Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now

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.
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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

I like the British education law on this point. It requires that all sides be presented fairly when it comes to contested issues of political thought. When some British schools started allowing the BLM agenda to be preached in their classrooms, including Critical Race Theory, Kemi Badenoch, the Minister for Equalities in Boris Johnson's cabinet, who is a black woman herself, made a stirring speech in the House of Commons warning them that they were breaking the law. Here is a clip of part of that speech: www.youtube.com

Also, when schools started showing Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", they were taken to court over it, and the British High Court ruled that if that movie was shown to school children, the school had to give a disclaimer that it is a propaganda film and contains multiple false statements of fact.

That is the attitude schools here should take to political issues, but I have heard too many instance from parents and children shere they do the same things Kemi Badenoch was complaining of on a whole raft of politicized issues.

Commented: Sunday, May 14th, 2023 @ 7:35 am By: Steven P. Rader

Why celebrate our Confederate past? One has to look past the partisan explanations of the north that it was about slavery (odd that it did not become that for over a year since the war started) or the South that it was about state's rights. I look to the ananlysis of the greatest statesman of the 20th century, Sir Winston Churchill, who was also a meticulous student of history and wrote a book on US history entitled "The Great Republic". That book contains a chapter on the causes (plural) of the War Between the States.

What Churchill identifies as the primary cause of the war is the final rupture of a conflict of ideas that had existed since the country was founded, between the concept of a powerful central government, originally advocated by Alexander Hamilton and represented in 1861 by the North, and the concept of limited government originally advocated by THomas Jefferson and represented in 1861 by the South. The Confederate government was organized around the Jeffersonian principles of limited government, and that was an ideal worthy to fight for, and worthy to celebrate today.

Churchill as a foreigner analyzing the causes of the war was in a much better position to be objective than northerners or southerners here.

Commented: Tuesday, May 9th, 2023 @ 6:52 pm By: Steven P. Rader

You might want to try to acquire a little bit of knowledge, Bob, before making posts like that.

Flooding is NOT covered by homeowners insurance. One has to buy Flood Insurance for that. Flood insurance rates for oceanfront property are very high. Having served on the board of an oceanfront timeshare resort on the Outer Banks, I am VERY aware of that.

Also, for wind coverage on property as far inland as Beaufort County, we are paying excessive rates due to the legislature years ago allowing the insurance companies to use computer modelling, which is a rigged game, instead of actual historic losses, to set rates in the east for homeowners and fire and wind insurance. In the decades since that scam was allowed, the historic pattern has been what has continued, not the false scenario of their computer models. The result is that eastern North Carolina insurance ratepayers have been badly ripped off and continue to be. The legislature badly needs to junk that computer modelling.

Incidentally, the junk seience of computer modelling is also what is behind all of these "global warming" scare stories that never come true. The problem with computer modelling is that whoever is running it can set up their model to produce whatever result they want to produce, and they do.

Commented: Sunday, May 7th, 2023 @ 8:21 am By: Steven P. Rader

Having been actively involved in politics for over half a century, there are two types of politicians I have observed, those motivated by principle and policy on one hand, and those motivated by money and power on the other. I have been pleased to know, campaign for, and in one instance work in his administration, several outstanding examples of the first type, such as: Senator Jess Helms, Senator John East, Governor Jim Martin, President Ronald Reagan, State Senators Bill Cook and Anne Bagnal, State Representatives Sandy Hardy and Keith Kidwell, county commissioners Carol Cochran, Stan Deatherage, and Hood Richardson and a number of school board members in a couple of counties. Unfortunately, I have seen too many of the other kind, too. I have also seen some who exhibited aspects of both types.

I remember my old friend C.J. Hyatt, who was the last true conservative to serve as a state officer of the state Democrat Party. When I served with him as an officer of the old Forsyth County Conservative Union, C.J. would always express complete distain for what he called the "go along / get along Democrats", who were the opportunists just looking to get themselves ahead and with no fixed set of political principles. He said that although he never agreed with them on policy, he had a lot more respect for the liberal ideologues in his party, who at least were guided by a set of principles than the go along / get along Democrats who were only looking out for their own personal advantage.

Commented: Thursday, May 4th, 2023 @ 12:52 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I think George Orwell may have been thinking about people like Bob when he wrote: "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot." - George Orwell

Commented: Friday, April 28th, 2023 @ 8:56 pm By: Steven P. Rader

"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." -George Orwell

Commented: Thursday, April 27th, 2023 @ 2:54 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Hillsdale's course is tradional history, not the woke crap that is being taught in so many public schools. It is used across the country and is a respected program. The racist program is CRT or its clones DEI or ESG, which are distorted history. As George Orwell wrote, "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." That is what the far left is now trying to do to our history.

Commented: Wednesday, April 26th, 2023 @ 2:39 pm By: Steven P. Rader