Berger's plans, NC's right to work, celebrating Labor Day | Hour 1

Happy day after Labor Day. I did not buy you anything. Um, the, uh, As is the tradition. It's 107.9 FM WBTP calendar here. And every Tuesday, what we do is we chat with Andrew Dunn. He is the award-winning journalist, the founder of Longleaf Politics, a contributing columnist for the Charlotte Observer and News and Observer, and the author of the book, The Change Agent. And actually, there's an event tomorrow night, 7 o'clock Wednesday, September 9th at Park Road Books on Park Road, coincidentally. The Park Road Shopping Center, I believe. Andrew, how are you, sir? I am doing fantastic. Just got done eating some leftover chicken wings I grilled last night. Oh, nice. For your Labor Day. Did you labor at all? That was mostly the extent of my labor was made in the grill, but I take that responsibility very seriously. As one does, and one should, absolutely. All right, so we had a bit of, I don't want to say bombshell, but it was a pretty big announcement. North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. put out a statement saying that he would not seek re-election to his seat. He is an associate justice on the state Supreme Court. He said he'll serve out his term. And in the press release, you note that he he said that he was considering other ways to serve the state. So what do you think this means? Well, I am almost 100% positive that what this means is that. Justice Berger Jr. Is going to. Run for chief justice of the state Supreme Court. If you don't follow all this stuff closely, it seems kind of weird that a... sitting Supreme Court justice would then need to retire essentially that seat and run for. The chief justice seat. But that's how things happen in North Carolina. And after publishing. My initial article on that, I did get some. More confirmation that this is what is going to happen. And so not surprising that he puts out this press release to announce it. I guess what's most interesting is the timing. You know, we actually have a Supreme Court election here in 2026. We haven't even gotten through that. And here we are talking about the 2028 elections. I think what it really shows is just how important 2028 is going. To be on the judicial side. This year, we have one Supreme Court seat on the ballot that's currently held by. A Democrat, Anita Earls. In 2028, we're going to have three seats on the ballot, and all three are. Currently held by Republicans. So if Justice Earls wins re-election this year, that means that the majority is in play in 2028. Right, because it's a 5-2 majority for Republicans right now. If Anita Earls keeps that second seat, then you've got the Chief Justice newbie, Berger's seat, as well as Tamara Barringer, three Republicans all up for re-election. Now, you also said that you expect the Democrat, the only other Democrat on the court, Alison Riggs, you suspect she's going to run for Chief Justice in 2018? That would be my guess. I mean, the Democratic Party is going to take those 2028 judicial elections extremely seriously. There's going to be a lot of big money pouring in from all over the country into those races. And I would imagine that the Democrats are going to want to put their most accomplished or their strongest candidate forward for the chief justice position. Because it's not just a nominal title. There actually is a good deal of power that comes along with it. And Justice Riggs, after her narrow win in the last election, she's got as much name ID as a state Supreme Court justice can have and proven fundraising ability. So I imagine that she's going to run. For that seat. And do you think she's favored to win? Why? I think she's favored Wynne mostly because of the money component. I would expect Democrats to out-raise and out-spend Republican justices by a factor of 10 to 1. It's going to be that much money coming into this race. Like it or not, if Democrats retake the state Supreme Court, you're basically going to see a reversal of a lot of things the General Assembly has done over the past few years and a lot of things the Supreme Court has decided. That's kind of where we are in terms of partisanship on the state Supreme Court is that if Democrats have the levers of power there, they're going to do everything they can to undo what the General Assembly has done. And so Anita Earls is running for her reelection. Sarah Stevens running against her, the Republican. So if Anita Earls were to actually lose this time, then the Republicans would have a little bit more breathing room, it seems like. That's correct. And, you know, I don't have a great sense of I would say. That sitting Justice Earls is slightly. Favored in that race. You know, any of the. Polling that I've seen has plenty of undecided. I mean, these are low information races. But given that Justice Earls has a ton more money and it also is shaping up to be. A year favorable for Democrats, I would I would have to say that Justice Earls has a slight edge there. All right, let's move on. You've got another piece at Longleaf Politics. Longleafpol.com is that website. North Carolina's latest election conspiracy. We've got another one, I guess. This is about whether or not the mail-in ballot on the inside of the envelope, the internal envelope inside the other envelope, whether that's sealed or not. Do I have that right? Yeah, basically. I mean, it seems like every other week there's some new hubbub having to do with the State Board of Elections. And I think, you know, what. This is really a clear example of media bias at play. If Democrats are in charge of an organization, then procedural things, minutiae, it just doesn't. Rise to the level of newsworthiness. But if a Republican's in charge, which Republicans are newly in charge of the state board of elections, then every single thing becomes controversial. At least in the media's mind. And these rules just don't strike me as all that meaningful, to be honest. I mean, I actually went into the historical record and found that as far back as the 1930s, North Carolina law has required the internal envelope with the ballot to be sealed. So, you know, if anything, this is. Just kind of establishing what's already been codified in law for almost a century. Right. So the idea here is that you've got two envelopes, basically, that get mailed back to the Board of Elections. One is the, you know, the outside, the external envelope, and then your mail-in ballot is stuffed inside of an internal one. So this way nobody can see your, you know, your information, who you voted for, anything like that. You got your witness signature, your notary public, whatever. And so it's done to protect the internal ballot. And so what for, do we know how long the board of elections had been counting the mail-in ballots that arrive in and the internal envelope is not sealed. Do we know when that change happened? That I do not know, but it's worth pointing out that if somebody. Turns in their ballot with an internal envelope that's unsealed, So, I mean. Just that ballot will be spoiled because there's a great potential that it was tampered with. But the State Board of Elections is also required to reach out to the voter, tell them what happened, and either send them a new ballot. Or direct them to vote in person. So nobody is having their. Vote completely erased here. Yeah. So it seems like at some point they were like, yeah, you know what, just count those ballots anyway, even though they weren't sealed. And now this is just, no, we're going to follow the law, and the law says it has to be sealed. And then you get the opportunity to remedy, uh, to fix your ballot. Um, all right. And, uh, finally, um, we are not going to see on our November ballot, at least at this point, I don't think I'm pretty sure like, like the calendar dictates that we can't add anything else to our ballot. Right. So we're not going to see a constitutional amendment protecting North Carolina as a right to work state. Um, and so why, uh, it seems like this is something that Republicans, uh, would be all for, and they've tried in the past. They've talked about, you know, codifying right-to-work status in the state constitution. So why are they not doing this? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, right to work basically says that you cannot be forced to join a union as a condition of your employment. And North Carolina has had a right to work law for, again, since the late 30s, early 40s. However, because it's not in the state constitution, a simple majority vote and the governor's signature can undo those protections that North Carolina workers have enjoyed for so long. And there's been efforts to put it actually in the state constitution. The House has passed it at one time, the Senate passed it at another time. It just hasn't synced up where both chambers have passed it at the same time, so it would go on the ballot. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. Number one, I think, is constitutional amendments have become kind of a turn out the vote mechanism. The General Assembly has, when they want to get some segment of the voting population excited about coming out to vote, they'll put. An amendment to that end. That was a big criticism, you might remember, I believe 2018 on the right to hunt that was put in the state constitution, all that. Well, here we are, 2026, another midterm election with a Republican in the White House. So the state legislature did put some very good constitutional amendments on the ballot, but right to work just didn't make the cut. Maybe because it would be too controversial, it wouldn't be a clean win for Republicans, or potentially because the political universe is realigning and union members are increasingly voting Republican. I think union leadership is continues to give donations. To the Democratic Party. But the rank and file. Union voter is increasingly a Republican voter. Right. So why antagonize that portion of the electorate? Why not just have them come out and vote on what is on the ballot? Income tax cap, property tax caps and voter I.D. These would be things. That you would use to animate and motivate your base to get out and vote. And if you put the right to work out there, then maybe you get. But I mean, there's I mean, the stats on union membership, it's like 10 percent of all workers are in a union. It's very, very low. So I'm not. Sure what portion of the Republican electorate that now comprises. But I do agree that the parties are realigning and there are a lot of people in unions that are now very pro Trump specifically. So, yeah, maybe it's just a political calculation. I don't know. But no right to work. Not in the Constitution. Not this year, at least. Maybe next year. Yeah, maybe. All right. Andrew, we appreciate your time, sir. Keep up the good work. Thank you. All right, take care. That's Andrew Dunn. And, again, you can subscribe to his newsletter. It's called Longleaf Politics. Longleafpol.com is his website. He also writes for the Charlotte Observer. And he's got the new book out. change agent. And I mentioned this, there's the event tomorrow night, Wednesday, September 9th, 7 p.m., Park Road Books. It's a book about Pat McCrory, his rise, his reckoning and legacy. And Andrew will be there. Pat will be there. And they'll do a Q & A and they'll do book signings and that sort of thing. Maybe they will read from the book. Maybe get Pat to read from the All right, for over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create-A-Video, great local company in Mint Hill that has helped more than 2 million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now, Create-A-Video is helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing Group Travel Videos, perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, and Group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams, I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. Well, this is interesting. I just saw this move across the transom. In Iowa's 3rd District, covering the south-central part of the state, the Democrats have nominated Sarah Trone Garriott, the unusual kind of Lutheran minister who, whose first wedding she officiated as an intern pastor was for a pair of Satanists. Does that, does that fall under the Lutheran church? If you're a Lutheran minister, do you get to marry Satanists in your church? Is that how that works? I, I'm not very familiar with Lutheranism, Lutheranism. Yeah. Um, All right. So I said earlier that I did not buy you anything for Labor Day, as is the custom. But I will say I have I have now started well since this morning, since I read this piece, I'm now starting to reconsider whether or not. I should more profoundly celebrate Labor Day because to me, it's always been. Like this day where it's like, oh, look at me. I'm a union guy. And then I've covered the Labor Day parades and stuff. As a reporter, I was out there and watching all the Democrats in the union leadership and the union rank and file march through uptown Charlotte. And, you know, you got a lot of unions that are now like the SEIU. And I mean, they're just it's all it's just all Democrat. Right. And so it's it's a partisan affair. You don't have Republicans out at the Labor Day parade. It's just not a day that conservatives tend to celebrate. I mean, we'll take the day off, sure, but we're not going to like it. So then I read a piece over at National Review, and it's got me reassessing how I, and maybe you, should celebrate Labor Day. We're going to make it our own. We can make it our own, okay? So as I mentioned with Andrew Dunn, only 10% of American workers are unionized. That's it, okay? This is by Ben Connolly. He said, those of us who oppose unionization generally do so on the grounds that unions restrict the freedom of individual workers. That is correct. It is a restriction on your free labor. Not free as in you don't charge people for it, but free as in liberty, freedom, right? This is the beauty of the free market versus socialism, versus, you know, collectivism, Marxism, communism, all of those isms under the heading of Marxism, right? This is the idea that made us exceptional, which was we said, our founders said, you have the right to your own labor. It is yours, okay? It is the free market, rather than the closed shop that best respects workers' rights to make decisions about their careers. You got 90% of American workers that don't belong to unions. He says, we can celebrate the freedom of American workers rather than labor activists. We can rightly say that we better represent the interests of American labor because we're in the 90%. Free labor has a long and proud tradition in the Republican Party, going back to the very first presidential campaign of John C. Fremont in 1856. The Republican Party, founded in opposition to slavery, the grand old party championed the right of workers to own their own labor. That was the point. Southern slaveholders not only rejected this right in the case of their slaves, but they saw their society as fundamentally at odds with the capitalism of the northern states. Perhaps shockingly to modern sensibilities, they did so on the grounds that the slave system was supposedly gentler and more humane than the dog-eat-dog labor markets of northern states. Southern writer George Fitzhugh said, attacked the supposed exploitation of northern free labor and argued, quote, slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism. As Pierre Lemieux put it in an article for the Cato Institute, Fitzhugh believed that, quote, competition reduces individuals to economic cannibals, making the weak no better off than slaves and, in fact, worse off because they lack the protection necessary of a master. The idea that individuals should own their own labor won. Okay? That was part of this debate. This is a bedrock principle of free market capitalism. It's what made capitalism a radical disruption to the feudalism of the Middle Ages. Thinkers like Adam Smith rejected notions of serfdom and noblesse oblige, in other words, the obligations of the nobility to provide for the lessors. He preferred the system of natural liberty in which human beings could change their circumstances through hard work and effort rather than remaining stuck in the station to which they were born. Free labor is inextricably linked to property rights and freedom of contract. If I own my own labor, the fruits of my labor belong to me. I think I could celebrate this. I think after reading it now, this is the third time I've read it. I am more convinced. Every time I read this guy, I'm getting more convinced. We should start doing Labor Day celebrations of the free market. From the text line, Tony says, Pete, I am saddened to hear that you did not buy us any Labor Day presents. You always say you're a giver, so I can only hope that you have plenty of witty and learned observations to tell us today. I guess I will drink the gift that I got for you. Well, that's fair. I mean, that's fair. But let's be honest, like you weren't really going to give that to me. You just probably said that you were buying it for me. But you intended to probably drink it yourself. But that's OK. That is all right. I'm not judging. Stan says, I was listening to your conversation about all of the consternation regarding how the internal portion of mail-in ballots in North Carolina are sealed in the internal envelope. It reminded me of a discussion I had 50 years ago with my maternal grandfather in which he swore pecan pie or pecan pie tasted better if you ate it upside down. No, not himself, but the pie. Well, that's true. I mean, that, that, that's science. Um, Gary says, I am just maybe saying maybe I, I might, be completely wrong, but it seems like the Democrat base has shrunk and is shrinking. It boils down to really old white liberals and progressive young college grad women. I don't see blacks locked in for Democrats like previously. I definitely don't see it in the working class, not to say they are pro-Trump or pro-GOP, but I feel like Dems are toxic. Yeah, and this is the problem that the DSA is posing for the Democrat Party and why they can't just kick the DSA commies out is because... the DSA people are bringing all the youth vote and energy and they're knocking on doors and they're highly, uh, activated and the Democrats need that, uh, that energy and they need the foot troops, right? The problem is their message does not resonate among working class and black voters. We've seen this now in multiple, uh, exit polls from the races up in the Northeast where DSA candidates won, uh, or we're running, you can see who they're attracting as their base of support. And it's not working class voters. It's not rural white voters. It's not urban black voters. They're all voting for Democrats, like the quote-unquote establishment Democrats, not the DSA candidates. But the heart wants what it wants in the party. Ken says. Just wanted to let you know that was not Lutheranism, but Luciferism. That's interesting. Yeah, that makes more sense. The Hellion wants to know, does North Carolina's right to work cover docs that say you can't go to work for the competition for 18 months if you leave us? That's the, ah yes, the old non-compete. I do have some experience with the non-competes. Depending on which state you are in and where you are looking to move to, a lot of times the non-competes are not really enforceable. They're very difficult to enforce. It just depends on the circumstances. It depends on the way the contract is written. Is it for a reasonable duration of time? 18 months seems like pretty long. That seems like that might not be reasonable, but it may be dependent on whatever field you're in. The idea there is that, you know, that the company trained you, taught you all this stuff, and now they don't want you going to work for their competitor and bringing all of that knowledge over to the competitor. And so by writing out a non-compete, the company or the stuff that you learned may be of diminished value by. The time the non-compete expires. This is particularly the case in the tech world, a lot of IT stuff, because the advancements move so fast. that after 18 months or two years, like the stuff that you learned may not be directly applicable. So anyway, I cannot give legal advice. I'm not a lawyer, but I've seen some pretty egregious ones. Let me just say that. And there's usually got to be some compensation offered and accepted, that kind of thing. So, all right, back to this national review piece by Ben Connolly. Labor Day is a triumph of capitalism. He quotes Deidre McCloskey in her book, The Bourgeois Virtues. Yeah. In pre-capitalist England, not only could workers often not change occupations, but they were often prevented from moving to other cities because if too many blacksmiths moved from Manchester to Birmingham, they might compete with one another. Did you know that? I did not know that. You couldn't even move? If you had a skill set, talk about a non-compete. You're not even allowed to move. Socialists talk a big game about labor. Karl Marx argued that the free market pitted labor against capital in a vicious struggle that resulted in exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, right? Oppressor-oppressed model. According to Marxists, socialism will finally usher in a workers' paradise in which people are not alienated from their labor and politics no longer serve the interests of capital. But what many don't realize is that it is capitalism, not socialism, that is premised on the principle of free labor. It is socialism, not capitalism, in which people do not own their own labor. Indeed, In a socialist economy, people cannot own their own labor. That's why you have harsh penalties for slacking. That's why they kicked Bernie Sanders out of the commune. Because he wasn't doing any work. He was just loafing around. And they kicked him off the commune. Because human nature will encourage a thing called free riding. And you know that the unions know this concept because they say it all the time. That's why they try to force everybody to join the unions involuntarily. Because if we're a union shop, you know, then we just automatically enroll every new employee into the union. We collect their dues. If you want to not be in the union, tough noogies, not allowed. You have to be in. And they say that they have to do this because otherwise you will have people who will free ride on all of the glorious benefits that the union gets for its workers. So when the union negotiates a contract, the non-union workers enjoy the benefits that were negotiated. So they know the concept. But that is at the heart of why Marxism fails. Every time. Every time. Real quick also, I am soliciting donations for the Alzheimer's Association. We do this every October. We do a march in Charlotte, and then I emcee another one in Gastonia. And so if you would like to make a donation to the Alzheimer's Association, you can donate it. To my team. We're trying to raise $ 5, 000. We're about, I think we're at like 1500 right now. So thank you to everybody who has donated already. You can go to alz.org and then do a search for Pete's pack. That's my team. If you want to, if you want to do the walk with me, join the team. You can do that there as well. Again, alz.org. I also have the links for just a donation, but also to sign up as a member of the team. It's in the podcast description, so you can just click on that, and it'll take you right to the direct website. So every donation helps, no matter how big or small. And there was actually a pretty crazy story I'll tell you about next hour about this FDA-approved drug that won approval in July, and it has shown remarkable success for Alzheimer's patients. So I will get to that. But ALZ.org or go to the podcast description. and click one of the links there. And thank you very much for all of the, all of your support in the past and now. Okay. So back to this national review piece talking about, there are, there have to be harsh penalties for free riding in any kind of a socialist utopia. Right. Because people will loaf about and they won't do work. And by the way, you can see this. This is a hilarious experiment that you can run with people is to ask them, like, what do you envision your life will be like under socialism? Like, what are the benefits you're going to get? And you hear the craziest things. Like, oh, you know, if I don't want to work today, I just don't go to work. I'll be able to get all my food for free and all my health care for free. It's just like free, free, free. It's like all they're thinking of is like their material benefits, right? But all the Marxist thinkers, I use that term loosely, right? They all identified this free rider or slacker problem. You had Pierre Joseph Prudhomme, Edward Bellamy, Bernard Shaw, all of them. Marx wrote about it, right? They share the view that human beings ought not to own their labor. See, if we own our labor, we might not use it for the benefit of all humanity. You see, that's what they have to then force you to do the work, which means you do. Not own your own labor. It is capitalism, the free market system, that rejects this way of thinking. It is the free market society that allows individuals to make their own decisions. More than any other system, free market capitalism is premised on the dignity of individual workers and the freedom of people to make their own decisions about their labor and then to be rewarded for their time and their talent. In another piece at National Review by the editors, what we like to call an editorial, They say every Labor Day, unions claim responsibility for much of modern America's cushy living standards. They argue that the eight-hour workday and five-day workweek would not exist without their valiant efforts against the mighty industrialists. We're supposed to thank unions for minimum wages and workplace safety laws, too, and for banning the scourge of child labor. Ignoring the underlying force beneath them all is to engage in historical revisionism, though. At best, organized labor ratified improvements in living standards that were already enabled by rising productivity. It's crucial to remember that mankind's economic baseline is universal grinding poverty. That's the baseline. Look at labor hours. Did you know, since the 1800s, the number of hours worked per lifetime has been cut in half worldwide. That's pretty amazing. Leisure time has increased five-fold. Weekly hours worked by men in the U.S. have also gradually declined even as the unionization rate rose, but then collapsed. The same is true of American seniors. The now standard work week, five eight-hour days with a two-day weekend, that was not a union creation. You know who decided on that? Henry Ford, at the Highland Park plant, the productivity revelation that was the assembly line, that's what permitted Ford to give workers one day off a week in 1922 and then, four years later, gave them two days off per week. With mass production came the free time needed for mass consumption. Wages for production workers were rising steadily for decades before the advent of unions and When the first federal minimum wage law took effect in the 1930s, it was 25 cents an hour. Most unskilled workers were earning about twice that amount. Child labor was almost non-existent by the time Congress prohibited it in 1938 because it had been plummeting in the prior decades. Time and again, Laws pushed by labor unions were enshrined only after economic growth made them feasible and after such standards were already being adopted voluntarily. When businesses have to compete for employees, they have every incentive to boost productivity and share the proceeds through higher wages and more attractive working conditions. This is how we ended up with foosball tables in the workplace, people. Bring your dog to the office days and all of that stuff. I remember. I remember the TV show 30-something. This Labor Day, remember, no improvement in living standards is possible without the economic productivity that lets Americans provide ever more goods and services to one another while requiring less work. Don't let the unions take credit for your weekend. I agree. I agree. I am now going to start celebrating Labor Day as. A free market expression as a celebration of the free market, capitalism, and the ability to set my own course. Who's with me? 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 the Pete calendar show.com again, Thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.