Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern NC Now

Here is a great video from the Dare County GOP as a grandfather and grandson discuss socialism while fishing.

drive.google.com

Commented: Thursday, October 15th, 2026 @ 9:41 am By: Steven P. Rader

Why should a city manager even have a contract in the first place? I spent five years in state government in the Jim Martin administration. High level state administrators DO NOT have contracts. If you are an exempt employee, like I was, and those are mostly the highest level positions, you are an employee at will who can be dismissed at any time, as I was when a new Democrat administration came in. There does not even have to be cause to let someone go. For middle level administrators and below, they work under the State Personnel Act, where cause is needed to remove an employee and there is a grievance process for those who contest their removal. Golden parachutes like those in this contract do not exist.

Most of these appointed officials in state government who are employees at will manage government agencies far larger than the city of Washington. For my department, it was a $2 Billion+ budget and 18,000 employees. Yet all of us at the management level were dismissed without cause when an administration of the opposite party came in office.

The private sector largely works the same way as to top management being employees at will.

Local government needs to run more like state government on personnel.

Commented: Saturday, October 10th, 2026 @ 6:41 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Bob, in any school system, you find some teachers who push an ideology in the classroom. Fortunately most teachers are more objective than that. The real problem comes from the textbook companies, which today are curriculum companies, delivering a digital product as much as one in printed textbooks, together with appointed state school boards that have a heavy ideological tilt. That has been problem in North Carolina due to the very left wing state school board appointees by Roy Cooper.

The current Social Studies curriculum in our state is very woke, and was strongly resisted by the two Republicans on the state school board for that reason. Many teachers just surrender to "state standards" even if they are not woke themselves. Under NC education law, local school boards have the authority to determine what meets state standards, and the state has no veto over them. Local school boards need to exercise their authority in avoiding a woke curriculum or at the very least telling both sides.

Some states have taken strong action on curriculum, Florida probably the strongest. However, even some Republican run states have been asleep at the switch on this. Alaska hired an outside consultant to develop their social studies curriculum, and ended up with one that does not even mention George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. In Iowa, the governor and legislative leadership hit the roof when they saw a state curriculum that promoted illegal immigration and the global warming ideology while downplaying our founding fathesr.

Currently, Beaufort County Schools has not had a social studies curriculum for quite a few years. Teachers are pulling together materials on their own. We need a good pro-America curriculum in this area.

Commented: Tuesday, September 29th, 2026 @ 2:03 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Social services has way too much power over families and children, and there are currently no meaningful safeguards. It is a stacked deck in court against parents. Early in my career as an attorney, I handled a number of these cases, but stopped (except in Hyde County where a common sense social services attorney would negotiate a fair result) after a conversation with one of our then serving district coutt judges. This judge, who I regard as the fairest and most objective of any district court judge I have practiced in front of, had just ruled for social services in a very weak case. When he explained why he did so, I realized that parents were never going to get a fair hearing under the current system. If that judge tilted so much that way, the whole system seemed broken.

The solution is actually pretty simple. Parents should have a right to trial by jury if social services wants to take their kids. Citizens have a right to a jury trial if the civil case is over money. Children are much more precious than money, so there should be a right to a jury trial there, too.

In addition, I have seen too many bad results from where social services has placed children when they took them from parents.

Commented: Tuesday, September 15th, 2026 @ 11:02 am By: Steven P. Rader

yes, Washingtonian, I did run into Councilman Davis a couple of weeks ago and mentioned the issue to him. He did have some interest, but I think it would take more people expressing concern about the dumb "smart meters" to get him to take any action.

Commented: Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 @ 8:22 am By: Steven P. Rader

Washingtonian, that provision applies statewide. One election year when I was working abroad I had to use it because of the three times the BOE mailed me a ballot, two did not arrive and the third arrived a few days after the election. As I recall, I could only vote in statewide races that way, not local races. the form I was sent stated it was only for military and US government employees who were abroad, but I was told to submit it even though I did not fall into either one of those categories. I never did check to see if my email vote actually got counted.

It would have been so much simpler just to go down to the embassy to vote as so many other countries do.

Commented: Friday, September 4th, 2026 @ 9:30 pm By: Steven P. Rader

As a voting system prone to misuse, voting by mail should only be allowed in limited cases, such as where a person is going to be out of town on election day (and during early voting) or unable to get to the polling place. That account of the mail ballots at the nursing home in Saxony-Anhalt is a very good example of how voting by mail can be abused.

When I worked in eastern Europe, a number of countries in that area did not allow any voting by mail. For voters physically unable to get to the polling station, they had an interesting practice of the "mobile ballot box". A person who could not get to the polls notified the election officials during the morning of election day, and in the mid afternoon, a team of election officials, along with election observers got in a car and drove a small ballot box and a stack of ballots around to all the people who had requested the mobile ballot box.

For voters who were abroad, every embassy opened a polling station for citizens to come vote. In countries with a lot of expats or large size, they also opened scattered polling stations at other sites. In recent Romanian elections, they have had the closest polling station located in Norfolk, Virginia. Recent Moldovan elections have had one polling place in North Carolina, which has moved from Raleigh to Hickory to Asheville. These extra polling stations have been organized by the embassy in cooperation with the country's central election commission.

Voting by mail should be available but only for those with a good reason to vote that way. The reason is making election fraud more difficult.

Commented: Thursday, September 3rd, 2026 @ 7:02 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Let me expand on what is going on with the Social Studies (history) curriculum here in the Beaufort County Schools.

Social Studies (history) has been probably the most contested curriculum area around the country. It is the focus of the furor going on in Iowa. There the Department of Education came out with a Social Studies curriculum embedded with lots of the woke agenda from promoting open borders to a very one sided presentation on climate issues, and lots of other things in between. The governor and legislature told them that was unacceptable. They produced a new version that only slightly watered down those things. The governor and legislature again told them it was unacceptable and had to be changed.

Here in Beaufort County, our school system has not had a Social Studies curriculum at all for years. Each individual teacher has had to put together their own. That means there is nothing remotely consistent about what is being taught. Many very conscientious teachers do their best to pull together what materials they can on an objective basis. However, there is likely to be some personal ideology seeping through in some cases, whether intentionally or simply because for some people their own beliefs and the "facts" become intertwined in their minds. I would hope that teachers doing this intentionally is rare, but there is no way to know. The history teachers I have personally talked to seem to be doing this objectively.

Having an adopted curriculum by the School Board gives a consistent approach throughout the school system and is a way to know what is being taught. This would also take a burden off of teachers.

A couple of years ago, a committee of teachers appointed by the school board proposed adopting the SAVVAS social studies curriculum. This company is known for injecting DEI in its curricula. In Florida, even its math curriculum was rejected because even math was loaded with DEI. In Beaufort County, a standing room only crowd came to a school board meeting objecting to this curriculum, and the school board voted to reject it.

Several of us on the school board have raised the issue of moving forward on adopting a Social Studies curriculum, but we keep getting pushback. Realistically, finding the money to pay for it is an issue. However, there are some curricula out there that are free, where finding the money would not be an issue. One of those that reflects American values rather than the woke agenda is produced by Hillsdale College and is well regarded. My predecessor on the board, Gary Carlton, was promoting this back during his tenure. It is an option that should be considered.

(My comments are my own. I do not speak for the School Board as a whole. The School Board can only take official action as a body)

Commented: Friday, August 21st, 2026 @ 9:22 am By: Steven P. Rader

ABC = Anybody But Cooper

Commented: Sunday, August 9th, 2026 @ 8:12 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Van Zant, you are particularly well informed.

The conservatives elected to the school board in 2022 got some important policy changes made on the curriculum adoption process. The new written policy, proposed by board member Donald Shreve, gave the board a lot more oversight over the process, something it should have had all along. It is, after all, the elected board member who have the ultimate say over what curriculum is adopted.

During the adoption process on the new science curriculum, the teachers evaluation committee, supported by their central office staff coordinator tried to do an end run around that new process and present the board with a single "take it or leave it" option instead of the minimum of three options required by the new policy. The central office staff involved in that has since been replaced.

In dealing with that curriculum, the board informally used some new policies that produced a greater degree of information for the board from that teachers evaluation committee. It also became apparent that having cost information on curriculum proposals available early in the process to everyone would improve the process.

I put revision of the written policy on curriculum development on the board agenda for discussion, and verbally presented a series of suggested improvements in the formal process, based on our experience with the adoption of the science curriculum. I went through each of a series of proposals and got no objections to any of them from other board members, so I stated I would draw them up in a formal policy amendment and present them for adoption. When I presented them, I ran into a buzz saw of organized opposition, led by board member Carolyn Walker. They objected to making any change whatsoever. They did not want to rethink just a point or two. They wanted no changes at all.

Adoption of the curriculum is one of the most important policy decisions entrusted by statute to elected school board members, and one that members should take seriously. We need strong policies that maximize the board's responsibility and give it the best information to make its decision. Without appropriate written policies on the procedures in curriculum adoption, that responsibility may not properly be fulfilled.

If some of the more liberal board members had any issues with my proposals, those should have been discussed openly at the first meeting this subject was on the agenda. I put it on the agenda then to try to get a consensus, which from all appearances had been achieved. If any of the proposals had received pushback, I would have presented two policy proposals, one with those that had consensus, and one where there was some division. From the responses, all of the issues had consensus so that was the way I presented it in a formal amendment.

Commented: Saturday, August 1st, 2026 @ 9:32 am By: Steven P. Rader

Glen Beck had a segment today on his radio show on the threat of these license plate reading Flock cameras to our privacy and freedom, with the big danger being in Flock's collecting all of this data from many cameras and aggregating it for permanent storage in data bases. He discouraged people from destroying or damaging the cameras, as seems to be going on some places, but that this issue needs to be addressed urgently with local governments. He suggested the key safeguard is to prohibit maintaining these records beyond a couple of weeks.

Commented: Wednesday, July 29th, 2026 @ 11:54 am By: Steven P. Rader

Ray, there is way too much personal attack in local Republican politics, and there has been too much of it on both sides. Politics should be about policy, principles, and issues, not personal grievances with other Republicans. The Democrats undoubtably are left grinning from ear to ear when these personality conflicts within the GOP go hyper.

At every meeting of the Victory Committee I attended, all Facebook advertising was focused on electing the five Republicans running, not attacking Republicans or conservatives. I have seen the nastygrams you mention, and I suspect whoever did it left as little a paper trail as possible. Internal party wars only help Democrats.

Commented: Wednesday, July 8th, 2026 @ 10:36 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Buzz, precedent is a key feature of English Common Law, which was adopted as it then existed in 1776 by the 13 colonies, and subsequently by the new United States and by all but one of the subsequent states. The exception is Louisiana, whose state law is based on France's Code Napoleon. That said, common law precedents are trumped by statute and even more so by the Constitution. Precedent is a factor in the SCOTUS following past interpretations of Constitutional or statutory provisions, but they are not bound by it.

The problem in the birthright citizenship case was a precedent that involved a child born to foreign citizens who were lawfully in the United States. That should have been a precedent as to Green Card holders but NOT as to illegal aliens or tourists. Even after ratification of the 14th Amendment, American Indians were not considered US citizens and a special law had to be passed to make them citizens. Since that was required for people whose ancestors had been in America longer than anybody else, something similar should have been required as to children of people who are illegally here in the first place. I am appalled at the positions of Roberts and Barrett in this case. Four justices correctly ruled that the 14th Amendment does not make the children of tourists and illegal aliens US citizens.

Commented: Tuesday, July 7th, 2026 @ 1:07 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Hood, your view on the new NCGOP Plan of Organization is very different from most NC conservatives.

A few weeks before the NCGOP state convention, I was one of five panelists on the subject of the then proposed new Plan at a statewide meeting of the Conservative Coalition of North Carolina (CCNC). Two panelists supported the Plan, with reservations> Three of us felt the concerns outweighed any benefits. After the panel, the CCNC as a body voted unanimously to oppose the new proposed Plan and circulate flyers on its flaws.

Generally, the new Plan of Organization continues to increase the top-down control of the party at the expense of the influence of the grassroots.

Some of the objections were:

- Until now, there has always been at least one path to offer Plan amendments from the convention floor and pass them by simple majority. Now that has been raised to 2/3rds and only then after first submitting the amendment 15 days in advance to the Plan of Organization Committee.

- the Arbitration Committee is no longer objectively established but instead is personally handpicked by the state chairman for each case.

- Until now, party chairmen at all levels have had "general supervision of the party with the advice and consent of the executive committee". The new Plan removes the language on the the advice and consent of the executive committee.-

- until now, the Plan has had roles for various party committees in legislative candidate recruitment. Those are all removed in the new Plan. This comes as legislative leadership, which historically has not been that conservative has been working to assert itself as the source of legislative candidate recruitment instead of the party structure doing it. Party activists tend to look for candidates who will represent local interests and conservative principles, while the legislative leadership is looking for yes-men who will do what they are told.

- it makes amendments to the Platform and to the Resolutions report much more difficult. These can no longer be offered from the convention floor unless submitted 15 days in advance to the committee (and the party these days has not even been offering contact information on committee leaders). Most delegates have not even read those reports by that time, so they are denied an opportunity to participate. The new Plan also requires a 2/3rd vote to change anything the committees have done, compared to a simple majority vote now.

There is lots more. I have been attending state GOP conventions since 1973 and served on the state Plan of Organization Committee myself five times, chairing it twice, and this ranks as the worst proposed Plan I have ever seen, even worse than last year's failed Plan.

As to the Victory Committee, the local Republican Party has had something like it for a long time. When I was county GOP chairman in the 1980s, we called it the Campaign Committee. These committees operate to support all Republican candidates at General Election time and do not get involved in primaries.

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Commented: Monday, June 22nd, 2026 @ 4:46 pm By: Steven P. Rader

It is inconceivable to me that our local governments do not seek applicants for top management positions from the private sector. When I served in the Jim Martin administration in state government, almost all of our top management personal got their management experience in the private sector, NOT the public sector, and it worked fine. The bigger the pool of applicants for a local management job, the more choices the governing body has.

Commented: Thursday, May 14th, 2026 @ 1:22 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Gore was not the first to resurrect and politically weaponize the old CO2 climate theory. That first happened in the UK.

The CO2 global warming theory was put forward by a Swedish physicist in the 1890s but never got much traction in climate science. Mainstream climate science looked at known climate history which followed alternating multi-century cycles of warming and cooling, CO2 and greenhouse gases were not a factor in those cycles.

In the early 1970s, a British science magazine, the "New Scientist" published an article that mentioned this then discredited and mostly forgotten CO2 climate theory. That got the attention of an advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was then in major battles with the Marxist coal miners union and with Arab oil sheiks. Her government was pushing nuclear power as an alternative and saw this theory as something they could use for that purpose. They put out a bunch of government grant money for "science" that promoted this CO2 theory and found enough hungry scientists to jump on that grant money and give them the "science" they needed to resurrect the theory and play it in the media.

After Thatcher got what milage she could out of this revived theory to promote her nuclear power program, others picked it up for their own political purposes, not only Al Gore, but also the UN hierarchy..

Commented: Sunday, April 19th, 2026 @ 4:55 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Van Zant, from my observation, the splits within the Beaufort County Republican executive committee had nothing to do with the outcome of the school board primaries. The big factors were 1) the large turnout of Unaffiliated voters turning out for other races, 2) a network of teachers actively working for the ex-teacher candidates, 3) obvious networking between the two ex-teachers and the campaign of the special interest backed NC House challenger, both of whom openly operated out of his tent at early voting.

In my own race, I had support from both wings of the executive committee split, with members of both sides making financial contributions, endorsements, and doing volunteer work like addressing and stuffing envelopes. The only exceptions I am aware of were the Walkers, who had their own personal agenda in all the school board races and some other races

There was one former county party officer, who is no longer active in the party who did get rather involved in pushing Charles Hickman's opponent and ran her mouth a few days at early voting against other conservatives, but she has no position in the party presently.

Having three conservatives running for the Bath seat was a blunder that had a lot to do with losing that one.

Commented: Monday, April 6th, 2026 @ 7:55 am By: Steven P. Rader