bob etheridge

Saturday morning (Feb. 9th) the Harold Ellen Harnett County Democratic Men's Club hosted their annual Groundhog breakfast. David Price who now represents a portion of Harnett County was the keynote speaker and Bob Etheridge was master of ceremonies. Each spoke about the future of the Democratic Party and the dangers of the GOP in Raleigh and Washington.

The Council of State candidates and statewide candidates of judicial races will be touring 5 counties in the east on Saturday, Oct 27th. Details below.

We can thank Bob Etheridge for bringing this up:

Parents and supporters at several Wake County schools have raised money to pay for teachers in recent years. A News & Observer analysis before the current school year showed that foundations, parent-teacher groups, individuals and companies gave as much as $21 million annually to Wake County Public Schools. Schools with low-income populations got much smaller slices of the pie.

Of course they did. And there's a whole lot of rural schools out there whose parents can't afford a pack of pencils, much less a multi-million-dollar annual budget supplement. It's a bleak future for our kids. Most of them, anyway...

Got an interesting call yesterday. Some kid Field Organizer from Etheridge campaign called up and left a message on my phone. Told me to contact him (but did not leave a number), but left the number and name for a Field Director for the entire state. So I called him.

I told him that as a Precinct Chair in Wake County, I can't take sides and endorse one candidate over another. I told him that I was not so much concerned about the candidate's policies (assuming that they will follow the Democratic Party platform and work to turn it into public policy should Hell freeze over and we get a workable majority back).

Update by James with short answer: Yes, Ellmers does support destroying Medicare.

Last cycle, Republican’s across the nation ran against President Obama’s healthcare reform plan by scaring seniors about ‘Death Panel’s’ and how the President’s plan would cut over $500 billion from Medicare. Although both claims are completely misleading, that didn’t stop Renee Ellmers from using those lies to attack Bob Etheridge for his support of heathcare reform.

You can't retire just yet, Bob:

Former Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge will take office today as director of the state Office of Economic Recovery and Investment, overseeing the spending of federal stimulus money.

The state has received more than $10.5 billion so far in federal stimulus money. Nearly 80 percent had been dispersed and the money will continue to flow through at least 2012.

Here's a link to the Office's site, where you can find (among other things) a county by county listing of Stimulus-related job opportunities.

Renee Ellmers has pledged to oppose all earmarks.......but right after making that pledge she revealed that she didn't really know what an earmark was.

Renee Ellmers based her campaign on repealing health care reform.......but she says she will probably sign up for the federal health care plan that is offered to congressmen and women.

Renee Ellmers wants a smaller federal government.........but her district is home to Ft. Bragg and the local governments are being overwhelmed as a result of BRAC.

Dear Ms. Elmers,

Thanks so much for you making the Park 51 building a center of your campaign. It is so important that we care about this issue in North Carolina. Now that you've addressed what matters in New York, I will hope that you will also address these other out-of-state issues as well: :

* Seattle is considering a $2 billion dollar tunnel for Highway 99. If they are building a tunnel that expensive, shouldn't it go to Raleigh? Pearl Jam is from Seattle, and a lot of Pearl Jam fans live in NC. Imagine how thrilled they would be if they could go straight there with no traffic lights!

Congressman Bob Etheridge is the Congressman from the Second District of North Carolina. The Second District stretches from downtown Raleigh, through the suburbs of Southern Wake County, and into the surrounding suburbs and farmland of Johnston and counties south. It's a changing area, formerly rural, now rapidly urbanizing. It is the very definition of a swing district.

Now, thanks to the Tea Party, Congressman Etheridge is in a dogfight. And he's fighting a woman, Renee Ellmers, who has risen to Tea Party prominence on the back of a campaign against the Health Reform Plan, a campaign based on misinformation and gullible people who don't read for themselves.

But she just outed herself as a racist Islamophobe in her new campaign ad.

I promise you, you won't believe this one. Join me below the fold.

Rep. Bob Etheridge’s reaction to a street encounter with a student journalist has politicians and political pundits on both the left and right in a frenzy. The right is calling it an “assault.” The left is claiming it was “set-up.” Etheridge possibly set a new record by apologizing so quickly, without hours of the video appearing on the internet.