Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. As we do on Mondays at two o'clock,
we chat with ap Dylon. She is a reporter at
the North State Journal nsjonline dot com. She's also the
publisher of a substack newsletter called More to the Story, Ap.
How are you today?
Speaker 2: I'm great. How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right doing? Okay. We got a new
police chief in Charlotte. I heard it's the Raleigh police chief.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Any thoughts on her tenure there in the Raleigh zone.
Speaker 2: Well, it was bumpy for a while there. I believe
she was there when the riots happened in twenty twenty,
and I believe that she was, you know, oversaw most
of the COVID era hm hm, So you know there was.
Speaker 1: Having that.
Speaker 2: You know, crime definitely was creeping up there in the
last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, so we'll say, like I'm hoping for
the best, but we'll see. Let's uh, you wrote You've
got a lot of stuff over at North State Journal
as well as at more to the story. So first
let's let's talk about Cecil Brockman. He is the North
Carolina state representative Democrat out of Guildford who was a
still in prison under like a million dollar bond for
taking indecent liberties with a child who counts the statutory
rape sex offense of a thirteen to fifteen year old.
So there is a development now in this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very very late last Friday afternoon, Halloween Eve, his
resignation was received by the House. He's finally resigned. And
it looks like from the screenshot of the letter that
was put.
Speaker 1: Out, no we lost you, he had ye Are you
back yep? I'm okay, all right, yeah yeah yeah, so
your phone just cut out. It did that earlier too,
So yeah, I don't know if you're like standing next
to a microwave or something, but.
Speaker 2: No, but right next to my computer that might be it. Yeah, yeah,
he resigned on Friday afternoon, Halloween, right around five I
think it's when the House received his resignation, and that
came like literally half an hour after the House Speaker
announcer is going to be a committee, you know, a
bipartisan committee to look at, you know, what they could
do to possibly remove him from the House. The letter
itself was dated October twenty second, and they've been crossed out,
wrote October thirty first, So it looks like you had
been thinking about doing this for over a week just
hadn't done it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of interesting you would write. Yeah, you wrote
the letter and had it ready to go and then
just waited for the House Speaker to create the committee
to try to find a way to oust you. And
that's when you sent the letter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it was literally you know, it's dated five
eight pm on Friday, and Speaker Dustin Hall had announced
it announce it could be something at like like four
point thirty something, So I mean it really came right
on the heels, one after the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So process now is that the Guildford
County Democrat Party they get to pick a replacement, to
nominate a replacement, and then that goes to what the
governor first and then is that it or does the
generally need to sign off on that too?
Speaker 2: Uh well, the General Assembly will install him after that point, gotcha?
So yeah, I mean it's typically the party of the
representative who nominates and administrative gets a nod from the
governor and then that gets passed down to the General
Assembly and then they turn around and install.
Speaker 1: So who are we looking at for the candidates now
that have I guess made their made themselves known as
as eyeing the seat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, could there could be it could be any one
of these four, but it could be somebody else that
they have in mind. We're not sure. But former Guildford
County Commissioner Bruce Davis, high Point City councilwoman Amanda Cook,
a former Guildford Party Democratic Chairman Joe Alston and then
a citizen of high Point and so she's a former teacher,
Angie Williams McMichael. Those are the four that have said
that they want to run for the seat already. So
it could be one of those four or it could
be somebody completely different. We'll see.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move down East Wilmington. This the North
Carolina Republican Party has referred evidence of potential cash for
votes to the North Carolina State Board of Elections for investigation. Okay,
is this real? Is this is did this really happen?
Or like I've seen people trying to claim online that
this is all just made up.
Speaker 2: Well, there were text messages or dacted text messages that
were accompanied the press release that came out of the NCGOP,
and that also came out last Thursday, lest Friday. M h.
I think it was less Thursday. No, it was less Friday.
Speaker 1: Yea, it was Friday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they got these text messages and they weren't sure
what to do with them, but then they figured out
that these were real things that were forwarded to them,
so they were dacted them so that you could see
the person's name that was being sent to or being
the numbers being sent from. But if you take a
look at them, they talk about the initiating one talks
about having met this person at the No King's protest
and that they wanted to touch base about the three
Democrat candidates on the city council ballot for New Hamner
County Town in Wilmington. So it talks to them about
that and it says. The person responds back, how do
I get paid?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it says the outreach message says, each candidate
will pay you one hundred dollars for your vote.
Speaker 2: Yep, So I mean, I mean that's one hundred dollars
for that person's felt. But if it's all three candidates
or all three you know votes that he's going for,
that's three hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Not too shabby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's too shabby. And it says the person says
to him, Well, after you vote, our team members will
meet you in her Our team member will meet you
in her car, so it's a woman near your polling
place and pay you the cash money. We can arrange
transportation if needed.
Speaker 1: So I wonder did they back that cost out of
one hundred dollars like it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like an uber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a ten dollars pickup fee or something
if I have to drive you bud okay. So the
GOP is treating this as if it's real.
Speaker 2: They've handed it over to the State Board of Elections,
and their public information officer told me on Friday that
they're aware of the text messages, but they can't comment
as specific investigations of course, and that they take allegations
of voter fraud very seriously. And then he cited the
felony that would be associated with this particular act should
it be true, and ways for people to find out
whether or not they're getting text messages that they're real
or fake or that kind of thing. Right, But that's
one looked like it was two individuals who had met
at some point, Otherwise they wouldn't have had each other's
phone numbers. Right at a King's route, No King's protests. Yeah,
and there was one of those recently down in Wilmington.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, so we'll monitor that as well. You
can read about that at nsjonline dot com. Lawmakers are
requesting a hearing with Chapel Hill Carborough School board chairman
and the superintendent because the allegation is that the school
district there has failed to follow the state law called
the Parents Bill of Rights. What is this stem from?
Speaker 2: Okay, so this this happens over a year ago. I
reported on the fact that this Board of Education in
Chapel of Carborough they just decided that no, we're not
going to follow a couple of provisions in this thing.
And this happened last January, January and twenty twenty four,
and then nothing happened out of it after it Mike
Senator Mike Lee was supposedly going to look into it,
but then he ended up leaving the legislature, So this
kind of fell under the carpet there, but it resurfaced
again on social media through a couple different accounts, including
libs of TikTok, which is widely followed, where there was
a video of the board chair from the meeting actually
talking about how we're not going to follow this these
two pieces of the law, and those two pieces of
the law are sexual concepts and gender identity in K
four and the other one is telling parents whether or
not their child has changed their pronoun So.
Speaker 1: The board chairman and the superintendent explicitly say that this
is morally wrong and we're not going to do it
this way, and we're just not going and that's.
Speaker 2: That's what the board chair said, Yeah, yeah, this isn't
going to happen. We're not going to do it. So
he's blown it off. And so two letters went out,
one to Chair George Griffin and the other one to
Superintendent Rodney Trice, and they're identical letters, but Basically, it
says you're invited to come. We're requesting you actually to
come on December third and testify before us, and we
want all these documents, communications, et cetera, et cetera from you,
and we want those by No. Number fourteenth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some light reading material to read through over
the Thanksgiving break. So yeah, December third. I mean, well,
I don't know, like, do you think that they'll show
Do you think they'll go or do they just say no?
Speaker 2: That's a good question, you know. I would guess that
if they don't show up that the legislature can take
action to compel them to come. But we'll see what happens.
They could just blow it off. Trice was the former
deputy superintendent who ran the Wake County School's Office of
Equity Affairs for a number of years since this installation,
up until about twenty twenty two, I think, and then
he went back to Chapel Hill after people started noticing
what his office was doing in terms of teaching. They
were going around doing systematic trainings for teachers at every
single school in the district and critical race theory and
DEI concepts. I thought when that got figured out, so I.
Speaker 1: Thought they weren't doing it.
Speaker 2: I will no.
Speaker 1: I thought that was like Antifa, that like all that's
a myth, that was never happening.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, it's really happening. In fact, I had
a teacher who sent me the presentation materials and I
did a five part series. It's on North State Journal
at NSJA online dot com that folks can go look
at that. Yeah, there was a series about critical race
theory training.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You can read AP's work at North State Journal
nsjonline dot com. You can also subscribe to her newsletter.
It's called More to the Story. It's over on substack. Ap.
Thanks as always, We appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 2: Thanks Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, take care. That's AP Dylan. Here's a great idea.
How about making an escape to a really special and
secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive
up the mountain and Cabins of Ashville is your connection.
Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, honeymoon, maybe you want to
plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together
for a big old reunion, Cabins of Ashville has the
ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your
loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within
the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest,
their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of
the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the
entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the
perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local
attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi
Fi grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch.
Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a
great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville
has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and
they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight, three, six,
seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is
to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories
that'll last a lifetime. It's another edition of reading Pete's mail.
This is actual mail, like honest to God, dead tree
in my hand piece of mail that arrived in the
mailbox to my house. I've read a couple of these
over the last few weeks. This too is a card.
It is from the Partnership to Advance Charlotte Incorporated, once again,
coming from the address of eighty five Oa Park Road,
Suite one, fourteen, Charlotte. So I've gotten a couple of
mailers from this organization that really really wants me to
vote yes for roads, vote yes to vote for the solution.
And when I saw that, I was like, we vote
for the solution November fourth. At first, I thought, wait,
anytime I start seeing mailers with like solution in it,
and it's like, is this coming from mom, Donnie, I'm
not even in that. I'm just kidding. It's just a
joke because he's Jihati adjacent. Anyway, It's got the same
picture of the woman being a jerk leaning out her window,
like this is a real good way to get yourself attacked,
to lean out your car window, raising your hand up
like you're like, and she's like angry, screaming at somebody
in front of her. You know, she's leaning out her
car window, hand raised, screaming at the car in front
of her or something. Or maybe it's a pedestrian she's
yelling at, or a bicyclist or something. I don't know.
They don't show us who she's yelling at, but she's
she yeah, I like that's a really good way to
get the guy in front of her. You to get
out of the car. And now you're blocked in because
he's in front of you, and you could. He walks
up to you and it's like, hey, why are you
being an idiot? Why are you screaming like a like
a jerk here? And so the the mailer shows a
big picture of her and it says traffic will continue
to suck unless dot dot dot we vote for the
solution on November fourth. Then you turn it over. It's
got like a little graphic of the referendum question one
percent local sales and use taxes in addition to the
current local sales and use taxes to be used only
for roadway systems and public transportation systems. And then it
has a little four box and then against box and
then the fours is checked, which, by the way, if
you are filling out a paper ballot, that is not
going to that will not lead lead to your vote
being counted. Okay, it's a little bubble, it's like a circle.
It's an oval, and if you just put a check
mark in the oval, it's not going to read okay,
So like this is fake news right here, Like, yeah,
you got to fill in the whole bubble if you
got one of the bubble sheets to vote. Okay. Now,
in Necklimer County, we've got the touch screen, so I
don't really know why they're showing is this but anyway,
so they want me to vote for a sales tax
increase for roads to alleviate all the traffic. Right, I've
gone over this before, but I'm highlighting this mailer because
for the first time I have received one of their
mailers and it includes a mention of bus and rail service.
So give it up. They finally have included the bus
and rail as part of this package. I mean, they
still say, you know, billions of do to improve our roads,
cut down on traffic. I don't know how exactly are
you cutting down on traffic. Is that building sidewalks so
therefore people will walk instead of drive? Is that the
idea that's the only reason people don't walk. Sink the
green lights for faster commutes, which, by the way, you
can do that right now like you wanted to. But
this is how they're selling it. This is how they've
always been selling the sales tax increase, which forty percent
is going to be used for the light rail. Like
that's they want to use most of that money, forty
percent of it to build the rail service, which they
then say, enhance bus and rail service, not create a
new rail line. No, no, it's going to enhance bus
and rail service. So there you go, and that's the
solution for the congestion. Right, but at least they mentioned
rail for the first time a day before the election.
You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense
of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the
people of our past while transcending generations. They help us
process the meaning of life, and our stories are told
through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video.
Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It
was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images,
photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos
and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative
Video will go over all of the details with you
to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off
in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week.
Or two memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas,
family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told
through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They
are your life told through the eyes of everyone around
you and all who came before you, and they will
tell others to come who you are. Visit Creative video
dot Com did get a couple of texts in regarding
the sales tax hike mailers. Bill said, Uh, my mailer
like that had a woman on it that looked like
AOC's sister. It's the same one. She does resemble Alexandriaz
and it made me want to vote for more taxes.
That's why they do it. This is Allen who says, ah, yes,
enhance is a clever word for subsidized those who don't
pay to ride the rail. And because they said yes
enhanced bus and rail service. And this from Chris, thank
you for covering the dishonesty of the pro transportation tax mailers.
My wife Life came to me with that same mailer
with the woman yelling in traffic and said maybe we
should vote yes because Huntersville traffic is going a hell fast.
How exactly we're paying this tax benefit Huntersville residents with
commuter cars. Maybe a knowledgeable caller can call in and
tell us. Now, I don't think it actually is going
to it's it's not gonna be of great benefit. It's
just it's not. Remember they wanted the one sent sales
tax just for rail. They had to put the road
component in because the state legislature would not give them
the authorizing statute. They would not allow Mechlimber County to
go to voters and ask for the sales tax increase
unless there was a road component. That's how the roads
got in there. And now that's all they sell. They
didn't want the roads in there. They wanted it all
for buses and trains, mainly trains. So yeah, I just
I find and then yeah, I find it dishonest. And
I understand it's a campaign, you want people to vote, Yes,
I get it, but I just find it to be
overtly and obviously dishonest. This is the first mailer that
I've gotten, and I've gotten probably a dozen of them
by now, and this was the very first one that
even named rail, that even put the word rail anywhere
on the mailers, so it's obvious what they're doing. And
I suspect part of it is that they know, you know,
bus and rail is not a winning message. It's not
a winning message for bonds if they were going to
us for a bond. This is not a bond. I
keep seeing people referring to this as a bond referendum.
It's not a bond. This is a sales tax increase. Okay,
so you will be paying, on average about twenty dollars.
I think it's per household per month forever. That's the
increased cost. And they're selling it with the road component,
and again I find that to be dishonest. And I
also believe that the campaign is focusing on roads, not
only because it's a more popular thing. People will vote
for a road bond before they'll vote for a train bond.
But I also suspect that it's partly due to the
violence on the public transportation systems that people do not
want to fund in light of the recent violence. Right,
so there is that as well. I don't live in
Mecklenberg County, however I travel through it enough since my
daughter does. This sounds like another bait and switch scam.
Just like lotteries for schools, where's all the school money
from the law? Well, schools do get that money, they do.
But the issue there is that then there's the incentive
to supplant rather than supplement right, which, by the way,
the city leaders, the city manager, i should say of Charlotte,
made a mention of doing that exact thing months ago,
or maybe it was last year. He said like, well,
you know what, the legislature wants us to put road
funding into this sales tax in order to allow us
to take it to voters. And they agreed, the city agreed,
they put it in there, and then at a meeting
he's like, well, you know, and we can whatever revenue
we get off of the sales tax, we can just
kind of use that to pay for some of our
road needs and take the road dollars and use them
for other things. And when the state lawmakers heard that,
they were like whoa. They went back and they amended
it and they were like, you have to fund your
road allocations at the current level, so you cannot supplant.
You can't replace your current road dollars with new sales
tax revenue dollars. This has to be in addition was
it ever promised that rail would bring in revenue. No,
even back with the original Blue Line. It was never.
Like everybody always understood that these systems do not make money.
They lose money, all of them. They're not revenue generators.
They do kick off some revenue, but net it's a loss. Now,
I did see this tweet just came down from the
Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who says, after the polls
close tomorrow night, I will impose a one hundred percent
tariff on anybody moving to tech from New York City.
That's fair, that's fair. Speaking of migration, there's a piece
at The New York Times the other day by Josh Barrow,
a contributing opinion writer, author of the newsletter Very Serious
In the host of the podcast Serious Trouble, and he
had a piece headlined how Democrats can win back trust
on immigration. Okay, and he writes this as a Democrat,
all right. Since the spring, the shine has come off
of President Trump's handling of immigration, and yet there's been
no apparent surge in voter's desire to put immigration policy
back in the hands of Democrats. Frankly, Democrats have not
earned voter's trust on immigration. The most recent Democratic administration
presided over an enormous surge in migration, with the unauthorized
immigrant population explode, voting to fourteen million in twenty twenty three.
That is up from ten and a half million two
years prior, and likely millions more by the time Joe
Biden left office. That's all, according to the Pew Research Center.
For too long, mister Biden and his team asserted they
could not stop the surge without new legislation, and that
proved false. In twenty twenty four, having failed to get
an immigration built through Congress, Biden finally took executive actions
to curb abuse of the asylum system and slow the
flow of migrants across the southern border. When Trump took office,
illegal border crossings slowed to a trickle. In other words,
the problem had been fixable all along. Mister Biden simply
did not fix it until much too late. What he
does not answer is why, why Why did Biden allow
this to occur? Why did Biden say he needed new legislation.
Why did Biden preside over this loose asylum system. Why
did Alejandro Majorcis the Homeland Security Secretary, Why did he
grant blanket asylum status to millions of people. Why did
they implement this app that made it super easy to
apply for asylum status?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Why? Why? They never want to address this question of why,
and so I don't think that you earn back voters
trust on immigration before you examine why. 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 could 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. Josh Barrow of the
famed Wheelbarrow family, writing at The New York Times about
how Democrats can win back trust on immigration, I identified
what I think is a pretty big glaring omission here
when he's talking about how Biden simply did not fix
the broken immigration system that he implemented. And the big
glaring hole is why why did he break it? Why
did he allow it to continue? Why did he say
he needed new legislation in order to fix it when
in fact he did not. Barrow then goes on to say,
as a result, the unauthorized immigrant population in the US
today is considerably different from what it was before Biden's presidency.
In twenty twenty one, over eighty percent of unauthorized immigrants
had been living here for at least five years. Now
there are millions more recent arrivals without similarly deep links
to American communities. Admitting all these new migrants was never
and agreed upon public policy. No voters endorsed this, no
law passed by Congress contemplated it. And to the extent
the migrants are seeking asylum, their legal claims are too
often bogus. But it happened, and Democrats need to explain
to voters why they should not expect it to happen again.
If they regain power, it will. That's the thing. You're
asking Democrats to explain something they don't want to explain,
because it most assuredly will happen again. They also need
a story. They need to come up with a story
about what happens with the millions of people who came
here recently, even though they were not supposed to see
therein lies the problem. They don't actually have an explanation
or a proposed solution, and any plan they come up with,
he says, is not going to work without a robust
and credible commitment to enforcement, including in tear enforcement. He
goes on to say later in this lengthy piece, the
mental block that democrats have here relates to an instinct
about deportations, a feeling that it's presumptively improper to remove
an illegal alien who has settled in the country. If
that migrant has not committed a crime unrelated to immigration.
These people have been here a long time. The idea goes,
they're not causing trouble. But if we build a system
where people very often get to stay here simply because
they made it in the system that prevailed during most
of Biden's term, well then we really don't have an
immigration policy and voters won't have any reason to believe
us when we say our new policy will produce different
results about who comes here. Yeah, like, that's the problem,
you guys have never been about enforcement. The need to
make a credible enforcement threat does not require Democrats to
endorse specific enforcement practices of the Trump administration. He calls
for a more targeted approach that still needs to contemplate
that being in the country without authorization is reason enough
to deport someone, and therein, I think, is the fatal
flaw of his argument. They cannot do that. 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 the support of the businesses that advertise on
the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too
and tell them you heard it here. You can also
become a patron at my Patreon page or go to
vpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,
and don't break anything while I'm gone.