Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. Good news, the Paul to Prof pipeline has
been resurrected for old Roy, our good friend Ray, former
Governor Roy Cooper, benefiting from what I thought was maybe
now a defunct Paul to Prof pipeline, But no, no,
it is still alive. Man. What would we and by
we I mean Democrat lawmakers? What would they do without
the pipeline? They might have to fend for themselves helves
in the private sector for a couple of years while
plotting their next run for public service. That's right, Former
Governor Roy Cooper is taking a teaching role at Harvard University.
He told the McClatchy Newspapers exclusively quite the get. The
position will take Cooper away from North Carolina for eight
whole weeks. As speculation continues to grow that Cooper, a Democrat,
may challenge Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican, for his congressional seat.
Is well, it's a well it is Congress, but it's
a he's a senator. But don't worry, don't worry. The
teaching gig, the eight week teaching gig, will not interfere
with In fact, it'll probably help promote his run for senate.
He says in a written statement to McClatchy that a
run is still on the table. The Paul to profit pipeline,
what are you talking about, Pete, What does that mean? Well,
it is the politician to professor pipeline. And while that
is what I call it, it is not technically just professorships.
These can be fellowships, these can be chairs of departments,
these can be you know, visiting lecturer gigs. The key
is that you pay these former office holders tons of money.
That's really the key. And then they get to go
back to a college campus. They get to stand in
front of a class of people who have paid you know,
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the credentialing service.
That is Harvard and listen to Roy Cooper drone on
about let's see the topic is the intersection of government
and public health. Fascinating man, that's gonna be a dynamic class. Oh.
As one who sat through virtually every single press conference
that Roy Cooper did during COVID, I have pity on
the students, my goodness. And I was chatting with my
pal kcoday. He does the mornings up in Raleigh in
Greensboro on WTKK and WPTI and I joined him on Fridays,
and I was chatting with him about this topic, and
he pointed out, I hadn't even really considered it, but like,
you don't need a lot of material if you're going
if you're Roy Cooper going up there, you really don't
need a lot of material because the pace at which
he speaks is so slow that you could probably just
take one week's worth of curriculum and just drag it
out for eight weeks. Again, my sympathies to the students,
but that's like, you know, work harder, not smarter kind
of a thing. Like all I have to do is
come up with I mean, how long are these lectures?
An hour? Maybe roughly an hour. So you just need
to come up with like what an hour a day,
five hours of what a normal you know, speaking person
would would get through in one week, and then you
just drag that out over eight weeks five hours worth
of work. That's less than I do for show prep
for a single show. So like, I think I could
probably do it, and I bet I would. I bet
that I would charge way less than Roy Cooper. Not
to be fair, he's probably not charging Harvard. They probably
just made an overture to him, much like they to
his predecessor. No, no, no, not not Pat McCrory. He's
a Republican. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that
the Paul to prof pipeline is not available to Republicans.
Sorry about that. It is. It's just for our North
Carolina elected officials and sometimes their wives, sometimes their wives.
I forgot about Mary Easily. That's not I'm not saying
people are quick to wed. I'm saying Mary Easily. That's
her name, and she was the or still is, I think, right,
the the wife of former Governor Mike Easily. Now Mike Easily,
he was a he was a little bit radioactive, what
with all of the corruption and such, lost his law
license and everything when he was governor of North Carolina.
But no matter. You know, voters still put in a
Democrat after that by several decades of corruption that led
to many other Democrats going to prison, including Mecklenburgh's own
Jim Black, the former Speaker of the House, Meg Scott, Phipps,
Frank Balance. But I digress. So you had Mary easily,
she got a gig. Two you got to go back,
and I did. By the way, you got to go
back to Jim Hunt. He served four terms as North
Carolina governor. Now you're not allowed to serve more than
two consecutive terms, but Jim found a way around that.
His daughter's now the lieutenant governor, Rachel Hunt. Because you know,
democrats love a good dynasty, and so Jim Hunt. He
did two terms and then he was out of politics
for like four years or eight years, and then he
came back, came back and did another two terms, and
after he was done, he created the j Adams B.
Hunt Junior Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy. It's referred
to as the Hunt Institute. It is, according to Influence Watch,
a left of center education advocacy organization based in Durham,
Founded in two thousand and one by former North Carolina
Governor Jim Hunt. The organization was an instrumental force in
the creation of federal government directed common Core education standards.
So with a record like that, who wouldn't trust him
to advise on all sorts of other educational reforms? Right? Hmmm.
Since two thousand and two, the Hunt Institute has received
at least seventeen million dollars from left of center Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. That is just one of their funders.
It was founded in two thousand and I know what
you're gonna say, Pete, this is just an institute. What's
the big deal? I will get to it. Founded in
two thousand and one. It's an education focused advocacy organization.
And here you go. It was an affiliate of the
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill from two thousand and
eight through twenty fifteen, and in twenty fifteen, the Republican
led state legislature ended the institute's state funding. Right, this
is the pipeline. This is the jobs program for out
of work Democrat elected officials. This is also the same
pipeline that you see with the Usaid scandal, and oh,
I should point out that is a scandal. That is
a scandal, and that's why you are seeing journalisming rule
number two take hold, which is when the scandal is
about Democrats, the story is not the scandal. The story
is the Republican reaction to the scandal. Right. The corollary
there is that if the scandal is about a Republican
then the story is the scandal, Like, you focus on
the Republican scandal, right, But if it's a Democrat scandal,
then you focus on Republican reaction. Which is why there's
all this focus on Elon Musk and the doge dudes
that are you know, go that descended onto the Usaid
program and these they're going into these other departments and
they're just going in there with laptops and they're just
pulling data. And then what are they doing. Are they
hiding it from us? No? Are they like using it
to attack people online? No, they're just telling us. They're
going into these departments, they're pulling the grants, they're looking
at the funding and they're saying, this is what's being funded.
And the outrage that American taxpayers have towards the funding
priorities must be ignored because the stories that would be
about the scandal, so instead we get the Republican reaction
to the scandal. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too, And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.
Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app, and it's a website and it combines news
from around the world in one place so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out
at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check
dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link
and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use
the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature
your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Just real quick, I got a message here
from Representative Dean Arp who there is a go fund
Me now up to help Miss Esther rebuild after the
fire that engulfed her entire home. Dean Arp was on
the show on Wednesday, I think and yeah, because he
talked about how he stopped to help her, he saved
her life. Basically, she's wheelchair bound and saw the house
burning and he ran in there and got her out.
But the house was a total loss. So there is
now a go fundme that has been launched, launched by
her family. They're trying to raise fifty thousand dollars help
Esther rebuild after fire loss. That's the name of the
campaign put up by the Hayley family. Esther is the
oldest sister of the bunch, has outlived most of her siblings,
and she is battling cancer as well. She's wheelchair bound,
but she is alive and she's in good spirits. They
took her to the hospital. So if you you know,
have a heart to help somebody, Miss Ester is a
probably a good candidate to help there. There's so if
you go to go fund me and look for help
esther rebuild, you'll probably find it that way. I tweeted
it out also at Pete Calender on the Twitter machine.
So all right, Roy Cooper goes to Harvard, and Dennis
says in an email to Pete at Thepete calendershow dot com,
if Cooper really wants to make a big splash teaching
Harvard or teaching health at Harvard, he should bring that
whirlwind of a speaking personality, Mandy Cohen along with him.
That should go over bigger than Jim and Tammy fay Baker.
That's I don't know if the Harvard class would be
able to withstand the dynamism of a Cooper Cohen, you know,
a C and C production there like that would be ooh.
I mean, we were all just galvanized by their oratorical
skills during the pandemic, So I don't know if the
kids would be able to I don't know if they'd
be able to make it through there with that kind
of John says, do you think Professor Roy will use
that same irritating, condescending third grade teacher voice when he
lectures the students at Harvard that he always used during
his daily free hour infomercial COVID news conference. Yes, I do, John, Absolutely,
He's going to talk to them like they are four
year olds. I don't think he knows any other way
to address a group of people. His press releases are,
you know, biting and scathing when he's going after Republicans,
But when you put him in front of a class
of you know, probably progressive minded people, he's going to
lecture them like they are children, which kind of makes
sense actually, But yeah, that's what I said. I have
sympathy for the students. They're gonna have to sit there
and listen to this. And I would be surprised if
he does not bring Mandy Cohen into the class. I
would be surprised if he doesn't do that, because, like
she was the one that was there as you know,
trying to trying to tell all of us what was
going on and what they were doing and everything. So
he would always turn it over to her anyway, So
why not just turn over your class to her too.
It just makes sense. But this is just the latest example.
And by the way, it's an eight week class. It
will not impede his ability to run for the US Senate,
which we all expect him to do. We have all
expect him to do it. The purpose of the gig
is to give him an income for a little while
so he will be able to tread water long enough
to get to his next run. Right, that's the point.
It's a scholarship program. He's on scholarship. Harvard gave him
a scholarship, and so he's going to go there. He's
going to talk about how he locked everybody didn't know.
I'm kidding. He's going to go there and talk about
how he got Medicaid expanded. Except he didn't actually get
Medicaid expanded. The Republican legislature did that. So I'm at
a loss to understand what exactly, Like, I can't wait
to see what his his his course curriculum is, Like,
what is it? I forget what they call it? The syllabus?
There you go. I can't wait to see what the
syllabus is gonna be. What is he going to cover? Right?
What is the program description? So this goes way back
for Democrat politicians. Jim Hunt did it with his Hunt Institute.
He got a whole bunch of state government money, taxpayer
funds to run his little institute. And then, of course,
you know, all the money pours in and when the
from these left wing groups, and I've got their their
donor lists. Let's see here, we've got the chan Zuckerberg Initiative,
the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation. Babe.
By the way, here ever, listen to NPR, You're going
to know like all of these names because these same groups,
these foundations fund NPR two. I mean, besides us, the
Lumana Foundation, the Foundation for the Carolinas right here in Charlotte,
shout out to the Foundation for the Carolinas, Arnold Venture's,
Robbins Foundation, the Bezos Family Act, Altria Aris Foundation, the
Belt Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Brady Foundation, Burrow's Welcome Fund,
that's a big one, Charles and Lynn Schustermann Family Foundation,
College Board, Dominion Energy, the Duke Endowment, Foundation for Child Development,
John Belkindowment, the Kresge Foundation, New Venture Fund. Oh, the
New Venture Fund, by the way, you know who that's
managed by Arabella Advisors, right, so that's who. That's the
Hunt Institute, and they were getting tax dollars and Jim
Hunt drew a salary while he was over there. He's
not the only one after Jim Hunt. It was Mike
Easley as governor. But as I said, Mike had a
little bit of a taint to him, and so they
tried to line up his wife, except now you had
a Republican legislature, and it did not go well. Here's
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So we went over Jim Hunt. Next in line was
Mike Easley. He was the next UH governor through the
Democrat machine that has basically controlled North Carolina politics for
a century and a half before Republicans were able to
break that grip in twenty ten. So Mike Easley then
is governor. And as I mentioned, he had a bunch
of problems. They took his law license for a while,
suspended it. He had some you know, some problems because
he had this habit of like lining up a bunch
of stuff for his family members, you know, from Yeah, yeah,
there some scandals involved with that. So anyway, so North
Carolina State University they gave Mike Easley's wife a big
fat contract because he was a little, you know, sketchy.
And this goes back to two thousand and nine. Okay,
Mary Easley, the wife of former Demmocrat governor Mike Easley,
got fired from her position at North Carolina State University
as the controversy over her hiring and promotion continued to swirl,
with a federal investigation and the resignation of three top
university officials. Okay, so this one took out three NC
state leaders. Newly released email messages indicate that the former
governor himself, Mike Easley, was heavily involved in creating a
job for his wife at the university. The NC State
University Board of Trustees voted unanimously to terminate the contract.
This is from WRAL. Mary Easily had resisted calls to
step down from her one hundred and seventy thousand dollars
a year job at NC State despite a growing controversy
that claimed the jobs of three top university officials. The
UNC system president Erskine Bowles, Democrat ran for Senate, said
NC State needed to quote bring sunlight to this issue.
So he backed the trustees' efforts to separate themselves from
Easily and then it goes to the article goes over,
I'm trying to see here if there was I thought
there was something about Yeah, here it is. Emails released
by the university show that Campbell. All right, I aught
the backup and tell you see, I highlighted this. I
should have just done what I had. I should have
just gone with what I highlighted. But sometimes I highlight
too much, Okay, I over highlight and then I never
get to a lot of this stuff. So she has
served as an executive in residence and senior lecturer at
NC States and SO five, developing the Millennium Seminars Speakers Program,
and teaching a graduate course in Public Administration and courses
in the Administrative Offices Management Program, which provides leadership training
to law enforcement officers. Last year so this would have
been eight, she got an eighty eight percent pay increase. Coincidentally,
when Easley was leaving the Governor's mansion, when she signed
a five year contract, NC State officials defended the moves,
saying she had taken on new roles such as directing
pre law services and serving as a liaison to area
law firms and law schools at other universities as she
developed a dual degree program. Provost Larry Nielsen and McQueen Campbell,
the chairman of the board of trustees, resigned last month
amid questions over their roles in her hiring. Chancellor James
Oblinger submitted his resignation after officials questioned the lucrative payout
that he had negotiated with Nielsen as he transitioned into
a faculty position, and so. The emails that were released
by the university show Campbell and Oblinger discussed her hiring
in April of five when she was first brought on,
but Oblinger said in a statement that he didn't recall
the communications until he ran the emails again last week.
The emails were among documents that NC State turned over
to a federal grand jury that was investigating the dealings
former Governor Mike Easily had with friends and contributors while
in office. If I recall correctly, there was a car
dealership that gave free cars to the Easily family members
like his son and maybe his wife. I forget there
was the lucrative land deal that Easily got to take
advantage of down at the coast. He bought some property,
sat on it for a while, and then was able
to sell it to some connected person for way more
than it was worth. Things like that. They have ways
of taking care of their politicians on the way out
the door. Okay, so then that was easily. Then there
is BEV Purdue, BEV Perdue. Which this was also something
that Cacoda pointed out. We now have two governors, two
former governors that have gone on to teach at Harvard University.
What are the odds these? Apparently we are able to
select the most brilliant minds to be our governors, so
much so that they get offered professorships up at Harvard.
BEV Perdue finished her term in January of twenty thirteen.
She was a one term governor. Okay, she saw the
writing on the wall. The polling was terrible. Pat McCrory
was gonna beat her, and so she stepped aside, leaving
the seat open basically, and the lieutenant governor, Walter Dalton,
who Walter Dalton, that was literally his campaign ad because
nobody knew who the hell he was, so he had
to run an ad saying I'm Walter Dalton. It's me,
you know, and I'm running for governor. And of course
he got waxed. And she had gone to Asheville, hung
out in a brewery, drank some beers, and the next
morning said, I'm not running for reelection, Like that was
what happened. I was up in Asheville at the time,
and so I still remember like it was like breaking news.
Holy cow, she's not running for reelection. But the writing
was on the wall. She wasn't gonna win. And so
she steps aside. And then lo and behold, she gets
a gig up at Harvard and she I'm reading the
bio here on the UH on the Harvard page, trying
to find out where uh she managed the state. She
was this awesome person, earned a reputation as an innovative, disciplined,
and transformative chief executive. Really she she headed for the
hills after one term. Talks about facing a budget shortfall
of eleven percent when she took office because because of
the structural deficits that the Democrats while in charge had
run up that Republicans then came in and had to fix.
So anyway she got she got this professorship up there.
I forget what they call like Institute on Politics or
something like that. They called it. So they gave her,
they gave her a gig, So that was bev perdue.
Then there was John Edwards, and he deserves his own segment.
All right, I hope you had a happy holiday season.
But tell me if something like this happened at your house.
Your family and friends are gathered around, Maybe y'all are
in the living room, you're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and
then somebody says, hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes?
Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room
gets all quiet. All eyes are on Dad, who says, oh,
you know, well, I've been meaning to but I just
having gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless
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Hill right off I four eighty five and online at
create avideo dot com. Eddie is not listening, he told me,
because we South Carolina folk don't need a rehash of
NC political history. Okay, Eddie, thanks for taking the time
to tell me that you turned off the radio. If
anything that I am ever discussing is of zero interest
to you, I give you permission, not that you need it,
but you can turn the radio off. That's okay. I
don't mind. There's a lot of content out there. You
can go find something else to listen to. My feelings
are not hurt, but people do have an interest in
going over the history if they live through it. But
also people who don't know the history need to understand
that this is a pattern and North Carolina is giving
us a very good chronology of how this operation, the
Paul to prof Pipe line works, and as I indicated
at the beginning of the hour, this ties into the
USAID scandal that's unfolding. So if you give it time,
it'll connect, the dots connect. Believe it or not, I
actually chart these shows out like from beginning to end.
So I have a flow and the things connect, the
topics connect. Okay, So John Edwards not simply a North
Carolina US senator. No, No, he ran for president twice.
He was the vice presidential candidate. So that's of national
import I would think back in two thousand and seven.
John Edwards, according to The New York Times, ended two
thousand and four with the problem. That was when he
ran for president the first time, became the VP nominee
for John F. Kerrey, who, as I understand it, served
in Vietnam, if I remember correctly. He ended two thousand
and four with the problem how to keep alive his
public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that
could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.
Mister Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets
of nearly thirty million dollars, came up with a novel solution,
creating a nonprofit organization with the state admission of fighting poverty.
The organization, called the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised
one point three million dollars in two thousand and five
and unlike a sister charity that he created to raise
scholarship money for poor students. The main beneficiary of the
Center for Promise and Opportunities fundraising effort was that's right,
John Edwards himself. It was to keep it was to
keep him out of poverty. It was it was a
promise to him for his opportunity. A spokesman for mister
Edwards defended the center as a legitimate tool against poverty.
I'm not aware, by the way, if there was ever
an analysis done on exactly how many people he lifted
out of poverty with his seminars. I'm sure it was substantial. Though.
The organization became a big part of a shadow political
apparatus for mister Edwards after his defeat as the Democratic
vice presidential nominee in two thousand and four and before
the start of his presidential bid this time around in
two thousand and eight. See, so he had it's like
when you want to go backpacking across Europe for your
gap year, Like that's what he's looking at. But how
do you fund this thing? I mean, I know he's
like a really really wealthy guy, but that's just part
of the equation here, you know, he's got some money, sure,
but how do you stay in the public eye. He's
got to keep his profile. So this is how you
do it. And then you get to put it on
the resume and you get to then say on your
next campaign trail, you get to say, all the work
I did at the Center for Promise and Opportunity, working
on these poverty related issues and stuff. You get to
use it. See, So it's it's a dual purpose. Really
actually a triple purpose because it makes some money too, right,
It makes some money keep some high profile or higher
profile than just some former guy. And again keep in
mind this was in the days before he could have
just done a podcast. Then now he could just do
a podcast like Anthony Wiener. Who's gonna Anthony Wiener is
like running for mayor now in New York City. He's back.
The Wiener has returned. So it's true, though he has
he's I think, or maybe it's city council. I think
it's the mayor though, but he's he's weighing his options,
I think. So he needed to cover the gap years
between four and eight. It's officers of this Center for
Promise and Opportunity, the officers of that organization were all
members of his political staff, so he kept them employed too.
See it's not just him. He's spreading the wealth around
and it helped pay for his nearly constant travel, including
to the early primary states like New Hampshire. Right, there's
a lot of poverty up there people. Okay, look, he's
doing a lot of poverty work up there. And this
was through unc Chapel Hill. Right, it's the same racket.
It is, as the New York Times called it, a
shadow political apparatus. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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