Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

WTIB radio is collecting supplies for the western counties. Glenn Beck's MercuryOne charity is, too.

Commented: Tuesday, October 1st, 2024 @ 11:56 am By: Steven P. Rader

A poll of North Carolina parents found that 71% expressed concern about political indoctrination in public school classrooms. This issue came up due to the woke agenda being pushed in the schools, which is mostly leftwing fiction instead of real history. The so-called 1619 Project is a good example, and its creator has even admitted it is not real history. That is the sort of thing the left wants to substitute for real history.

What the woke want to do with our history is the same thing Chairman Mao did with Chinese history. As George Orwell wrote: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."

Commented: Tuesday, September 24th, 2024 @ 5:12 pm By: Steven P. Rader

We ended up with Mark Robinson as our Lieutenant Governor because the 2020 primary for that office had two major candidates, Robinson, whose comments supporting gun rights at the Guilford County Commission had gone viral nationally, and former State Senator Andy Wells of Catawba County, who was in thick with the green energy grifters. Republicans voted on issues, not race, and it was gun rights vs. "green energy".

Most active Republicans I know of voted for Dale Folwell as our nominee as governor, as he had a much better record on a broad range of issues. Unfortunately, Robinson had much better name recogmition with voters overall, partly because the media tended to cover him more than Folwell.

For the record, I voted for and supported Robinson for Lt. Governor in 2020, and voted for, contributed to, and supported Dale Folwell for governor in 2024.

Commented: Tuesday, September 24th, 2024 @ 11:19 am By: Steven P. Rader

It is political malpractice that Republican candidates and party leaders are not constantly calling out media bias in this election. Media bias for the Democrats has been documented for decades, but it has never been as bad as in this election. Senator Jesse Helms always called out media bias, constantly reminding voters that he had to run against six opponents, the Democrat candidate plus the editors of the five largest newspapers in the state. In this day and time, it is the alphabet networks of the MSM rather than newspapers, but it is the same issue. When the ABC News coverage of Harris was 100% positive and their coverage of Trump 93% negative, why in the world were they allowed to control a presidential debate? They were wearing their political bias on their sleave.

I voted for and contributed to Folwell. He was clearly our best candidate for governor.

Commented: Monday, September 23rd, 2024 @ 10:41 am By: Steven P. Rader

I guess then that you would claim that the "International Herald Tribune" is not a newspaper because all of its articles are verbatim from either the "Washington Post" or the "New York Times", and that it is not "journalism".

Commented: Thursday, September 19th, 2024 @ 9:41 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There have been studies going back decades showing heavy political bias in the major networks, so it makes no sense to depend on them to be controlling presidential debates if we want them to be fair and objective. With ABC News coverage this year, it has been 100% positive for Harris and 93% negative for Trump, so why should anyone expect any different in the debate? The problem with the Commission on Presidential Debates was that they always turned to these biased networks for debates.

We had a chance of something better when the RNC dumped the Commission on running the debates, but then failed to follow through and we ended up with something worse. The solution is negotiating debates openly. Realistically, finding knowledgable moderators who are both objective and unbiased is almost impossible in today's polarized society. The best solution is two moderators, one chosen by each side. The fact that a particular side chose a particular moderator will make it damaging if that moderator gets too one-sided and that would act as a safety valve.

The other option would be something like a modified Lincoln-Douglas debate, where half the questions came from each candidate. That way neither candidate gets protected by biased moderators from questions they do not want to have to answer. That worked fine for Lincoln and Douglas, so it should be fine for politicians today. Lincoln and Douglas had no moderators at all, but it may be wise to have one moderator who at least keeps time and turns microphones on and off appropriately but has no control over the substance of the debate.

Commented: Monday, September 16th, 2024 @ 1:22 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Political bias to the left has been rampant in the media for decades, but the open rise of "advocacy journalism" in recent years has meant the mask of objectivity has increasingly fallen off. The media is a horrible place to find comeone who should be neutral in a debate setting.

The sad thing is that RNC was working to straighten this problem out but then dropped the ball, allowing the worst manipulation of debates in US presidential election history. The Commission on Presidential Debates has had a history of choosing biased moderators, although not as bad as the ABC News duo, so at Chairman McDaniels initiative the Republican National Committee withdrew from the Commission debates to negotiate debates directly with the Democrats. Her successor, Michael Whatley, then dropped the ball and did not start begotiations. This allowed the Biden camp to put forward their debate plan directly to Trump while Trump was tied up with the Stalin Show Trial in Manhattan and thus had little room to manuever. That allowed the Democrats to, in effect, set the rules.

If Michael Whatley had had the competence to follow through on what McDaniel started, we would never have had that ultra-early debate that set up the Democrat coup against Biden, and the Trump - Biden debate would have been what occured Tuesday, too late for the Democrats to oust Biden as nominee. And we certainly would not have had partisan hack moderators like we had Tuesday.

Commented: Thursday, September 12th, 2024 @ 8:43 am By: Steven P. Rader

The way the RNC handled the presidential debates is gross political malpractice. First Ronna McDaniel led a vote to abandon the Presidential Debate Commission, which has always tilted the process toward Democrats. So far so good. If RNC had followed through and started negotiations with the Democrats for debates, as they should have, they could have avoided Biden's sudden debate demands catching them flatfooted. After Romney left, her successors failed to follow through. If there had been debate negotiations underway, Biden could never have gotten away with his demand for that very early debate. He would have been wiped out in the first debate, BUT it would have been after the Democrat convention, tying their hands to do anything about it, and Trump would now be facing a demolished Biden and have a cakewalk to November. Instead, thanks to incompetence at RNC we have a competitive race.

Commented: Tuesday, September 10th, 2024 @ 7:12 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The policies of Biden and Harris have played a big role in the large number of Haitians in the US illegally. Biden and Harris by executive decreee deemed everyone of Haitian origin to be of "Temporary Protected Status" meaning they won't be deported unless that status is revoked. Even Obama did not do that. Biden and Harris have made the US a magnet for Haitians by guaranteeing they will not be deported.

Trump can revoke that when he gets back in office, and send them home, but if Harris stays in, the Haitians will stay indefinitely and keep coming.

Commented: Monday, September 9th, 2024 @ 2:56 pm By: Steven P. Rader

That kid's online posts about shooting up a school would have been enough for a law enforcement agency to initiate a commitment procedure against him based on his being a threat to himself or others a year before the shooting happened. The FBI knew all about those online threats, but neither they nor local law enforcement did anything. That is where the fault lies. Those civil commitment proceedings are available in all states and have been for many many years. They afford full due process rights. Law enforcement knew about this deranged kid and dropped the ball. Civil commitment laws do a much more thorough job in dealing with the mentally ill and they are already in place.

Commented: Saturday, September 7th, 2024 @ 9:38 am By: Steven P. Rader

Anyone who calls Sen. James Lankford a "right winger" is either badly misinformed or deliberately distorting the facts. When Lankford ran for an open Senate seat in 2014, he was the establishment candidate in that primary. I well remember it because his conservative challenger, T.W. Shannon was one of the candidates I contributed to that election cycle.

T.W. Shannon was Speaker of the Oklahoma State House, an African-American with enough Cherokee blood to be an enrolled member of the tribe, and a staunch conservative. His endorsements ranged from national conservative PAC's like the Senate Conservatives Fund to prominent conservative leaders like Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Mike Lee to local Oklahoma Tea Party organizations.

Lankford, on the other hand, was the candidate of the Mitch McConnell wing of the party. He had been elected to the US House as a Baptist minister who talked conservatve but quickly disappointed conservatives with his voting record, his votes on some key tax and spend bills being the ones that drew the most ire.

That was a very clear choice in the primary, with Shannon being the conservative and Lankford the moderate establishment type. If that continuing disappointment Lankford runs again, I wonder who the conservative will be who brings him home. After his stupid Open Borders bill, I will be motivated to again contribute in an Oklanhoma US Senate primary. I think the dumbest thing Lankford said in trying to defend his open borders bill was trying to equate illegal aliens with legal immigrants.

Commented: Monday, September 2nd, 2024 @ 1:57 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Van Zant - The seating arrangement of the BC School Board has also always struck me as very odd. It is not only totally different from other local government bodies, but also from the state boards and commissions I used to work with. When I served as a departmental General Counsel in the Jim Martin administration, one of my responsibilities was to monitor the rulemaking boards and commissions housed under our department such as the NC Social Services Commission, NC Child Daycare Commission, and NC Mental Health Commission for the cabinet secretary who administered the department. Those sommissions were staffed by top officials of the division or section handling the appropriate policy area. Staff, including division directors or section chiefs were not seated with the commission itself, but down the side, much like many of our local governments. Seating paid staff among board or commission members is just strange.

Commented: Wednesday, August 28th, 2024 @ 6:05 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The woke agenda involves lots of things and using things like the 1619 project instead of real history is indeed part of it, but so are things like radical gender theory. Actually, I am a big fan of British public education law that requires teachers to present both sides of any politically contested theory or issue. Students should be presented with both sides. I have never heard of one of the woke fairy tales that does tnat. Indeed the inventor of the 1619 Project admits that it is not history. That also applies to science, where I doubt many teachers are teaching both sides of the science on climate issues.

Commented: Tuesday, August 27th, 2024 @ 5:52 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There are two lawsuits pending in North Carolina against the state Board of Elections failures to do their duty. One involves failure to enforce the federal HAVA election integrity requirements that have been in force for over twenty years. All voter registrations are supposed to have either a drivers license number or if no license, then the last four of the SS number. The failure to enforce this over the years has mushroomed to the point that over 500,000 NC voter registrations do not have this federally required information, and our state Board of Elections refuses to do anything about it. The other has to do with a law passed by the General Assembly on removing foreign citizens from the voter rolls that the state Board of Elections has been deliberately dragging its feet on to get past this election.

There have also been rumblings from NC larger counties that the Democrats may be doing the same thing as in Detroit in denying Republicans a fair representation in poll watchers.

Commented: Tuesday, August 27th, 2024 @ 5:09 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Buzz, the NC statute that is directly on point says that the elected local school board is the final authority on approving a curriculum. No entity at the state level has the authority to tell them what they can and cannot approve. That is the position of the legal staff at the NC General Assembly when they advised Rep. Kidwell, and it is IMHO an accurate statement of the law.

Entities in Raleigh try to claim control of curriculum based on testing provisions, but that is a real stretch. There is a decades long history of education entities in Raleigh attempting to assert controls over local school boards that they simply do not have and this is one example.

Commented: Wednesday, August 21st, 2024 @ 6:00 pm By: Steven P. Rader

That is a despicable smear and a lie, Bob. The Voter Integrity Project works entirely on election integrity and has not a damn thing to do with "white nationalism". The facts they uncovered on foreign citizens registered to vote and actualy voting in Wake County speak for themselves and are well documented. The Democrats could have done their own investigation but would get the same results so they swept it under the rug.

Commented: Sunday, August 11th, 2024 @ 11:52 am By: Steven P. Rader

It is a real travesty that the Biden-Harris regime is attempting to turn Title IX on its head by executive rulemaking, and without consulting Congress. As passed by Congress in 1972, Title IX protects girls and women in education, but that is thrown out the window by Biden-Harris in their administrative rules that change it into a protection of "gender identity" and "sexual orientation".

Twenty six states are suing Biden-Harris to block this travesty, but not North Carolina. Our far left Attorney General Josh Stein, who is running for governor is fine with this far left assault on our girls and women, and is the only AG in the southeast NOT to challenge Biden-Harris on their illegal and unConstitutional rules.

But someone in North Carolina is fighting. State Rep. Keith Kidwell spoke at the Beaufort County School Board meeting this past Tuesday and is organizing a challenge. Republican candidate for State School Superintendant Michele Morrow appeared with him in support of a challenge. They got positive response from the school board.

One thing that local parents can do to protect the schools their children attend is to take advantage of the restraining order obtained by a group of states led be Kansas which got a court order to block the Biden-Harris rules. One of the co-plaintffs in that lawsuit was a conservative organization Moms for Liberty, and the restraining order issued by the federal judge in that case prohibits these Biden-Harris rules from being imposed on any school which children of members of Moms for Liberty attend anywhere in the country. Membership in Moms for Liberty is free and can be done online, and then there is a form to fill out about what schools their children attend. Joining and filling out that form will block these rules in those schools.

Commented: Friday, August 9th, 2024 @ 12:07 pm By: Steven P. Rader