Dem poll: Kay Hagan lead vanishes

Incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) is near the top of national Republicans’ target list for 2014 — and a new poll shows her lead over her potential GOP challengers has all but evaporated.

Against state House Speaker Thom Tillis, Hagan leads by only 2 points, 44 percent to 42 percent, according to the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. She leads Rev. Mark Harris by 2 points as well, 43 percent to 41 percent, and nurse Heather Grant by 3 points, 43 percent to 40 percent.

Hagan trails physician Greg Brannon, the Rand Paul-endorsed candidate in the race, by 1 point: he leads 44 percent to 43 percent.

That’s a huge difference from PPP’s September poll, which gave Hagan leads of anywhere from 12 to 17 points against all possible GOP challengers.

(Also on POLITICO: Hagan seeks Obamacare probe)

Hagan’s approval ratings are underwater in the poll: 49 percent of those surveyed disapprove of the job she’s doing, compared with 44 percent who approve.

The poll also suggests she could be suffering from the implementation of Obamacare: 69 percent of those surveyed said the law’s rollout has been unsuccessful so far, compared with 25 percent who say it’s been a success.

In the four-way GOP primary, Tillis leads the pack with 20 percent. He’s followed by Harris at 14 percent, Brannon at 11 percent and Grant at 8 percent. Just under half of GOP voters are undecided.

The poll surveyed 701 North Carolina voters from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11. The margin of error is +/- 3.7 percent for the general election questions and +/- 4.4 percent for the GOP primary questions.

Via: Politico

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States Struggle to Draw Interest in Obamacare Health Plans

Obamacare’s rollout has become a punch line for late-night comedians, Saturday Night Live, and the Country Music Awards, which all noted that only six people enrolled in the federal health exchange’s website on its first day.

But the federal exchange isn’t the only part of the health law that’s suffering. Several states and the District of Columbia don’t even break double digits within the first month. Some examples:

• Delaware is off to a slow start with only four state residents enrolling in Obamacare health plans. Four community groups in the state received $4 million in federal tax money to promote the exchange.
• North Carolina has managed to get one enrollee, but officials admit that the person has not paid—suggesting a “payment re-direct option” on the government servers isn’t working. The state is also confronting a “scammer,” who was trying to obtain personal information using an insurer’s name.
• Oregon has yet to enroll anyone on its exchange website, which still doesn’t work. The state hired 400 temporary workers to process paper applications.
• The District of Columbia enrolled only five people in its insurance exchange

Even Maryland’s health exchange, considered a model for state exchanges, has had a slow and troubled start. One example is Maryland resident Brian Shaffer, one of millions of Americans who lost his current coverage because it didn’t comply with Obamacare. He was denied several times from buying new insurance on the state exchange because the state wouldn’t verify his citizenship.

According to WJLA ABC7, Shaffer—who has researched his U.S. family history back to the Mayflower—faxed his driver’s license and birth certificate twice but the state said it needed more proof.

“I believe it’s just sheer stupidity,” he told WJLA.

Via: The Foundry

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[MUST READ] One Second After

Back in July, I wrote an article that examined the post-apocalyptic genre in fiction and in film. In that piece, I committed (at least) one sin in that I mentioned a book that I had not read. Having just corrected that failing, I'm here to tell you that everyone in America should read William R. Forstchen's novel One Second After.

Forstchen's novel takes place in post-9/11 America. And into that very real America, he introduces "the event" -- an electromagnetic pulse attack. EMP is not science fiction; it's been known about for decades. The Sun emits EMPs in solar flares, which have caused power blackouts.

An EMP attack involves detonating nuclear bombs high up in the atmosphere. With an EMP attack there is no radioactive fallout, nor bombed-out cities. But what a successful EMP attack would do is knock out our entire electric grid and fry all our electronic devices. An EMP attack would turn the lights out across America.

One Second After follows one community, the real town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, for one year after a devastating EMP attack. The town is left like all towns in America: utterly cut off from the outside. That's because an EMP attack would not only destroy the electrical grid and everything attached to it, the electrical systems of all vehicles built in the last few decades would also be destroyed. The only vehicles that would work would be antiques, such as Edsels and VW bugs. So the teeming millions in our cities would either be stuck, or have to walk out.

Via: American Thinker

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Video: Allentown mother forced to choose between ObamaCare and feeding family

While the focus on the ObamaCare rollout has mainly been on its incompetent web design and operation, that’s far from the only problem — or even the most important. Pennsylvania’s WFMZ profiles a family that saw its monthly premiums skyrocket for 2014, forcing them to choose between getting the mandated health insurance or feeding their family (via Daniel Halper at TWS):

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“I feel it’s important for people to understand that the premiums aren’t affordable,” says Jennifer Most, a mother, who “told the crowd she went to the government website with all intentions of signing up … Jennifer and her husband are disabled, on a fixed income, and their five year old has a few medical problems as well,” the reporter explains.

The woman says, “My premium for health insurance was $947.63.”

“That is a over 765 dollars more than she currently pays,” says the reporter.

“It would take food out of our mouths to be able to afford these coverages,” the mother explains.

Don’t forget the little bait-and-switch pulled by HHS last month, when they finally rolled out the prices on the exchanges.  They claimed that the premiums came in “lower than expected,” but Forbes’ Avik Roy dismantled the dishonesty behind that claim:

“Premiums nationwide will also be around 16 percent lower than originally expected,” HHS cheerfully announces in its press release. But that’s a ruse. HHS compared what the Congressional Budget Office projected rates might look like—in 2016—to its own findings. Neither of those numbers tells you the stat that really matters: how much rates will go up next year, under Obamacare, relative to this year, prior to the law taking effect. …

Based on a Manhattan Institute analysis of the HHS numbers, Obamacare will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent, and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent. Worst off is North Carolina, which will see individual-market rates triple for women, and quadruple for men.

Via: Hot Air

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How Much Is Your Health Insurance Going Up?

Have you gotten a letter from your insurance company about your premiums going up? Has your employer told you that more will be coming out of your paycheck to pay for your health plan?

President Obama promised that Obamacare would lower premiums by $2,500. But instead, Americans everywhere are facing higher premiums because of Obamacare.

George Schwab, who lives in North Carolina, was notified in a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield on September 23 that his current plan doesn’t meet Obamacare’s benefit requirements and would be canceled at the end of the year. While Blue Cross did suggest a comparable plan, it was $980 more than what he now pays.

“The President told the American people numerous times that… ‘If you like your coverage, you can keep it,’” Schwab told The Charlotte Observer. “How can we keep it if it has been eliminated? How can we keep it

Via: The Foundry

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Insurance Rate Spikes Due to Obamacare Crushing N.C. Consumers

Thousands of North Carolina residents are facing huge increases in their health care premiums due to new coverage rules imposed by Obamacare.

Because the Affordable Care Act mandates certain types of coverage each health care plan must contain, some insurers like Blue Cross are canceling existing plans and requiring customers to purchase new plans.

How large are the increases? For some families, the changes will mean tens of thousands of dollars a year, the Charlotte Observer reports:

One of them is George Schwab of Charlotte, who pays $228 a month for his family’s $10,000 deductible plan from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.

In a Sept. 23 letter, Blue Cross notified him that his current plan doesn’t meet benefit requirements outlined in the Affordable Care Act and suggested a comparable plan for $1,208 a month – $980 more than he now pays. [...]

“The President told the American people numerous times that… ‘If you like your coverage, you can keep it,’” Schwab said. “How can we keep it if it has been eliminated? How can we keep it if the premium has been increased 430 percent in one year?”

Another family the Observer profiles would now pay $24,000 annually, up from $14,000.

The rate hikes at Blue Cross will affect one-third of the approximately 400,000 Blue Cross individual market customers in the state, the Observer reports.

Via: WFB

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AFL-CIO Convention Report #3: Union Bosses Commit To Targeting Southern Workers For Unionization

This is the third installment of the AFL-CIO convention report.

As 1,600 union bosses and their Marxist allies meet in Los Angeles through Wednesday to focus on rebuilding union power, one of the resolutions passed has been Resolution 26–to “Develop a Southern Organizing Strategy.”

This, of course, is by necessity, as most Southern states have workforces that are ninety-five percent (or more) union-free and companies, fed up with unions and their tactics, have been moving South for decades.

As the North Carolina AFL-CIO stated on its website to its national AFL-CIO delegates:

…Given the region’s culture and laws, unions have not invested heavily in organizing the region. And so, it’s no surprise that voters in the South keep electing state and federal officials who vote time and again against workers’ interests.

The anti-worker culture of the South has an impact far beyond the Mason-Dixon line. Southern Tea Party conservatives block progressive policies in Congress. Companies are increasingly moving to the South in order to lower labor costs and avoid union contracts…

…If unions grow this movement by investing in southern states, we can change the South and by doing so, we can change the nation. [Emphasis added.]

Via: Red State

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Progress in North Carolina

New clean-election standards and a law protecting unborn children have Democrats’ heads spinning. 

Democrats are terribly upset with Republicans in North Carolina: Having won the state house, the state senate, and the governorship, along with nine of thirteen U.S. House seats in the last election, Republicans in Raleigh are acting like they run the place.

The Republicans’ most controversial piece of legislation is a new voter-identification law, which Democrats are treating as the Second Coming of Jim Crow. Such is the low bar for controversy in the early 21st century: The new law simply requires that voters present a state-issued photo ID such as a driver’s license or the similar ID that the state issues to non-drivers. Other forms of identification not subject to the same documentation and security standards — such as student IDs and work IDs — are not acceptable under the new law. It is really something to watch the Democrats treat a trip to the DMV as an unbearable burden: Under Democratic initiatives, everything from a trip to the doctor’s office to opening a business requires or will require running a bureaucratic gauntlet indistinguishable from a trip to the DMV. Such trips are therefore properly regarded as educational: There is nothing that quite so perfectly attunes one’s senses to the ineptitude and hostility of a Democrat-dominated bureaucracy as a visit to the driver’s-license counter. Little wonder the Democrats object.

The absence of state-issued identification is not a bar to voting only — it marginalizes people from much of modern life, restricting their ability to travel or access financial services. If there are really that many in North Carolina who cannot get a state-issued ID, then the solution is to help them to do so.

Via: National Review Online

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Democrat Admits He's Voted FOUR Times Already

VOTER FRAUD: N.C. Democrat admits he’s voted 4 times already and will vote again on election day

It’s amazing what people will say online. A North Carolina Democrat named Jim Turner posted on his Facebook page that he has voted FOUR times already and will vote again on election day. Once he did that it was picked up by @BradMarston on twitter and has traveled like a bullet around the blogosphere:

Brad Marston@BradMarston

Wow. #Obama supporter admitted he's voted 4 times already w/ 1 to go. #tcot #gop2012 #mapoli #NCpoli pic.twitter.com/Kj2PjJPy

2 Nov 12

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Via: Fox Nation

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