Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. All right, so let me start with this.
This is about the customs and border protection operation that
was running in Charlotte for the past what five days?
Six days? Now it has apparently concluded, and apparently they
told the local Democrat leaders that they have concluded, and
the Democrat leaders promptly rushed out to tell everybody, good,
dear God, we're all going to be stronger together now.
But yesterday I missed this yesterday, Otherwise I would have
brought it to your attention, but I saw it now,
so I'm going to tell you about it now. And
it is a statement from a North Carolina Supreme Court judge.
See if you can take a guess who this judge
might be statement, this is not who we are as
a nation, and it's not who we are as North Carolinians.
I cannot be silent while the constitutional rights of our
neighbors are being violated right here in North Carolina. Across
the state, we are seeing reports a federal agents stopping
and seizing lawful residents and immigrants with no criminal records,
causing many North Carolinians to be fearful of leaving their homes,
going to work, sending their children to school, shopping for food,
or getting medical attention. We need strong public safety measures,
but this is not law enforcement intended to protect the public. Indeed,
it is making the public Let's safe in part because
it has resulted in abandoning the effort to stop serious crimes.
That's just stupid anyway, These agents are being pulled off
cases investigating sex trafficking, child abuse, and terrorism. This type
of political stunt further eroads the public's trust in the
already broken justice system. Remember this is a sitting judge.
They actually have a code of conduct. I just point
that out. You're not supposed to trash talk the justice system.
But this judge does have a history. Oh that's a hint.
Does have a history of doing that The willingness of
this administration to abandon the prosecution of serious crimes simply
in service of political theater and to scapegoat immigrants is appalling.
This is not who we are as a nation, and
it's not who we are as North Carolinians. Okay, did
you figure out who it is yet, Nita Earles. That's right,
the left wing activist lawyer turned Supreme Court judge Earls,
who is up for reelection next year. So keep that
in mind. Now. I mentioned that the Border Patrol is
rolling up its operation. We got a statement from Mecklinberg
County Sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden, who announced that
the federal officials have confirmed with him that the Operation
Charlotte's Webs officially concluded. As a result, there will be
no CBP operations in Charlotte on Thursday, November twentieth. It
is important to clarify that while the Charlotte's Web operation
has ended, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, will
continue to operate in Mecklinberg County as they always have.
ICE maintains full authority to detain, apprehend, and take into
custody any undocumented immigrant in accordance with federal law. As
a reminder, the Mecklumberg County Sheriff's Office will not engage
in any enforcement actions regarding immigration with ICE. We will
continue to follow the law as it relates to House
Built three eighteen and release those in our custody to
ICE within the forty eight hour time period, right because
we had to pass a law to make you do that.
Now he wants credit for following this law that he opposed,
by the way, and then he says they give a
quote from McFadden. We will continue to build relationships, mend bridges,
and listen to the voices of everyone in our community,
well not everyone, as we move forward. I want the
City of Charlotte to know I will keep fighting for clarity, accountability,
and trust. I will continue to protect this city and
every single one of its citizens. Oh my gosh, there's
here's a suggestion then, like I don't know, maybe keep
people from killing themselves in the jails, keep people from
overdosing in the jails like that, that would like you
have direct control over that. I don't know how you
think that you're going to continue to protect the city
and every single one of its citizens like this? That
is a delusion of grandeur. Okay, you cannot do that.
Law enforcement is reactionary. Okay, you don't know when a
crime is going to occur. You're you're responding to the crime.
And Mecklimber County isn't even a responding agency like that.
The sheriff's deputies, they do the courthouse security, they do
the jail. They're not They're not running around doing sting operations,
you know anyway? And then what was the other one
I had here? From thank you? The City of Charlotte
statement from the mayor Viaisles. It appears that US Border
Patrol has ceased its operations in Charlotte. I'm relieved for
our community and the residents, businesses, and all those who
were targeted and impacted by this intrusion. See again, like
I would love a reporter to ask any of these
Democrat officials that are making these statements now, are there
any other laws that we should not be enforcing? Can
you tell me what other laws we should not be doing,
we should not be following? As we move forward, she says,
it is essential that we come together not as separate
groups divided by recent events, but as one Charlotte community.
Our strength has always come from our ability to support
one another, especially in challenging times. I am calling on
all members of our community to join in this effort
against the fascist Nazis that came into town. No, I'm kidding.
I just added that last part. Let us stand together,
listen to one another, and recommit ourselves to the values
of dignity, compassion, and unity that define our city. This
is all just pap Okay, this doesn't mean anything to me.
It doesn't mean anything really at all. Was this another
chat GPT derived statement. That's what this sounds like. This
is like a lot of words to say nothing except
to virtue signal to the people in your own base,
to say like, this wasn't our fault. Please don't hold
it against us. We want all illegals to stay. Never
once does she mention the rule of law, that we
are a nation of laws. We are a nation of
laws before we are a nation of immigrants. Okay, let
me jump over and get Michelle on. Hello, Michelle, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi, Hello, thank you Pete for taking my car.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: I just an observation, is that all this protesting that's
been going on in Charlotte about ice in bordhist control.
It's just funny that these people seem to care about
the safety of illegal aliens, but none of them have
gone and protests in the streets when individuals and being
raped and molested, TEX traffic, kids killed. You know, where
is the protests for the American citizen? The children, the women,
the men of them are being killed might as well,
even if they live, they feel dead. Where is the
protesting for them? Because when does their life matter?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 2: We have them going to school and being cms, being molested,
sexually harassed. Nobody's protesting for them.
Speaker 1: Now, this is why it's called suicidal empathy. That's where
this that's what the term refers to. Suicidal empathy. When
and I appreciate the call, Michelle, when a society values, say,
honor above all things, then it is okay to die,
if it's an honor death right. If you elevate empathy
as the highest attribute to achieve in a society, then
you know, committing Harry Carey basically to signal that you
are the most empathetic that becomes the most rewarded thing.
That's where the term comes from. That's what it applies to.
That's why we see no protests for you know, otherwise,
like shouldn't there be protests in front of the jail
for the release of the violent illegal alien offenders?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: We've seen none of that. We don't see protests down
at the courthouse demanding accountability for the judges and the
magistrates who turn people loose with no bond. We don't
see that. We don't see protests for reduction in crime.
We may see a vigil for somebody who has been murdered,
but we don't see protests. We don't see anger in
the street like we saw over the last six days. Here.
It's suicidal empathy. It is best for us to sacrifice
our own lives in order to signal to others that
we have empathy. I care about your feelings more than
I care about my own life. That's what that term means.
I appreciate the call.
Speaker 3: You know.
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forwarded to me a message that was posted or pushed
out to parents. I should say this came from a
teacher at Sedgefield Middle School and reportedly they had taken
down after I guess complaints about this because the teacher
pushed out the following. This was two days ago. This morning,
I received quite a few questions and comments from students
about the presence of border patrol across the city. Okay,
my understanding is that this came from a science teacher. Okay,
so here just again, I'm not a trained educator at all.
I don't have all of the you know, the the
training that comes with, you know, going through four years
of teacher college. Although I did attend Winthrop University, and
I did take one class in the education field, and
I did spend K twelve then four years of college,
you know, in education, so I feel like I have
some bit of experience in this. But here's how I
think my science teachers would have answered questions like this.
That's not on the agenda for today. That has nothing
to do with the course curriculum we are covering. This
is a sign science class. Now open your textbooks or
open your laptops, and we will proceed with the lesson. Okay,
just because kids are asking you things doesn't mean you
need to answer them, you know, just like if a
kid asks, you know, hey, why do you have that
bull ring thing through your nose? What is that? Why
does your face look like a tackle box like? Stuff
like that doesn't mean you need to answer those questions.
They don't need to know who you're attracted to. They
don't need to know about your living arrangements and your polycule.
We never would even think to ask a teacher about
those things, And if anybody ever did, the teachers would
have just said, none of your business. Shut up your
ind attention, like that's it. That's how you answer that stuff,
especially if it's not part of what you are teaching.
You are a science teacher. But you know, I'm only
sending this out to everybody because they just add so
many people, so many of these kids, they were asking
about the presence of border patrol. In response to this,
I the cool teacher that I added that part I
shared with the students the attached graphic about their rights
and your rights if encountering law enforcement, and it's taken
from a nonprofit group called United We Dream. I also
tried to communicate the sensitive nature of and empathy required
to navigate these current events. With that being said, your
students may come home with questions, No, they're they're their kids,
dude or lady. I don't know, like they're not. They're
not the parents' students. It's the parents' children. You're telling
them things that maybe those parents don't appreciate you. You
do what you going off book here outside of the
science curriculum to share with them a graphic telling them,
don't open the door for law enforcement, demand a warrant,
don't sign anything, remember ice may lie. Do gree to
follow them anywhere. That's the stuff this teacher shared with
kids and then sent out to the parents as a
heads up, like, Hey, I gave your kid this information
and maybe you need it too. It did get taken down, though.
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memories that'll last a lifetime. I want to welcome back
to the program the North Carolina State Auditor Dave Bullock.
Speaker 1: How are you, sir?
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great as well. There's a publication called Inside
Climate News, I believe, and they described your latest report
that examined the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency,
which is kind of neither or encore as it's referred to,
that they that it wasn't good at rebuilding, entering budgets,
overseeing contractors, or helping hurricane victims. Many of whom were
left living in motels for years while their homes were
supposedly being rebuilt. But I guess other than that, they
did a good job.
Speaker 3: Right. Other than that, well, look, INCORE was set up
to respond to both hurricanes Matthew and Florence. That was
his primary purpose. And what we took a look at
was the recovery process, which was based on the home
rebuild program at INCORE. The homeowner recovery program really is
the technical word for it. And there were I mean,
we had the disaster of Matthew, we had the disaster
of Florence, and North Carolinians experienced the third disaster, which
was Incoor. And what the big picture on this is
is that this agency, which was set up to help
people in eastern North Carolina, spent way too much money,
way too much time on process over actually swinging hammers
and getting results.
Speaker 1: You say in the report that that inadequate oversight of
vendors led to increased costs. Now, this was part of
the previous administration. ENCORE was set up under Or is
managed mainly by Roy Cooper, the previous governor, and Cooper's
office has responded by saying that the federal government did
not provide enough resources to meet the state's needs. It
was that at all factored into this report by your office.
Speaker 3: Well, what we took a look at was where the
rubber meets the road, and here's here's what we found
with respect to the process over boots on the ground
and results and with vendor over So when the INCREP
was first set up, the vendors ran the oversight, they
governed the program. In Corps basically outsourced the management of
the entire program. So you had a situation where, for example,
when applicants applied for INCORE to be a part of
the program, the vendor managing that received four hundred and
eighty dollars a month for up to approximately and this
was never specifically designated, but generally up to eighteen months
while somebody waited in line. The vendor could receive four
hundred and eighty dollars a month, whether there was a
decision made or whether there was any action taken on
behalf of a particular applicant who was looking to receive
help from INCORE. Now, by twenty twenty two, late in
the game, in Corps actually took over the governance of
program and after that the government itself began to hold
not only a self but contract vendors more accountable. The
process of building homes increased, but look, people had to
wait two and a half years even to get approved,
and then it took an average of four years to
sling a single hammer to get anything done. And we
haven't even talked about the temporary relocation assistance. I mean,
you know, Pete, we spent an average of thirty two
thousand dollars on hotel rooms for people. One family, for example,
spent one four hundred and ninety nine days in a
hotel at a taxpayer cost of two hundred and thirty
four thousand, eight hundred and ninety six dollars. We could
have built a house for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. So the timeline on this is Hurricane
Matthew hit in late twenty sixteen. Pat McCrory was still governor,
but then Roy he lost the reelection and Roy Cooper
took over. Then Hurricane Florence hit in twenty eighteen. So Encore,
and I want to make sure I understand this. So
encre hires a vendor and the vendor is compensated for
I guess on a per applicant basis, So there's essentially
an incentive for them to keep the and the applicants
are just homeowners that were impacted by these storms. So
it sounds like there was an incentive for the vendor
to keep as many applicants waiting because they would draw
like four hundred dollars whatever you said, that number was
per applicant per month, and so if you string them
out for a year and a half, the vendor's going
to make more money. Is that what you're.
Speaker 3: Saying, Yeah, I would. I wouldn't say that the vendor
necessarily because we don't have any evidence, so sure, sure,
clear don't want to be accurate. We don't have evidence
that the vendor did that with an incentive motive. But
that leads to another technical and I know a lot
of this state auditor stuff really gets in the wage date,
but it is important, I think for taxpayers to know
a lot of the process. And the lack of metrics
and the lack of key performance indicators and the lack
of accountability written into these contracts really accelerated the lack
of production because there really wasn't any accountability on either side.
You know, the government who invites contractors and vendors to
come in to do things on behalf of taxpayers as
a responsibility as well to work with the contracting firm
to get the job done and to provide that environment
where they can actually succeed. And the vendor, on the
other hand, has the responsibility to comply with what the
government is asking in their contracting process. We did neither
neither well, right, there was not accountability on either side
of that into way laid into the game fee. And
by that time we had wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Right in half a decade. I mean that's the uncontract.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the time was the big thing. I mean
four years to start swinging a hammer. I mean that's
just unacceptable.
Speaker 1: And you say in your report payments were made without
full verification of work completed. So even after the work
was done there, we don't even know if it was
done as per the contracts were required to be completed.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It seems like it takes a really long time to
get the hammers swinging, and then when the work is done,
it's just okay, good job, here's your check, and there's
no verification that it was done.
Speaker 3: There was some verification, but we found the verification to
not be procedurally consistent, okay, and we also found we
found the processes not to be standardized. And when you've
got contractors needed and get paid, you're also in essence
wanting to keep people on the job because eastern North
Carolina is also a hot housing market, so you want
to be able to keep contractors in the job process.
So they just oftentimes went ahead and paid invoices without
the verification process.
Speaker 1: So what do we do? Where do we go from here?
Because obviously, like they're they're winding this thing down. I mean,
even Governor Josh Stein is moving the Hurricane Helene relief
efforts into a different organization and see Grow I think
is the name of that one. Even he recognizes that
Encore was inadequate here. So what is your recommendation going forward?
Speaker 3: And I just testified in from the House and Senate
Joint Oversight Committee on this issue, and we have several recommendations.
First of all, I think you're you're dead on with
with Governor Stein clearly, and I have not directly talked
to him about that, although I've talked to him about
other things. He made a policy decision not to continue
with incore and stood up another agency. And that's what
we do in North Carolina when a disaster occurs. The
current process is to stand up an ad hoc agency
and start from scatch scratch. You know, Pete Enforce spent
twenty five point four million dollars on a software program
that they ultimately never could work correctly because they didn't
design it right from the beginning. Oh my god, We've
we've We've got to have a plan and a strategy
for dealing with what I call the back end of
the house. The front end of the house, to use
a restaurant analogy, that's first responders, swift flight or rescue,
stabilizing the situation. The back end of the house is
the recovery, and that is also accounting for the billions
of dollars that tax payers are giving to help these
recovery efforts. We've got to have a strategic plan in place.
I've reckoon ended involving all the Council of State members.
I'm a Council of State member. I signed up to
be a statewide elected official. I want to be held accountable.
I'm willing to be part of the process. It needs
to be housed with the governor, the chief executive officer,
but all of the executives elected statewide play a part
right now in Helen recovery. We need to be able
to have buy in on this as well as legislative
leadership and relevant cabinet members to have a standard way
of responding so we can flip the switch, Pete, because
we can't continue down this path. We can't start from
scratch every time a storm.
Speaker 1: Hells, Yeah, that's insane, that's insane. And do you have
any understanding of why that is the case.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just there's never been I guess the political
will to move forward with a standardized way of doing this.
You know this this started in commerce in course, started
in commerce, moved to incoors. Right now. Inc Grow is
the main component of government that is working on Helene recovery.
But the Department of Commerce is running a lot of
the rebuild program. So we we seem to be moving
in a better direction. But you still have a bifurcated
system even within the Governor's office today, where you've got
Commerce working on rebuilding, you've got inc GROW coordinating agencies
and you know, my office, for examples, never been called
by the Governor's office or NCI GROW for input. And
I've talked to other Council of State members who have
also not been called yet. Each each Council of State
member is responsible for really unique and focused parts of
the recovery agriculture for example, the treasurers it is running
a loan program, the insurance commissions really important in recovery.
There's a lot of responsibility. We still need to get
on the same page so the taxpayer is getting the
most efficient work out of discoverment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I appreciate your efforts on this and appreciate your
time as always. North Carolina State Auditor Dave Bollock, thanks
so much, Start to take care, appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thanks State you too.
Speaker 1: All Right, if you're listening to this show, you know
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So Wral's story on this. Some victims of Hurricane Florence
and Matthew remained in temporary housing for more than fourteen
hundred days because the state agency created to lead the
disaster recovery prioritized process management over repairing and rebuilding homes.
That's according to the State Auditor's office. Their report dropped yesterday.
You just heard from the state auditor himself. They're recommending,
you know, standing up a different model, which, by the way,
I was very critical of Roy Cooper during COVID for
this very thing. You have ten Council of State statewide
elected offices, and he would make all of these decisions
on his own, never bringing in like the agriculture Commissioner,
which is stupid, because agriculture was impacted, these industries, the
insurance industries, like all of these different industries that you
have the Council of State over, they were all impacted
and he didn't and he stiff armed all of these
other statewide Council of State offices so he could have
complete control over the process. And I think the auditor
is right that needs to stop.
Speaker 4: All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support and the support of the
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You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
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much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.