Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

The atmosphere that instigated this assassination was generated by the Biden campaign and other leftwing Democrats with their over-the-top extreme rhetoric falsely calling conservatives "nazis", 'fascists", "Hitler", "a threat to democracy", etc. This also instigated the two assassination attempts on Trump through this extremist rhetoric. Yet, these people still keep on with this hateful nonsense, continuing to stir the pot. The left glorifies killings like the murder of that health care CEO. They are stirring a cult of violence.

What is bizarre is that such a hateful group working to stir up violence against their adversaries has the gall to smugly denounce opposition to their own agenda as "hate speech". If you suggest that dangerous criminals should be kept in jail instead of out on the street, they call that "hate speech". If you suggest that our federal immigration laws ought to be actually enforced, they call that "hate speech". if you suggest that biological men do not belong in womens and girls locker rooms, restrooms, or sports teams, they call that "hate speech", The list could go on, but it is really the left who are the main perpetrators of what is genuinely hate speech, and Charlie Kirk is just the latest victim of it.

If our society is to pull back from this violence, it is time for the left to lay off their over-the-top extreme rhetoric that leads to violent acts like this.

Commented: Thursday, September 11th, 2025 @ 11:06 am By: Steven P. Rader

Obama and Biden were hard at work trying to undermine Freedom of Speech both in our own country and abroad. Renowned law professor Jonathan Turley, a big advocate of free speech, called Biden the most anti-free speech president in American history.

Commented: Friday, September 5th, 2025 @ 12:05 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Having been there during a key part of the period described by Campbell, I have to disagree with him over the changes in the legislature and in politics generally. For five years in the Jim Martin administration, one of the hats I wore was as a member of the legislative team for my department and worked regularly with the General Assembly promoting Governor Martin's agenda as it pertained to my department.

One of the big differences between now and then is the sea change in the Democratic Party during the intervening years. During the Martin administration, there was still an active conservative wing of the Democratic Party, one whose members, like State Representative Walter Jones, Jr. (D-Pitt), worked regularly with us in helping pass Governor Martin's agenda. The conservative wing of the Democratic Party is now an extinct critter. Democrat legislators now range from full blown "progressives" of the far left to "go along / get along" business Democrats, who tilt liberal, but somewhat less so.

I was sitting in the House gallery with others from our legislative team when a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans ousted dictatorial House Speaker Liston Ramsey and replaced him with conservative Democrat Joe Mavretic (D-Edgecombe). I was also there when Democrats stripped most of the Lieutenant Govenror's power from Lt. Gov. Jim Gardner and handed it to Marc Basnight as President Pro Tem of the Senate.

That brings me to the major thing that has led to the problem in functioning of today's legislature. That is the concentration of power in the leadership in both houses, placing great power at the top and emasculating individual legislators. The leadership has far too much power viz-a-viz individual legislators.

For a century, the NC House had a tradition of one term speakers. After serving one term a speaker moved on to something else, like a state cabinet position or a judgeship. They did not stay around in office to build up a political machine but turned over the reins to someone else. This prevented a concentration of power. That tradition was broken when Speaker Carl Stewart decided he wanted to run for statewide office but do so from the perch of House Speaker. Stewart broke tradition by running for and winning a second term. Then his successor, Liston Ramsey, decided he wanted to be Speaker-for-Life and built up a dictatorial power structure within the Speaker's office. Ramsey's running roughshod over individual legislators led to a rebellion from within his own party that led to his ouster and replacement, with Republican help, by conservative Joe Mavretic. Unfortunately, the genie was out of the bottle, and we have never had a voluntary one term speaker since.

In the Senate, power was long divided between the Lieutenant Governor and the president pro tem, which prevented a concentration of power and lieutenant governors changed every four years anyway. Most of the Lieutenant Governor's legislative powers were in Senate rules rather than in the state constitution. When Jim Gardner was elected as lieutenant governor as a Republican in 1988 that changed everything. The Democrat majority in the Senate stripped him of all of his legislative powers that came from Senate rules and gave those to the president pro tem, who at the time was Marc Basnight, concentrating power in that office. It took Basnight a few years to get a firm grip on things but once he did, he was called "the most powerful man in North Carolina."

The real problem in the legislature is the concentration of power in the hands of the legislative leadership, and to solve the problem that needs to be changed. Since no one seems to want to honor traditional voluntary term limits, the best solution is Constitutional term limits for the top leadership positions in both houses to no more than two terms. One term would be even better.

Commented: Saturday, August 30th, 2025 @ 3:29 pm By: Steven P. Rader

DEI is part of the Democrat Party scheme of Identity Politics, which attempts to divide America instead of uniting us. It reminds me of a funny video: "DWI: Driving While Italian.": www.youtube.com

Commented: Saturday, August 9th, 2025 @ 10:48 am By: Steven P. Rader

Democrat legislators have fled to Illinois to try to prevent Texas from correcting its congressional districts, but the governor is playing hardball and says he will remove them from office if they keep playing hookey from their duties. Texas law provides that he can do that. www.thegatewaypundit.com

Commented: Monday, August 4th, 2025 @ 9:16 am By: Steven P. Rader

The real unfairness of the way our immigration system has been run is Biden allowing illegal aliens in line in front of legal immigrants who are trying to do it the right way. If we need more immigrants, there is a big waiting list of people who are applying properly, not trying to sneak to the head of the line. Legal immigrants should ALWAYS have precedence over those who do not respect our immigration laws.

On the immigration debate, I think of my former employee, Sergiu, when I was running an American-funded office in Moldova. Sergiu was our accountant, with a university degree and excellent written and spoken English. His wife was a law student, also with excellent English skills. They applied repeatedly to emigrate to the United States, but there were a lot more Moldovans applying to immigrate than there were immigration slots. Finally, he also applied to Canada. It turned out that accounting was a skill Canada was looking for in immigrants and he was accepted the first time he applied. As with legal US immigration, he and his wife went through extensive medical and background checks and he was required to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), a test many Americans would have a hard time passing. He passed that test on the first try, getting his immigrant visa soon after. Although it meant I had to hire a new accountant, I was happy for Sergiu and his wife when they were able to board the plane to their new life in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

We have a screwed up immigration system, when people like Sergiu are left on waiting lists while unvetted illegal aliens who thumb their noses at our immigration laws are waved across the border, too many of them connected to foreign criminal gangs. I am happy that President Trump is working hard to fix that.

Commented: Sunday, July 27th, 2025 @ 7:58 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I appreciate the work of the Beaufort County GOP leadership, particularly Chairwoman Garris, in staying on top of this matter so that it could be handled properly. I am also grateful for the support I received from all wings of the BCGOP executive committee within the district in giving me a unanimous vote for this position.

In reviewing the Beaufort County Schools policies on Board operation, I found that they had never been updated to reflect that the races are partisan. I have drafted and submitted proposed amendments to make the needed revisions for consideration by the school board so that this process can run more smoothly next time around.

Commented: Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025 @ 11:03 am By: Steven P. Rader

Hood, the US used to have something like you describe, the old Bracero Program, where foreign farm workers came in through a controlled and monitored program, worked, and then went home. It was repealed by Democrats in Congress after pressure to do so from Cesar Chavez' United Farm Workers Union. The union was made up of mostly Hispanic farm workers who were American citizens and did not like the foreign worker competition. Chavez also constantly told his union members to report illegal aliens they were aware of living in the US to the Border Patrol, for the same reason.

Commented: Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 @ 9:13 am By: Steven P. Rader

The concept of DOGE is useful at all levels of government. Our GOP legislators in Raleigh have formed a DOGE operation and put our own Rep. Keith Kidwell in charge of it.

It is even being copied in other countries. In the UK, Nigel Farage's Reform Party is implementing DOGE efforts in the ten local governments they won control of this last election, and is working with the Conservative Party to implement it in local governments where Reform and Conservatives jointly have control.

DOGE has exposed what the Democrats and Deep State bureaucrats were trying to hide in Washington, DC. What is someone trying to hide in Beaufort County?

Commented: Monday, July 14th, 2025 @ 2:12 pm By: Steven P. Rader

President Trump said about Tillis: "He loves China made windmills that will cost a fortune, ruin the landscape, and produce the most expensive Energy on Earth" (from one of the linked articles above). We need a senator with a conservative Republican agenda, not a Greta Thunberg agenda. Don Brown is my choice in 2026.

Commented: Sunday, June 29th, 2025 @ 11:50 am By: Steven P. Rader

State law gives counties authority to enact solar and wind ordinances to set standards and requirements for solar and wind "farms". Beaufort County has a rather weak solar ordinance but, as far as I am aware, no wind ordinance at all. It is in these ordinances that a bond for the total cleanup of the sites ought to be required of the original builder of the facility. Many wind ordinances also restrict how close they can be to occupied buildings including schools and homes.

State law also makes wind turbines and solar panels largely exempt from local property taxes, stiffing counties and shifting the burden to other taxpayers. This is a very good reason to adopt very strict wind and solar ordinances to encourage these things to be built somewhere else rather than here.

Commented: Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 @ 2:53 pm By: Steven P. Rader

This reminds me of a story I heard decades ago at a state Republican convention. I do not remember the county, but they had just elected their first Republican member of a city council where a city manager was a power bully. At his first meeting, there was a large crowd of citizens there for a public hearing but before that was reached, on another agenda item, the new Republican council member had made comments, only to have the city manager enter into debate opposing his position. After the manager had spoken, the council member turned to him and remarked "Bureaucrats, like children, should only speak when spoken to". He got a huge standing ovation from the crowd for that remark when told everyone about how citizens really felt about the manager's excess power.

I would say from my own experience as a political appointee in state government that most career state employees I dealt with fully understood the difference between policy makers, the elected officials and their political appointees on one side, and those tasked with the nuts and bolts of carrying out policy, the career employees on the other. There were a few exceptions, but most grasped what their roles were supposed to be and the working relationship was generally very good.

Commented: Sunday, June 22nd, 2025 @ 8:03 am By: Steven P. Rader

One of the perennial challenges in government is the relationship between the policymakers, generally the elected bodies but in state or federal executive branches also their political appointees, on one side, and the career staff who carry out the policy on the other. This is true at all levels of government. Sometimes career staff accumulate too much power and set up bureaucratic fiefdoms and sometimes the policymakers let them get away with it. To make government work as it is supposed to for citizens, all the players must accept the proper role of their positions as well as that of others in government.

From my own service as a political appointee in the Jim Martin administration in NC state government, most of the career staff in the department I worked in fully understood the differences between policymakers and those who did the nuts and bolts work of keeping government running, and everyone worked well together without trying to get in someone else's lane. We only had a handful who acted as if they were a power unto themselves in a bureaucratic fiefdom. They existed but were a distinct minority.

Commented: Wednesday, June 18th, 2025 @ 2:01 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The premise of this "No Kings" movement is absolutely silly. To start with, only two royalists have ever been elected to the US Congress, and they were non-voting delegates advocating the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy, not creating a national monarchy for the United States. Anglo-Hawaiian royalist Robert Wilcox, who had been one of the military leaders of the unsuccessful royalist counterrevolution of 1895 in Hawaii, was elected Hawaii's delegate to Congress on the ticket of the monarchist Home Rule Party in 1901. He was succeeded by Prince Kuhio of Hawaii, who had also participated in the royalist counterrevolution of 1895 and was younger brother of Crown Prince Kawanakoa. Prince Kuhio was elected in 1903 to succeed Wilcox and served in Congress representing Hawaii until his death in 1922.

It is well known that many Continental army officers urged George Washington to become king after the success of the American Revolution, and he rejected the idea out of hand, instead becoming our first president. Washington also set the tradition of a president not serving over two terms.

The only other attempt to set up a monarchy in the United States occurred during the Articles of Confederation period before the US Constitution was adopted and was done behind the scenes with questionable support beyond a small group. Indeed, it was decades later before some leaders of that period discussed it publicly. After the Shays Rebellion, the then President of the Continental Congress, Nathaniel Gorham, wrote to Prince Heinrich of Prussia, younger brother of King Frederick the Great, and invited him to become king of America. Heinrich replied that he was not interested. It is highly questionable if Gorham would have had the support to have pulled that off even if Heinrich had said "yes".

So, other than the very limited situation of Hawaii, there has never been any substantial political support for a monarchy in America, and only the Gorham attempt had anyone of any political stature supporting such an idea.

Commented: Sunday, June 15th, 2025 @ 7:18 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The Democrat inspired riots, instigated by false information from "Let it Burn" Mayor Karen Bass, is nothing short of an attack on the Rule of Law. ICE was in the process of detaining a list of illegal aliens who had committed crimes, mostly serious ones and had already had their day in court in front of an immigration judge who had ordered their removal. ICE was simply enforcing the court orders of the Immigration Court, something that was often not done under Biden. Democrat Mayor Bass lied to gin up the rioters by falsely claiming that ICE was doing a random raid on a Home Depot. The incompetence of Mayor Bass led to much of the city burning in thewildfires, and now she seems to be targeting the rest of it.

Commented: Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 @ 12:27 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I would not assume that, Stan. Beaufort County does have a very consciencious, diligent, and honest elections director, but the problem was not in local policy but in state elections board policy. They instructed counties to approve registration of applicants who did not provide a drivers license number or the last four of the SS number. It is unlikely that any county refused to apply the official policy of the state board of elections even though that policy did not conform to federal election law. Indeed when the issue was raised in the lawsuits over the Supreme Court race, our county elections director confirmed to the Beaufort County GOP that there were such registrations here in Beaufort County.

Commented: Sunday, June 1st, 2025 @ 9:22 am By: Steven P. Rader

Van Zant, the Southside hearing was procedurally a huge improvement over the travesty of a hearing held at Snowden. When I served as a political appointee in the Jim Martin administration, I had a lot of experience with public hearings held by boards and commissions under the NC Department of Health and Human Services, where I served as the General Counsel. I would monitor public hearings of boards like the NC Social Services Commission, the NC Child Day Care Commission, and the NC Mental Health Commission for the department. I never saw anything like the circus at Snowden.

First, there was a lengthy advocacy speech by the superintendent before it was opened to the public. That was very inappropriate. Second, the superintendent tried to limit the public to questions rather than comments, until one speaker pushed back on that and went on with comments. That was inappropriate in the extreme to try to limit the public to questions. I have also never seen the people who are supposed to be listening to the comments to decide their course of action, the policymakers, hiding in the crowd instead of out front facing the public. That was inappropriate as well. All of those aspects were corrected for the hearing at Southside.

The other real oddity was the lack of legal counsel. When I was in the Marin administration, if I had a schedule conflict for one of these board or commission public hearings, I sent another attorney from my staff. Maybe when you have a school board attorney who is halfway across the state, it makes it logistically difficult to have him on hand, but that is just one more reason why it is better to have a local attorney representing the school board. They are more available for critical public hearings like this, as well as for things like riding herd on a massive school construction project.

Also, the report at the regular school board meeting on transportation lacked credibility because it was delivered as an advocacy speech rather than straight facts. When someone goes all over the landscape to try to justify something it raises real questions as to why. When that "report" started with ride times at district high schools and went on at length before ever getting to the subject at hand, it destroyed credibility.

Commented: Saturday, May 31st, 2025 @ 1:54 pm By: Steven P. Rader