Comments by Concerned Taxpayer | Eastern NC Now

The latest inflation numbers show that inflation is down at its lowest for several years, quite a change from the galloping inflation of the Biden era. Good job, President Trump.

Commented: Saturday, February 14th, 2026 @ 4:11 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

One would think that any elected body would take into account the opinions of those who elect them. In the case of the school board, that would be the parents and the taxpayers. Those board members who voted to respect and consider those opinions, School Board members Rader, Hickman, Shreve, and Davis should be applauded - and re-elected. That is the type of board members we need. The others? Not so much!

Commented: Saturday, February 7th, 2026 @ 2:43 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Glad to see this. There are some of these similar cases pending here in NC. It will hopefully put a stop to evil doctors who profiteer from genital mutilation of children.

Commented: Sunday, February 1st, 2026 @ 10:06 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

Politicians who let the hired help - the county managers, city managers, school superintendents, etc. - run government should be ashamed of themselves. We need hands on elected officials who do not delegate their authority to bureaucrats. These lazy politicians need to be replaced.

Commented: Wednesday, January 14th, 2026 @ 4:08 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Auditor, one symptom of what raises suspicions has been the city's refusal under the previous regime to respond to citizen Public Records Act requests, judging they would not spend the money on a lawyer to force an answer. That is a huge red flag of something seriously amiss. Then there have been things like the council voting to buy a substandard lot from a sitting council member at an inflated price with the councilman owning the property participating illegally in the vote. The $140,000 payoff to the outgoing city manager was another travesty that likely violated the law in more than one respect.

Commented: Friday, January 9th, 2026 @ 6:34 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Kidwell has been rock solid on taxing and spending issues. He has the highest conservative rating in the entire legislature. During Covid, he was the most active member of the legislature, by far, fighting for medical freedom. Local internal party fights mean at lot less than standing for principles in Raleigh when all is said and done. I regret he has gotten into some personality conflicts locally but it is principle and policy that really matter.

Armstrong's press release gives no clue about any philosophical compass. He mouths the word "conservative" but even liberals sometimes do that. Most of what he says is boilerplate that even a Democrat could put in a press release. The only real issue he mentions is 2nd amendment, but how much credibiliy does that have when he surrounds himself with people who have worked against gun rights? He must have thought he had to mention that since Kidwell is well known as the biggest champion of gun rights in the legislature. Action speaks louder than words, and the company Armstrong keeps on that issue does, too.

Commented: Wednesday, January 7th, 2026 @ 8:15 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Nick, thank you for the report and for all your and your team's hard work. I guess bitter ambushes from the losers is to be expected.

What the former ruling clique did to stonewall that audit information raises a lot of red flags. The city manager was responsible for seeing that this information was properly transmitted but he failed to do that. Why? Is there something stinky he was covering up? Does it have anything to do with why he beat a hasty retreat and resigned after his cronies were ousted from power? Did that excessive and grossly improper payoff to him when he left have anything to do with info he might know on the former ruling clique?

I hope that anything criminal that may be found will be prosecuted instead of swept under the rug. Our taxpayers are still reeling from what the losers did to out city and our taxes.

Finally, great choice on Roberson!

Commented: Thursday, January 1st, 2026 @ 12:29 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

There is another hero to Shrimpgate who will be on our primary ballot in March, Bobby Hanig, who is running for Congress in the GOP primary. Senator Hanig was the first conservative to see what Berger was up to on putting the shrimpers out of business. He responded by alerting the fishing community that they were under attack and also alerted the House Freedom Caucus to be ready to join the battle in the state House. Hanig had been vice chairman of the House Freedom Caucus before moving up to the Senate. Hanig getting the opposition to this scheme warned, both among the commercial fishermen and among House conservatives, gave them the precious time to get organized and defeat it.

Bobby Hanig has been one of the handful of conservatives willing to stand up to RINO Berger in the Senate. Berger has tired to force Hanig to vote liberal a number of times, always without success. When Berger did a deal with the special interests on passing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, Hanig was overtly threatened with severe repercussions if he refused to follow orders. Hanig's constituents opposed Obamacare Medicaid expansion and he had campaigned against it when he ran. He stuck to his guns and refused to knuckle under to Berger.

Bobby Hanig has the principle and the backbone that we need in Congress.

Commented: Saturday, December 27th, 2025 @ 12:03 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Attacks on freedom of speech are becoming endemic in many parts of the world. They are attacks on democracy itself. Without free speech, it is not possible to have democracy. It is frightening to see some of this same stuff being quietly placed in our own institutions.

Commented: Monday, December 22nd, 2025 @ 1:46 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

So, a local education bureaucrat in Craven County gets paid more than the NC Governor, a US Senator, and NC Council of State members including the STATE Superintendent of Public Instruction? That is both insane and obscene. It is an absolute taxpayer ripoff.

Commented: Thursday, December 18th, 2025 @ 7:50 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

In the notoriously factionalized Beaufort County Republican Party, it stood out that the executive committee voted unanimously to nominate Steve Rader when a vacancy occurred in this district. Members of both factions stood together to support him for the school board vacancy, and that was in spite of Carolyn Walker and Randy walker coming up with a rival candidate for the seat. Steve has a reputation in the party that goes back decades for working with everyone in the party, and it showed in the party's united support for him.

Commented: Thursday, December 11th, 2025 @ 3:15 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Electric rates are rising from RINOs, too like Thom Tillis and Phil Berger. Berger gave us NC's Green New Deal, and Tillis has also always been in the hip pocket of the climate industrial complex, resisting Trump's effort to rein in expensive and unreliable "green energy". Tillis owns investments in "green energy" and was looking out for himself instead of his constituents. Berger is an all-round whore for all sorts of special interests and the climate industrial complex is just one of those.

Commented: Tuesday, December 9th, 2025 @ 10:36 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

In North Carolina the leaders of the climate cult politically have been Roy Cooper and Phil Berger. Both need to be defeated. Also playing a big role is woke utility monopoly Duke Energy. Berger's total rewrite of HB951 is the EU Green Deal on steroids imposed on NC electric ratepayers. Berger is the enemy of NC electric ratepayers.

Commented: Thursday, December 4th, 2025 @ 12:35 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

What we should be outraged at, Tom Campbell, is the treasonous Biden regime allowing illegal aliens to flood our country by not enforcing our immigration laws. All of those in that corrupt administration who were responsible for not enforcing our immigration laws should be jailed. Now, we need to demand that our scofflaw state officials join in the task of getting these invaders out of our country and back where they belong. And it would be nice to put useful idiots like Comrade Campbell on the plane with them.

Commented: Saturday, November 29th, 2025 @ 5:45 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

Bureaucrats should NEVER NEVER NEVER have contracts like this that provide for "buyouts". That includes county managers, city managers, school superintendents, etc. The taxpayer should NEVER be at the mercy of a bureaucrat this way. Employment at will is the standard in the business world, and it should be in the bureaucratic world as well. Bureaucrats should NEVER be "entitled" to a job. If they are not performing, they need to go, just like in the private sector. For state bureaucrats, there are no "buyouts" like this so why should there be for local bureaucrats???? SUE THEM AND GET THE TAXPAYERS MONEY BACK< and that includes suing all of the irresponsible city council members who voted for this banditry.

Commented: Wednesday, November 26th, 2025 @ 2:31 pm By: Concerned Taxpayer

How evil Phil Berger is can be shown by what he did to Beaufort County to pass his Green New Deal (HB951). The Green New Deal was opposite the NC Republican platform on energy but it was the top legislative goal at the time of liberal Democrat Governor Roy Cooper, and Berger was the key figure in passing it. The NC Green New Deal will jack up power bills for us all. No Beaufort County conservative should EVER consider voting for anyone connected to ultra-RINO Phil Berger.

The first thing Berger had to do to grease the skids for his Green New Deal was to get rid of its most vocal opponent in the Senate. That was Senator Bill Cook (R-Beaufort), a former utility executive who thoroughly understood all the downsides of "green energy". Berger accomplished that by gerrymandering Cook out of his senate seat. At his direction, Beaufort County was placed in a heavily Democrat and majority black state senate district that Cook or any Republican could not have won, forcing Cook to retire, getting him out of the way for Berger to ram through the Green New Deal.

Berger did not just screw over Cook in that gerrymander. He screwed over all Beaufort County Republicans by putting us in a senate district where we had no meaningful representation. Worst of all, he did it to do a favor for a Democrat governor and a leftwing monopoly special interest that simultaneously screwed consumers.

Berger had a bill from the House (HB951) rewritten at the last minute by a Senate Committee to track the European Union's "Green Deal" but with even more radical provisions. That bill was then slammed onto the Senate floor for a vote with no chance for consumers to organize against it. It was extreme power politics at its worst and showed a total distain for NC citizens.

Commented: Wednesday, November 19th, 2025 @ 11:49 am By: Concerned Taxpayer

IT is good to see conservatives uniting against the climate hoax in Europe. We have too many establishment Republicans like Thom Tillis, Phil Berger, Michael Whatley, and Tim Moore who align too often with the green left.

Commented: Friday, November 14th, 2025 @ 8:30 am By: Concerned Taxpayer