Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now

While I appreciate the compliment, I do want to point out that the first suggestion of hiring a local attorney in a recent meeting came from board member Daniel Hudson, something many of the rest of us support. Unfortunately, the RFP was drafted to make that local attorney play second fiddle to an out of town attorney, the exact reverse of the way most school boards and other local governments operate. Unfortunately, we were one vote short on reversing that RFP to bring us in line with standard practice. An example is neighboring Craven County, where a local attorney has long served as their principle school board attorney, but regularly uses Tharrington Smith for specialized services dealing with personnel disputes and sometimes other matters. (It was incorrectly contended at the last board meeting by one member that Tharrington Smith was the Craven school board's primary attorney).

Board attorneys deal with lots of routine legal matters, but also play important roles when policy issues and legal issues are intertwined, which they often are. In those situations, it is important to have a board attorney who is on the same policy wavelength as the board he is supposed to serve. A good example of that is the dispute over injecting Title IX's prohibition of discrimination based on sex with a new definition that included things like gender identity and sexual orientation, a position that undercuts Title IX's original purpose of protecting women's rights. Lawyers throughout the profession have split on that issue on their legal opinions based on their own ideological policy preferences. There are many other issues like that one.

On the Title IX front, I am happy to report that the School Board voted unanimously at our last meeting to remove previous language from our policies that had previously included gender identity and sexual orientation as part of "discrimination based on sex". We are now back to the way Congress intended Title IX to operate to protect womens rights.

Commented: Monday, October 27th, 2025 @ 10:02 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I have known Bobby Hanig for years. He has been a great state representative and state senator and will be a great congressman.

Commented: Friday, October 17th, 2025 @ 7:20 pm By: Steven P. Rader

It sounds like the federal District Judge was very thorough and meticulous in his ruling in setting out facts and reasoning. If appealed, this case would go to the very left leaning Fourth Circuit in Richmond, and if so may need a final trip to the SCOTUS.

Commented: Friday, October 3rd, 2025 @ 7:53 am By: Steven P. Rader

Buzz, one of the distinguishing features of fascism is its economic doctrine which is based on the concept of the "corporate state". Unlike socialism and communism where government takes both ownership and control of businesses, under fascism, ownership remains in private hands, but subject to high levels of control by government. In the modern western world, the administrative state is example of creeping fascism, where government bureaucrats write onerous regulations and rules to hamstring businesses, and it is the American and European left that is pushing the administrative state, not the right. The US Supreme Court recently dealt a major blow against the administrative state in our system.

Commented: Friday, September 26th, 2025 @ 5:01 pm By: Steven P. Rader

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