Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

As a former political appointee serving in the Jim Martin administration, I am well aware that staffing an administration is the key to success or failure. Martin brought in policy oriented and competent Republicans and conservatives, and he cruised to easy reelection. Pat McCrory on the other hand shunned appointment of policy oriented party activists and as a result, policy blunders cost him reelection.

With this in mind, Folwell has demonstrated that he knows how to staff a state government department with solid competent policy oriented people, while Robinson has floundered badly trying to staff the much smaller lieutenant governor's office. Folwell has demonstrated the competence that Robinson clearly lacks.

There is an old campaign slogan used years ago by the British Conservative Party that sums up the difference between Folwell and Robinson - "Action, Not Words".

Commented: Wednesday, January 24th, 2024 @ 9:50 am By: Steven P. Rader

While I have never liked the term "RINO" because it is too much inside baseball and the average voter has no clue as to what it means, I am familiar with how the Democrats define the word "compromise". It means doing everything 95-99% their way, with maybe a few minor bribes to a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan thrown in. They never would consider a true compromise where each side got about half of what they wanted.

Commented: Monday, January 22nd, 2024 @ 4:51 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Like most extreme leftists, you are ignorant of history, Bob. Traditional conservatives were at loggerheads with the National Socialist German Peoples Party, the formal name of the Nazis. The last effort to stop the Nazis that might have worked was in 1932 under Chancellor Brunning of the Catholic Center Party where a plan was worked out with the two conservative monarchist parties, the German National Peoples Party and the German Peoples Party to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy in order to stop Hitler. That plan fell apart when the German National Peoples Party insisted on bringing back Wilhelm II while the others wanted to restore the monarchy under his grandson. When the Nazis came to power, both of those two conservative parties were banned along with other traditional conservative parties like the Bavarian Peoples Party and the Peoples Conservative Reich Union. If the von Stauffenberg plot to blow up Hitler at the Wolf's Lair had succeeded, the plotters intended to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy under Prince Louis Ferdinand, the grandson of Wilhelm II. Fascism is more akin to socialism than it is to any true branch of conservatism which is why the Nazis had the term "socialist" in their party name.

In contemporary Germany, it is the parties of the left who are more prone to Nazi-like behavior like limiting free speech.

Commented: Monday, January 22nd, 2024 @ 9:09 am By: Steven P. Rader

I have seen the fund raising letter that got the school board incumbents panties in a twist, and while it was not structured in the most effective manner, its content seems to be accurate. It is also interesting that the school board majority faction seems to admit that in its resolution by not disputing any of the facts presented.

Why are they so frantic about the public learning those things? Indeed, the letter's content about the county school's lousy scores on the state evaluations are something that the School Board itself is required by law to advertise itself. They do a deliberately poor job of meeting that statutory requirement. A link that goes to those scores is buried on the School Board's website, and even if you find it and follow it, there is still a lot more navigation of the state site necessary to find Beaufort County schools' scores. If the school board really had wanted to level with the public on the lousy scores our schools are getting, they would have taken some of the thousands of dollars they pay for puff piece ads in the Washington Daily News and buy a quarter page ad there revealing the scores. They don't want them revealed, so they don't do that and they get mighty upset when someone else reveals them.

Then there is the issue of local control of local schools which the majority faction on the school board clearly does not favor, based on the wording of their resolution. They clearly take the position that they should be subservient to the state DPI in Raleigh on curriculum, when the state law, on the contrary, gives the local school boards total control of what is in their curriculum. That was underlined when Rep. Kidwell introduced a bill to allow use of the Hillsdale College history curriculum, and the attorneys at the state legislature told him that was unnecessary because local school boards already had absolute control over curriculum and DPI had no authority to tell them what to do. Of course, the out of town attorney used by our school board is connected at the hip with DPI, so should he be expected to do anything other than sing DPI's tune?

With DPI being run by a Roy Cooper appointed majority on the state Board of Education, anything coming out of there is going to tilt to the left, often heavily. Therefore it is critically important to elect a school board that believes in local control of local schools. The current majority on the Beaufort County Board of Education clearly does NOT, and that is a huge issue IMHO.

Commented: Saturday, January 20th, 2024 @ 9:22 am By: Steven P. Rader

It is not surprising that the farmers have finally had enough and have gone to war with the climate-industrial complex. Not only are they being saddled with onerous new rules and more expensive fuel, but last year, the EU parliament decided to pass a "nature restoration" bill that targets farmers.

The climate-industrial complex has been busy clear cutting ancient forests for their very land intensive wind and solar "farms" leading to substantial deforestation. In turn, deforestation aggravates flooding problems and destroys wildlife habitat. Now they want more natural areas, but not by retreating on what they have done to the forests with wind and solar but by forcing real farmers to put farmland back into nature. How people are supposed to eat in the future has not really been explained.

Godspeed, farmers, you are standing up for the people.

Commented: Wednesday, January 17th, 2024 @ 1:00 pm By: Steven P. Rader

This is hardly the first time that the Democrats have done this dirty trick to interfere in the Republican nomination process, and probably will not be the last. The media usually tries to sweep it under the rug.

That said, Republicans need to do more to protect our nomination process. In North Carolina, we have a cut off date for registering Republican prior to our conventions and for all parties, prior to filing for office. No one can swith for a day to play games. They can however register Unaffiliated to vote in our primaries if they do it early enough, and many GOP activists object to that and want to close that loophole.

Iowa needs a cut off date, no later than January 1 to be registered Republican to participate in the caucus, and probably more like December 1 to make this Democrat mischief harder to set up. Also, early primary states like New Hampshire and South Carolian need to close their primaries to only Republicans, and the RNC rules need to set major penalties if they do not.

In 2008, McCain got the momentum out of open primary states New Hampshire and South Carolina to get enough of a lead of the pack to capture the nomination. Exit polls showed, however, if only Republicans had been voting, McCain would have lost both states and we would likely have had a different nominee. That is the huge difference that opening or closing a primary can make to the outcome of a campaign. McCain proved a useless nominee on economic issues, which became the election key in the Fall. A different nominee would have probably beaten Obama and saved the country from a lot of nonsense like Obamacare and the Iran deal.

Commented: Monday, January 15th, 2024 @ 8:33 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Good observation, Mark. Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984" were competing visions of a totalitarian future. The "Great Reset" of today's globalists combine elements of both.

You might enjoy Roland Huntford's book "The New Totalitarians" written about Sweden after decades of Social Democrat rule which he argued was sliding into a Brave New World type of totalitarian state. Huntford was longtime Stockholm correspondent for the London Times so he had lots of material to work from. Fortunately, Sweden's slide in that direction was stopped by the center-right finally beating the Social Democrats, and now the rise of the populist nationalist anti-immigration Sweden Democrats.

Commented: Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 @ 10:52 am By: Steven P. Rader

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has published a newspaper column denouncing the efforts to kick Trump off the ballot and pointing out it was the same tactic Putin and other dictators use. www.dailymail.co.uk

Commented: Friday, December 29th, 2023 @ 5:42 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The Democrats are trying to freeze out Biden's primary challengers, one of whom is a sitting Democrat Congressman, and it is sad that Republicans have allowed them to do that here in North Carolina. At worst, they could have had one Republican absent for that vote and the other two vote NO to show Republican opposition. This is heavy handed machine politics by the Democrat hierarchy to force feed Biden to their voters. It is an assault on democracy by the "Democrat" Party. And, yes it is a very Soviet style ballot to be offered one choice when others are running.

Republicans have never dictated this sort of thing to our voters. I remember the first primary I was active in 1972, when Richard Nixon, the closest thing Republicans ever had to a machine politician, was being challenged by two sitting Republican congressmen, one, Congressman John Ashbrook (R-Ohio) from the right, and the other one from the left. In his announcement, Ashbrook accused Nixon of "running on George Wallace's platform (from the 1968 campaign) but carrying out Hubert Humphrey's". These challengers were not frozen out of the primary and caucus process as the Democrats are now trying to do to challengers to circle the wagons around Biden.

Commented: Thursday, December 28th, 2023 @ 12:22 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The actual brief filed by former Attorney General Ed Meese and the two law professors is itself not readily available, Bob, but the legal theory behind it is well explained in the news coverage. Given who filed it, I trust their conclusion. One of those articles, the one in Red State, which is the better one, was written by a lawyer who has a practice in federal criminal law, not some hot shot journalist. He clearly has obtained the brief and read it to provide his analysis. I wish he could have put up a link to it, but he hasn't.

Commented: Monday, December 25th, 2023 @ 4:57 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I look at the choices in our primary as 1) who will make the best governor and fight for GOP principles, and 2) who will make the strongest candidate.

As to being the best governor, I rely on my experience as a political appointee inside the Jim Martin administration, and my observations of the Jim Holshouser and McCrory administrations. There are two important aspects to look at, 1) who will stand up for principles, and 2) who has the ability to staff an administration with solid people who will carry out the policies and principles of the administration.

As to staffing a government office, Graham is an unknown quantity as he has no record on that. Folwell has an excellent record of getting the right people on his staff to get things done on his agenda, while Robinson has a very poor record on that. Folwell is the very clear choice on this criteria.

As far as promoting solid GOP policy in government, Graham has no record on this as he has never been in office, but has pushed some very non-Republican policy as a private citizen. Folwell has a strong record of taking the bull by the horns, pushing hard, not being afraid of the special interests and getting things done on GOP policy. Robinson started off great with his crusade against woke curriculums in the schools, but after getting himself a lot of publicity on that, dropped the ball. He has not picked up the ball on ANY key policy issue since. Folwell, again, is head and shoulders ahead of the others on this criteria.

When it comes to electability, both Folwell and Robinson have good track records, but Folwell has won consistently, and so far Robinson only once. Graham has no track record. Graham pissing off the farmers means he has the least shot at election. I have some concerns about skeletons rattling around in Robinson's closet which have been aired on the Daily Haymaker and the Democrats are probably holding in reserve if he is the nominee.

Everything considered, to me, Folwell is the clear choice.

Commented: Sunday, December 24th, 2023 @ 2:20 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Bob, how it is moral or ethical to give those who willfully and wantonly break our immigration laws and lie to our officials about fake asylum claims preference over those on waiting lists who have applied properly and sit and wait properly and legally in their home countries for what immigration slots we may have available? Those on the waiting lists are properly vetted on criminal bankground, and fully examined medically, and they are trying to do it the right and legal way. Why should they be at the back of the bus behind lawbreakers?

When I ran a program in Moldova I had an employee who applied to come to the US as a legal immigrant. He had worked for years for an American organization and handled our accounting, complying both with Moldovan and US laws. His wife was a law student, and they both were very fluent in English. There were limited slots for immigration from Moldova and a long waiting list unless he scored on the "visa lottery" where he had no luck. Finally, he applied to Canada instead. The Canadians found their economy needed his accounting skills but required him to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language, which is a difficult test but he passed on the first try. He and his wife had to take comprehensive medical exams and undergo an extensive background check, both of which they passed with flying colors. He is now a citizen of Canada living in Alberta, working as an accountant, and his wife went back to school, changing her major and is now working in Canada as well. When I think of people like him who tried legally and were unsuccesful, but Biden is letting in a raft of Venezuelan prostitutes who are unvetted lawbreakers, it is very frustrating.

How in the world can you justify letting in arrogant, self-entitled lawbreakers in preference to those you go through the expensive and timeconsuming, and often unsuccessful process to come legally?

Commented: Thursday, December 21st, 2023 @ 1:51 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Political terms in Europe often have different meanings than in the US. In Europe, "progress" or "progressive" are often found in names of parties of the right as the winning party in Serbia. This began in Denmark fifty years ago, when Danish millionaire tax lawyer Mogens Glistrup founded the Progress Party, which ran on a three point platform of "abolish the income tax, abolish the welfare state, and fire the bureaucracy", coming in a strong second place in the party's first parliamentary election contest. Glistrup's run away success led Norwegian dog kennel owner Anders Lange to form a similar party at the last minute before a Norwegian parliamentary election, running on a shoestring and winning two seats. That party changed its name to the Progressive Party, and also adopted a very strong anti-immigration message and has been a player in Norwegian politics since, joining several coalition governments.

Of course, the term "progressive" was a key political term of the Soviets who used it to define a combination of card carrying communist party members and fellow travellers who followed a similar ideology but were not actual party members.

The term "liberal" is used differently in Europe than in America. What Americans would call a "liberal" in Europe would be called a "socialist" or "social democrat". The term in Europe still generally means what Americans now call a "classical liberal", which includes support of small government, low taxes, free enterprise, and individual liberty.

Commented: Monday, December 18th, 2023 @ 8:23 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The Free Democrats are a good example of a party that deviated from the old political saying that "you do not piss on your base". A "classical liberal" party that has always stood for low taxes, small government, and individual liberty, it postured itself in past elections to the right of the Christian Democrats on immigration, and more skeptical than the Christian Democrats of green energy. It largely abandoned its positions on those issues when it joined the present coalition, and its voter base has punished it for that in just about every subsequent local election. The polls show a big drop in its support for the next national election. From the contact I had with people from the FDP when I was working in Europe, their stances in the current government have been out of step for the party.

This is an issue that some Republican politicians need to learn, most specifically Mitch McConnell at the national level and Phil Berger at the state level. There comes a point where voters in the party base just will not tolerate playing footsie with the Democrats.

Commented: Saturday, December 16th, 2023 @ 6:31 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Bob, what has happened is that court after court said "we are not allowing you to litigate those election issues to determine if they are true or not". They did not allow discovery or hearing on the facts. That is a very different response by American courts as compared to European courts on election contests.

In Georgia, there are two cases which might acutally get into the facts on what happened election day. One is a civil suit in federal court financed by Mike Lindell, where an Obama-appointed judge has ruled the case will go to trial and actual facts can be produced to the court. She did not shut it down on prelimary motions like so many other courts. The other is the Fani Willis prosecution of Trump and others, where one of the defendants has issued wide ranging subpoenas to gather evidence of election fraud. That could prove a huge problem for Willis, as the court is going to have to allow in exculpatory evidence for a defendant on the charges she has brought. Her scheme against Trump may blow up in her face.

Commented: Thursday, December 14th, 2023 @ 4:12 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Growth????? The massive forced bussing ordered by Judge McMillan was a losing situation for everybody. The students bussed out from the predominantly black high schools to majority white high schools did not want to go, the blacks already there were caught in tricky, delicate, and uncomfortable situations due to resentments from the blacks being bussed in. For whites there was a lot of chaos that disrupted education.

These problems persisted beyond that first year. The very next year, the first white student walkout occured at South Mecklenburg. A white girl whose class was in the school library asked to go to the restroom and did. When she walked in, there were some of the Second Ward black girls in there cutting class and they jumped her, holding her down and beating her while she called for help. A student government officer was walking down the hall toward the principal's office, heard the cry for help, and went in and rescued her. The only student disciplined was the white boy who rescued the girl, who was suspended for going in a girl's restroom (different era, I guess!). The next day there was a student walkout and protest, which most white students and many of the rural blacks as well, from what I was told, participated in. Unfortunately, my high school German teacher, Mr. Idol, got fired over that. He had gone out for a pizza the evening before the walkout, and there were a bunch of students in the pizza place talking about the incident and what to do about it. Mr. Idol had agreed it was wrong to suspend the rescuer and not the assailants and suggested a petition to take to the school board. Apparently that was enough for the principal to blame him for the walkout and protest.

A couple of years later, bussing was still festering as an issue in the Mecklenburg County schools. When a bussing dispute arose in Boston, somebody got an idea to bring some students up from those schools to tell Boston that bussing was okay, and did so. This infuriated many other students who still were upset over bussing, and the next day, anti-bussing demonstrations broke out at all of the high schools and some of the junior highs in Mecklenburg County, and from the news footage I watched, there were both white and black students participating in those protests.

Judge McMillan paid a personal price for his radical social engineering court order. He was a member of the Myers Park Country Club, the most elite upscale country club in the county. My brother's girlfriend's family were also members so I heard the impact there. After McMillan's order, the rest of the members gave him the silent treatment, refusing to talk to him. He would try to talk to people he had known for years and they just ignored him like he was not there. He stayed away months, apparently hoping it would blow over but it did not. When he went back, he was still given the silent treatment. His ruling made him a pariah in the community.

Bob, you use the term "growth" and that might be an appropriate term if you used it in the sense of a "growth" that is discovered on a liver, kidney, or other vital organ. Bussing severely damaged the educational experience of all races. It is a very distinct issue from integration, something that was positive for education.

Commented: Monday, December 11th, 2023 @ 10:50 am By: Steven P. Rader

I was one of the guinea pigs on your sides social experiment on massive forced bussing, Bob. The school system I attended was the defendant in that lawsuit and it brought chaos to my senior year in high school as we were the first impacted. Judge James McMillan broke with previous law with a radical new ruling.

When I started at South Mecklenburg High School in 1968, we had a black community in Pineville, NC and a number of rural black communities in our attendance zone, and they made up a bit under 15% of the student body. Black and white students got along well and we had no problems.

McMillan's ruling required all schools countywide to have an arbitrary ratio of 70% white and 30% black. South Mecklenburg lost a few of the black communities in rural areas that had attended the school, and had a massive influx of students from the Second Ward High School in central Charlotte, which was closed and the students bussed a long distance to our school (and some bussed to other high schools).

The students from Second Ward did not want to be at South Mecklenburg. When our coaches tried to recruit their top athletes for our teams, most of them refused to play for SouthMeck. There was a well organizaed "student government in exile" among the Second Ward students who demanded their high school be reinstated and themselves returned there. A number of prominent black businessmen and professionals who had been involved in Second Ward's alumni organization publicly quit the NAACP blaming them as the lawsuit plaintiffs for the loss of their school.

At the other predominantly black high school, West Charlotte HS, which remained open, there was an assembly held to tell students where they would be bussed to the following school year. The students responded with loud boos and walked out of the assembly in protest. The radical activist Judge McMillan never bothered to ask actual black students where they wanted to go to school.

My senior year, when the forced bussing came in, was absolute chaos. Bomb threats, race riots, racial assaults, and similar problems were a common occurence, things that never happened my first two years of high school. The blacks who had been going to SouthMeck and those bussed in from Second Ward were constantly at loggerheads, and sometimes physical fights broke out between the groups. Those bussed in, who did not want to be there, resented those who felt at home at SouthMeck.

Serving on the Interclub Council, my junior and senior years, all of our clubs saw a big falloff in participation. While the blacks from Pineville and the rural areas still participated, there was almost no participation from the newcomers from Second Ward. Part of that may have been their long distances to home made afterschool activities impractical, but part of it was they did not feel a part of our school and resented being sent there.

Race relations took a huge nosedive from Judge McMillan's radical social experiment. I particularly felt sorry for the black students who had been part of our school before bussing being treated so badly by the Second Ward newcomers.

And, Bob, our schools were in full compliance with what the law was prior to McMillan's radical ruling, but he changed the law on us and everyone else.

Commented: Friday, December 8th, 2023 @ 10:53 pm By: Steven P. Rader