Crime, COVID, and disaster recovery (09-02-2025--Hour2)

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 and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to dpetclendarshow 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. All Right, so the two topics covered in the last hour're going to kind of keep them sort of in the pan here cooking for a little bit because it ties into a larger issue, which is this loss of trust, social trust, loss of trust in institutions. And I really do, I do believe that social media has really done more to help the faux lead as I call them because they're not really elites, they're fox leads. Has really helped them to just light their own credibility on fire. They go on to Twitter, they go on to Instagram or TikTok and they say things, they behave in certain ways. People who have phones now have cameras and they catch you. Gavin Newsom at the French laundry during the COVID lockdowns, and Roy Cooper walking around the Governor's mansion with his mask dangling from his ear while he celebrates Black Lives Matter during a lockdown where he said, no more than twelve people could gather outside, except if you're marching for social justice, and then you could have one hundred people gather together outside. And then maybe if you get a little fiery but mostly peaceful, and the cops have to use some pepper spray on you or something, you'll be hacking and coughing out your lungs. But don't worry. As I went over in great detail, COVID knows. COVID knows if your cause is righteous. See if you're going to just attend church service on a Sunday, for example, No, no COVID shall smite ye down. But if you are marching for Saint George Floyd and to defund the police and make our cities more dangerous, COVID knows that, and it shall. It shall not affect you. It shall not smite ye. Worth thee I guess it would be. It was the smartest virus ever developed in a lab. Oh okay, fine, that's racist. Batsup fine, whatever. People saw these things happening, and because of the democratization of media, there are no longer these gatekeepers, right, and so people see this stuff and the gatekeepers are like, you know, the kid trying to put the fingers in the dam, and yeah, they're too many holes. You do not have enough fingers. Without the gatekeepers to protect these faux leads, people have lost confidence in them and their expertise as well they should, right, remember trust the science two weeks to flatten the curve. Same thing as going on with the crime stories the light rail system, Like we expected that the people who are running the mass transit system when they get hired in and they're celebrated for all their expertise, and this person comes from Pittsburgh or Cleveland and they have all this experience and whatnot, and then you find out that they built all of the light rail train stations without any kind of turnstiles. Oh, and they're also not really checking your fare when you're on the train, and that means anybody can get on it and just write it around as a rolling shelter. Well, who's the Einstein who came up with that plan? How much money have we been missing out? On because people don't pay. I'm not just talking about you know, homeless people that don't have any money. I'm talking about people who do have money and would otherwise be paying, but they know they don't have to, so they don't. That's what happens in a lower trust society when you start eroding that social trust and people start behaving because well, everybody else is doing this thing, and everyone else is skating by, and nobody's taking holding them accountable and taking their tickets, so I might as well do the same. Right, you create a permission structure that becomes the norm, that becomes the acceptable behavior. So the legacy media is no longer acting as the gatekeeper. They can't. You're also seeing this. I got story. I got a story on this too, several stories on this. What's been going on in the UK that is social media driven? What's going on in the UK with the with the protests against migration and I my fear is this, this is going to boil over because the Folites in charge of the UK, they just keep getting stupider, They just keep saying dumber and dumber things and racing towards this fabian socialist paradise that the people do not want and they are turning out in droves because they fear it's just about too late. And by the way, it might already be too late. But the reaction is going to be could be violent, but it could all it's going to be radical, like this may propel that guy Nigel Farage from the Reform Party. This could propel him all the way in. He's now out there talking like Donald Trump. He's going to be doing mass deportations. So we'll get to that, right, But this is it's all under this category of trust, the social compact. I keep talking about this because you're supposed to be doing certain things when you're in charge of the government. You're supposed to be you know, managing it, but you're also supposed to be acting in the interests of the citizens of your state. And when Roy Cooper as governor cannot figure out how to do the recovery efforts for it, not one, not two, but three different hurricanes under his tenure, and now he wants to go to the US Senate and he's like, oh, I didn't want to have to go. He's been he's really leaning into this stupid slogan like I didn't want to go to Washington, but doosh, garnet, Gosh darn it, I have to. I got to go. You know, they're dragging me up there. You don't have to go, They're really you don't have to go. Stop trying to make this like I'm just being called to serve. You are a career politician. You have like literally been in office for almost my entire life. So don't tell me that, oh, I just didn't want to serve anywhere. That's all you know. That's your whole career is public service. And by the way, when he gets up there and he's like, oh, where's the response, the federal government's doing a terrible job on Hurricane Helene. Let me read to you a quote. This is from Tim Wigginton, who publisher at the Blue Ridge Times. Here's the quote. North Carolina is the first state affected by Hurricane Helene to start its home renovation and reconstruction program. In fact, North Carolina is the fastest state in more than a decade since Hurricane Sandy to begin rebuilding homes after a major hurricane using hud cdbg d R funding sources. That's a quote from the Democrat Governor Josh Stein see, so when Roy Cooper is out there saying, where's Wadley, Michael Wadley, where's Trump? They're not doing enough R two D two over here, the governor Josh Stein, he uh like he's touting, he's touting the rapid success. But that's the thing you always got to keep in mind about Roy Cooper. He will sacrifice any and everybody for his personal political ambition. He did it with HB two, right, He did it on the the because then he flipped on the HB two right, he told all the Democrats, don't you do any kind of fix I need this issue. And then of course he sold out the trans people and he changed HB two, signed on to that deal that they didn't want. So he threw them under the bus, through women under the bus for the access to the women's sports and that sort of thing. He threw all the teachers under the bus when he kept betowing all of the budgets, holding them hostage for Medicaid expansion. Right, this is just another example of it. By the way, the state auditor dashboard shows that North Carolina has already been making progress and recovering from the storm. So again, if it was anybody other than Roy Cooper, that they may be able to make this case about slow hurricane response, but not Roy Cooper. It took him a decade, a decade and still didn't get everybody back into their homes from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth that truest field sign up at alz dot org slash walk and then you can search for my team name Pete's pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk. Crime, COVID lockdowns, Hurricane Helene response, All of these things, just in the last five years have undermined trust in the institutions and the supposed experts, the foe elites, the faux leads that claim to know what they're doing. Trust them with the power, and then they will be able to govern effectively. One of the well, let me do this. Let me go to the text line here driven by liberty Buick GMC and let me get to some of these text messages, um I don't have a name here, nine to a zero number says I worked sanitizing the light rail during COVID. The homeless have used the trains as a mobile shelter for at least that long. Keep in mind, you're not supposed to eat, drink, smoke, or slip on the trains, and you're supposed to have a ticket. The homeless do all of those things, including smoking and doing drugs, as well as urinating, defecating, vomiting, and fighting on the trains. They've done it for years. They get on the trains first thing in the morning and wait to get kicked off at three am. It's the safest and most comfortable most of them will be all day. There was even a drunk lady that would call an ambulance at three am and then tell them to stop and let her get out when she got where she was going. All I can say is I didn't know the homeless had a political lobby, but it must be really powerful. Well, this is the cottage industry of activists and advocates. Think of them as NGOs, right, These nonprofits that are all about, you know, homeless activism, and they get government grants, they mobilize votes, and so the Democrats utilize their services in exchange for taxpayer funds going to the NGOs going to the nonprofits. And it almost seems like okay, it actually is, as Michael Schellenberger documents in the book San Francico. He writes about how there isn't any incentive for these nonprofits to actually reduce homelessness because then they're out of a job. Right, So why would you put yourself out of a job if you're making a good salary with the government grants. Right. Regarding the lockdowns, Yes, the impact on mental health, people's loneliness, deaths of despair, right. Roy Cooper has never been held accountable for you know the other side of the ledger. He always gets up there. If he's ever even asked about COVID and his response anymore. I would love for somebody to ask him. I should have told Don Brown this. Somebody needs to ask him. Did he make any mistakes? Was every decision you made during COVID the correct decision? Did you bat a thousand on that one, Roy, Or were there some things that you did that in hindsight you look back and say, yeah, we probably shouldn't have done that, just one? Can you name one? Or you're going to claim that you were perfect in all of your decisions, which would be remarkable, right, absolutely remarkable if you got every single decision perfectly correct. Shouldn't we expect, Oh, shouldn't we expect the family of the woman that was murdered on the light rail line to sue the city if the murderer did not pay for a pass or ticket and no security or anybody else checks the passes. I think there may be liability there. There very well could be there very well could be some liability there. Maybe that that's why the City of Charlotte has been less than great in its pr response to this. People haven't really been racing to the cameras to express sympathies and thoughts and prayers and promises of increased security and whatever. Maybe they're afraid of a lawsuit, and if it's the City of Charlotte, all you gotta do is just threaten a lawsuit, and they're just they're going to throw a bunch of money at you. So I would yeah, I'd say it's probably better than fifty to fifty chances that they're going to get suited. The city taxpayers are going to have to pay for the failures of the people who said, put me in charge. I know what I'm doing. A mass transit system does not work if people don't ride it because they are afraid for their lives. If they are going to be encountered by psychopaths and mentally derain people, criminals, they're not going to ride your transit system. And that's a very big problem for people who now would very much like to triple our sales tax in order to pay for expansion of the system. So until Veto says, until this decade, there were armed G four special police on the trains and they were asking to see tickets and passes. If someone was riding without one, they were arrested and usually spent the night in jail. The next day, at first appearance in court, the ADA would usually dismiss the charges and then release them. Same for panhandling and similar crimes. They haven't done this though since Saint George Floyd. Yeah, the amount of destruction that has been wrought with that whole campaign, and I don't by the way, I don't think that you would have seen we would have seen the level of violence and the overreaction had we not been locked down. You know, you lock people up, and then George Floyd was sort of the spark that that lit the fuse. You know, I don't think you get there. And by the way, I don't think you have the J six Riots without George Floyd and the lockdowns either. It was it was all that same year, same situation in rock Hill with the free buses. This is Jody uh started out great winter used it had stopped on campus. But now, as Edwin says, it's a rolling homeless shelter game on Week one starts now and every touchdown brings you closer to a payout. With Draft King sports book and official sports betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football, it's first touchdown fireworks anytime TD rushes live bets that ride every momentum shift. At DraftKings, every play is your next shot to win. Will the Panthers win? Will we even get a touchdown? New customers bet just five dollars and get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly, plus get over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. So your season starts now. Download the Draft Kings Sportsbook app and use code pete to get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly when you place your first bet of five dollars or more plus over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. But you got to use promo code pete. 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That's from the text line. No one on the city council is without responsibility for the security of the city transportation system. Is this the first security problem? But there is a real issue in Charlotte Meck in voting and how ignorant the voters are. Well, I'm gonna get to that in a second. The crime issue as an issue for politicians. There was another text here, but I'm sorry here, Mike in Gastonia says, how often do members of the city council actually ride the light rail? Edwin Peacock, councilman, pointed out something that's been a problem for a while. There is a complete disconnect with the leadership in Charlotte, both political and different law sorry, both political and different law enforcement, to do what needs to be done. It's like they put on their blinders and hold out their hand for people more money only. Okay, So yeah, so this gets to a thing I've referred to as suicidal empathy. It's also called toxic empathy. There was a post by Matt van Swoll on Twitter. He kind of rose to Twitter prominence and fame during the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. And he has been red pilled, which is a reference to the matrix where you know, you take the red pill and then you see how far the rabbit hole goes, you learn what the real truth is, or you take the blue pill and you go back to sleep. And so people say red pilled. It's a reference to that matrix. So he has a post about this, but he doesn't he doesn't use the term suicidal empathy that was coined by Gad Sad or toxic empathy, which that was said Ali Beth Stucky. Stucky. Yeah, Ali Beeth Stucky. She wrote a book called Toxic Empathy. So let me first focus on this comment about the crime and the voters. Okay, So there is a poll that ABC News reports on. It's associated press. NRC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that while most disapprove of how Trump is handling the issue, a large majority see crime as a quote major problem in large cities. Sixty eight percent say it's a major problem in large cities. The findings underscore the challenge facing Democratic leaders. They must thread the needle between criticizing Trump's policies, which are deeply unpopular among their base, while at the same time not dismissing widespread concerns about safety, which are amplified in many news sources and in online forums like Facebook and the popular next door app. That could create a vulnerability for the party heading into next year's midterm elections. Yes, the defund the police movement was awful for Democrats. It was terrible. Turns out people did not want to actually defund the police like the radical leftists were demanding. While Trump remains unpopular overall, the new poll finds as a coach to crime has earned him high marks compared to other issues like the economy and immigration. Half of US adults fifty three percent say they approve of his handling of crime, and the margin of error on this poll is like three and a half to four percent, So it's it's it's a it's a draw, I would say. But the vast majority of Americans eighty one percent also see crime as a major problem in large cities that includes nearly all Republicans roughly three quarters of independence and nearly seven in ten Democrats. About eight in ten Democrats say it's quote completely or somewhat unacceptable for the president to seize control of local police departments as he is done in Washington. Okay, it's he didn't seize control, it's a support role whatever. And it's also it's a federal district, so it's not like he's seizing control of a city that he has no jurisdiction to do it in. It's the district of Columbia. There's a woman here, quoted Democrat Starr K fifty nine lives in Downey, California, near La. She said, if the president really wanted to tackle the issue, he would be investing in local police departments instead of diverting resources to immigration enforcement. No, that would be for your local government to be doing. Oh, but they defunded their police departments. They caved to the woke mob. She sees the crackdown as part of a broader effort to bolster Republicans' chances in next year's midterm elections. Okay, fair enough, and so like, sometimes the right thing to do is the right political thing to do. As well. She said, I think he's going to want to have troops in the street to intimidate people not to vote again. The leftist paranoia and catastrophism. This is deranging. Here's the key part of the challenge for Democrats is that historically crime has not been a top issue for their base. And you know me, I'm a why guy. I like to ask why why is crime not a top issue for the Democrat party base? Why they don't answer that in the ABC News story. They just throw it in there, like, well, you know, Democrats don't really care about crime. H Is there a reason for that? What makes the Democrat base different than say, Independents and Republicans and their views of crime as being very important? Man, that's a brainbuster. I'm sure it'll come to me sometime. 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 these 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 trip Kit 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. All right? So I asked the question of why historically crime has not been a top issue for the Democrat base. Why ABC News does not offer an explanation, But I would submit that the answer can be found in this tale told by Matt van Swoll. He says, I've been wanting to write this for a long time. I think now is the time. Empathy is a virtue and it is being weaponized against those of us who truly and honestly care. It's insidious by design. Here's how it works on so many, including me for so long because he was a self described you know, liberal or progressive, and he Hurricane Helene just redpilled him. And anyway, So he says, the pattern is always the same. Present an emotional story, frame any opposition as cruel and harmful, rebrand neutrality as complicity, and then make the policy solution an empathy test. So this was after the school shooting in Minneapolis. He says, a trans person just shot up a school, and notice how fast the narrative shifted. It's not about the victims. It's not about the parents who will never see their kids again. It's about protecting the trans community from backlash. It's empathy pointed in the wrong direction. It's not just the trans issue either. Immigration. They say, it's just families seeking a better life. Okay, but then you learn about the fentanyl, the gangs, and the human trafficking. That's not good. But if you bring that up, suddenly you're heartless and racist. See the game. You see a homeless person on the street with your kids, and the kid says or they'll say, they'll say that these are vulnerable people with nowhere else to go. So cities allow open drug use, tents and crime, and if you disagree, you're accused of lacking compassion while the entire community suffers because of it. It becomes even more a parent when talking about crying they just made a mistake. Suddenly you discover there is vastly more empathy for criminals than empathy for victims. That doesn't sound right. Where's the accountability, Well, then you must be ignoring the systemic oppression. And by the way, this was this was what our mayor wrote vy Lyles in her statement, with the one sentence thoughts and prayers for the victim, and then five paragraphs about how, somehow or another we all failed the suspect, the attacker, the alleged murderer. What about foreign refugees, Well, they're fleeing war zones, have a heart, and of course many truly are. Nobody denies that. But when you rightly raise concerns about vetting, crime, cultural integration, empathy is then used as a shield to shut you down. Okay, sure, but what about all the students in debt? And they'll say people are drowning in debt. They just want a chance at life, and that part tugs at my heart. Nobody likes seeing people struggle to barely make it. But the second you bring up fairness, like the plumber who never went to college and would be having to pay for all of the degrees, suddenly all that's selfish of the plumber. And after a mass shooting, instead of focusing empathy on the kids who were killed, we're told the real victims are the group that the shooter belonged to. And that's weaponized empathy at its ugliest possible form, he said. Real empathy does not erase reality. It cares about all people impacted by a policy or a tragedy. So when empathy becomes selective, politicized, and manipulative, it no longer is compassion. It is no longer empathy. It's control. And this is the same pattern that you're seeing play out over in the UK with all of the migrants, and the people have had enough, the citizens or should I say subjects of the UK, they have had enough and they are making their voices heard, but the elites keep ignoring them. And that is a recipe for violence, for the overthrow of governments. I mean, I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here, But this is how these things happen. You've got hang up before I do that, because I'm gonna probably re rack and start from the beginning with the UK stuff at the top of the next hour. But let me do this. This is a logical fallacy. Okay, the appeal to emotion, Okay, that's the play here. Manipulation of emotions, fear, pity, anger, and you you to persuade rather than using reasoning or evidence. And the point here is to bypass rational thinking by evoking strong emotional responses that cloud your judgment. And that makes it more likely that you'll accept an argument without scrutinizing its logic or it's evidence, or it's lack thereof. And this is bad. Decisions based on emotion can be biased or irrational and override critical thinking, and it causes you to accept conclusions that lack logical support or fail to address the actual issue. This is the do something right after any mass shooting like this. We always hear from the Democrats in the media, but I repeat myself, we need to do something. No more thoughts and prayers, do something, do something right. And then you say, well, we have all these ideas that we would like to see done like it. Oh, not that we want you to do what we want you to do. So it's the use of emotion in order to get you to surrender and do what they want. That's manipulation. So you should take a step back, assess the information objectively, evaluate it based on logic and evidence. Separate your feelings from your reasoning. 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 dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.