Carolina Politics Online

Yep, you read the headline correctly. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, the state’s premier insurance company, is requesting a premium hike for as much as 30% for some North Carolina residents.

The state’s largest health insurer plans to hit some members with sharp rate increases again next year, blaming changes from the health overhaul and rising medical costs.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina asked state regulators Thursday for permission to increase rates an average of 6.97 percent for its 300,000 individual members in the state. That’s the lowest proposed annual increase since 2007. About 28,000 people would see their rates decrease, including women in their early 20s.

But rates for some children, men and older members will increase 30 percent or more.

The News & Observer

Confused?  Are you asking yourself how this could happen?  I mean, we passed the health care bill.  It was absolutely dire we pass the health care “reform” bill to lower the cost of health insurance in this country, right?  Sure, if you were stupid enough to buy up that crap hook, line, and sinker.

It’s partly because of increasing medical costs and more people using expensive services, but also because the new federal health law is forcing changes such as eliminating annual or lifetime limits on coverage, expanding dependent care for children until age 26 and more, McDonnell said.

“With everything that’s been added, you can’t really expect costs to go down,” he said.

Get outta town!  You mean when we force insurance companies to cover people’s pre-existing conditions and do away with caps and make them cover their 26 year old “children” it’s going to cost the rest of us more, not less?  Like, real math at play here?

The rising rates will likely force more people in North Carolina to cut back on coverage or go without, said Adam Linker, a policy analyst with the N.C. Justice Center’s Health Access Coalition. And some of the additional “safety net” measures of the federal law won’t start until 2014, he added.

Ah, but you can’t go without!  That’ll be illegal!  Remember that whole individual mandate?  If you don’t purchase health insurance coverage the IRS will come knocking at your door.

Folks, the promises made by President Obama and his minions at the Kremlin was nothing but a ruse.  They knew this was going to happen.  They know you can’t throw 30 million people into the system and spend less money.  All of this was orchestrated.  The far left in this country has wanted a single payer universal health care system just like Europe for years and that is exactly the idea.  In passing ObamaCare, the Democrats have created a bureaucratic monster that will make health care so much more painful than it has been that they’re banking on the American people just throwing up their hands and crying to the government to fix “the fix.”  That fix will be single payer.  The government created the problem and they will use a socialist government solution to fix it.

The DNC and this administration knows that ObamaCare will not lower health care costs and that is why they are telling their members who are fighting for their reelections to no longer talk about the cost aspect of the health care bill, but instead use sympathetic, tear jerker stories of Tiny Tim who now, thanks to ObamaCare, can kick away that crutch and walk again.

The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”

The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.

“People can be moved from initial skepticism and support for repeal of the law to favorable feelings and resisting repeal,” it says. “Use personal stories — coupled with clear, simple descriptions of how the law benefits people at the individual level — to convey critical benefits of reform.”

The presentation also counsels against the kind of grand claims of change that accompanied the legislation’s passage.

“Keep claims small and credible; don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers,” it says, suggesting supporters say, “The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work [to] improve it.”

Politico

A majority of the country still opposes this bill so we have only two roads left to which we can turn.  One, we can rely on the Republicans to take over Congress and then the presidency by 2013 and repeal this disaster, but will they have the testicular fortitude to actually go through with it?  It’s hard to say.  Typically, they’re nothing but a bunch of gutless wonders.  The only other hope is that the Supreme Court strikes it down.  It should be struck down on Constitutional grounds, but their idea of what is and isn’t Constitutional these days is always a craps shoot.  Even if they find the mandate to be unconstitutional, which I think is the most likely result of these lawsuits, it doesn’t mean that the whole legislation will be voided.

Senator Kay Hagan, the lone Democratic Senator of the Carolinas voted for this train wreck, so be sure to call her office and let her know how you feel about it.  You can find the information here.

Kay Hagan is forced to go off-script and form her own thoughts and opinions. The results are not pretty.

H/T to High Minded Commentary

RALEIGH, N.C. – A prestigious North Carolina private college cannot have police officers with the power to arrest suspects and enforce state law because the school is a religious institution, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

A three-judge panel agreed that the state Attorney General’s Office shouldn’t have commissioned Davidson College officers as law enforcement with powers similar to city police or county sheriffs. An attorney familiar with the case said it may apply to other private colleges with religious affiliations.

Allowing the school’s security officers to carry out laws on behalf of the state violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against laws establishing religion by creating “an excessive government entanglement with religion,” Judge Jim Wynn wrote in the unanimous opinion.

The police power “is an unconstitutional delegation of ‘an important discretionary governmental power’ to a religious institution in the context of the First Amendment,” Wynn wrote before he left the state bench to join the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week.

Fox News

This has got to be one of the dumbest rulings I’ve seen in a long time and to make matters worse, one of these judges was just appointed and confirmed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Please explain to me how “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” translates into campus security cannot have the same police powers as other schools simply because it is a religious school.  This is the kind of bastardization of the Separation Clause that we’ve been seeing, mainly from far left judges, for almost a century now.  If this is the kind of Constitutional ignorance we can expect from the Dishonorable Judge Wynn on the Circuit Court then, no pun intended, God help us.

Both Senators Kay Hagan (D) and Richard Burr (R) were supportive of Wynn’s nomination to the 4th Circuit Court.

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 last thing American businesses need in this economy is to get smacked with a tax increase so that the Federal government can dole out more welfare money, but that is exactly what the U.S. Senate did today and Kay Hagan voted for it.

WASHINGTON—The Senate voted Thursday to approve a package of $26 billion in aid for state and local governments, funded partly by an $11 billion tax increase on U.S. multinational corporations.

In what was one of the final moves by the Senate before lawmakers depart Washington for the summer recess, Democrats were able to score a significant victory for a core constituency of their party: labor unions and public-sector workers.

But at the same time, they handed a hefty tax bill to U.S. companies with units overseas that have been able to pay a lower corporate income tax rate on profits derived from their foreign businesses.

The Wall Street Journal

You would think that in a state with double digit unemployment numbers the last thing Hagan would want to do is hinder further job growth, but she isn’t too bright on the economic side, is she.  The House still needs to pass this before it becomes law, but I don’t see any reason why they won’t.

Tree.com, an online lending and real estate company, is the parent company of LendingTree, which matches consumers to lenders of various types of loans. A nonprofit arm launched in April, The LendingTree Foundation, provides low-income families and individuals with a mentor to help them resolve financial difficulties.

“It’s for people who…just need the coaching to overcome the financial problems they’ve faced,” said Nicole Hall, a LendingTree spokeswoman.

LendingTree also created a website this spring, AboutFinancialLiteracy.com. It offers tools, such as loan calculators and loan coaches, to help consumers with their finances.

Hagan was onsite to learn about the programs. She spoke of starting financial literacy education early in her home, teaching her children the importance of budgeting and borrowing at a young age.

Charlotte Observer

The State of North Carolina should require that every student have a course in financial literacy as a graduation requirement.  Instead of wasting students’ academic time with worthless literature requirements that have no practical value in the working world, they should learn how to manage money and responsibly manage debt when it is necessary to take it on.  It’s good that Hagan supports financial literacy initiatives, but it would also be nice if she practiced it as well.  She did, after all, cast a vote in favor of the current Congressional budget which will have a deficit of $1.5 trillion by the end of the year.

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.

Gee, nobody saw this coming.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

The New York Times

Shocking, eh?  No, not that this is happening.  It’s shocking that there were people in this country stupid enough to actually believe the President’s lies about being able to keep their current health coverage and doctor.  As ObamaCare slowly unfolds more people are figuring out just how badly we got bent over by our “representatives” in D.C.  Oh, and let us not forget who it was that brought this on us by voting in favor of ObamaCare.

• G. K. Butterfield (NC-01)
• Bob Etheridge (NC-02)
• David Price (NC-04)
• Mel Watt (NC-12)
• Brad Miller (NC-13)
• Jack Spratt (SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (SC-06)
• Senator Kay Hagan (NC)

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.

Hagan said she wants small producers to be allowed to continue to operate under existing state regulations.

“We need a robust prevention and response system to handle outbreaks of food-borne illnesses,” she said in a statement. “But we have many hardworking small producers and family farms in North Carolina, and it is unnecessary for these producers to be saddled with new regulations and paperwork.

Local farm and food advocates have said the new regulations are great for companies buying ingredients from hundreds of places worldwide. But the small producer usually knows where he is buying his ingredients and might have grown some of them himself, which tends to mean a safer product.

Asheville Citizen-Times

So let me see if I have this straight.  It’s apparently perfectly acceptable for small food producers to accidentally poison us.  It’s only bad if the big evil rich producers contaminate our food supply.  Do I have that right?

Either these regulations are needed or it’s just another encroachment of government bureaucrats making it harder to do business in the United States.  Which is it?  Are Hagan’s actions an indication that this is just more bureaucratic B.S. that we don’t really need or is she putting the special interests of business ahead of the health of her constituents?

Did N.C. actually elect this dunderhead in 2008? Holy crap…

I’m not sure Kay Hagan could articulate a single idea that isn’t spoon fed to her by her Democrat handlers. Is she even capable of an original thought?

This is a simple question, Kay: That bill you just voted for- y’know, the one everyone seems so pissed about? Where in the constitution does it say you can do that? No, I don’t care what Harry Reid says. What does the constitution say?

If you can’t answer, have an original thought for once… and think about resigning.

h/t- NRO

Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, is pushing to have her financial literacy bill included in Congress’s reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the law that tries to battle the achievement gap in public education.

Hagan, a former banker, submitted a bill early last year that would require students to be taught about personal finance and financial literacy as part of their schooling.

At a dinner Wednesday night for a financial education coalition, Hagan talked about the importance of helping the next generation navigate increasingly more complex financial products.

“The fact is, we all have to understand debt and money issues to get by in the world today,” Hagan said, according to her prepared remarks.

The N&O

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