U.S. Senator Kay Hagan has a communications closet problem. While the North Carolina Democrat is a supporter of LGBT rights generally – she voted in favor of the current federal hate crimes law and to repeal DADT, she has a history of trying to fly under the public radar in doing so, as if the right wing isn’t going to notice her voting record.

JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon sits on the board of the NY Federal Reserve. He knows what the Fed is doing. But Hagan says Congress can’t be trusted with that information because they would leak like a seive and the markets would crash. In the short span of a year, she has decided she doesn’t want anyone to tell her anything, and that we should just trust Jamie Dimon to do the right thing.

That’s. . . delightful.

Ask Sherrod Brown to save us from PhRMA and the Eshoo/Hagan/ lobbyist-written biologics legislation HERE. Well, we now know that 42 bipartisan members of the House were willing to act as PhRMA’s fax machines. I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise — 80 House Dems signed a letter to Henry Waxman, telling him to [...]

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio has been the leading voice in the Senate on the issue of biologics, the expensive drug treatments made from living organisms, and his advocacy for affordable, generic versions of the potentially life-saving drugs will continue once the Senate health care bill hits the floor. The Senate HELP Committee version of [...]

I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that Rep. Eshoo did not intend to put an evergreening period in her bill. Because not only would it apply to important breast cancer drugs, but also to drugs yet to be developed for everything from Alzheimers to an AIDS vaccine. Thank you, Rep. Eshoo, for your commitment to having a bill that does not allow for “evergreening.”

Now the question becomes — how are we going to get one?

In the Senate, Kay Hagan sponsored an almost identical piece of legislation to Rep. Eshoo’s on biologic drugs, which would keep important lifesaving treatments for breast cancer and other diseases, which can cost $50,000 to $300,000 a year, from every becoming generics. Even if you’ve got an 80% insurance copay, as Sherrod Brown notes, that’s [...]

Maybe it was just lousy timing, but many customers of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina are ticked off at the mail they’ve received recently from the state’s largest insurer.

First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of 11 percent next year.

Next, they opened a slick flier from the insurer urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid note to Sen. Kay Hagan denouncing what the company says is unfair competition that would be imposed by a government-backed insurance plan. The so-called public option is likely to be considered by Congress in the health-care overhaul debate

Elizabeth Dole is the most senior member of the North Carolina GOP, and she has the power to stop the racist attack ads against Obama that are running there. But in an election year when she’s widely accused of having “gone Washington,” she’s AWOL on yet another North Carolina issue.

We’re gong to be working with North Carolina bloggers (including Pam Spaulding) to deliver a petition to Dole’s office, telling her to write the North Carolina GOP and make it stop. You can cosign here.