Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

Suppressing free speech and hiding vaccine side effects are NEVER the right thing to do in a free country. Why things got back to normal is because certain political leaders, like the Swedish govenrment in Europe, and Governors deSantis and Noem in the US got rid of the lockdowns and mandates and showed they were useless and harmful.

Commented: Saturday, July 29th, 2023 @ 3:40 pm By: Steven P. Rader

You've got that right, Stan, and when the machines screw up, getting recourse is often dificult.

There was a case in the UK where a man got a ticket in the mail from a speed camera saying he was driving over 400 miles an hour on a British motorway. He sent a letter back saying that this could not possibly be right because he drove an old Toyota, not a jumbo jet. He got a letter back that the machine was always right and he should pay up.

There was another case some years ago when this issue was hot at the legislature, when a legislator brought up the case of one of his constituents. She had received a red light camera ticket in the mail from a town she said she had never been to in her life. Further, on the day she allegedly ran the red light, she could document that she was in intensive care in a hospital in Las Vegas, and the car was in the parking garage there. The town still did not want to cancel the ticket.

Commented: Thursday, July 27th, 2023 @ 11:47 am By: Steven P. Rader

If Trump were still president, we would not have a war in Ukraine. A series of blunders by Biden showing his weakness encouraged Putin to invade. The fake "environmental crisis" is a made up load of hooey and Biden throwing away money hand over fist on that is a huge threat to our economy.

Commented: Thursday, July 27th, 2023 @ 10:22 am By: Steven P. Rader

As is so common these days, the Democrats are putting their ideology over common sense.

Commented: Sunday, July 23rd, 2023 @ 5:13 pm By: Steven P. Rader

In the Orwellian lexicon of the "woke", the word "inclusion" really means exclusion - eccluding those who don't believe in wokeness. It is part of the obnoxious and totalitarian cancel culture. One use of this term that really stood out was at a UN conference on "inclusion" where a representative of Iran used it to call for the extremination of people of the Jewish faith, and no one stood up to object. That fits with the woke definition of "inclusion" which really means exclusion.

George Orwell, call your office. Newspeak is HERE.

Commented: Thursday, July 20th, 2023 @ 7:32 am By: Steven P. Rader

I'll bet Bob has never been to South Africa. I have spent several weeks there myself, and this weather is much colder than normal there. It almost reminds me of the "Global cooling and coming ice age" scare of the first Earth Day back when I was in college. That was the environmental disaster du jour back in those days. Now, the scaremongers have found that climate patterns do not fit with their global warming theory either, so they call whatever happens "climate change". That covers all bases, but it also shows they are just flailing.

Commented: Saturday, July 15th, 2023 @ 10:24 am By: Steven P. Rader

How does one spell "boondoggle"? N-C-I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N.

Brant hit the nail on the head when he mentioned fascism. The "corporate state" is the key economic tenet of fascism, and "NC Innovation" is a concept that would have warmed Mussolini's heart. This program does have some similarities to socialism, but at its heart it is truly fascist.

Commented: Thursday, July 6th, 2023 @ 7:34 am By: Steven P. Rader

Some of the left's judges have actual conflict of interest situations and do not recuse themselves, but the left is fine with that. Yet they whine about conservative judges where they cannot point to ANY actual conflict of interest with ANY actual case, and no quid pro quo. And I am not at all surprised to see the far left's term for trying to hide their hypocrisy - "whataboutism" - thrown around by Big Bob. When that term gets thrown around, you know you have hit one of the far left's double standards.

Commented: Sunday, July 2nd, 2023 @ 6:50 am By: Steven P. Rader

The independent legislature theory has been around for decades and been espoused by a number of past conservative SCOTUS justices, but never before come before the court for a ruling. Roberts writing a decision that muddies the water has become all too typical for him. While it rejects an ironclad adoption of the independent legislature theory and leaves the door open for some interpretation of state Constitutions by state courts, it is very unclear as to the specific standards and how much leeway they may have. The original North Carolina Supreme Court ruling, which has since been modified, just made up law out of whole cloth, which is called legislating from the bench, and that is a threat to separation of powers.

Commented: Wednesday, June 28th, 2023 @ 2:01 pm By: Steven P. Rader

At first glance, this just not seem to be as big a deal as the headlines indicate, but when you read the details, it does seem to be a big deal. These district administrators constitute the only level of government where it is necessary to win a majority of the votes in a race. In a multi-party country with seven parties now represented in the national parliament, and a couple more in state parliaments, most politics operates by forming coalitions. In this race, in spite of all the other national parties working against the AfD, they still won, and defeated an incumbent. Since that incumbent was from the next most conservative party, that made it an even tougher race, and they still pulled it off.

The other thing that is particularly interesting is that this race seems to have opened the discussion within the CDU about being willing to form coalition governments in the future with the AfD. That is important because the only way the math works for a government of the right nationally, or probably in most if not all states, is for the CDU and AfD to work together. At one time, a CDU / Free Democrat coalition had a shot at a majority but that math does not work any more. The traditional right and the populist right have formed successful coalitions in much of Europe, including the just formed coalition government in Finland. Germany and France are the two major countries where the traditional right has snubbed the populist / nationalist right, but maybe that is about to change in Germany. The polls have been showing the CDU as the most popular party in Germany, with the AfD second, and together being able to form a comfortable majority.

Commented: Tuesday, June 27th, 2023 @ 3:41 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Tillis' response claiming that the McCarthy climb down on debt was a huge spending cut is laughable. Almost all GOP activists know better than that. His NC colleague, Sen. Ted Budd called the McCarthy deal with Biden a bad one that accomplished almost nothing when he voted against it. When Tillis voted for the Biden-McCarthy deal, he aligned himself with a big majority of Senate Democrats and against almost two thirds of Senate Republicans. That bad vote was not something for Tillis to defend himself over, but instead another bad vote to censure him for.

The reception by convention delegates of NC members of Congress was telling. Most only got a polite applause, but when Congressman Dan Bishop, the only NC member to vote against the McCarthy debt deal took the stage, he was given a rousing standing ovasion, and his speech was interrupted multiple times by standing ovations. It was clear to anyone watching that GOP activists like Bishop's vote against the McCarthy deal a lot better than the others' vote for it.

Commented: Sunday, June 11th, 2023 @ 6:29 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Because this student only took the mRNA shot because the college mandated it for him to attend, I hope his heirs are suing that college as well.

Commented: Saturday, June 3rd, 2023 @ 11:46 am By: Steven P. Rader

It is not a compromise. The point is well made that from a conservative standpoint, it is worse than the "clean" $1.5 Trillion increase the Democrats originally sought. McCarthy has been played and has illustrated his incompetence. It is time to vacate the chair. His choices of Republican congressmen to negotiate were very very poor, and it went downhill from there.

Commented: Tuesday, May 30th, 2023 @ 6:52 am By: Steven P. Rader

Here is the whole article from The County Compass. It is hard to read on the screenshot.

Who killed NC's Constitutional Carry bill?

by Steven Rader

Twenty seven states have now passed Constitutional Carry legislation that recognizes the Constitutional right of law abiding citizens to carry guns without the need of a permit. North Carolina was poised to be number twenty eight but that fell apart recently Divisions among gun rights groups and among Republican legislative leaders led to the bill being pulled from the legislative calendar.

To understand how this happened, one has to understand that there are a number of gun rights organizations which are active. The oldest and best known is the National Rifle Association (NRA), but disagreements with some of NRA's policies has led to the growth of other national gun rights groups, most prominently the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). GOA was founded by a former national director of the NRA who broke with that organization over NRA's political endorsement policy of heavily favoring incumbents, even if they were relatively weak on gun issues and the challenger was a strong gun rights advocate.

Added to the mix at the state level is a home grown North Carolina gun rights organization, Grassroots North Carolina (GRNC). Over the last few years, it has been GRNC that has been by far the most active of all the gun rights groups in promoting gun rights legislation in the North Carolina General Assembly.

Since 2017, gun rights advocates, led by GRNC have been pushing Constitutional Carry legislation, and have passed a bill out of the state House on one prior occaision. In the 2023 legislative session, Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort) introduced as chief sponsor HB 189 to authorize Constitutional Carry in North Carolina. The bill was a top legislative priority of GRNC and was backed by GOA and NAGR. Its language was generally similar to earlier bills sponsored by former Reps. Mike Speciale (R-Craven) and Larry Pittman (R-Cabarrus). The NRA was informed of the bill and its contents early on.

HB 189 cleared the necessary House committees, had the blessing of the House Speaker and was calendared for vote in the House just prior to the “crossover deadline”. Then Richmond, Virginia based regional NRA lobbyist D.J. Spiker swept into Raleigh at the last minute to oppose the bill. Firearms training is a profit center for the NRA and Spiker raised last minute objections to the training provisions of HB 189. A North Carolina firearms industry publication also alleged that the NRA was jealous that it had not been involved on this legislation and could not claim even partial credit for it.

While Spiker tried to rattle cages in both the House and Senate, it was in the Senate that he struck paydirt. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger announced that the Senate would not take up the bill. With no path to passage in the Senate, Speaker Moore then pulled it off the House calendar, too. Rep. Kidwell did get HB189 referred back to committee to add a fiscal note, a manuever that can get itpast the crossover deadline. GRNC is redoubling its efforts to try to get the bill passed, but its prospects look bleak at this point.

Already there are recriminations in the gun rights community. The North Carolina firearms newsletter “Ammoland” has called on gun rights supporters to resign their NRA memberships over the NRA's opposition to HB 189.

The exact path Spiker took to get Berger to spike the bill is not known, but it has been pointed out that Sen. Jim Perry (R-Lenoir) is a close personal friend of Spiker's boss at NRA, and also as Senate majority whip, close to Berger. Perry was in a key position to exert influence on the outcome, one way or the other this time, and likely will be in the future as well.

Constitutional Carry is an important issue to gun rights supporters, who have been working topass it in North Carolina for several years. This setback was not expected, but groups like the GRNC are already looking at future possiblities to move this bill or one like it. Rep. Kidwell has worked tirelessly to pass it, and is committed to redoubling his efforts going forward.

Commented: Sunday, May 28th, 2023 @ 2:56 pm By: Steven P. Rader

This is an attack on the freedom of elected officials to debate the issues, going down the same slippery slope as Europe. For a functioning democracy, our elected officials as well as citizens need full ability to debate issues. The statements complained of were clearly made in debate and in response to remarks of the thin-skinned Democrats who complained. They are presented by the ultra-leftwing WRAL article above totally stripped of context.

What we have are whiny thin-skinned Democrats with a victim mentality and a grievance mentality. This is something new in politics and Democrats a couple of decades ago would not have been so whiny. Unfortunately, the GOP leadership was wimpy themselves to even respond at all to the Democrat nothingburger. As George Orwell wrote, "freedom of speech is your right to say what I don't want to hear".

The British House of Commons is considered the "mother of parliaments" and a role model for how a democratsic legislative body should function. Throughout the history of that august body, comments about other members have been part of the process, and at periods even quite common. One famous such exchange involved Sir Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty in a Conservative cabinet and was speaking on the floor of the House of Commons. A female Liberal MP interrupted Churchill and exclaimed "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk" to which he replied "Madame, you're ugly, but tommorrow I will be sober".

There were no consequneces when a former Beaufort County legislator, Zeno Edwards made sexually suggestive comments toward a colleague in a House committee meeting. The meeting was in session considering a bill, and a female Democrat legislator who was a chiroprator by profession had just finished substative remarks on the bill when Edwards obtained the floor and rather than discussing anything about the bill, he decided to discuss the prior speaker, saying "I don't like to think of her as a back doctor because her front is not too shabby either." That was a totally graituitous remark that did not have anything to do with the bill or with the other legislators comments on the bill, but there were no consequences for it.

Politics is a rough sport and politicians as thin-skinned as these two whiny Democrats are just pathetic. It is also sad for the functioning of our elected legislators that the GOP House leadership caved in to their whining. That is starting down a slippery slope of restricting the freedom of debate of our elected legislators.

This brings us to the threats to freedom of debate now happening in Europe. In France, a French Senator was charged criminally a couple of months ago with "hate speech" over a social media post that "immigration kills" after an illegal alien migrant brutally murdered a young French woman. Then leftwing members of the EU parliament filed complaints seeking penalties against three conservative colleagues from three different parties from three different countries for remarks in debate on the floor of the parliament. The "offnese" of a Romanian MEP was to say that the safety of women should take precedence over gender ideology. An Italian MEP was targeted over her discussing an "honor killing" in a Muslim migrant family of a young woman who refused an arranged marriage. A Danish MEP was complained over because he mentioned official Danish government statistics on migrants and sex crimes in Denmark.

The left around the world is at war with free speech, and Speaker Tim Moore has just knuckled under to that attack here in our own General Assembly, which is shameful.
L
I wish the BO would seek sources other than a notorious far left propaganda organ like WRAL.

Commented: Friday, May 26th, 2023 @ 10:01 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Charles - You can search particular industries and it will tell you within those industries the woke bias rating. I compared auto insurance and found we are with one that has a high woke bias rating but also found alternatives with medium or even low woke bias ratings. When our auto insurance comes up again, we will be switching companies. Our homeowners insurance company is not among those listed.

Commented: Saturday, May 20th, 2023 @ 9:47 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I think what you will find in most cases, Bob, is that kids smart enough to develop conserevative thinking and able to figure out that their teachers are flaming liberals who wear it on their sleave, are also smart enough not to rock the boat at school, figuring it might jeopardize their grades, so they just bring those frustrations over political propaganda in the clasroom home with them. And conservative principles have nothing to do with being a "bigot". Indeed, it is you who are the most race-obsessed person posting on this site.

Commented: Monday, May 15th, 2023 @ 1:11 pm By: Steven P. Rader