Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

Kids can be a lot smarter than you think, and the smarter ones can be very attuned to politics. There was a 13 year old in one school district who proved their school superintendant a liar when the kid recorded a teacher in the system, blatantly pushig CRT after the superintentandt claimed there was no CRT in their system. We have a 14 year old in our family who complained last year of two teachers in a school in a nearby county who were constantly pushing left wing politics in class. Of course, the complaints were just to family members, but many kids are perceptive to this politicized material in class.

Commented: Monday, May 15th, 2023 @ 7:18 am By: Steven P. Rader

THis is typical liberal disinformation. That "My Turn" colunn in the Washington Daily News is from the education correspondant of the far left NC Policy Watch, which now calls itself NC Newsline. It is part of a leftwing network called States Newsroom, whose murky funding is hidden. Even the liberal establishment "fact checker" NewsGuard has critized that organization for having an activst agenda but not disclosing who was paying for it.

What happened was that Kidwell and other legislators were working on a broader bill to authorize the Hillsdale curriculum, and the legislative research staff determined that there was already legislative authorization for local school boards to adopt it, so no new legislation was necessary.

The education establishment has over the years gone from garden variety liberal to progressive woke in its slant on history, pushed by radical teachers unions and education bureaucrats. That resulted in the highly controversial new social studies curriculum adopted by the NC Board of Education, dominated by leftwing appointees of Governor Cooper. The big education companies pander to the big liberal states in pushing curricula they provide farther and farther to the left. "Wokeness" has been injected into much of the education establishment's offerings, and that is why a poll last year showed that 71% of North Carolina parents were concerned about political indoctrination in the schools.

The key is finding a traditional history / social studies curriculum that is not full of the woke alphabet soup of CRT, DEI, and ESG. Hillsdale College produces one that is respected by those not on the extreme left, but there are others. Texas demanded that the big education companies modify their curricula to present more traditional history, so Texas approved options would seem to be one way to accomplish this. FLorida has also taken a hard line in approving only curricula that are not "woke", so looking at curricula approved in Florida would also be an option.

The bottom line is that our school board needs to exercise the statutory authority it already has to adopt a trandtional non-woke curriculum.

Commented: Thursday, May 11th, 2023 @ 5:41 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The above quote by George Orwell is a good one, but there is a better one from his novel "1984" which is directly on point with what the leftists are doing today to our history:

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right." -Geroge Orwell, from "1984"

Bob, I would also point out to you that to true southerners, maligning their ancestors are fighting words.

Commented: Tuesday, May 9th, 2023 @ 1:04 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Beachfront property owners should be given the right to sue the wind turbine companies for loss of their seaviews, and commercial fishermen should be able to sue them for damage to their industry.

Commented: Saturday, May 6th, 2023 @ 6:56 pm By: Steven P. Rader

What actually happened on this bill is that the Neal amendment prohibiting use of drugs only applied to one part of the bill and not the other. It applied only to the second part prohibiting use of state funds for theses procedures, but NOT to the first part prohibiting the procedures entirely. Here is the bill as passed with the amendment:
www.ncleg.gov

All Republicans voted for this bill, and it was also bi-partisan as a few Democrats also voted for the amendment or the overall bill.

Commented: Thursday, May 4th, 2023 @ 9:45 am By: Steven P. Rader

The elephant in the room that the school administration seems to be denying is TRANSPARENCY. I asked a couple of the school board members if they had been given access to all of this new curriculum to evaluate it and they had not. Have any been given access to it? Then there is the public, the parents and taxpayers, who should also have had a means of access if they wanted so they could make informed comments on it. That has not been given. The school administration seems to be demanding that the board vote on a pig in a poke, and that demand is arrogant and an affront to democracy. Elected board members need to be fully informed on what they are asked to vote on, not expected to rubber stamp the superintendant's desires. The public also needs to be fully informed. The school administration needs to be taught a lesson in democracy by putting off the vote on this curriculum until there is full transparency on it.

Commented: Friday, April 28th, 2023 @ 9:38 am By: Steven P. Rader

All you have to offer, Bob is the ideological rhetoric of the political left, and that is certainly NOT "truth". For example two of the "woke" distortions of history that are often put forward by the left, CRT (Critical Race Theory) and the 1619 Project both grossly distort facts to try to advance political points. The inventor of the 1619 Project has even admitted it is not history.

Critical Race Theory is part of Critical Theory, which was developed by Herbert Marcuse, a university professor who had been chief ideologue of the German Communist Party during the Weimar Republic. Marcuse's goal was to find other ways to create divisions in society since Marx's economic divide had failed to work for the German Communists. Critical Race Theory was developed a bit later by a group of Marxist law professors as a specific part of Marcuse's Critical Theory. All of Critical Theory is designed to do one thing, and that is divid society so that the far left can politically exploit those divisions.

Why is this all so dangerous? I will give you another quote from George Orwell: "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth." I think Orwell hit the nail on the head as to your version of "truth" and why you on the far left constantly push the distortion of history.

Commented: Wednesday, April 26th, 2023 @ 10:03 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Turn about is fair play goes an old saying. This is hardly the first time something like this has happened in politics.

When I was in the Jim Martin admninistration, the Democrat legislative majority grabbed some of the governlr's appointive powers. They also stripped the Lieutenant Governor of most of his legislative powers when Republican Jim Gardner won that position. They also moved most of the attorneys serving in the cabinet departments over to the control of the Democrat Attorney General.

I understand there is a separate bill on the state Board of Education, and the legislature would not get appointments there. The voters would get elections to replace gubenatorial appointments.

Commented: Wednesday, April 26th, 2023 @ 2:28 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The real extremism on abortion is from the Democrats, many of which view infanticide as "abortion". Republicans need to call out Democrats on that issue and do a much better job of messaging on the issue.

With rising crime, people want to be able to defend themselves, and the GOP standing firm on gun rights plays well with voters.

Commented: Friday, April 21st, 2023 @ 2:39 pm By: Steven P. Rader

This is a liberal attempt to take over the board. The organization sponsoring this lawsuit, Common Cause, is an ultra-liberal pressure group that often allies with Democrats but almost never with Republicans. It very often works hand in glove with the Democrats on redistricting issues. The individual plaintiffs are just front men for Common Cause (an organization I sometimes hear conservative call Communist Cause). The way Locke writes this article, they seem to have someone on staff who is totally clueless.

If one looks at the voting behavior of Unaffiliated voters, the overwhelming majority are either straight ticket Republican voters (the larger group) or straight ticket Democrat voters. If one or more Unaffiliated are being placed on election related boards, it matters who does the appointing, as it can have a definiate partisan impact on control of the board.

A good example is the "non-partisan" redistricting board in Michigan. The Democrats managed to get several "Unaffiliated" voters onto it who although registered Unaffiliated had a history of major involvement in Democrat campaigns. The same thing happened some years ago when a redistricting board was set up in Arizona with one Independent member who turned out to be a liberal who voted in lockstep with the Democrats and gave them a highly partisan new congressional map.

When Locke puts out articles on political topics, they need writers who understand the actual politics of what is going on.

Commented: Friday, April 21st, 2023 @ 7:28 am By: Steven P. Rader

Clearly, Bob, you know nothing about election mechanics. In a presidential race, the needle they try to move, legitimately or illegitimately is electoral votes. Certain key states are targeted for that, and anyone with much political knowledge on either side would comprehend which ones. Then the Democrats target big urban counties within those states. That is where most of the red flags in the 2020 election occured, not small rural counties like Beaufort.

You may use your "Jewish space lasers" to understand campaign strategy, but the professionals on both sides simply analyze where it is that they can move voters to swing electoral votes.

Commented: Wednesday, April 19th, 2023 @ 7:21 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Having been myself certified as an International Election Observer in eight foreign elections, and led a multi-member observation team in each of them, the 2020 US election is one I would have flagged as being far below acceptable standards. The problem in the US is that our courts tend to run like scared rabbits from dealing with election fraud, so there was no real investigation.

In contrast, European courts tend to take the bull by the horns, investigate allegations of election fraud and order elections rerun. Most recently that happened with the Constitutional Court in Germany ordering an entire rerun of the state election in the German state of Berlin due to election irregularities. That only happened a couple of months ago, but courts in countries as diverse as Ukraine and the United Kingdom have ordered elections rerun due to voting irregularities in recent years.

Where Fox got caught was that several of the on air personalities did not even mention the other side of the issue, which would have protected them. Then, due to the lack of any real investigation by the courts, they did not have the evidence to back up that position.

What is shameful to democracy is the failure of our courts to allow any real investigation of the many smoking guns from that election. Most European courts would have dug into it.

Commented: Wednesday, April 19th, 2023 @ 11:00 am By: Steven P. Rader

This big government, big spending Obama boondoggle will be a nightmare for our taxpayers for years to come. The Republican Executive Committee of the Third Congressional District unanimously passed a resolution asking our legislators to vote AGAINST this Obama boondoggle. Conservatives should thank those legislators in our area who stood up for taxpayers and voted against this big spending giveaway program which is a part of Obamacare; Sen. Norm Sanderson, Sen. Bobby Hanig, Rep. Keith Kidwell, Rep. George Cleveland, and Rep. Celeste Cairns.

Commented: Thursday, April 13th, 2023 @ 8:10 am By: Steven P. Rader

It is good that a lot of conservative State Treasurers like NC's Dale Folwell have been either removing the proxies or removing the money itself from Blackrock, which has been managing most state pension fund investments and voting those stock proxies for their liberal agenda.

Commented: Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 @ 9:45 am By: Steven P. Rader

You did not answer my question, Bob, just try to deflect. The standard for conflict of interest is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Judge Merchan clearly has a dog in this political fight personally.

Commented: Friday, April 7th, 2023 @ 12:10 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Alan Dershowitz is one of the smartest legal brains in the country, especially on Constitutional matters. He may be a liberal and a Democrat, but he calls them the way he sees them and his demolition of Bragg's nakedly political stunt is devastating. It is well worth the read.

Commented: Thursday, April 6th, 2023 @ 9:01 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Both the Tara Reade situation with Joe Biden and the Paula Jones situation with Bill Clinton involved much more sexual activity and were not consentual at all in the case of the molestion of Reade by Biden or not completely in the case of Clinton's activities with Jones. Whateven may have happened between Trump and Stormy Daniels seems to be a lot less nvolved and was consentual. There was a massive payoff to Jones which Clinton was personally involved in. There was a likely payoff with taxpayer money to Reade but the fund likely used for that has stonewalled on saying whether it paid anything out or not. The very worst incident was Biden's digital rape of his own staffer, but that has been swept under the rug. Then one can look at Al Gore's multiple sexual assaults on women, none of which has ever been punished. There is a very differnt standard these days in our country for politicians on these matters, depending on which side of the aisle one is on, and Governor deSantis is quite correct that this is un-American to politically prosecute a presidential candidate like this.

Commented: Friday, March 31st, 2023 @ 9:13 am By: Steven P. Rader