AP Dillon and NC Labor Commissioner Luke Farley (08-18-2025--Hour3)

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 thepeteclendershow 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. Pete calendar here and it is Monday at two o'clock and so that means we chat with ap Dylon. She is a reporter for the North State Journal. You can read her work at nsjonline dot com, and she is also the publisher of her substack newsletter called more to the Story, Ap. How are you? I'm great, Pete. How are you doing? I'm doing well as well. So, first off, was the Momo Moo back up in Raleigh today? Any Moral Monday Movement sightings? Not a whole heck of a lot that I saw. Their invitation was titled a Southern Call to Conscience and they were going to be at the State Capitol and then they were going to walk the center to buzz office, and apparently they were going to have all bearers for coffins. But only one kind of paul bearer as I understand. Women, Yes, in honor of one hundred and fifth anniversary or the ratification of the nineteenth Amendment, we're asking that only women serve as pallbearers, speakers and testifiers on the program. Have you ever have you ever have you ever had to do a pall bearer thing? Uh? Nope? Yeah, surprisingly heavy. Yeah, so they are very very heavy. Coffins are very heavy, although I got to believe that they're not going to be like actual real coffins, probably just like some cardboard or paper mache types of representations of the coffins. I guess maybe I don't Yeah, yeah, So, so in honor of the ratification of the nineteenth Amendment, only female pallbearers. Now, do we know how they are determining whether the females are females? No? I would imagine that they, like in the past before protests, had a meeting to organize who was going to say what, and perhaps they were chosen at that time, But what the qualifications were we don't. Know, right, But I mean, they don't even know what a woman is. So how are they able to discriminate the pallbearer cadre? I don't know, because, yeah, like if anybody like I could step forward to be like I'm a woman, I can I can do it, and who are you to say I'm. Not so exactly? Yeah, all right, well that's that's kind of the fizzle. I'm sure they'll get some coverage. I'll have to check WRL. Yeah, I'll probably have a recap on myself stack later this week when I get a free moment. But right now I'm not seeing a whole huck of a lot out there. But that's not to say that there isn't video or pictures or something. I just haven't really gone looking that well. You know what, you know how you can tell that it's not well attended is if the video of the event has a lot of tight shots of the protesters and their feet. That's how you make it look like there's more people there. You get real close up, you know, you don't give any wide angles anyway. It's a little trick of the trade there. So let's talk now about the North Carolina Democrat Party Chair Anderson Clayton, who is breezy as I understand it. According to her Twitter handle, she apparently I'm not sure if it counts as bribery or extortion or something like Matt Mercer, who isn't he He he's the North Carolina GP chairman. But he used to work at North State Journal, did he not? Yes? He was the editor, Yeah, Merce Journal for about five years and he's their communications director over at the NCAA gap right now? Oh, what did I call him? Did I call? Did I promote him to chairman? You did? Jason Simmons might be a little upset. He would be, Yes, I apologize, No, he's the comms director there. Sorry. So Matt's great guy and I've known Matt for years, but he's he is suggesting that his the Democrat party chairwoman Anderson Clayton, may have tweeted a Class C felony. So what was this about? Well, apparently there was a claim by another Substucker, independent journalist, Brian Anderson, who wrote that one hundred thousand dollars from the MCGOP building fund was used for legal bills for Jefferson Griffin in his bid for North Carolina Supreme Court. However, that didn't happen, so he appears to updated story, which I include the updated versi of that in there. Duke Energy contributed one hundred thousand to the North Carolina Republican Building Fund in February. While the North Carolina GOP's Building Fund was the main financing vehicle for Jeff for Griffin's litigation, Party spokes when Matt Mercer said Duke Energy's contribution wasn't Griffin related. The company also says it wasn't intended to support Griffin. So the money, Yeah, Duke Energy gave them one hundred grand towards their building fund. In looking at the building Fund and their most recent transactions, Duke Energy is given them money regularly for things like utilities, payroll, like building fund the things. So that our building fund is literally like for their building. Yeah, it's literally for like operations upkeep. And they give money to the Democratic Party for similar things. So that was interesting to me, and you know, as I looked into it even more, you know, you happen to mention that, you know, the Duke Energy build out the DMC in twenty twelve or twenty thirteen whenever they had their convention. Yeap, So the two and the ten million dollars line of credit which never got paid back right then ended up eating that. So yeah, there's that. So this is what drove me nuts when I saw her, when I saw Clayton's tweet about this, where she's like, hey, maybe we could get a little bit of money. I guess our check got lost in the mail. And I'm like, you guys got ten million dollars from Duke Energy when Obama came to town for the DNC in twenty twelve, and then they and then you never paid Duke back and so they just ate it. And that means the shareholders ate that ten million, and that share those shareholders are retirees that have Duke Energy stock that kicks off a dividend for them. Like, that's what you That's what the Democrats got. So I don't want to hear anything from her about Democrats not getting money from Duke Energy. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a big deal. And I mean if you look at at the building funds for both of the parties, they both have that type of fund in the past, and the twenty twenty four third quarter report for the NCGP building Fund chose Duke's Energy paid for operating expenses like cleaning, utility, building, payroll services, but didn't show any of the money being transferred out to any other committee, much less to Griffin and campaign finance. They had to show that Griggs outraised Griffin almost three to one, taking in over five point two million to Griffin's one point nine. And you know, the NCGP gave Griffin somewhere between two hundred and seventy five and I've seen three hundred something thousand dollars, whereas the NCDP gave Rigs two point one million dollars right her campaign. So we're looking at this one hundred k from Duke Energy, and in the chair, she made a really big deal out of it, like they should have been giving money to Allison Riggs as well, and she accused them of subverting democracy and you know, the will of the voters. And she made quite a number of claims there, of which, you know, one I guess could be considered an extortion level remark, Yeah, belief thattt Mercer did. She wrote that Duke Energy can make our checkout to the NCDP building fund. Otherwise, I guess we'll just have to assume that y'all meant for this money to be to support, subverting democracy and stealing the votes of military voters. Yeah, that's that was That was quite a SmackDown on a major utility outfit that runs in the southeast, not to mention based here in North Carolina, that is given on both sides of the aisles. Yeah, Duke Energy has given money to Democrats and Republicans for decades, I mean, and Democrats when they were in control, they got more of those donations because there were more members, but they also controlled the legislature. So yeah, when when the Republicans took over, then do probably reallocated. But just like from a from an interpersonal relationship standpoint, this is such a stupid thing to do. Right, Well, the political optics are horrible, right, that's that's just not a smart move. But you know, she also kind of ignored them. She and the Democrats have ignored the fact that the Duke Energy one hundred grand is a drop in the bucket compared to the cool half million that Eric Holder in Barack Obama's National Democratic Redistricting Committee gave them back in twenty eighteen to get Anito Earles elected, Right. Yeah, and so that was yeah, So and the expenditure side of this what we're talking about is that Supreme Court seat that was so contested for so many months, and it went through all of these different court battles and stuff between the incumbent Alis and Riggs, who was appointed to that seat, but then did win. But remember she was losing at first, and then when all the when all the dust cleared and all the votes got counted, then she was winning. And it's amazing how that always happens in one direction, right. I mean, she was first appointed to the Court of Appeals and you know, not even nine months I think later, Ray Cooper then re elevated her to the Supreme Court seat, right, I had of everyone else who was probably way more qualified. So it shouldn't be lost on a anyone that both Anita Earls and Alison and Riggs were business partners at the Southern Coalition for Southern Justice. They used to sue the state regularly over redistricting and voting maps and voter id and that sort of thing. So the two of them are great pals and are now Associate justice pals on the bench. Yeah, they were activist lawyers that litigated everything out of the Republican legislature and that was aard. Well at the end of the month. Apparently, on July thirtieth, Senator Alex Padilla, the Democrat who's been upset about you know, Maryland Man, held some sort of you know pushback against the Texas redistricting and you know, saving democracy and you know, jerrymandering in the whole nine yards. He held some kind of public forum at which Alison Riggs was there to testify, sitting right alongside Eric Holder. So I mean this, this relationship continues, you know, And it's worth noting that between eighteen and twenty twenty two, the FBC records show that Holders Redistarting Group poured two point two seven four million into the North Carolina Democratic Party and it's amongst all of its different funds. So they've been meddling in North Carolina elections for quite a while, despite you know, wanting to save democracy. Yeah, no, it's yeah, I don't. This is why I don't believe them in any of their arguments about quote unquote fair maps. Right there. They're utter hypocrites on all of this. And when they say a fair map, what they're talking about is a map that advantages them' that's it's and they have people that obviously carry this narrative for them in the media, and it's just it's just repugnant to me. But we'll leave it there. Ap, I appreciate it as always. Keep up the great work. Absolutely, thank you for each time. All right, take care. That's ap Dylan. 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You got one and a half million kids now returning to the you know, the classroom for the school year. He's talking about the rise in the homeschooling and the use of the opportunity scholarship money the school the vouchers, right, he says, it's no surprise North Carolina has been considered a leader in the school choice movement. At one time, Expanding charter schools and opportunities outside of the traditional public schools was a goal lauded by both political parties. However, radical left Democrats, led by former Governor Roy Cooper, broke North Carolina's by partisan agreement on school choice. Only among the radical left is school choice a problem. History shows democrats once agreed with giving children a fair shot at obtaining a quality education. That radical left is led by Cooper, who waged war on school choice as a governor. In his lame duck year in office, he went so far as to call school choice an emergency on par with hurricane warnings and public health concerns. Cooper's State of Emergency sham, That's why I called it. The stunt of emergency, was called the Year of public Schools and made no mention of parents or students. In nearly every budget cycle, Cooper zeroed out the funding for the opportunity scholarships, and he argued the money going directly to families to his a escape of failing school should go elsewhere. Cooper and his Democrats misled the public about the source of funding as well. The General Assembly fully funded North Carolina's public schools, increasing appropriations every year for over a decade. This is a shameful lie perpetuated by Cooper and the radical left, he said. Nationally, Democrats continue to defend the status quo. While math and reading scores for thirteen year olds are at the lowest level in decades, six in ten fourth graders and nearly three quarters of eighth graders are not proficient in math. Seventy percent of fourth and eighth graders are not proficient in reading. Democrats today firmly stand in the doorway between students and the education they deserve. So that was Simmons's peace. And then there was this out of Mississippi. In an effort to make the case against school choice, the Mississippi Democrat Party accidentally made the perfect case for school choice. Hilarity ensued within an hour, with it finally dawning on them what they had done, what they had posted on Twitter. They deleted the post. Okay, so it started off where they were responding to a piece that appeared in the Magnolia Tribune and they were like, a recent article called public school advocates objectively dumb for opposing public funds going to private schools. Well, no, actually, the article just said that the arguments that people are making are dumb, and he said the author, Russ Latino, said, the article did not call public school advocates objectively dumb. It called an inconsistent argument made by opponents of school choice objectively dumb. If you're going to fact check, start by not lying. So then the Democrat Party's social media account comes back and says PELL grants go to student because he mentioned PELL grants as an example of this, And they say PELL grants go to students, not directly to colleges, just like food stamps go to people, not grocery stores. There's a difference between public funds that empower individuals and public dollars handed to private institutions with no oversight. Yeah, except right, the money goes to the kid, and then the kid hands it to the private institution. The PEL grant, by the way, is directed, it doesn't actually go to the student first, so they were wrong on that too. It actually does go directly to the institution. It is dispersed directly to the colleges. In other words, the posts from the Democrats marked a similarity, not a difference. Okay, they actually made the original point in praising the fact that pelgramts and pel grants and food stamps are public funds that empower individuals. They actually made the very argument that their opponents make against them, and that's why they then deleted that post as well. 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. And I want to welcome to the program the Labor Commissioner of North Carolina, Luke Farley. How are you, Commissioner? What's going on? Hey, Pete, good to talk to you. How are you. I'm doing all right. You know, I just saw you this weekend. I was in in elevator. Oh that's right, yeah, and my wife said, well, what happened this weekend? So anybody Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you, but my wife said, well, what happened to Josh Dobson. I was like, well, he didn't run again, Luke Farley, just once. So now I didn't know that they swap him out that quickly, But we were commenting, you're a very nice signature. You have very good penmanship. So well, I appreciate that. You know. When I was running, that was the number one thing people would tell me, is your signature better be as good as cherie berries? Right, and it's certainly going to be better than Josh's. Right. Yeah. Wasn't I forget that all the time when I was out there? Did you? That's actually your signature on that, that's actually yours. Well, I'll let you in on a little secret. Oh. I got about thirty three thousand elevators in the state, So thirty three thousand certificates, and honestly I do not sign them all by hand. Well, that would be all you pay me to do. But yes, that is really my signature. That's really what it looks like. Send me your address. I'll send you a letter and sign it. No, that's okay. No, I just I thought you were going to say it was like AI generated or something, But no, you can autopen that thing. Yeah, thirty thousand. This office, we are I sign We're only signatures by hand. No auto pen There you go. So how's the how's it going so far? Right? As the Labor commissioners, it what you thought it would be, You know. Pete, this is the best job I have ever had, and the reason is because I get to get up every day and serve the people of the state that I love. And that's all I got to focus on, is serving them and fulfilling the campaign promises that I ran on. So you really couldn't ask for a better job. Yeah, all right, So the elevators are actually related. Yet this falls under the Labor Commissioner. But what else does the Labor Commissioner do? So obviously we inspect the elevators, but we do other things to protect the rights of workers in North Carolina. So we've got a Wage an Hour Bureau where you can complain if you aren't paid the wages that your employer promised you. And if you've got any listeners who have those issues, they can call our department at one eight hundred NC Labor, one eight hundred NC Labor and that's the hotline where you can report all sorts of labor and employment law violations, and one of them is wage an hour and in fact, PETE we just for the fiscal year that just ended, recovered two point five million dollars for North Carolina's workers. These are wages that they were promised by their employer either final page bonuses or commissions or paychecks that had things improperly deducted from them. And we went to back for those employees against their employers and collected two point five million dollars. In fact, Mecklenburg County was the number two county in the state where we collected back wages and. All of that goes goes back to those workers. It goes right back to the workers. This is money they can use to pay rent, make their car payment. You know where it's back to school season, so yeah, paying for back to school supplies. But the workers of North Carolina earned it, and the North Carolina Labor Department was here to telp them recover it. So just over three hundred thousand dollars back to workers in Mecklenburg County. Yeah, that's fantastic. Good job. Related to elevators amusement devices, I guess the Amusement device Bureau, I guess because you don't want your you don't want your rides at the fair or your elevators to I guess like feel the same, right, So you want that, you want to inspected, but you want the elevator to run a little bit. Probably smoother than the roller coaster. We want you to have fun and we want you to have thrills when you ride these amusement rides, but we also want you to have confidence and peace of mind. And everybody who's going to be getting on an amusement ride here in the next few months should feel confident that North Carolina Department of Labor inspectors have inspected every single one top to bottom. And today actually marks the start at fair season in North Carolina. The Drexel Fair in Burke County opens today and in fact, as soon as we get off the phone, I'm hopping in a car tohead to the opening ceremonies out in Drexel. But today marks the start of the fair season. We've got over thirty different fairs, including the State Fair, the Mountain State Fair, the Carolina Classic Fair, and every ride there infected by an inspectors from the Department of Labor. So when you show up on scene at these fairs, like does like the word go out like the bosses here make sure everything is you know, tip top shape. It's like, we don't want to get in trouble, you know. I think our guys do a great job whether I'm there or not. And in fact, I've got so much confidence in the work of the inspectors in our department. I got three young boys eight, four and one, and I'd put them on any ride inspected by the Department of Labor, assuming they met the height requirements. The one year old probably don't. Yeah, probably, yeah, that's probably not wise. Try to smuggle them on or something that's probably not great. So this, as you mentioned, the Drexel Fair, This is the seventy fifth annual fair. And for people who don't know where Drexel is, it's between Valdi's and Morganton, so it's sort of like the Hickory metro area up there in Burke County. And so have you ever been to this fair before, the Drexel Fair. I have, actually, about two years ago, when I was campaigning for this office, I spent a day at that fare. It is a great fair. They call it a community fair. It is the only fair in North Carolina that has never charged an admission fee for its entire existence. So for seventy five years you can go have family fun at a reasonable cost. And so we see our job at the Department of Labors making sure that when families are out there having a good time. They can just focus on being together as a family and enjoying themselves and they don't have to worry about whether the rides are safe or not. That's our job and that's what we're focused on. Well, I will let you get to it. Then. I do appreciate your time. Have fun at the fair, and thanks for your time today, sir. We appreciate it. Good talking to you. Pete Hi, Yes, sir, take care. That's the Labor Commissioner of North Carolina, Luke Farley. All right, you hear me talk a lot about incentives, right, Well, let's talk about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer employees to fire them up and reward their teams. If you own a business or you work somewhere that offers them incentive trips, first off, good for you, but also there is a custom app that's a game changer for these trips. It's called Incentive Tripkit. Private group messaging, shared photos, your itinerary, travel details all built into a single, easy to use app. There's even a traveler locator, so Carl from Accounting doesn't get left behind. The best part about Incentive Tripkit it's totally private, no email captures, no sign ups, no cringe ads. It's simple, clean and secure, and when the trip is over, Incentive trip Kit turns those highlights into a professional storytelling video. So think about it. When you launch next year's incentive trip campaign, that video becomes your greatest motivator. Talk about a return on investment, right, You got to check out Incentive trip Kit for your business. Visit incentive tripkit dot com because great trips deserve even better returns. Thanks again to Labor Commissioner Luke Farley. I did literally just see his photo in the elevator this weekend. I was wondering when they would change them out. Actually I wasn't. I was like, oh, that was fast. Anyway, MSNBC's got a new name. Not the one that we use to mock them. No, they really are changing their name. They are now going to be called miss Now. I'm not kidding, that's the name miss Now. MSNBC is set to change its name as part of Comcast's spin off from NBC Universal, which the company announced in late twenty twenty four. According to the Wall Street Journal. It reported today. Wall Street Journal did that the left leaning network's new name technically will be my source News Opinion World. That's I'm yeah, that's what they're my source space News Opinion World or miss Now, CNBC, USA, Oxygen E. They're all included in the Comcast spinoff as well. CNBC gets to keep its name, but they're working on a new logo. I guess they got to get rid of the peacock, you know. The move is part of the network's attempt to separate themselves from NBC Back in November when they put this press release out, they say it's intent to create a new publicly traded company comprised of a strong portfolio of NBC Universal's cable television networks, including USA Network, CNBC MSNBC, Oxygen E, Sci Fi, and the Golf Channel, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes, Golf Now, and Sports Engine. I've not heard of like three of those, so no, I have. Fandango's a movie thing, right, isn't that? Like? So is Rotten Tomatoes. I know that one. That's the one where they get the critics score right, and then you have the the audience score. And if the critics score is high, then that's a good sign. Then that the audience score is going to be low, and then you don't want to watch that movie, and vice versa. If it's a high audience score low critic score, that's usually a good movie. That's that's how I interpret the Rotten Tomatoes ranking system. So there's that. Yeah, miss now or I guess it would be ms now is their new name, which will well solve all of their problems as I understand it. The new name and the lack of NBC resources from which to draw is probably go to make their content well, well, yeah, probably worse. Actually, if that's even possible, it's basically going to become Air America, because all you're going to have is a bunch of raging pundits on the left. By the way, I'm not sure if the marketing geniuses that came up with the miz now ms now, I'm not sure they are aware. But folks on the right have have added a letter to the name MSNBC for years. I think Limbaugh may have actually been the one to do it first, and then everybody on the right has been calling MSNBC a different acronym. They throw the letter P at the beginning and they say MSNBC after the p so it's PMSNBC and now you've just made it worse. I'm not sure if there's like, I'm not sure there's a better example of being in the bubble right than this. Why would you, like, why would you hand your your opponents this name because now it's PMS now, which is like, yes, oh my goodness, I don't know. I don't know who decided this terrible, absolutely terrible. And then there's this I had no idea. Maybe I circle back to this Jen Psaki style tomorrow. I did want to cover it though, because it was a piece over at WBTV. There. Did you know there's a town called Bostick, North Carolina, to Rutherford County, and there is the Bostick Lincoln Center. It's a museum that challenges the history books that the nation's sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln was actually not born in Kentucky. He was actually born here in North Carolina. Yeah, in a scandalous manner, stories shared through the generations, first pieced together by the late Tom Melton, longtime Rutherford County school educator. Yeah, I'm gonna have to get into the details on this because it is scandalous. We'll do it tomorrow. 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 thepetecallnershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.