Comments | Eastern NC Now

Authoritarian Cooper will never be considered as an education governor; not with the diminishment of public education in his more that 6 years of governor.

Commented: Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 @ 12:55 am By: Stan Deatherage

Thanks Buzz for keeping a public eye on these issues.

Because of my long standing political position, former fiduciary to the BCS, it has proved difficult for me to do so; however, I can, however, keep a keen watch on what education costs in this long protracted era of our state imposed public education monopoly.

More and more, I am of the opinion that fully imposed School Choice may be the best option for the public schools to correct their continued conundrum of providing what education our citizens will need going forward.

Commented: Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 @ 12:12 am By: Stan Deatherage

Buzz, regarding your complaint of the BCS website, when we, (Symbiotic Networks) developed and maintained the school district's website, prior to the New Providers from Far, Far away, this inability to find pertinent information would Not have occurred, not unless the schools wanted it as such. It is simply just a process of organizing the Search parameters of the site's databases by, in part, correctly establishing key words, and then leading the public to use the intra site Search function properly.

A case in point is that BCS's former Superintendent, Don Phipps (who personally requested our services to significantly upgrade their website), thought it wise to organize the School District's School Policy data, which was in a large PDF format (basically an image file to a site's search engine) to one that could be quickly Searched by subject. To accomplish this, we reduced the PDF file to simple text, so that a multiplicity of desired subjects could be Searched by common terms, which meant many keywords and phrases were strategically loaded to trigger the Search tool to properly Search the site's expanded database, and do it in a many that was efficient.

Continuing in explanation, when Symbiotic Networks created and maintained the school's website, we gave the school system the utmost in quality of workmanship, and would be doing i still if we had their charge to do so. In our 5 years of creating and maintaining their website, we strove to excel in every measure, and, ironically, did so at a far lower cost to the public than what is being expended now.

When allowed to rebid that contract, we underbid the successful bidder by 16,900.00 over a projected 3 year period (this is my minimum estimation from the data that I was provided, it could, however, be more now). In this case the lower bid, by the local provider, was not successful, and the Beaufort County School Board sought services elsewhere, which is their right to do so ... even at the higher projected cost, even if the quality of product is in NO WAY superior.

To try to make sense of why we lost this bid, under the school's new management, we considered that the quality of our workmanship may not have measured up to their current desired standards; however, after our own evaluation of their New Site, by their New Provider, and at the aforementioned greater expense, we are most happy and proud to advise the public that their former local, less expensive provider (Beaufort County's own Symbiotic Networks, locally owned and operated) of said service was, and still is, easily capable of that measure of quality and innovation that any school system should receive ... and should demand.

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 10:55 pm By: Stan Deatherage

More Jewish Space Lasers!

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 5:33 pm By: Big Bob

Still the only honest Christian in modern times to hold the office

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 5:37 pm By: Big Bob

Many students cheat in college to get ahead of the competition. It is quite easy for them to do so because schools don't have a good education policy.

If we want to prevent cheating, we must first make sure that students are getting the best education possible. This means that leaders and teachers need to learn more pay someone to do my course online about what makes a good education policy. 

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 3:59 pm By: carmeliawood

Do you outsource all of your "facts" to Fauci? No wonder you are always wrong, Bobbie.

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 11:55 am By: John Steed

In truth, there is a lot of middle ground on how the local party used its resources in the last election. There were three major groups of spending party funds, as the published reports to the Board of Elections show. The first one, the $14,000 that has been mentioned, was a very poor use of resources, but the other two were effective. The second set of expenditures was made up of party raised money and second in size, while the last one came from two generous contributors and was around $5,000.

Chairwoman Carolyn Garris played a major role in seeing that the second set of expenditures was used for what it should have been. She took the bull by the horns to head off any attempt to use it like the first round, the $14,000. As a result, the second round provided funds for a get out the vote mailer to Beaufort County GOP voters for the entire ticket, funds for mailings for the two contested school board races, and money for a radio campaign on behalf of the sheriff candidate, Scott Hammonds. That money was directed at local voters. Thanks to a couple of very generous contributors we also got the third wave of spending, which included a mailer on behalf of the sheriff's race, and a radio campaign for the school board candidates. Chairwoman Garris was also very involved in getting all of that accomplished, too.

The diversion of the $14,000 mostly to statewide judicial campaigns was orchestrated by First Vice Chairman Paul Varcoe. There are guesses at who else may or may not have been involved but they are only guesses. Unfortunately, one of the proposals of the orginal committee that was cast aside when Varcoe prevailed was a radio campaign on the issue of crime that had been designed to help both the statewide judicial ticket AND our local sheriff candidate. This would have given both a lot more punch than just writing checks to a statewide campaign committee.

Because judicial ethics rules largely prevent judicial candidates from running on issues, it is always more effective to spend money on their behalf raising issues that they are hamstrung on raising themselves from their own campaigns. This is why the NC Republican Party has a Judicial Campaign Fund, so they can run their own advertising raising issues that the candidates are prevented from raising directly. It is also why many other GOP organizations do the same thing. It is why giving most of that $14,000 directly to the official campaign organizations of each judicial candidate was the least effective way that money could have been spent on those races in terms of trying to do something to actually win those races. And the campaign records show that when those Supreme Court candidates were distributed shares of that Beaufort County GOP $14,000, each one was already sitting on well into six figures of cash on hand, with professional fundraising consultants out beating the bushes statewide for more. They were NOT "out of money" as the county executive committee was falsely told to try to justify diverting the money to them.

The county commission race was not a logical place to spend money because the math dictated that there would be two Republicans and one Democrat elected. The Democrat base vote will always elect one Democrat if only one Democrat is on the ballot. If three Republicans equally divide all of the swing vote plus the Republican base vote, that equals significantly less than just the Democrat base vote. This awful limited voting system guarantees the Democrat that seat as long as their vote is united in one candidate. The only real question in that election is which two of the three on the Republican ticket will join that Democrat. We need to either hope more Democrats file to split their base vote or change the system if we want a shot at winning all the seats.

In my opinion, county GOP efforts contributed siginificantly to at least one of the school board victories and to the sheriff's race victory. We had a first rate candidate in Scott Hammonds, but we had some usual GOP voters with their noses out of joint from the primary. The efforts by the county party and by Rep. Keith Kidwell helped get those voters upset from the primary back into the GOP fold for the general election. The county party funded the early Kidwell ads on behalf of Hammonds, and then Keith got out and raised more money where by election day, his efforts had brought in even more than the party put into it. Working as a team we helped solidify Republican voters behind our nominee.

The bottom line? Are people rightly upset about what happened to that $14,000? Absolutely. But in other respects, did the party spend money efficiently and effectively to elect our local ticket and to turn out local votes for our statewide ticket? Absolutely.

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 10:51 am By: Steven P. Rader

Thanks RH for yanking this far flung conversation back into the truth zone.

A real Beaufort County GOP would have vetted its candidates, which would have precluded Fake Frankie from running for county commissioner as a Republican.

An unknowledgeable local GOP is working hard to destroy what Republican brand that we have left. As someone who helped build the local Republican Party here in Beaufort County, that is a tough thing to watch, as I am forced to swallow that bitter pill each election as Frankie does his Democrat dance while this local GOP sucks up the flavor of his "step and fetch it" for the Democratic Socialists.

Without "Hoods PAC," I would NOT have been the leading Republican, in terms of votes won and gained, on the ticket. With "Hood's PAC," and another good Democrat running along with the Leftist Commissioner Ed Booth (Frankie's coalition member), Tandy Dunn may would have had enough votes to take Fake Frankie out.

And, you are right RH, we would have had a Republican majority, hopefully then moving Randy Walker more to the Right, thus making Beaufort County a far better governed county.

This is the real of it, the world outside of Alias Fools calling the Honorable Hood Richardson "liar!"

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 9:07 am By: Stan Deatherage

What the last county commission election was about was whether Republicans would regain control of the county commission or whether it would remain captured by the Democrats and their allies. If Deatherage and Dunn won, then we could get a functioning Republican majority. If Langley's stooge Waters won, the Democrats would keep effective control of the county commission. Frankie Waters is no more a Republican than Liz Cheney is a Republican. Waters is an infiltrator who is functionally still the Democrat he was most of his life. He is like the boy who pretends to be a girl to play girl's sports. Waters is a pretend Republican whose role is to get actual control of county government for the Democrats.

Commented: Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 @ 7:33 am By: Rino Hunter

I wonder who will brag that they will be doing Ly'n' Joe Bid'n's eulogy days, weeks, months before his possible slow death?

Commented: Tuesday, March 21st, 2023 @ 11:39 pm By: Stan Deatherage

Whether you believe in God or not, this message is a "must-read"!!

Throughout history, we can see how we have been strategically conditioned coming to this point where we are on the verge of a cashless society. Did you know that the Bible foretold of this event almost 2,000 years ago?

In the last book of the Bible, Revelation 13:16-18, we will read,

"He (the false prophet who deceives many by his miracles--Revelation 19:20) causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666."

Referring to the last generation, this could only be speaking of a cashless society.

Commented: Tuesday, March 21st, 2023 @ 11:18 pm By: Sarahsn