Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now

Ray, this convention had some definite pluses. One important one was stopping the Plan of Organization rewrite that would have increased control from the top, going against our tradition as a grassroots party. Interestingly, that proposal drew not only almost total opposition from grassroots / conservative elements of the party but also from many considered more "establishment" types.

The staunchly conservative platform also passed without much of a fight. Additions this year to party positions included support for election of the state Board of Education by the citizens of the state, instead of appointment by the governor, opposition to central bank digital currency, and denouncing the attempts by the courts to invade the province of the executive and legislative branches.

The resolutions package which was conservative also passed intact. Unlike last year, establishment elements were not able to remove and discard some key conservative resolutions like medical freedom.

The main disappointment came in the chairman's race, where establishment incumbent Jason Simmons prevailed over grassroots challenger Brooke McGowan on the weighted vote by 52.5% to 47.5%. McGowan has a majority of delegates physically present. McGowan's campaign was hurt by mass email company ConstantComment taking her money but then refusing for frivolous reasons to send out her emails. She got a late start in the email campaign as a result of having to find another emailer at the last minute. She probably also would have done better if she had gotten out more in the way of the failures of the NCGOP in this last campaign under its current leadership and more details on how she planned to correct the problems.

For me, one of the biggest reasons we needed a change was the incompetent way the party's Judicial Campaign Fund was used which amounted to total political malpractice. If those funds had been used wisely, we would have elected conservative Jefferson Griffin to the Supreme Court instead of far left activist Allison Riggs, former co-director of the far left Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Commented: Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 @ 6:56 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The debate over the social studies curriculum is a major one. It was fought out at the state level on the state Board of Education a few years ago in a partisan and ideological confrontation, the leftwing Democrat appointees of Roy Cooper on one side and the Republican State Treasurer and Lieutenant Governor on the other. The Republicans actively fought that curriculum as being "woke" and full of DEI and CRT, both far left doctrines. There were more Cooper appointees, so they prevailed.

It is a curriculum that adheres to that leftwing state DPI version that the superintendent is trying to ram through. Any real Republican would take the same stand our state Board of Education Republicans did to oppose it. Polls show that 71% of NC parents are concerned about political or ideological indoctrination of their children in the classroom, which is exactly the concern about this curriculum.

The legal staff at the General Assembly advised Representative Kidwell that the state DPI or state Board of Education did not have authority to dictate what local curriculum a local school board adopted or restrict what they adopted. The local board has full authority to adopt whatever curriculum in their judgment will meet their educational objectives. The education establishment feels differently, but that is because they are grasping for control.

As to the science curriculum, there is an additional important issue, which is teaching both sides of the climate debate rather than indoctrinating on the globalist narrative on CO2.

Superintendents are always going to push for following what the education establishment wants because that is in their best peraonal career advancement interests.

Commented: Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 @ 12:20 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The refusal to follow federal law on election integrity has been ongoing by Democrat led state Election Board officials. In the last election, there were 700,000 voters on the tolls without this federally required information. The federal law is designed to help stop ficticious and duplicate voter registrations. This was one of the big issues in the questionable "victory" of radical leftwing Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs last year.

This issue has been raised to the Democrat led state Elections Board by citizen protests, but they refused to take any corrective action and just kept on allowing questionable voter registrations that did not comply with HAVA.

Commented: Sunday, June 1st, 2025 @ 8:37 am By: Steven P. Rader

Buzz, the "superintendent problem" is endemic in the public schools. I remember in my first year in law school almost fifty years ago when State Senator Dick Deeb (R-Pinellas) commented to a political meeting I attended that "too many school board members think the superintendent is their boss instead of their employee". That seems to sum up too much of public education, where the bureaucrats rule and the elected policy makers sit quiet.

Senator Deeb had a solution. He introduced a bill in the Florida Senate to make the office of public school superintendent of Pinellas County elected by the voters of the county, not appointed by the school board. The bill passed the Senate but when it got to the House, a number of legislators realized they had the superintendent problem in their county, too, and a bunch of counties got added to the bill. That bogged it down and it never made it out of the House.

In some counties with solid conservative school board majorities, they have no problem in standing up to a superintendent whose proposals they disagree with. The Craven County School Board, this year voted down their superintendent's proposed budget, for example.

I remember back when I was in high school and an undergraduate at Duke and we had a split school board in Mecklenburg County where I then lived. The three newest members had been elected by the conservative Concerned Parents Association and there were four moderate to liberal holdovers from the previous cycle. The superintendent kept ignoring the three conservatives. Then one meeting, the superintendent made a report that was very adverse to an issue dear to the heart of the most moderate of the holdover members. Conservative Jane Scott saw her chance when she saw the reaction on his face, so she immediately moved to fire the superintendent, the upset moderate seconded, and it passed 4 to 3.

As long as the career path of school superintendents is to move from one county to another, to larger counties with better paying positions, I think the superintendent problem will remain. The solution is to elect strong school board members who remember they are the boss, not the superintendent, and keep a firm hand on the tiller themselves.

When the time comes again in Beaufort County, another solution to the problem is to look for a superintendent looking for his last posting at a place he wishes to retire. That way, we should get a superintendent more interested in truly serving our county instead of mainly advancing his career.

Commented: Friday, May 30th, 2025 @ 1:30 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Traditionally, judges only issue injunctions that only involve the people who are partied to that individual case. An exception would be a case that has been filed and approved as a class action, which none of the political cases against Trump have been. The issuance of national injunctions by district judges is a relatively recent development that has exploded in the Democrat lawfare cases against the Trump administration. Turley is right that the Supreme Court needs to put a stop to this practice where a local district court judge thinks he is running the country.

A contrast i court behavior can be made with Biden's most egregious abuse of power when he tried through executive fiat to rewrite Title IX of the Civil Rights Law to stand it on its head and make it say the opposite of what Congress passed. That was challenged in five separate lawsuits in district court, each one involving a grouping of states. Courts entered injunctions against Biden's move in each case, BUT each injunction only protected those states suing in that particular lawsuit. States that were not part of any lawsuit like North Carolina were unprotected.

Now, even though many of the injunctions by Democrat district judges are frivolous and are reversed by appeals courts, they are issued to block executive branch actions in all states. That should not be allowed to continue.

District judges should not be allowed to issue national injunctions unless a case is properly certified as a class action or unless the Supreme Court approves.

Commented: Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 @ 1:58 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Mann's lawsuit was what was called a SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) lawsuit which are designed to intimidate people on the other side of an issue from speaking out on it. Undoubtedly some entity in the Climate Industrial Complex paid for Mann's attorneys in this lawsuit, but now the court is making Mann pay for the lawyers of the people he sued, to the tune of a million dollars. That is poetic justice and ought to help shut Mann himself up.

Commented: Sunday, May 25th, 2025 @ 7:55 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The 1948 US Supreme Court case that upheld the Alien Enemies Act and ruled that the courts had no jurisdiction to hold hearings on deportations done under that act was Ludecke v. Watkins. It involved President Truman's deportation during peacetime of a foreign national who had entered America legally and held a Green Card. You can read the Supreme Court opinion in that case here: supreme.justia.com

It is appalling to me that our Supreme Court did not follow the clear precedent of Ludecke and dismiss the Democrat legal challenges to Trump's deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. The same interpretation of the law applied to Truman should also apply to Trump.

Commented: Sunday, May 18th, 2025 @ 1:02 pm By: Steven P. Rader

So Tillis thinks drugs should cost more to Americans than to foreigners? How does he think that will play in the 2026 election, in the primary or the general?

When I worked in eastern Europe, I could buy one of my prescription drugs whose cash price in the US at the time was $120 for a 30-day supply for $10. for a 30-day supply at pharmacies in Moldova or Romania. Why were Americans getting slammed on the much higher price, and why would Tillis condone that? My guess is that it is a dog whistle to get Big Pharma political contributions.

Commented: Tuesday, May 13th, 2025 @ 2:04 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The Constitution is clear in giving the President authority to manage the executive branch and its agencies. It is not supposed to be micromanaged by activist Democrat judges. They did not try to do this with other presidents. When Democrat judges decide to become part of the political "resistance" tey demean their office and the entire federal judiciary. If the SCOTUS will not rein them in, then Congress needs to or the public will lose trust in our federal courts more than they already have.

Commented: Saturday, May 10th, 2025 @ 5:18 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Votes by elected officials come in two varieties, policy votes that individually do not necessarily carry party loyalty implications, but a cumulative record may, and leadership votes that do individually carry party loyalty implications. There is an old saying in politics that "ya dance with who brung ya". This means on leadership and personnel positions, a politician who goes against his party is crossing the line on party disloyalty. That is exactly what Thom Tillis is toying with. If he goes against Martin on the vote for US Attorney for the District of Columbia, he will have committed a major act of party disloyalty. He can expect angry Republican activists to go after him, hammer and tongs, at the state convention, and at every other opportunity leading up to the primary in 2026. The question is whether Thom Tillis is loyal to the Republican voters of North Carolina or to the Deep State. I hope he answers that question the way a loyal Republican is expected to answer it.

Commented: Tuesday, May 6th, 2025 @ 11:59 am By: Steven P. Rader

WOW, that is a massive majority that this by-election projection would give the Reform Party in the next Parliamentary election. The way that is calculated in the UK to is apply the percentage changes for each party from the last election to the by-election in this constituency or district to the percentages attained by each party in the last election in every constituency in the country. So it assumes for every seat the percentage change for each party will be the same as in this district. Then you crunch the numbers and look at the result. While this mehodology is not perfect, it gives a pretty good idea of the trends.

Commented: Friday, May 2nd, 2025 @ 11:24 am By: Steven P. Rader

Even the legal analyst for liberal CNN has admitted that if this judge did what is alleged, she committed a crime. Actually, she has been charged with two federal felonies.

Commented: Sunday, April 27th, 2025 @ 7:36 am By: Steven P. Rader

There was a Democrat judge in Massachusetts who did essentially the same thing back during the first Trump administration, who was also arrested on federal felony charges, and suspended for three years by the state court system. However, her federal criminal case was still pending when Biden took over, and the Biden DOJ dismissed it.

Commented: Friday, April 25th, 2025 @ 4:54 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There is clear Supreme Court precedent on the Alien Enemy Act. It is a case decided in 1948 by the SCOTUS entitled Ludecke v. Watkins that that involved deportation of a German citizen who had been a legal resident alien of the US, with a Green Card, for many years, and had been imprisoned in a concentration camp in Germany when he had visited in 1933 and escaped. The Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that the discretion of the president in using this act was exclusive and that courts had no jurisdiction to question it or even hold hearings on it. supreme.justia.com

The Alien Enemy Act applies under its clear statutory language not only in wartime but also when there is a "predatory incursion" which is exactly what we have now from the illegal aliens. In Ludecke, the Supreme Court specifically held that the Act was NOT limited to wartime, and in fact it was enforced in that case three years AFTER the end of World War II.

It is disturbing that our Supreme Court is waffling instead of enforcing this very clear precedent.

Commented: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025 @ 9:12 am By: Steven P. Rader

Stan, I am reminded of a comment on school boards by a former Florida State Senator. According to the late State Senator Dick Deeb (R-Pinellas), he observed that "too many school board members think the superintendent is their boss, when he is really their employee".

I was in law school at the time and attending a meeting of the Pinellas County chapter of the Florida Conservative Union. Senator Deeb was explaining his local bill in the Florida senate to make the office of superintendent of the Pinellas County Schools an elected office by the voters of Pinellas County. He and others were frustrated at the fact that even with electing mostly Republicans to the local school board, they were unable to muster a majority of them with enough backbone to stand up to a liberal power bully school superintendent.

Senate Deeb's bill passed the state senate with flying colors, but when it got to the House, legislators there who had similar superintendent problems back home in their own counties started amending the bill to include quite a few other counties. Unfortunately that got the bill bogged down where it failed in the House.

Power bully superintendents are hardly unique to Beaufort County.

Commented: Friday, April 18th, 2025 @ 2:05 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Great bill and badly needed, but it is going to be difficult to get through the Senate due to filibuster.

Commented: Thursday, April 10th, 2025 @ 12:44 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Judicial ethics rules prohibit the official campaign committees of judges from raising most of the issues that other campaigns would. That is why Riggs had out of state leftist dark money funding her attack postcards on Griffin so her own campaign would not be held responsible. The NCGOP set up a Judicial Campaign Fund several cycles ago, which could have done the same thing to get the word out on Riggs and her radicalism. Being able to raise such issues that official judges campaign were barred from doing was one of the reasons that fund was set up. But for some reason in the 2024 Judicial campaign, that money was just turned over to the official judicial campaigns whose hands were tied on being able to use it to expose Riggs. That made absolutely no sense to me.

Commented: Saturday, April 5th, 2025 @ 6:07 pm By: Steven P. Rader