Speaker 1: What's going on.
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And again, thank you so much for your support. All righty,
So a couple of things happening up on Capitol Hill.
We had the House within the last half hour. They've
agreed to go along with that Senate budget. It's on
a bill, but gonna go along with a Senate spending plan.
And as I understand it, it's like four trillion dollars
in tax cuts and five trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Increase in the debt ceiling.
Speaker 2: So things are going well, Yes, we're getting our fifth
House in total order.
Speaker 1: And then this is actually good news. Well not this
first part.
Speaker 2: Only four Democrats joined the House Republicans, but they did
so credit where it is due. They joined House Republicans
to pass legislation that would impose stricter regulations to ensure
that only US citizens are participating in federal elections.
Speaker 1: No, we can't have that, gosh.
Speaker 2: The House of Representatives voted two twenty to two h
eight in favor of House Resolution twenty two. It's called
the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act.
The bill would require states to obtain proof of citizenship
prior to registering an individual for any federal election, and
also requires state officials to remove all non citizens from
the existing voter roles. And if the North Carolina Board
of Elections is left to do that on their own,
I suspect they will get around to that sometime in
around twenty fifty five or so. That's generally the pace
at which they operate. Democrats Henry Quaar of Texas, Jared
Golden of Maine, Marie glues In Camp Perez of Washington,
and Ed Case of Hawaii were the four Democrats to
vote in favor of the bill. So I think we
are at the point in this this story, you know,
the story arc, the trajectory of the tale here is.
I think we're at the where, at the beginning stages,
where the left is going to tell us that this
does not happen, because this is what we were told.
Remember when the state did this, When the state of
North Carolina passed its own version of this, you know,
you have to have citizenship in order to vote in
North Carolina elections. We are not allowed to have non
citizen voting. And when the state House Republicans I think
it was the House, when the Republicans in Raleigh introduced
this legislation, we were assured that this does not happen.
And the response was, well, it does happen in cities
and counties and states that allow it in their city, county,
and state races. There are several examples. This has been
one of the incursions of leftists across America in you know,
jurisdictions that they control to change law to allow for
non citizen voting in their elections. There was a court
case actually up in New York because New York City
attempted to do this, and there was a lawsuit filed
and they won that lawsuit. The challengers won that lawsuit
because the State of New York I think it had
I want to say it was in their constitution and
so it prohibited this kind of a local law. And
they won that case. But if you don't have that
in your state constitution, then you're going to be in trouble.
And so this is what we were all. I think, yeah,
I think the House. I'm trying to remember, did we
get to vote on this or is this going to
a referendum?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was last year. Yeah, we voted for it. Yeah,
we put it into our constitution. Right, we voted for
this last year.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the argument was that this is it's not even happening.
Nobody's introduced anything like that. Nobody wants to do this
thing that other people have been doing in other cities
and states around the country. But so that's the beginning
of the story arc. And I suspect that's the beginning
of this story arc. At the national level. The Save
Act it's fixing or it's a solution in search of
a problem. Right, that's usually what they start off with,
that the thing that you are worried about is not happening,
so we should not erect any kind of safeguards to
prevent that thing you are worried about from happening from happening.
And then of course when you find out, oh, actually
there are cases of this happening, then The next step
is to say, okay, fine, and may be happening, but
it's just a teenc ween see little bit. It's not
a lot, okay, And then you're like, oh, actually we
have like all of these examples. You cite different cities
that have allowed non citizen voting, and then it shifts
to Okay, it may be happening, maybe it's a little
bit more than a teenc ween sea bit, but it's
not enough to affect the outcomes. And then you end
up in the final stage, which is okay, fine, it
is happening, and.
Speaker 1: Here's why it's a good thing. Right.
Speaker 2: So, we still have a ways to go on the
Save Act in this story arc, but for now, let's
celebrate the win. The Save Act passed the House. Here
we go. This is from The Independent The Independent Journal.
In the run up to the vote, Democratic House lawmakers
claimed the legislation here it is would make it harder
for individuals without proper documentations, without proper documentation to vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, correct, you are correct.
Speaker 2: That is actual yes, Because when the left talks about
people without proper documentation, they're talking about non citizens. They're
talking about people who are oftentimes illegal aliens. Right, and
This is why they corrupt the language, so they can
then conflate different things and confuse the debate so they
can get what they want.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So they say in particular married women, see, because married
women they take their husband's last names because patriarchy, you know,
So they take their husband's last names, and so they
would be prevented from voting because their surnames no longer
match the names on their birth certificates. Except for the
fact that the bill had provisions to allow married women
to register to vote in federal elections.
Speaker 1: So it's a stupid argument.
Speaker 2: Read the bill, said Florida Representative Camick, page fourteen. If
you are registering to vote, there is a process by
which the state establish the states established. If you are
already registered to vote, you are fine. Please read the bill,
she said, and star insulting women. But if the leftists
can't insult women along with minorities because in their minds,
I guess women just can't possibly figure out how to
register to vote and minorities can't figure out how to
get a driver's license or photo ID. Right, this is
always a very odd argument that the leftists make, you know,
the ones who are the champions of these people, while
also denigrating them as to stupid to function in our
current society. The legislation with bar state governments from accepting
or processing any application to register to vote in a
federal election unless an applicant provides documentary proof of their
American citizenship. The legislation also specifies what documents are deemed
acceptable proof of American citizenship, such as documentation that complies
with the Real ID Act of two thousand and five.
By the way, the deadline for the real ID is
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createavideo dot Com. Alrighty, so the real I D deadline,
don't call it a deadline. Deadline is is approaching, but
good luck, because you're gonna have to go to the
DMV and uh yeah, that's a that's an issue, so
officials say. According to the story at WBTV by Dalford Jones,
officials say they do not consider the May seventh deadline
a deadline per se, because you will still be able
to get your real I D after May seventh. But
if you are, you know, going to be flying on
a on an airplane on May.
Speaker 1: Eighth, then.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to bring a passport with you
or something because the real I D is now going
to be required.
Speaker 1: Right. This is and this has been the case.
Speaker 2: Like they they've been telling us to get our real
IDs for like twenty years classic gov Co rollout. Am
I right, yeah, They're like, hey, everybody, we want these
real IDs more secure blah blah blah blah blah and
really important. We get this done immediately. And then they
extended it, and then they extended it, and then they
extended it, and then they extended it. They I don't
even know how many times, Like I, I had forgotten
that there was a deadline on this thing. I just
happened to go in there. At one point I had
to re up. Oh gosh, don't even get me started. Okay,
I'm already started. So like I had to go in
because I got a notice in the mail that said
I have to get a new driver's license. I had
to renew my driver's license. And I said, well, that's
weird because I was just in the DMV office like
a year ago. Because when I moved back to Charlotte
and we moved into a house, it was new construction
in a new neighborhood that got built and our address
did not exist, and so we had to wait for
the builder and whoever in the city or county or
whoever to turn like the papers of legitimacy over to
the Postal Service. And apparently all of the well everything,
the banks, the the Amazon, like all of them, they
all rely on what's called the Red Book, the US
Postal Service Red Book. And as I understand it, back
in the day, it used to be like a big
fat red book and they would write everybody's address in
them as the addresses came online are we did not
get mail at our house for over two months. My
neighbor couldn't get mail. She had like the thing where
they like take pictures of your mail and give you
a picture of it. I forget what the Postal Service
thing is called, but it's like on their app or something,
and so they send you pictures of your mail and
so but she would go down to the mailbox and
the key wouldn't work in the mailbox, and so she's
getting these like hostage pictures every day of her mail
and she can't get to it, and she's trying to
figure out how to fix this, and the Postal Service
is not very helpful. I know that's going to come
as a shock, but yeah, so that's the problem is
you got to go to the.
Speaker 1: DMV in order to get the real ID.
Speaker 2: And so what you know, when I went to the
DMV to get my license renewed and my concealed kerry,
you know, I had to do that in a very
time sensitive fashion, which don't even get me started. I
got the paperwork for that, for the renewal on the
concealed hand on permit, and oh my gosh, list every
prior address, sir, I work in radio, Okay, I have
a lot of prior addresses. That's ridiculous. And not just
prior addresses. You got to list the dates that you
lived in them.
Speaker 1: That's nuts. I already have a permit.
Speaker 2: I'm just renewing classic not my fault MCFAD and right there. Anyway,
so I go into the DMV and I'm like, I
need to, you know, give you. I show them like
the deed of the of the house and like here's like,
here's the register of deeds documentation. This address does exist.
He had to override his computer system. I had to
do this at all my banks. I had to do
this everywhere. And so he's like, well, do we'll go
and take another picture. And so I got a new license,
or so I thought it was not a new license.
It's even though it was a new picture, new address,
it was what they called a duplicate. It's a duplicate.
Even though it wasn't a duplicate, it was a new
license with a new photo. So they send me this renewal.
I said, I already did the renewal, and they're like,
that wasn't a renewal.
Speaker 1: That was a duplicate.
Speaker 2: So I had to I could not get an appointment
at the DMV anywhere nearby. I had to go all
the way up to the Hickory area. I took a
day off of work to drive to Hickory to get
an appointment, and it took me like five minutes. Yeah,
that's the state of our North Carolina DMV.
Speaker 1: But don't worry. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: The DMV Communications manager, Marty Homan says, we now have
ninety two offices that are open ten hours a day
from seven am to five pm. That's eighty percent of
our one hundred and fifteen offices. That's an effort to
try to stretch more out of the folks that we have.
So we're thankful to our employees for working over time
necessary to allow us to be open for ten hours
a day. For nearly a decade, state leaders across the
country have been pushing people to get their real ID.
The enforcement date has been pushed back several times, most
recently due to the pandemic. If you do not have
your real ID by next month, you will be able
to use your passport or a passport card as a
valid form of identification. Which I'm waiting for the leftists
to come out and say, but how will the women
and minorities be able to they can't get a passport
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that'll last a lifetime. Let's jump over and talk to Rob. Hello, Rob,
Welcome to the program.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 3: Hey? How are you?
Speaker 1: Pete good? I'm going what's going on?
Speaker 3: I flew in and out of a Dayton, Ohio a
couple weeks ago and I'm sorry? Yeah, return trip uh
when to go through TSA through the PreCheck and gave
them my new North Carolina real d license. It's the
new multi security feature license. It's this new and.
Speaker 2: Is it black and white? Does it look sort of
black and white versus color correct? Uh huh, that's what
I got, yep.
Speaker 3: And so the TSA officer would not take the ID.
He requested that I present a passport or the old
form of the driver's license that their their verification equipment
wouldn't recognize the new license.
Speaker 1: Is that because it's in black and white?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I think it was kind of bizarre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what it is. So, Yeah, funny story.
The apparently the North Carolina d m V put out
for proposal for bids some vendor, you know, to get
a vendor to do the i ds, And apparently they
awarded the bid and then the vendor began producing the
i ds. Uh, and nobody ever checked to make sure
that they would be compliant I think with the the
real ID dollar requirements. So we've been making IDs in
North Carolina apparently in violation of the law by not
having them full color IDs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty crazy. Just the DMV experience overall is just
it's totally absurd.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had to go through a few months ago. They
revoked my license for a thirty five year old fine
that they say I'd never paid, and I've renewed my
license numerous times over the years over that thirty five years,
and without any warning, I just happened to be looking
on the DMV app or website and saw it my
license was eligible for reinstatement with no explanation. So that
was took about a week to get it cleared up,
and about six different DMVs to finally get in. And
that took going in at six am standing and I
was about number thirty. And you know once you get in, Yeah,
as free insurance, and the the image of the phone
of your current insurance wasn't good enough. It had to
be printed. Wow and yeah, and then so it came
back and pay the fee. To pay the fee, I
paid cash. One of the one of the bills had
a tear in it. They wouldn't accept it. It was
just crazy.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Where so where was the where was the the fine?
Out of what you said it was an unpaid what
was the what was it was a ticket or something
that was unpaid?
Speaker 3: It was a reinstatement fee for the license where it
had been revoked.
Speaker 2: And oh I got you so to thirty years to
track you down, and so what was the originating county?
Speaker 3: Was that originating was Jackson?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, because I was thinking maybe it was tied to
the problems that they've been having in the court systems
with their their migration over to a new software platform
or something, and there have been a lot of problems
with that. So but I don't know if Jackson County
was one of those counties that did it, and maybe
that's why it popped up or something. I don't know,
but that's I mean, that's kind of nuts that that
they they didn't know for thirty something years and then
they finally figured it out.
Speaker 3: With with no notification and right in the same address
for fifteen years.
Speaker 1: So did they charge you any penalties on that.
Speaker 3: No, just just the fee and the instatement for you.
Speaker 2: Well okay, well at least they at least they didn't
nail you for thirty five years of.
Speaker 1: Penalties like that would have been nuts.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, now that that seems to track Rob,
I appreciate the call man, all right, see you you too.
Speaker 1: So this is from John Boyle. He's a writer.
Speaker 2: He used to write for the Asheville Citizen Times and
then you know, after they fired like ninety nine percent
of their workforce from that newspaper. He's now at a
nonprofit left wing website called AVL Watchdog Ashville Watchdog dot org,
and he wrote about the DMV and getting his real
ID and the problems at the DMV, and this would
be up in Bunkhom County. But there is a bit
of a helpful tip apparently on how to beat the
broken appointment system. 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.
Speaker 1: See for yourself.
Speaker 2: 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. And uh, okay, we got Robert on. Hello Robert,
welcome to the show, Pete.
Speaker 3: How you doing.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm good man, what's up?
Speaker 4: I just wanted to add comment to you. Said you've
moved into a new house a couple of years ago
and challenges that you had on getting your address and
everything changed over.
Speaker 1: Well, just recognized it's like it didn't exist. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 4: So that's one topic that's called the AMS system today
and there is a backlog of people getting their addresses
into the AMS system. That's the new term instead of
red book.
Speaker 1: Oh AMS.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well I don't need to know this anymore, hopefully
so yeah.
Speaker 4: All right. So here's the better part of the story.
So when you move into a new neighborhood, as you know,
you don't have your mail delivered to your house anymore.
It gets delivered to a mail chioskity right, and the
actual little box that they put it in is called
a CBU it's clustered mailbox, and so the postal carrier
has a key that unlocks that box and they stick
all the mail in it right time and postal carriers
were being robbed of that key so that bad people
could get into your mailboxes and steal all your checks. Ah,
and so they quickly realized this is a bad problem
that they needed to have a more secure lock, and
that secure lock is called a mal I can't remember
what the mouse stands for in al And there's a
shortage of forty nine thousand of these locks that they're
changing out through every place in the country that has
existing neighborhoods and so new neighborhoods that when you install
these things the cbused, it is taking up to eight
months before that map. You can have the little box there,
but the lock will not be on the mailbox, the
mail lock, and it's taking up to eight months to
get that lock because they're trying to replace all the
other ones. And so you could be living into your
house for eight months and you're having to go to
the post office to get your mail because they do
not have any locks, so.
Speaker 2: They won't even deliver it to the CBU without the mal.
Speaker 1: Correct under the AMS correct. I think I got that. Now.
What a mess.
Speaker 4: It is a huge mess, but not surprising either with
bureaucracy of our post office.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's another facet here that I have some
personal experience within my own neighborhood where apparently they have
not The builder did not do the pull off area
at the CBU, so they're supposed to apparently be according
to the Postal Service, there's supposed to be like a
like a little parking pad or something where you can
pull over and get out of the car safely, you know, right,
And they didn't install any of those at any of
the cbus all around the neighborhood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're supposed to beak be any cap assessible. There's
a special design and if they didn't do it, they
not go deliver.
Speaker 2: Well, they've been delivering, so I probably have said too much,
but they have. They have been delivering, so at least
they're at least they're doing that. But yeah, I like
we saw that some of the residents saw that a
couple of weeks ago, and it's like, oh, that might
be a problem, but we shall see.
Speaker 1: Robert, I appreciate the intel. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 4: Enjoy your day.
Speaker 1: Hi buddy, you too.
Speaker 2: John Boyle at THEAVL watchdog dot Org writes, in a
topsy turvy, unreliable world, you can always count on the
North Carolina DMV driver's license offices to provide some constancy
as far as providing reliably long lines and frustrated human beings.
That is, or, as I say, DMV going to DMV
North Carolina contracts out, contracts out for the DMV license
plate in titled offices. These are the tag offices right,
and you might notice there are a bunch of them.
They generally run a little bit better than the driver's
license offices, which are run and staffed by the state NCDMV.
There are about one hundred and thirty tag offices statewide
compared to one hundred and fifteen driver's license offices. According
to the DMV spokesperson Marty Homan in twenty twenty two,
the big problem with the driver's license offices with staffing
and filling vacancies. Back then, Holman said the vacancy rate
in bunkhom County and fifteen other offices was about thirty
six and a half percent vacancy, so one out of
three spots were empty. The DMV has tamed that problem.
The vacancy rate now is about ten percent. So it's
not a problem of the DMV hiring and training employees
and filling the seats that are allocated in the state budget.
It's a math problem, he says. It just needs more
of those positions to address the growth that we see.
There are hundreds of people moving into the state every
single day. By the way, there are people moving out.
Speaker 1: Of the state too.
Speaker 2: But anyway, the DMV has a two part ask in
the budget, so it's any more money, of course, of
course it's a budget ask. Part one of the two
part ask is to add sixty one employees across the state.
These would be driver's license examiners who do the renewals,
the road tests, and other work involved in getting you
a driver's license. Part two is for twenty four additional
employees to staff two new offices and one So they
want to add two new offices and one that would
move into a new location. These employees would be targeted
for Coberis County, Brunswick County, and Durham County. While the
DMV dysfunction frustrates a lot of people, a lot of
folks who have just moved here and don't really understand
the political lay of the land, for example, and for
people who are under the age of sixty five, the
renewal is good for eight years, so we tend to
forget over time. What a pain in the butt getting
our license appointment actually is? Chris Cooper, Western Carolina political
scientists guy. He says, quote, it's the bureaucratic version of
getting a colonoscopy, which is very accurate. So here is
the hack. If you go on the DMV site for
the real ID appointments and you keep hitting the refresh button,
you have a good chance of getting lucky with an
appointment that just becomes available. His wife got an appointment
within an hour, went in about a week later at
the set time, came out twenty minutes later with a
new real ID and he says, and now I have
to hear about this for the rest of my life.
But he says, you can benefit from my laziness. Here's
why this hack works. Holman said that we were in
sort of this darned if we do something and darned
if we don't. February of last year we started doing
real ID confirmations. We were having thirty three percent of
people not show up for their appointments, so many misedappointments
did not help with the DMV efficiency. So it started
a system where after you book an appointment, you get
a conformation text and an email and you get that
right away, and then you have to act on that
within fifteen minutes and that holds your appointment. The next
step is where the refresh button trick comes into play.
Holman said, four days before your appointment, you get a
reminder message asking you to confirm the appointment. So you
get that four days in advance, and you have twenty
four hours to respond to that text or email, and
if you don't, you lose it. And then those are
the appointments that pop up and get taken all throughout
the day. So if you're so, if you just like
sit on that website and hit refresh for an hour,
maybe two, maybe three whatever, right at least you're sitting
and waiting in the comfort of your own home versus
sitting in a DMB line. You know, it's not really
a time saving I guess.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: It's a quality of life upgrade. You can be hanging
out and you're Jammy's drinking some coffee or something. Now,
they do say that this new system of the constant
barrage of texting and emails making you confirm within you
know a certain amount of time, that that has helped
reduce the no show rate for real ID appointments, taking
it from thirty three percent down to below eight percent.
This is this is the problem when you're building any
kind of the system.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the users, which really makes sense because if you've
ever seen the people that they give licenses to, you've
seen them out on the roads. It makes perfect sense.
Those are the people that you're fighting in line for
to get the appointments on the website, and you've seen
the way they behave on the roads. So that does track.
You know, there are change is planned for North Carolina's DMV.
They wanted to be more streamlined, they wanted to be
more efficient. They want well I'm serious, Okay, that's what
they say. That's what they're saying. They want they want
to improve the DMV. How not sure yet, but no
I'm but they're working on it all right. That'll do
it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
I could not do the show without your support and
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.