic stimulus package, the expansion of state children’s health insurance and a new anti-discrimination law.

I guess the entire Democratic party in the U.S. Senate is one big moderate group based on Hagan’s votes.

What’s more entertaining is that Barrett chose to interview our very best of friends at BlueNC.

That was just after Hagan joined the Moderate Dems, a group of southern and Midwestern Democrats with more conservative leanings, led by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana.

“Senator Kay Hagan has opted to take a path that is a bit disconcerting to a lot of us here at home,” wrote Betsy Muse, a supporter from Monroe, on her blog at the liberal-leaning Web site BlueNC. She worried that Hagan “may not be as open-minded as we might like.”

Get out of here.  Really?  Take a gander over to BlueNC and read some of the thoughts of these people.  Most of them are extremist whack-jobs on the fringe of society.  They would have complained that Stalin wasn’t Communist enough for them.

Kay Hagan and the reporters covering for her are going to have to try a lot harder than this to convince anyone that Hagan is a moderate, independent maverik in the U.S. Senate.  We need to see real results, not empty platitudes.

Once again, it has been my pleasure to debunk for you all the leftist media trying to whizz down your back and tell you it’s raining.

Yesterday, both the House and Senate passed a 2010 fiscal budget of $3.6 trillion, still leaving a deficit of $1.2 trillion in our wake.  The budget passed mainly on party lines.  Not a single Republican in either chamber voted for the budget.  In North Carolina’s Congressional delegation, Congressman Mike McIntyre (NC-07) was the only Democrat to vote against the budget.  I guess Kay Hagan was full of shit the other day when she expressed her apparent faux “outrage” over the spending.

The budget proposal pushed by President Obama is “completely unsustainable and unacceptable” because it would burden the nation with annual deficits of more than $1 trillion, U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, said Saturday.

Hagan, D-N.C., drawing a contrast from the nation’s top Democrat, said she has been working to limit the growth in non-defense spending in the budget. She questioned the Obama plan that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would place the country under a $1.2 trillion annual deficit even a decade from now. Hagan said she’s not sure how she’ll vote, saying changes could still come.

“I agree with a number of ideas in President Obama’s budget, but I was particularly concerned about the deficit spending in his proposal,” Hagan said in a speech at the N.C. Associated Press Broadcast annual meeting at Elon University. “It’s completely unsustainable and unacceptable.”

Charlotte Observer

It’s nice to see Hagan finally showing a little bit of independence from her party, considering she has pretty much been a lackey her first two months on the job.  She was touted as a “moderate” Democrat, after all, but this is about the first example I’ve seen of that.

Obama’s entire vision for America is indeed unsustainable, let alone his budget.  He intends to spend well over $3.5 trillion, still leaving behind a $1.75 trillion deficit.  How any member of Congress can even consider going along with this is reprehensible, but then when you consider that a novice like Barack Obama was considered the gold standard for Presidential politics last year, how can we expect any more from our other representatives?  The American people have really lowered the bar and we’re going to pay for it badly.