Baseball, Mayor Pat, and Chinese-owned NC farmland | Hour 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 thepeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. This is Andrew Dunn. He is a contributing columnist over at the Charlotte Observer. He's also the creator of long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com. I shouldn't say he's the creator of long Leaf Politics. The brand is his creation, though, Andrew Dunno, how are you, sir? H I am fantastic. How about yourself? I am doing all right myself. So I want to start with a piece that you had over at the at your Longleaf Politics website called the Right Way for North Caroline to chase Major League Baseball. Okay, first off, have you been following this issue closely. Or not so closely? Because I will confess I have not followed this issue closely at all. I have been covering it fairly closely. Okay, I think what happened here is, you know, there's been a grassroots movement to bring Major League Baseball to North Carolina for a couple of years now. Ever since major League Baseball said, you know, we're looking to expand sometime in the next decade, and especially folks up in Raleigh to a lesser extent in Charlotte, we're saying, well, there's a huge gap if you look at the map, you know, but there's Atlanta and then there's Washington Nationals and nothing in between. It would make sense to have something in here. And then after the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup, there really seemed to be just like a sports mania fell over the General Assembly. So there was some rumblings that they might include some money for a Major League Baseball bid in the state budget and that actually and that ultimately didn't come to pass. It didn't make it in the budget, And I think that's a good thing. That wasn't the right vehicle to do it. But there is still an opportunity if the General Assembly does want to help out in landing a Major League Baseball team in North Carolina, they can still. Do it this year, So I am reminded of Charlotte's not really for real effort with major League Baseball many many years ago. This would have been in like the probably twenty twelve or sorry, two thousand time frame. Yeah, when they were looking to build the Charlotte Knights new Stadium as part of the Arena vote package with all the arts projects, and there was a stadium in there for the nights, and there was a guy who came down. He had all these proposals and plans and all of this stuff, and he was talking about, if you'd build the Charlotte Knights Stadium, then you're not going to get major League Baseball. And he had said something back then, and I'm not sure people are aware of this. If it's true. I think it's true. If memory serves that you can't have a Major League Baseball team within a certain amount of miles of a minor league team, the minor league team. Is going to have to leave. So I don't know what that does. I mean, I know the Durham Bulls are up there, but I don't know how close the price. I thought it was something like one hundred miles. Yeah, I don't think. I think those rules are a little bit more amorphous than they may have been ten twenty years ago. There's been a lot of changes in minor league baseball itself, a lot of contraction that I do think he is correct that you're not going to have a major league and a minor league team in the same city, right, So if Charlotte were to get a major League baseball team, there would be no way for the Knights to remain here. But I don't you know the guy who was really pushing for major league baseball in Charlotte, and his name is Escape Agam. Yeah, I don't remember his name either. Yeah, he has given up on Charlotte as a home for a major League baseball team, and I kind of have two. There's just not and I get a lot of hate online when I tweet about this, but there's just not any momentum behind bringing a team to Charlotte. There doesn't there's no billionaire who's willing to back it. There's you know, you don't see the mayor of the city city council out there pushing for it. There's just not much momentum behind it. Right. As much as I would love to have a major League team here, in Charlotte. I've kind of given up on it. Yeah no, And I mean, look, the Charlotte Knights put on a heck of a product. It's a great stadium, and so I mean, if you want to watch baseball, it's a great it's a great product to patronize. It's beautiful. I mean, I do think it is the best minor league baseball stadium in America. Wow, I have not been to many well any well, I went to one in Asheville. That was it the tourists. So yeah, that's the only other that's and that was in the movie Bull Durham. That's where Crash hit his final home run of his minor league career. I was filmed right there in Ashville. So there's. This argument though, that the Raleigh media market is not large enough to make it a viable place. Have you heard any of that. I have heard some of that. And you know, actually, when you look at media market size, this was the case five years ago. I don't recall if it's still the case, But the Raleigh media market is a little bit bigger than Charlotte's. Your mouth stop it. Charlotte MSA is a little bigger. But because the Raleigh, MSA, includes like Fayetteville, and you know, it's huge geographically and encompasses a whole lot of different places. I mean, the thing about statistics is you can make them say whatever you want, indeed, but I don't think size is the issue here. So it sounds like you're saying is that they cheated in order to get bigger. That's what I'm taking from that. Yeah, yeah, all right. So you say that public financing for sports infrastructure does not split neatly along partisan lines, which I think is a very it's an astute observation. I have noticed this as well. You get, you know, fiscal conservatives that are like, like, what are you giving these billionaires money for? And then you get the left wing progressives and they're like, what are you giving these billionaires money for? Exactly Yeah, And so there is this kind of a weird split that goes on into coalition against usually what amounts to sort of the tourism business chamber type of crowd. Do they have enough juice up in Raleigh to actually drag this thing over the finish line? I think it's possible. I think the smart way to go about it. You know, if you're a coalition trying to get this across the finish line is to at least give a nod to the other side, the fiscal conservative side, and say, well, let's minimize state investment. Let's, you know, let's treat this as a pure infrastructure play. Let's minimize upfront cash and kind of wait and see and wait until you get a lot more commitments. And then once the ball rolling, it's hard to jump off the train once you get all those announcements. Is the Lenovo Center? Is that the biggest venue in the Raleigh area? Do you know, like seating capacity wise for like concerts? I think side I can't think of any other one that would fit the bill. But the interesting thing up there, if any of your listeners haven't been up there, there's a ton of land around there, and the fairgrounds is right next to it. There's just a. Whole lot of empty, vacant buildable land that you could really turn that area into something similar similar to what the Braves have done with their new Truest Park. It's really kind of a cool area over there, all right. So you do make some recommendations for sort of a compromise if the legislature wants to go through with this. You say the first step is to create a North Carolina Baseball Authority. Why A lot of that has to do with signaling serious seriousness to Major League Baseball. I think there is something be said for at least having kind of a tacit sign off from the state government that yeah, we're interested in this, We're we're we're creating an entity that will interface with Major League Baseball and at least, you know, be able to have those conversations. But it also opens the door to start discussing, well, what sort of legislation needs to be in place to make this a reality? Is this, you know, a sales tax in Wait County? Is this occupancy tax changes up there? You know, Charlotte is very well used to how that process works in terms of occupancy taxes, tourism taxes, all that. There isn't nearly as much of that yet up in Wait County if it were to go to Raleigh. So there need to be some legislative changes up there, and an authority is a good mechanism to try to figure out what those might be. But you also say postpone any decision on actual state dollars. Yeah, I agree, I mean there was some well, yes, I agree with myself. Yes, it's always wise. Yes, there was. Some talk about like setting aside eight hundred million dollars or something for a stadium, and I think we're we're way too premature for that. There is no reason to set aside all that money and to lock that up, and I don't think it's necessary. Do you know, last question, do you know is this is the idea here to get a new team like that doesn't exist or is somebody looking to relocate. It seems to me that plan A is a new team, a brand new expansion team. But there is all and there's always talk about teams moving. You know, the Tampa Bay Rays is the big one that always comes up. And you know, even a Governor Ron DeSantis down there in Florida was saying, hey, we don't want to lose out to Raleigh Durham. And so it helps primarily in getting an expansion team. But then this side benefit is being ready if there is a team that is looking to move. All right, let's shift gears. You wrote a book. Congratulations, Thank you. Yeah, I understand these are difficult to write. I've never tried, so I would know, but I don't recommend it. Ye oh, okay, so I guess. So. The Change Agent is the name of the book, and it is about Pat McCrory. You called him one of the most consequential political figures in modern North Carolina history, So I have to ask. How how so? Yeah, and thanks for bringing this up. You know, I actually I hadn't met Governor McCrory before starting this project, but you know, I've covered North Carolina politics for more than a decade, and you know what drew me in was the story here. You know, how does a guy go from a rock. Star mayor. And a rockstar Republican candidate for governor flying high actually wins Mecklenburg County in twenty twelve as a Republican which seems unheard of, to a complete political outcast in four years. And so that got me interested in the project. And over the course of the year, I've talked with hundreds of people for this book, and what I found is that kind of the common narratives are way too simple and what the real story, well, really, it takes a whole book to explain what the real story is. So I hope your listeners will go pick up a copy But what the story is is of a guy who helped define modern Charlotte as mayor and driving a whole huge amount of change both as mayor and governor, but then finding out what happens when you run up against obstacles and the friction and the controversy that follows. And this book tries to tell kind of an even handed, balanced story of how that came to play. Yeah, I think the simplistic narrative is that he lost because of the North Mecklenburg toll road issue and because of HB two. But I mean I recall hearing out in western North Carolina that he stopped, you know, visiting and stopped being accessible out there. He didn't seem to listen to it. Advisors, I think when Jack Hawk passed away, nobody could really help to guide him on making decisions and then and GOP leaders didn't really need him up there in the legislature, right, I mean, it didn't matter. They had super majorities. They could just walk all over him, and it did not matter. They did not need a Republican governor. In fact, it was preferable almost in some cases to have a Democrat because then you had a foil to run. Against exactly, and we've talked about that in the past. Yeah. Yeah, there's kind of two common narratives. So the one narrative you primarily hear on the left is, you know, oh, this was a real moderate, pragmatic guy who went to Raleigh and became a you know, a horrible right wing extremist Republican. Obviously that's not true. And then on the other side, where you're more here on the right, is more similar to what you just described, which is, you know, he just got run over by the legislature and didn't really know what he was doing. And the reality is is not either of those. What I've found over the past year is that he really didn't change all that much between when he was mayor and when he was governor. But kind of his style of leadership kind of hard charging, impatient, wanting to rock the boat. It worked well in Charlotte and people were willing to go along with it, but when it got to Raleigh, it didn't play out the way he was expecting to. And to your point. About his advisors and political advisors, that is kind of the original sin, so to speak, was not building up that political muscle when he first came into office as governor, and to his credit, a lot of it was fairly noble. To be honest, was he wanted to focus on the nuts and bolts of government and didn't want to get tainted by politics. But I think what he would say today and what I would say is the best way to be an effective governor is to have that political stick behind you. Yeah. The name of the book is called The Change Agent, written by Andrew Dunn. We knew him when, back when he is merely the purveyor of long Leafpolitics dot com and a contributing columnists to The Charlotte Observer. Andrew, thanks for your time, buddy, appreciate it, Thank you, all right, take it easy. All right. 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Regarding Andrew's point there about this simplistic view of Pat McCrory in his term as governor, I remember hearing that he, you know, this criticism from the left that he was somehow this like uber right winger and like I knew, like I've known Pat McCrory for twenty six years. I was a reporter for the for WBT here on the city council beat, so I was in city council meetings every single week at minimum, and he was the mayor. He ran the meetings. We would I would interview him many many times, I don't even know how many times over the years. And this idea that he had somehow become some you know, uber, you know, far right conservative governor was just always absurd to me. And that actually ruffled feathers in the ledge as well. And he would he would run up against the legislature on things because Pa McCrory recognized that, you know, here's the executive branch and that's the legislative branch, and he was protective of executive powers for that office. And so they got he got into fights. I think the legislature even sued him at one point over one of these fights. But that was on brand for him. That was something that he had done with the city council. He would cross Republicans on city Council when they wanted to run, you know, resolutions that were of an that pertained to a national issue, right. I think one year somebody tried to run a resolution. I don't remember if it was a Republican or a Democrat, but it was something. It was on abortion, and and he said, no, that's not going on the agenda. And as the mayor, you could do that. That's you set. You get to set the agenda. And that's actually one of the fights that the now former Mayor vy Lyles had been having with members on the city council because there are members on the city Council that have been trying to force issues onto the agenda and she has not been willing to put some stuff on the agenda. Right, So that's been part of the friction going on at Charlotte City Hall. But that's always been the case. We have a very weak mayor system in North Carolina. We have a weak governor system as well. North Carolina, like the wellspring of power is the legislature. Always has been well under our current constitution because they did not want to empower governors to become strong and then you would have sort of the same sorts of dynamics that occurred prior to the Civil War. All of this was intentional, right, the council manager form of government, Right, you have a city council, You have a mayor who cuts ribbons, runs the meetings, sets agendas. That's about it. And the council then hires the manager. Because at the time, the idea was, well, we'll have the experts. This was very progressive idea. We'll have the technocrats come in and they'll manage things. It's a professionalized kind of form of government. Now, of course, what happens is you end up with managers that you know, create their own little fiefdoms. So again, like the problem with any form of government is that you got people running it, and people can behave badly and they can do a lot of things. In order to gain more power and control. So yeah, I agree with Andrew like that that line was never It was always comical to me when I heard, oh, Pat McCrory's governing like a right winger, you know, not really over on the text line the helly and says Pete, I prayed for your vocal cords last night. Yeah, there wasn't a lot to wasn't a lot to scream about last night. That game was terrible. By the way, it's amazing how the scoreboard will impact my my feelings towards that Telemundo sportscaster guy screaming goal. Just like the last game when we won, I was loving it. That was amazing. But last night I was like, dude, shut up, that's just it just landed differently from me. You know, when when you're now down four to one. I mean, they look the Waffles were a better team, right, I mean they really were. They were a much better team than we were. We always knew this, like we don't even try, like maybe And by the way I was saying, I saw this morning some way more in depth analysis of the problems with American soccer than I ever cared to know. But apparently, like in the rest of the world, they have these academies where the kids when they like when they're old enough to walk, I think they like take the kids from the parents, they steal them, and then they stick them in these these soccer camps. So fun camps. Yeah, Hillary had this idea too, but they put them to the soccer camps or whatever. And then if you end up being good and you get onto a team and you get paid some money, that team kicks back money to the academy, to that soccer school, the camp or whatever. So there's it's basically the money follows the player and you get a certain amount of money for said amount of years. I think it's like, I don't know, ten years or something. You get the academy, we get some money out of that contract. But in America we don't do that. So what you end up with are a bunch of you know, parents paying for their kids to go to these schools, and now the school has an incentive to keep the kids in the school even if they're not very good. So you're not actually, you know, you're not. You're not cultivating elite soccer players basically. And then if you get signed, if you are good and you make it out of one of these things and you go on to a team, there's no residuals that kick back down to the places that trained you. And that's that's that's. The big problem apparently, or one of the problems with the American soccer business model, right, and the organizations that profit right now do not want to see this model change, so it won't. Now. The other thing is that we have way more sports. We have way more sports than these other places. I mean, Belgium is a tiny, tiny little country, right, I think. I don't know. It's my birthright as an American not to know geography, so I don't. I don't even know, but it seems like a small place. It does, like in my mind, well maybe I'm thinking of Luxembourg. Either way, they don't have a lot of sports going on over there, Like what are they going to be doing? Like curling? Like what do they do? Like seriously, what other sports do the Belgians play? Exactly? You don't know. Nobody knows, right, So they play soccer here. If you are an athlete, you got a lot of sports to choose from, and if you're really good at one of the sports that's not soccer, you're gonna you have all this opportunity to keep pursuing that, and it's gonna be way more lucrative, right, football, baseball, highlight whatever, Like there's just way more. They're just way more lucrative opportunities there for you. So that's part of it too. So look, I'm glad we made it as far as we did, but at least at least we won Freddy, you know, and and to me, that's worth it. We won that German guy and a bunch of other YouTubers and stuff that came from Europe they you know, and that really, in all seriousness, what a birthday present for America is to have all these people come from all over the world, but predominantly the old world, right Europe, and to come over here and be red pilled and to fall in love with America in a way that they never thought they could, and to sort of make us appreciate once again the things that we have that we just take for granted, that are just part of our everyday, mundane lives. And to them it's like, oh my gosh, look at the size of this gas station. You know. So that was nice. That's worth it. Let's see awesome Andy. I'm not sure why it's never discussed, but during mccrary's tenure, the state of North Carolina had one of the largest state tax increases in our history. Trades, electricians, plumbers, hvac many others had to start changing state start charging state taxes for their services. That showed me everything I needed to know about him. Okay, so number one that was the legislature. McCrory obviously bear some responsibility because he signed that budget, but that was the regularization of sales taxes, which you now see other states doing because what had occurred under Democrat control was preferred industries got carve outs, so they got exempted from sales taxes because they greased the palms of the ruling party, and so they could then have to not charge sales taxes. And so what the North Carolina Reform majority when they took over the Republicans took over, they said, we are going to drop the sales tax. That's the first thing they did. They lowered the sales tax. And then they said, we're going to lower the income tax rates as well, and we're going to bring all of those down to a single level. No more marginal taxes and all that stuff. We're going to normalize all of that. We're going to drop all those rates. We're going to drop all the corporate income taxes, drop all of those rates, and we're going to now charge a sales tax. On movie theater tickets and oil changes. I think accounting services, right, because those are sales. Those are sales, but they were exempted from the sales tax, but the offset was on the income side, so you could make way more money and you could actually avoid the sales tax if you didn't buy stuff. So yes, I remember that argue being made at the time, and I found it to be as hollow then as I do still today, because I prefer use taxes versus penalties on work. Income taxes. So they lowered all the income tax rates and then they added the sales taxes to a bunch of industries and services sales that had been exempted because of political pull in years past. I'm not much of a sports fan, Jeff says, but one of the things I found most entertaining about the World Cup was the free refill coat guy from Italy. Yes, I played that audio. That guy was hilarious. Soccer academies in America will have difficulty getting paid for the children they developed that are wanted by MLS or international clubs. It would be nice to set this up and also pay back parents for what they spent on the academy. But when parents here selling your kid to a club they get wary. Yes, well, I mean there is that old part of it too. Ian says, when you say government and professional in the same sentence, I recall Tom Dashel saying that the TSA couldn't be professional unless they were unionized. Oh Tom Dashel, what an innocent era that was? Huh, Kirk says pete communist kickball stinks on ice? Okay, Well, that. They do need to change the whole clock system. I just I'm gonna say that again, and this will be the last I speak of it until the next World Cup in four years. They need, we all need to be able to know how much time is left on the clock. It's absurd, Okay, it's the twenty first century people. More from the text line, Jeff says, regarding the hydration break, that was a new one for me too last night watching that soccer game, and they're like, hydration break. But as Jeff points out, it's a water break, people, It's a water break, okay, hydration breaking. And then they got the sprinklers on the field, and then of course you're seeing people slipping all over the grass and falling down. Yeah, that's what happens. When you, I don't know, water the. Field during the game, Like, what kind of dumb assery is that? That's stupid? And then they got the clock running. I'm watching the clock going and I'm like, wait, wait a minute, this is part of the time too. Oh but we'll get that back, do we. I don't know, I can't see the clock. You pause the clock for halftime, why not pause it for the hydration break. It's just stupid, so many stupid. Also, he says what qualifies for a yellow card seems a bit subjective. No, that's not true. Does not seem a bit subjective. It is one hundred percent completely subjective. That's all of it, which is why FIFA has a reputation of being so corrupted. I mean just everything about it is corrupt, all of it because Marxism. Why is it called a sales tax? Should be a buyer's tax. We are not the ones selling the goods. Well, it's a point of sale. The sale is purchased. I mean, the business owner could eat that sales tax. But it's a it's a tax on the sale of a thing. That's why it's a sales tax. I did see where is it here? Ah? Doctor h I mean naturalized Belgian living over here for forty years. Also, I'm a conservative. I wish Trump had stayed out of the red card controversy because now all of the memes I'm getting from my family and friends are not about how team USA lost, but how Trump lost? How did Trump lose? Even if you believe that Trump got the red card rescinded, which my understanding is that red card never should have been given. It was a bad call and they looked at the video in slow motion and they're not supposed to do that, So they cheated, the ref cheated in order. To kick our guy out. So it was corrected. But even if Trump did get involved personally, and even if he is the reason why it was overturned, he won because our guy got to play the match. So like, even if you hate Trump so much, like the guy played. So how was that a loss for Trump? The team lost, but I mean Trump wasn't on the field, He wasn't playing. Okay. He goes on to say, we. Don't have high school sports teams like over here in America, everybody plays soccer there. I returned to Belgium every year for family visits. Love the food, history and sitting on a terrace on the marketplace, drinking a good beer and watching people go by. But I do not want to live there anymore. Three weeks a year is enough for me. From a socialist monarchy. Yeah, I don't blame you on that either. The best argument I have heard is the best athletes in the US are not playing soccer. That is true, Josh, they are not. You never played organized sports. I did. That's not a hydration break, it's a commercial break. And it says nine to a zero number, we should tax all foreigners living abroad. How do you tax all foreigners living abroad? How do we those are tariffs? Speaking of foreign adversaries like Belgium. No, I'm kidding. The North Carolina General Assembly, well, the House actually passed a bill one hundred eleven to two. This was House Bill one thirty three, and it bans investors tied to foreign adversaries of the United States from purchasing farmland and property within fifty miles of military installations across the state. Finally, finally, the legislation defines adversarial foreign governments using a federal list tied to international traffic in arms regulations, and that includes countries like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Military installations named in the bill are Fort Bragg, Camp Lagourne that is the way you're pronounce it, Seymour, Johnson Air Force Base, Marine Corps Station Cherry Point, and other military and National Guard facilities. The bill would give the state Attorney General authority to investigate potential violations and seek court ordered divestiture of prohibited land holdings. Yeah, it's I don't know, call me crazy, but I kind of feel like it's more than a coincidence that you've got people with ties to the communist Chinese Party that are super interested in buying up all sorts of properties around our military bases and along the Mississippi River, a major navigable waterway. Right, seems weird, Probably not a coincidence, So good for the General Assembly. 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 pati at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalanarshow dot com again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.