A Fifty-Fifty Proposition For McHenry

Our old friend The Odious Patrick McHenry has a plan to help the NC-10 area's 14%+ unemployment rate back home.  His clever plan to create jobs, help families and bolster the economy?

Meh, OK I lied, McHenry's got nothing on that front.  But he does want to waste America's time by putting Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill!

Rep. Patrick McHenry announced that he will introduce a measure that would replace Grant's face with Ronald Reagan's, just in time for the 40th president's 100th birthday next February.

"President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation's political and economic thinking," McHenry said in a statement. "Through both his domestic and international policies he renewed America's self confidence, defeated the Soviets and taught us that each generation must provide opportunity for the next."

McHenry says it's only logical for Reagan to replace Grant on the $50 bill because several historians have ranked Reagan as a much better president than Grant. McHenry specifically cites a 2005 Wall Street Journal survey of scholars who placed Reagan at No. 6 and Grant at No. 29.

"Every generation needs its own heroes," McHenry also said. "One decade into the 21st century, it's time to honor the last great president of the 20th and give President Reagan a place beside Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy."

He does have a point:  Ronald Reagan was certainly half the man Ben Franklin was on the $100.  Apparently the bar for getting on currency as a Republican is "Being a president not universally despised when they left office."  Compared to Nixon, Ford, and the Bushes, yeah, I guess Reagan's not a complete douchebag.  Also, his wife was on Diff'rent Strokes once.

Seriously though, Pat.  I'm fairly sure your constituents have much bigger problems to worry about than whose face is on the fifty dollar bill...I'm sure most of them would rather have the fifty dollar bill, in fact.

Or a job.  Throw in the U-6 numbers in this part of North Carolina and you're looking at, what, over 22% being underemployed or unemployed?  One in five, approaching one in four?

And you're trying to get Reagan's face on money?  No wonder you're getting Hoffmaned from the right by not one, but two teabagger challengers.