Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now
Browse all Comments by Steven P. Rader...
 |
Names don't tell you a whole lot. A good example is the current GOP National Committeewoman from NC whose first name is Keshia, and she is a white woman. We had a former GOP state chairman whose first name was Hassan but he was a black Christian. On the other hand, I remember in the same week of district court with Mitchell Norton prosecuting, there was a black gentleman in Martin County whose given names were Stonewall Jackson and another in Beaufort County whose given names were Robert E. Lee. Mitchall also prosecuted a white guy that week whose last name was Superman, so he joked that in one week, he had prosecuted Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Super Man. Seeing those names on applications, other than Superman of course, would give someone the wrong impression about race.
DEI is systemic discrimination. What you refer to may happen occaisionally but is not systemic.
Commented: Friday, January 24th, 2025 @ 10:16 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Commented on Birthright Citizenship: Game On!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 left in their misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution want to ignore the key phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". There is no absolute birthright citizenship. If one looks at the legislative history of the 14th amendment, which is necessary to understand its meaning, it's authors specifically did NOT intend for the amendment to grant unlimited birthright citizenship.
I am sure this issue will end up in the Supreme Court, and I suspect that the majoriy there will not ignore the legislative history of the 14th amendment or that key phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
Commented: Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025 @ 7:18 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
|
|
Perhaps Bob needs a refresher course in reading comprehension or maybe he is just so into Democrat spin he just says whatever comes to mind. Lets look at his distortions.
"Democrats - racist" Well, NO. What I pointed out is that Democrat Frank Bonner was operating purely in his own political self interest. As a white politician finding himself in what would be a black district, he naturally thought that would not be good for his own political future. It would have been the same if he had found himself in a Republican voting district. It was all about his own political self interest for Frank Bonner. "Courts- not to be trusted" In this case, the district court dealt with a situation that appellate courts had not specifically ruled upon, where a party at one point agreed but then withdrew that agreement. While it is not certain which way the appellate courts would have ruled, the odds of a favorable ruling for the county were certainly high enough it should have been appealed. "Voting Rights Act - bad" I made no comment on the act itself, only that the evidence here would likely have resulted in a victory for the county if they had fought it out instead of surrendering. To win a voting rights case, the plaintiff must prove that voting is racially polarized and they did not have the facts on their side in this case. No black had run for county commission to establsh such a pattern, and if you looked at other races, there was ample evidence that such a pattern did not exist. Part of that was substantial white vote for a black city councilman in Washington. But it went well beyond that to include heavy white voter support in the nomination of a black candidate over several whites in a Republican sheriff primary, and the fact that the majority of blacks voted in the general election for a white Democrat over that well qualifired black Republican. It also included a state House Democrat primary, where the majority of Beaufort County blacks voted for the white incumbent over a well qualified black challenger who has a Hyde County Deputy Sheriff. The county could have blown Moore's case out of the water if they had contested it based on those then-recent election results, but to me the best result would have been a settlement based on Moore's district proposal. That would have given the county a better voting system than it had and light years better than limited voting. And, although it destorys your narrative, if you go back, Bob, and read the Wasington Daily News accounts when this was happening, you will find my account is accurate.
Commented: Monday, January 20th, 2025 @ 9:57 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Bob, the "someone who wanted to change the system to fit their needs" who gave us "limited voting" was a Democrat County Commission chairman named Frank Bonner. Beaufort County was facing a Voting Rights Act lawsuit from David Moore over the way ocmmissioners were elected. They had the ammuniction evidence-wise to win the suit over Moore but hired a Chapel Hill liberal attorney who preferred to negotiate the surrender instead of win the case. Moore presented a district plan, which i had the opportunity to see at a later period, and it was a solid plan. Frank Bonner, however about had kittens over the plan because it put his own home in a black district. He instructed that liberal Chapel Hill attorney to come up with an alternative plan that would not end his personal political career. That plan was limited voting. Frank Bonner's personal "needs" were to save his own political career and limited voting was imposed on Beaufort County to do that. I wish Moore had stuck to his guns on his district plan because it was a good one.
When the public found out about the limited voting that was coming their way, there was a huge public uproar, so much so that the all-Democrat commissioners tried to back out of it, but the court ruled they had gone too far in settlement of the case to do so. Our appellate courts have ruled that limited voting is such a strange system that courts cannot impose it as a remedy unless all the parties agree to accept it. In our case, the court ruled that if they accepted it at one point, even if they changed their mind, that was enough. That aspect should have been taken to an appellate court, but it wasn't.
Commented: Monday, January 20th, 2025 @ 7:33 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Bob, in Beaufort County, we have a VERY convoluted system of electing commissioners called "limited voting" which largely destroys the lines of accountability and responsiveness between the voters and commissioners. We need a normal election system like either straight at-large or districts, or some combination of the two, to restore that responsiveness and accountability. "Limited voting" is what the Communist Chinese suggested for Hong Kong elections in their negotiarions on the end of British rule, and the British rejected as totally undemocratic.
Commented: Saturday, January 18th, 2025 @ 6:29 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Commented on LA fire chief blasts LA Mayor Bass for failing the citizens of city on fire prep. UPDATEThe number of signatures achieved in one day on that petition demanding LA Mayor Bass resign is astounding, but it is unlikely she would ever resign. What someone on the right needs to do is circulate a petition for recall. That would have some teeth to get rid of her. The same should be done for Newsom.
Commented: Saturday, January 11th, 2025 @ 8:13 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
One of their biggest cities in their own state is on fire, and these hacks concentrate on partisan national politics?? California badly needs a change in its governance. These Democrats can't govern because all they want to do is play politics while they ignore a disaster of their own making on their own doorstep.
Commented: Saturday, January 11th, 2025 @ 9:43 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Maybe this time, we will see an American court really get to the bottom of election irregularities. American courts have a history of being gunshy of getting involved to remedy these things while European courts do not have that reluctance
Commented: Thursday, January 9th, 2025 @ 9:22 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Those "fact checkers" really ought to call themselves "spin doctors" because that is what they really are, spinning everything for the establishment narrative.
Commented: Wednesday, January 8th, 2025 @ 8:29 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Stan, I saw the same thing happen in Moldova with the "Twitter Revolution" when I was there advising pro-western political parties. Crowds of students were in front of the Presidency, turned out by Twitter messages, protesting Communist cheating in a Parliamentary election. Communist agitators infiltrated the crowd to get them to storm first the Presidency and then the Parliament doing lots of damage to both. The Communists blamed this on the pro-western parties and produced a TV "documentary" entitled "Attack on Moldova" which was broadcast on the government run TV network several times. Even with cheating, the Communists came up one seat short and were unable to buy anyone from another party off, although they tried and made some big offers, so there had to be a new election. In the polling I commissioned for that election, our pollster, the Gallup Organization, found that most Moldovans did not believe the Communists' contention that the pro-western parties were responsible for what happened to the Presidency and Parliament buildings. The Communists lost that next election.
It looks like the US voters followed the same pattern of seeing through the propaganda.
Commented: Tuesday, January 7th, 2025 @ 10:05 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
The normal way of repealing all the onerous Biden rules is timeconsuming, but using a Democrat legal trick, they could be done rather quickly using the Democrats' favored "sue and settle" method. All it takes is getting agrieved parties to file lawsuits against the rules, after which the Trump DOJ files answers admitting the allegations of the complaints and the case gets settled with a consent judgment through the court declaring the rules void. Since the SCOTUS just issued a ruling severely restricting the administrative rulemaking powers of the executive branch, this would be a great time to chop down much of the administrative state's opporessive forest of rules this way.
Commented: Monday, January 6th, 2025 @ 11:23 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
President Trump has been having meetings at Mar-a-Lago with Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, so it is certain that the illegal alien problem would have been discussed between them.
Commented: Sunday, January 5th, 2025 @ 10:00 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Race, of course, has nothing to do with citizenship. I suspect Bob knows this and is just playing dumb.
If one parent is an American citizen, the baby is an American citizen wherever the baby is born. If both parents are legal immigrants who do not have citizenship yet, I do not know how that would be viewed when citizenship by birth is eliminated. In a European country I once lived in, the baby would be eligible for citizenship when the parents or either of them were. I suspect that might be the way it would work here. In Europe, citizenship is based on the nationality of the parents or naturalization. In some cases that nationality can reach quite far back. For instance in German citizenship law, anyone who has an ancestor who was a citizen in 1871, when the united nation of Germany was formed from around 30 previously independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities, can claim German citizenship today. There are even provisions for ethnic Germans whose ancestors settled in specific places in medieval times like the Baltic states, part of Romania, and part of Russia to claim automatic German citizenship today by ethnicity. Romania is another example, where anyone who had an ancestor who was a citizen of the Kingdom of Romania in 1919 is entitled to claim automatic citizenship, which about half of the citizens of neighboring Moldova have already done. Moldova was a part of Romania in 1919. The last European country to award citizenship by place of birth alone was Ireland. and their Constitution was amended in a referendum by a landslide vote to abolish that a couple of decades ago. The problem that led to the landslide vote to end it was abuse by illegal aliens.
Commented: Friday, January 3rd, 2025 @ 8:31 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Commented on Former President Jimmy Carter died today. He was 100One of Jimmy Carter's positive accomplishments was his leadership of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, a bi-partisan effort to address some of the weaknesses in American elections that were highlighted in the 2000 Bush - Gore election. Two of the more significant recommendations of that commission was the need for photo voter ID and that mail-in ballots should be as limited as possible since they are the most prone to voter fraud. Today's Republicans continue to support the Carter commission's recommendations on both subjects. Today's Democrats, however, are vehemently on the opposite side of Carter on both issues.
Commented: Monday, December 30th, 2024 @ 6:44 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Everything depends on energy, and when you raise the cost of that, it makes the cost of everything go up for the consumer. It was Biden's anti-energy policies as much as his big spending that have been responsible for the inflation during his tenure. Attempts to raise the price of energy such as that by New York have to be stopped, or it will cost all of us. Considering the impact on interstate commerce, I cannot see how that move will be allowed to stand.
Commented: Sunday, December 29th, 2024 @ 2:55 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Identity politics does not seem to be working so well for the Democrats. All three of the legislators who recently switched to Republican, two Florida state representatives and a California state senator, have been women. Two of them have been Hispanic and one Jewish.
I suspect we will be seeing more of these Democrats with common sense abandoning the woke Democrats as time goes on.
Commented: Saturday, December 28th, 2024 @ 10:29 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
New York is again behaving like a Third World banana republic and their attempted shakedown of energy companies needs to be halted in its tracks. It would seem that the Trump administration could act to stop it because New York is intefering in interstate commerce, a federal responsibility.
Commented: Friday, December 27th, 2024 @ 10:45 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
The Biden Democrats tried to take Cuellar out in this year's Texas primary, where they had a well funded much more liberal Democrat challenging him. Biden's DOJ sent the FBI to do highly publicized politically timed raids on Cuellar's home and office just before the primary. However, Cuellar still won re-nomination.
The Biden Democrats play dirty, even against those in their own party who won't play ball with them.
Commented: Thursday, December 26th, 2024 @ 8:20 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Charlotte TV station WBTV sending an investigative reporter to southeastern North Carolina to investigate ballot harvesting is NOT "internet speculation". The Democrat run NC Board of Elections would not even investigate, much less prosecute wrongdoing by their own party. It is good for honest elections, that new legislation has ended Democrat control of the state BOE.
Commented: Tuesday, December 24th, 2024 @ 1:35 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Stan there was a good in depth investigation of the illegal ballot harvesting in southeastern North Carolina in that 2018 congressional race by WBTV of Charlotte, which ran their findings in multiple reports. McCrae Dowless, a longtime Democrat ballot harvester went to work for a GOP congressional candidate, but other Democrat ballot harvesters were also active in Columbus County. In Bladen and Robeson Counties, only the Democrats were engaged in ballot harvesting, and more votes were gathered by Democrat ballot harvesting in Robeson County alone than the other two counties combined of all harvesting. Not only that, but in Robeson County, the money trail back to Raleigh Democrats of how that was paid for could be ascertained.
Not only that but in 2016, Democrat ballot harvesting in Bladen County was exposed during the McCrory recount. There was a local race where there was a write-in candidate being backed by the Democrat harvesters, and it was noteworthy that over a hundred ballots were found in the hand-eye recount with that write-in candidate's name being written on ballots in the same handwriting and an odd and distinctive color of ink. Ballot harvesting is a corrupt practice that is illegal in North Carolina, and should be illegal nationally. Indeed there should be very severe criminal penalties for those who engage in it.
Commented: Tuesday, December 24th, 2024 @ 12:33 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Virtually all of the election fraud has been on the Democrat side. The one major instance otherwise in NC's 8th district involved a longtime Democrat ballot harvester whiching sides and selling his services to a Republican who probably did not know the whole story of what he was doing. Even in that 8th district race, with the one guy switching sides, most of the illegal ballot harvesting was still for the Democrats.
Commented: Tuesday, December 24th, 2024 @ 8:35 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
I suspect we will see a lot more Democrats with common sense fleeing the woke mind virus that dominates their party.
Commented: Monday, December 23rd, 2024 @ 1:13 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
We had one of those "progressive" voter registration groups turn in thousands of voter registrations on the very last day, and in Raleigh at the state board, instead of at each of the local boards where the statute said they were supposed to turn them in. Raleigh then sent them to the counties. One of the first counties to mail out letters to the new voters was Brunswick, and their Board of Elections got about 20 calls from those "new voters" who were mystified, saying they had not registered to vote and did not know anything about it. Most of these groups are probably doing things like that, and a tighter process would put a stop to it. Nationally, when all of this loose registration process started, the group ACORN got caught turning in fake voter registrations in a number of states. The group that did this in North Carolina should have been prosecuted, but I would bet that the Democrat NC Board of Elections did not do so.
Commented: Sunday, December 22nd, 2024 @ 7:06 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Title IX was adopted by Congress. Biden was way out of line attempting to fundamentally change it by executive fiat. All aspects of the Biden distortion of Title IX need to be prevented from taking effect.
Commented: Sunday, December 22nd, 2024 @ 1:36 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
The Democrats have tried as hard as they can to turn America into a banana republic. Now Trump has a great opportunity to right the ship. This whole circus has shown that in particular, the courts of New York dance to a political tune.
Commented: Sunday, December 22nd, 2024 @ 11:16 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
There were two people close to what was going on in the medical field with Obamacare whose comments I heard that bear on how Obamacare changed medicine.
One was my own primary care physcian here in Washington, when I expressed surprise that he and his partners had sold their practice to Vidant. He explained that Obamacare created a bureaucratic nightmare for doctors in its regulations that was going to be costly and timeconsuming for them if they stayed independent but by selling to Vidant, that would be Vidant's headache, not theirs. The other thing they thought about when Vidant approached them with an offer to buy their practice was that right then their practice had a value on the market but where the government was going on healthcare, it might not in the future. So they pocketed the value of their practice and became salaried employees of Vidant with the same annual income as when they were independent. That process seems to have been repeated many times over all around the country. THe other comment had to do with an international organization I was working for. At our annual interenational retreat in Washington, DC. After Obamacare passed, one of the speakers was the organization's health insurance consultant who negotitated our group health insurance provisions with insurance companies. He told us that the changes with Obamacare would mean a choice. If we kept all the coverage we had, it would cost more, and if we kept the rates we had, we would have less coverage. This was because under OBamacare, everyong in all group health plans was put in one big pool, and the health profile of that pool was worse than the health profile of our organization's own employyees. Insurance rates for group plans were based on health profiles of the people to be insured. He also said some insurance companies were getting out of the health care field entirely due to Obamacare, and less competition would also push prices up and coverage down. He did tell us the changes for group health were significant but not as severe as the changes for individual health insurance would be.
Commented: Friday, December 13th, 2024 @ 11:11 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Commented on Diane Gentile RufinoDiane was a real patriot who loved liberty and gave freely of her time and talents, which were many, to advance that cause. She will be missed. Her vast knowledge, calm demenanor and quick wit were a real asset to every project she undertook. Our country needs a lot more like Diane Rufino.
Commented: Wednesday, December 11th, 2024 @ 7:47 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Having spent decades practicing criminal law, it is clear to me that this was a textbook case of both self defense and even more so defense of others. Alan Dershowitz, a very renowned legal expert, is absolute correct that this case never should have been brought against Penny. The testimony of the other passengers, many of them minorities and including children and the elderly, that they were in fear of their lives from Jordan Neely was clear cut. ONe elderly black woman at the end of her testimony turned to Penny and said "Thank you". Neely made the explicite threat in so many words to kill the passengers and began acting aggressively toward them. Penny was fully justified under the doctrine of defense of others as well as self defense to neutralize the threat. Since Neely was breathing on his own and had a heartbeat when help arrived it is a real stretch to say Penny "killed him".
Those of the left these days want the rights of self defense and defense of others to go away, but they are critical to our system of justice.
Commented: Tuesday, December 10th, 2024 @ 7:31 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
One of the Democrat members of the NC Board of Elections is the spouse of the campaign attorney for the Democrat candidate in that contested Supreme Court race. This is an obvious conflict of interest, and is being challenged by Republicans, but I have not heard of this member resigning or recusing herself.
Commented: Monday, December 9th, 2024 @ 7:52 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
For centuries in Anglo-Saxon criminal law, a right of self defense and a right of defense of others have been recognized. Both of these applied to Daniel Penny and it is a horrible miscarriage of justice that he was charged over this incident. That is particularly true since the psycho who attacked the passengers was breathing and had a heartbeat when the rescue squad arrived.
This is racial politics by Alvin Bragg. There was a very similar case in Manhattan not long before where a black man armed with a gun threatened a car load of subway riders. Another black man acted the Good Samaratan then, got the gun away from the attacker and shot him dead with it. He was not charged with anything. There is clearly a racial double standard of "justice" in Manhattan courts, just as there is a two tier justice system there based on politics.
Commented: Saturday, December 7th, 2024 @ 2:57 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
The almost weekly bye-elections (special elections) for British local government seats, whose results on published in detail at "Conservative HOme" show that the Reform Party is pulling votes both from the Conservatives and from Labour, when compared with the prior election. The local government seats that Reform has been winning so far are seats previously held by the Conservatives. Too often, seats that would have easily been won from Labour if only one of the two right spectrum parties was running have been lost due to a divided vote. What that suggests is that a stand down agreement where Conservatives and Reform only run one candidate in each parliamentary constituency would give them a massive landslide, but will egos allow that to happen? Watching running data on these local government elections is a good way to watch the changing dynamics of British politics.
Commented: Friday, December 6th, 2024 @ 5:06 pm
By: Steven P. Rader
|
|
Commented on Raleigh's new RINO - Bradford Paisley Briner IVTruitt was a big disappointment, the second weak DPI superintendant from the GOP in a row, but now we have something much worse, a radical extreme leftist Democrat in that position, Mo Green. God help our NC education system.
Commented: Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024 @ 10:17 am
By: Steven P. Rader
|
