Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

You can be sure that they are teaching something in those classes. The question is what?

The fundamental issue is who has the final say in what curriculum is chosen. The education establishment says it is DPI. State law says it is the local school board and that DPI has no control and no veto over what the local school board decides. Superintendants always side with the education esbablishment becuase their career path is to move on to a bigger and better paying district and they think anything conservative in their record will be harmful to such career moves.

The legal staff at the NC General Assembly told Rep. Kidwell that the local school board had the absolute power to choose whatever curriculum they judged best and that DPI had no control and no veto over their decision. That legal opinion came about when Kidwell introduced a bill to allow the Beaufort County Board of Education to use the Hillsdale curriculum if they chose. The legislature's legal staff advised Kidwell that his bill was unnecessary because local school boards already had that authority under existing state law.

The state education establishment tries to cobble together some other statutes to claim otherwise, but their argument is a real stretch and totally bogus. The lawyers at the General Assembly are correct on this issue.

DPI is like any bureaucracy, always grasping for power. Local school boards need a local attorney who will stand up for their interests and their rights. Unfortunately, in Beaufort County, the superintendant conned the School Board into hiring an out of town school board attorney who has his tenacles deep into the state education establsihment, and who thus will sing their tune instead of looking our for local perogatives. This is the same out of town attorney who was MIA when the superintendant badly bungled so much of the process on his new elementary school. He is good for looking out for the positions of the sate education establishment, but less so for the interests of the local school board.

DPI is controlled totally by the left. Their bureaucracy has always tilted that way. The state school board, appointed mostly by Cooper is hard left, and the new superintendant of DPI has been a kingpin in the far left political / ideological network in N, leading one of their major funding organizations for the leftC. Their positions on anything should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Commented: Wednesday, March 19th, 2025 @ 1:53 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Judge Boasberg is flagrantly disregarding US Surpreme Court predecent on the Alien Enemies Act, which was used during and after World War II to deport nationals of countries we fought in that war. The SCOTUS specifcally ruled that alien enemies were not entitled to normal due process. Does this one district court judge think he can overrule the SCOTUS? The law may have been passed more than two centuries ago but it has been used much more recently, with US Supreme Court approval.

Every time a partisan judge puts his party politics ahead of the law, he is undermining faith in our judicial system.

Commented: Sunday, March 16th, 2025 @ 4:50 pm By: Steven P. Rader

If a Republican fundraising operation was run like Act Blue, they would have been in prison a long time ago. It is embarassing to our system that this was allowed to go on for as long as it has.

Commented: Sunday, March 9th, 2025 @ 12:16 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There is an old saying in politics that "you do not piss on your base" and the German CDU seems likely to find that out the hard way if Merz persists in abandoning his most important campaign promise on illegal immigration. Exit polls showed that cracking down on illegal migration was the number one issue of German voters, outstripping the economy and inflation and far outstripping "climate change". In votes actually cast over 60^ of German voters cast their votes for parties pledging a hard line on immigration.

The CDU only has to look at the implosion of its frequent ally, the Free Democrats due to their abandonment of their hard line on immigration. In the previous German election, the Free Democrats had run on a hard line against immigration, not quite as hard as AfD but much harder than the CDU, and received almost 12% of the vote. After joining an open borders coalitino with the Social Democrats and Greens, they started getting totally wiped out in state election after state election. Although they tried to regain their footing in this national election by again taking a hard line on immigration, their voters no longer trusted them and they got a bit over 4%, crashing out of the national parliament altogether. Merz may well bring the same fate down on the CDU with the same arrogance toward German voters.

Commented: Wednesday, February 26th, 2025 @ 8:50 am By: Steven P. Rader

That is a great sign for the mid-term elections.

Commented: Friday, February 21st, 2025 @ 8:59 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Bob seems to be ignorant of Republican Party history. Unlike Europe where parties on the traditional right and populist right almost always organize as seperate parties, in America, the GOP has always had its populist and traditional conservative wings, as well as a moderate faction. Only once has the populist faction gone off as a third party, which was Teddy Roosevelt's ill-fated Bull Moose Party. The Democrats have also had their populist factions from time to time, with two instances where they broke away and formed third parties, the Populist Party in the south at the turn of the 20th century which allied with Republicans and ousted Democrats in some southern states including North Carolina, and George Wallace's short-lived American Independent Party in 1968.

President Trump is doing a good job keeping the Republican Party united and governing effectively. Yes, we may have primaries, but we will close ranks afterward to defeat the left. IN general, I think there has been a better working relationship between populist conservatives and traditional conservatives than between either of them and the moderates, although at most levels things have been worked out there, too, although that historically has been the biggest point of strain within the party.

Commented: Friday, February 21st, 2025 @ 11:37 am By: Steven P. Rader

Totalitarians all operate the same way, whether they be communists, nazis, or globalists. J.D. Vance is standing up against totalitarianism by fighting for free speech and free elections. The new nazis are those who want to supress free speech and ban media, censor both voters and the media, and talk openly about banning their political opponents. In the German election, the new nazis would be the Greens and Social Democrats. Josef Goebbels and the current Social Democrats and Greens think the same way on censorship of their political opponents.

Commented: Saturday, February 15th, 2025 @ 10:16 am By: Steven P. Rader

Stan, not every judge who is a Democrat and/or a Democrat political appointee will abuse their office for political reasons. Many Republican appointees are strict constructionists and that philosophy mitigates against going rogue for political purposes. I don't think there is any way to calculate percentages.

However, one red flag is to look at whether they are Democrat political contributors. Judges who have been Democrat political contributors seem more prone to using the position to advance their political agenda. A good example is the Colorado Supreme Court voting 4 to 3 to kick Trump off the ballot, which the SCOTUS overturned on a unanious vote. The three who voted against kicking Trump off the ballot were Democrats and also Democrat political appointees, but they were not Democrat political contributors. The fours who voted to kick Trump off the ballot all had a history of being Democrat political contributors.

In the current Democrat lawfare cases against the Trump agenda, several of the judges who have entered highly questionable orders have had histories of being Democrat political contributors, one who was a mega-donor, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat candidates.

Commented: Thursday, February 13th, 2025 @ 2:40 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Jack - the "limited voting" system used for the county commission has always made that body unaccountable and unresponsive. A normal election plan, like real at-large plan with full voting rights or districts or some combination would solve that problem. As long as we have "limited voting" the politicians on the county commission know they do not have to listen to the voters.

Commented: Thursday, February 13th, 2025 @ 10:05 am By: Steven P. Rader

Of the three Constitutionally co=equal branches of government it is the judiciary which has taken the attitude, to use Orwell's words "more equal than others." Liberal judges have for too many years been legislativng from the bench, usurping the legislative powers of Congress. Now we are seeing judges try to urusp the President's executive powers under Article II to direct and manage his branch of government. We are sliding toward judicial tyranny, and the judicial branch is the very worst to be in a strongman role because unlike the exectuve or legislative branchs, they are not elected by the people and the people have no check on their power.

To put a check on judicial tyranny, maybe we should create a mechanism for Congress to remove judges by majority vote for abuse of power. Those who have described the actions of these judges as a "coup" are not far off the mark. This is a dastardly and intential attack on democracy by two rogue judges.

Commented: Tuesday, February 11th, 2025 @ 6:49 am By: Steven P. Rader

THese Democrat hacks will have done some judge shopping. They include people from multiple states so they will have lots of options to choose from. They will file where they think the odds are best of getting politically friendly judges and in a circuit where the bench tilts more their way politically, hoping to drag this out for a long time before getting to the Supreme Court. They are trying to play a delay game of stall ball.

I wish Trump or a supporter had arranged to file cases raising these same issues in courts where the judges were more likely to be friendly. That way they could hopefully get court orders they could choose to follow rather than those from the liberal judges these Democrats will certainly seek to bring the case in front of.

If the liberal judges enter adverse orders, then hopefully the Supreme Court could take up an emergency appeal. Otherwise, the enforcement mechanism for the liberal judges would be contempt proceedings, but since this is in federal court, Trump could just issue pardons and DOGE could keep on trucking.

Democrat lawfare is a threat to our economy and it simply must be stopped.

If liberal judges play politics too brazenly, there is always the impeachment mechanism.

Our courts should not be so politicized but politics has unfortunately been a key to who gets appointed especially under Obama and Biden. One would hope for jedicial restraint on these highly political matters.

Commented: Sunday, February 9th, 2025 @ 12:06 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Before it became "woke" in the second Obama administration, USAID did not get into all of these leftist political agenda operations. That is my assessment from actually knowing quite a few people who ran those programs on the ground in eastern Europe. It was early in the second Obama administration that the wokeness started arriving in USAID. Keyboard warrior Bob has never had any contact on the ground with people who actually ran these programs, so all he has to go on is what his talking points tell him to say.

I am not surprised at the new reports of USAID funding of both promoting left oriented media here in the US and suppression by censorhip of right oriented media. It had emerged much earlier that they were funding a major pro-censorhship organization based in the UK that targeted conservatives.

It is sad to see what has become of USAID under Obama and Biden. It once was an agency that accomplished a lot of good.

Commented: Thursday, February 6th, 2025 @ 10:20 am By: Steven P. Rader

This distortion of the mission of USAID happened during the second term of Obama. The five years I worked in eastern Europe spanned the second Bush term and the first Obama term. I knew many expats who ran USAID funded programs, and at that time those programs were what one would expect of foreign aid; technical assistance to farmers, technical assistance to the banking sector, technical assistance to media, and the like and wokeness was not part of the routine. A year or so later, during a week's visit, I had lunch with some of those expats and they were talking about how USAID was going crazy. Woke type programs were rumored to be coming, but what they were already seeing was woke demands on their own programs that they had not experienced before.

One demand was that reports on their own programming contain the number of homosexuals, the number of lesbians, the number of bisexuals, the number of transexuals, etc. by each category who participated. Previously USAID had only asked for numbers of women and youth. What was nuts was that this was a country in which sexual deviancy was extremely frowned upon and if anyone was a member of any of those categories they would never admit it. If leaders of groups they worked with were asked if they had any of those categories present, they would emphatically deny they had any of them in their organizations. Yet USAID was insistant that they serve these "underserved sexual minorities", so they just made up numbers to pretend that they were.

Obama tried to look moderate in his first term but went hard left in his second. That is when the distortion of prioties happened in USAID. When I was overseas, I never heard of USAID getting into this woke agenda, but that was prior to Obama's second term.

Commented: Tuesday, February 4th, 2025 @ 7:20 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Stan, I cannot imagine an attorney tasked with representation on a project such as this doing his job in a superficial way. The risk to his law license would be too great. It would be interesting to see the terms of his contract. Most attorneys for local government bodies are obligated to be present for meetings of those bodies, but in this case apparently this school board attorney is not. The question is how and when is he brought in on matters? I look at the invompetence of whoever is deciding when to call him in apparently failing to do so on this school construction project. Of course, being way off in Durham, that would add to the cost of having him truly engage on the project and that might be why they failed to do so. This is an example of the old British saying of being "penny wise and pound foolish".

Commented: Monday, January 27th, 2025 @ 2:53 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Those party colors in the UK are a good example of how the MSM in the US "reversed the colors" for US parties when they started to arbitrarily call the GOP red and the Democrats blue. The Labour Party in the UK adopted red as its color when it was formed, just like every Communist and Socialist Party in the world. Blue, on the other hand, has been the color of the UK's Conservative Party, adopted by it in the 1700s, as parties of the right around the world use either blue or black. The Reform Party has adopted another shade of blue. And one also remembers that Ronald Reagan's campaign colors were blue and white.

Commented: Saturday, January 25th, 2025 @ 2:58 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There is a solid argument that proper interpretatin of the 14th Amendment does NOT make children of illegal aliens or other foreign citizens who give birth in the US citisens of this country by birth. They could seek naturalization, of course, like any other foreign citizen. This matter will only be decided when it reaches the Supreme Court. The twenty or so liberal states suing the Trump administration, of course have selected the court they bring this in front of, and they will judge shop it to someon they expect to rule for them at the trial court level. They will also look to bring it in a state that is withing a federal circuit where they hope to draw three liberal judges on appeal. The second step is less certain as to the judges they draw but they will have considered the odds of getting appellate judges favorable to them when they decide where to bring their lawsuit.

Commented: Thursday, January 23rd, 2025 @ 5:47 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The fact is Bob, that black candidates had run for office is Beaufort County for a variety of offices. We had a black Washington City Councilman who was top votegetter and Mayor Pro Tem due to all the white vote he received. We had a black Republican who had been head of security nationally for McDonalds corporation who was top votegetter in the first round of the Republican sheriff primary over multiple white challengers due almost entirely to white votes as few blacks were registered Republican in those days, and won a landslide one on one with a white opponent in the runoff. When it came to the general election however, the black voters voted for the white Democrat over this very well qualified black Republican. We had a black deputy sheriff in Hyde County challenge white dingbat Howard Chapin in the Democrat primary for NC House, but Beaufort County black voters voted for the white Chapin.

I am also only looking at elections close in time to the VRA lawsuit from David Moore. If you go back to Reconstruction, I think there were some black Republicans elected to local office then.

I did not "miss" your points, BOb. I annihalated them.

Commented: Monday, January 20th, 2025 @ 11:18 am By: Steven P. Rader