Democrats amid financial scandal: Vote for us and give us more money! | Hour 2

All right, so last night... We were admonished by the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board. We have disappointed some of the members who are at the heart of a scandal over financial irregularities that's being investigated by the FBI, the SBI, the DPI, and the State Auditor's Office. We were admonished for noticing and for being agitated and for directing our energy towards the apparent corruption scandal that is swirling all around the Board of Education. We were told this by the members of the board of education who are at the heart of the poop swirl, right? So this from the Charlotte observer, former Charlotte Mecklenburg school board chair, Stephanie Sneed, uh, yesterday reported threats against her safety and said, quote, an allegation is not a verdict as the district faces multiple investigations. Her comments came as CMS board members met for a regular meeting with and continued to address swirling turmoil connected to financial questions and a decision to fire the superintendent, Crystal Hill. During the board meeting Tuesday, district leadership heard from frustrated community members and offered new reactions to recent events. Last hour, I played for you two sound bites, the comments from Anna London, who is a new board member, not part of the five-member committee, majority voting block on the board of ed. I call them the fivers. She's a member of the four vote minority block. I call the quad for purely marketing purposes. We also heard from Stephanie Sneed, right? Where she talked about how she's been subjected to abuse. And she's basically saying, I stand by everything I did, which I don't know if that might, that might pose a problem for her. Maybe if they do find evidence of wrongdoing, So here's the thing. She is correct. An allegation is not a verdict. That is true. But for the very same reason that she stepped down as chair is also the reason why she should step down from the board. It's the same reason. She already stepped aside as the board chair. Right? Why? She claimed... in her public announcement that this was a distraction from the work that CMS was trying to do. And I'm just going to take her at face value and say, okay, that's the real reason you stepped aside as board chair. Fine. You were also facing a vote to remove you from the chairmanship position, but be that as it may, this is a distraction. You are still that same distraction. on the board. Your presence on the board is also part of the problem. Just as part of the problem with regard to being a distraction to doing the work, so too is the new board chair, Gregory D. Rankin. He was the vice chair who was elevated apparently in a closed session vote, which I did not think you're supposed to do. I thought you're supposed to do those votes in open session. But this is what they did in closed session. She stepped aside. Vice Chair Rankin was elevated to chair. And then they voted on a new vice chair. They did do that part in open session. And we saw the 5-4 block install Liz Monterey Duvall. But now she says she's going to be stepping aside from that position at the end of the year. She said she was going to quit immediately. But then she said, all right, I'll wait till the end of the year because Dee Rankin convinced her to stick around for a couple months until the end of the year. She's not going to resign from the board. She's just going to step aside as vice chair because she too has claimed she's receiving threats. And once again, I point out all of the board members are Democrats. Okay, so this isn't a bunch of MAGA right-wing Republicans that are coming after the board members to This is an internal factional split inside the Democrat Party on the Board of Education. They are going at each other. They've got political allies that are going at each other. So that seems to be what's going on. And as not a member of the Democrat Party, I don't know all of the personality conflicts. I don't know all of the different friction points and such. But this is what it looks like. And I can tell you as one who covered the school board through many dysfunctional cycles that when you see this stuff bubbling up in the public meetings, then you know it's much worse in the closed meetings because there they don't have to worry about the cameras being on them. In front of the public, they're doing these types of speeches about let's focus on the children, you know, we're doing the work and we want to applaud all of the staff and all of the teachers and you know, all of the students and all of, they do all of that in the public, but in, in the closed sessions, they, they go at each other. And there are stories that go back 30 years. Okay. I've gone over some of those stories. So this is just what we are seeing publicly. Now she's not, Stephanie Sneed's not stepping down. Nobody is stepping down. Despite the fact that there are at least two different petitions that that have been started locally calling for various members to step down because they are a distraction. And this is sort of a vote of no confidence. We don't trust you any longer. You have proven yourself unable to be a leader. Okay. We cannot remove you from the office. Voters cannot do so until you are up for reelection. So you cannot be removed. It's very difficult to remove a board member who refuses to step aside. I mean, heck, look how long it took Mooresville to get rid of their pantsless mayor, you know, and he wasn't even wearing pants. So it's hard to do. That's why a sign of leadership is and always has been like when you realize I have lost the support of the people I'm leading. I need to now step aside because the institution that I was leading would benefit from me stepping aside. But they will not do so. They haven't done so. They refuse to do so. It's what they all said last night. And in fact, their defiance manifests as sort of an attack on the public because the public cares about these allegations and they care about the dysfunction because they got kids in the system, they're paying tax dollars into this system, and they look at this and they say, what are you guys doing? We don't have confidence in you. And the response from the Board of Ed is, you just need to, you know, vote for Democrats to give the district more money. I'm not kidding. This is what they said last night. They called on voters to put Democrats into the state legislature so the state legislature gives CMS more money. Guys, do you realize how insane that sounds? It would be one thing, I guess, if it was some sort of like a sexual misconduct scandal. But this is a financial scandal. You got investigations into the finances of CMS. And you're up there saying that we need to put more Democrats who are the ones involved in this scandal. You want us to send more Democrats to the state to give CMS more money. So what? You can do more contracts with consulting firms that are run by your political allies? That is a very stupid argument to make. But the CMS board made it. This is what they were arguing for. Get out there and vote, everybody. Vote, vote, vote, vote for Democrats. You get more of this. All right, I have some more soundbites. Also, the story that Tia Juana Brown, the formerly incarcerated and futurely incarcerated, now former city council member, who also pleaded guilty to financial crimes, she was scheduled to speak, allegedly, at the school board meeting about all of this. Slight problem. That wasn't true. Somebody signed her name up for it, which is that is some A-plus trolling right there. I gotta say. A-plus trolling, whoever did that. 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Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. Okay, so I mentioned about Charlotte, former Charlotte City Councilwoman Tijuana Browne. big story at the Charlotte Observer that she was going to address the CMS school board last night about whether board member Stephanie Sneed should remain in office. Brown's remarks, this was reported, sorry, this was reported Monday, Monday afternoon. Brown's remarks will come as CMS board members prepare for another meeting focused on leadership accountability and the fallout from former superintendent Crystal Hills firing. Sneed stepped down as chair, but remains the District 4 representative. That occurred the same day that they fired Crystal Hill. The speaker list for last night's meeting states that Brown will discuss, quote, keeping Sneed on the school board. It does not say whether Brown plans to argue for or against Sneed remaining on the board. Brown did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. Brown, a former city council member pleaded guilty earlier this year to wire fraud conspiracy involving COVID-19 relief money. But I paid it back, but I paid it back. As she kept saying, she got 10 months in federal prison followed by two years of supervised release. But she has now said she's going to appeal that sentence. after she attacked the judge in a Facebook post, which is, that's some brilliant strategery there. Well, it turns out this was not true. Stephanie, or sorry, Tijuana Brown had not, in fact, signed up to speak to the CMS Board of Education. Somebody signed her up to do so. Oh, my goodness. And that really was like, that's what I was, I would have watched the public comments for that. You know, I would have gone back and found her. But she did not speak. Now, people who did speak included some of the folks who had created these petitions. More than 1,500 people have signed a pair of petitions calling for some board members to resign. Again, this would have to be completely voluntary at this point. State law and district policy lay out what would happen if a board member or members did step down midterm. This according to a report at the Charlotte Observer, a member would likely have to resign to create a vacancy on the board as there are few options in the state of North Carolina for removing an elected official from office. An elected official becomes disqualified from holding their seat under the state constitution if they move away. or if they are convicted of a felony while in office, I guess, because we have a convicted felon as the board chair now. So, but that happened years ago. That was like 10 or 15 years ago. There's also a state statute on the books that allows the North Carolina attorney general or someone with the permission of the attorney general. So that would be Jeff Jackson who, fellow Democrat, to all of the board members, also from Charlotte, a.k.a. Baby Jesus. The Attorney General's office would have to challenge the title or right to any state, county, or municipal office if somebody, quote, usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises any public office. But according to the UNC School of Government, that process has a lot of disadvantages because it is time-consuming, it's expensive. So absent those options, according to the reporter Mary Ramsey, there are virtually no mechanisms for removing a school board member or to force a school board to remove one of its own. There's no state statute that lays out options for removing elected local board members, and North Carolina generally does not allow recall elections. The General Assembly could conceivably try to pass what's called a local act. So these are bills that are run, but they only apply to a local area. And there are certain rules like they got to be non-controversial. They can't like affect the budget or something there. There are some rules on these local acts that the local delegations bring forward. They could order the removal of a local school board member through one of these local acts, but the odds of that actually happening seem to be unlikely. Probably I would say because the local delegation would all have to be on board with doing that. And our local delegation to the general assembly are all Democrats. So don't think that's going to happen either. Even if you remove one of these board members, the remaining board members pick the replacement. So not sure, not sure we want that either. This is, This is the problem. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes later, tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. All right, back to the text line. Clean this up here with the remaining commentary from you people. Jeff with a G says, they love to say, for the children... when in reality it is from the children, as in stealing from the mouths of. Vote for more Democrats to address the corruption. That makes about as much sense as vote Democrat to make stuff cost less. It does. Yes. Um, next up is Brent. Um, Okay, I love how you believe Democrats have morals. They will never step aside. Way too greedy. It should bother everyone that there are board or state and federal government positions you can't be removed from. Ridiculous. Well-armed militia sounds better and better. Jeff says the marginally demoted CMS board head sneeds use of the word of the whispering word. Didn't Gary, not my fault, McFadden use that ploy? Yeah, this has become a standard thing. This idea, oh, there are all these whispers going on and all these rumors going on. I don't deny that that's happening, by the way. See, here's the thing, though. In a town such as ours, controlled by a single party, right, that's what you're going to hear. the whispering, the innuendo, the rumors and all that stuff because it's all amongst themselves. It's all amongst the Democrats, right? So you have these different factions vying for power and prominence in the party and the Republicans are shut out. See, normally if you had a functioning two-party contest going on, then those, quote, rumors, the whispering, those things would actually be articulated by your political opponents in public. You would just be out there saying it right to your face and asking people to vote for you because, you know, I'm not corrupt like my opponent is, whatever. But when the party dominates as it does here in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, then you have these camps that engage in this kind of this whisper campaigning against one another. And people talk to each other. And, you know, you're let's say you're at some fundraising event and you're chit chatting with three or four of your fellow Democrats. And you you engage in some of this whispering, some of this rumorings. And one of the people that hears you do this, they are also friends with the target of the whispering campaign. They go back to their friend and say, hey, you know, Pete was saying this about you. And so that's what they're talking about. And that's why we're hearing more and more of these types of accusations from these elected officials. It's because it is happening. And that's a byproduct of a one-party campaign. Controlled jurisdiction. 704 number says, I love Sneed's attitude. No humility at all. Sad to hear, but it provides me more weeks of entertainment while I am at work listening. See, so you got to find silver linings on all this stuff. The Hellion says, please keep a spotlight on the bunch that makes over 200 K a year. That should be re-evaluated. People that make that much should be designing bridges, not turning out subpar citizens. Yeah, we have way too many people in CMS making six figures of that nature. Is this to me or to Brett? Iron Rhino. All right, it's addressed to Brett, but I think you mean me, and my name is Pete. But I think, but it says Brett. After listening to the clips on your show today, I would classify the Fivers as hypocritical narcissists that feed off of deceit and each other's ideas on obtaining capital gain. As a proud Charlatan and 87 grad of Myers Park, I am disgusted and embarrassed by the way these nine people represent our education system. Kevin wants to know if there's an unwritten code that radio broadcasting entities are not allowed to work together when they are in the same market. Uh, yes. Um, it's, it's old school radio because they're competitors. And so you never do anything. That's like, for example, that's why the Charlotte observer never mentions WBT's call letters and, and, and our frequency. And if they like for years, they would always refer to us as, uh, if they even mentioned our call letters, they would, put 1100 AM. So they would put the wrong frequency in their stories. Um, when I worked in Asheville, we partnered up with a TV station there, WLOS. And, um, I was up there. Remember when the, um, the Islamic attack on the army recruiting station in Chattanooga, Tennessee happened, we are our radio station. We spearheaded this thing where we like got big banners, uh, you know, Chattanooga strong and we stand with you and all this stuff. And we had people come out to the local grocery store parking lot and everybody signed the banners. And then we delivered them over to the, um, uh, over to Chattanooga and our own TV partner called us quote, a local radio station. That's because they don't want to get, they don't want to give anybody advertising, free advertising. So then, oh my gosh, I'm aware that this other station exists and I'm not going to watch your station. I'm going to watch this other one. So yeah, that's pretty standard. Oscar says, I am pretty sure that the FBI is not focusing on the children. Yeah, that's right. That is correct. They're focusing on the books. Danny says, in my calm and soothing text manner, the CMS board is all Democrats. So they have taken any bullets out of their gun, accusing the other side of any ill will. Snead should point out that the catcalls are coming from her own side. Right. And that's exactly correct. If they could tie this to Republicans, they would. But they can't. So that's why they just talk about these nebulous whispering campaigns and rumors and stuff. And they never call people out specifically, you know. What about Crystal Hill? Only reason she mentioned any of this is because they fired her. Was she in on it? No, she actually sent all of this out and then got fired. Remember, she compiled. So what appears to me, the timeline on this appears to me to be going through the budget process. She makes her recommendation. The board majority refuses to adopt her recommendation because apparently the board chair and her allies did not want to spend like $ 4 million on teacher pay raises, but rather to put that money aside for stuff to be determined later, which would have been consulting contracts to her friends. And Crystal Hill did not put that in the budget. It did not go through the normal board process. So she didn't put it in the budget that then prompted this friction at the open meeting when they did not accept her budget proposal. Then she gets put on suspension. They hire a law firm. They investigate for two months. They turn up nothing. And then she, in the interim, then, or as soon as she comes back, she then publishes that memo to the board outlining all of these financial irregularities and suspicious activity that Then she got fired. It does not seem like she was in on this. All right. More from the text line. Then I'm going to be moving on. We're going to be moving forward and doing the work for the children on a different topic in the next hour. But I want to clear out some of these remaining texts on the text line. Danny says, I think Crystal Hill should be reinstated for pulling the cover off of all of this mess. That might be an option, depending on how this all shakes out, yeah? Steven says, I feel like this is going to be a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime. And the name of the movie is going to be called Betrayal in the Classroom. We can do, yeah, we can do that. Sneed and greed for the children. All right. Beth's favorite Russ says, I don't doubt that there's some level of threats and whispering going on, but I also think that saying so publicly without naming names feels a lot like a sympathy ploy and the Darvo inaction. DARVO is, this is the acronym that narcissists use in order to manipulate other people. It's psychological manipulation, psychological abuse. DARVO stands for deny, anger, and then the RVO is reverse victim and offender, right? So they may have harmed you, And when you object, they then reverse that and say basically they're the victim and you calling them out for the harm they caused, that's victimizing them. So it's a manipulation tactic. So yeah, there's probably some of that going on as well. Remember that there are certain professions that sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists that they are attracted to law, politics, media. I am aware I work in media people. Yes. Okay. I am aware. Russ goes on to say, also, I'm not quite ready to believe Crystal Hill is a hero in all this mess. Given the stories of the A & T mafia, friends with large salaries and use of vehicles. My gut tells me the friction came from a difference in priorities and whose friends were getting paid. That's fair too. Yeah, I've not held up Crystal Hill as the hero in this. There's evidence, though, that she is a whistleblower. And I pointed out that people blow the whistle for not so altruistic reasons too, right? People can blow the whistle on corruption or malfeasance or whatever. for a variety of reasons. Some of them are, you know, self-preservation, vengeance, whatever. But it does appear that that memo she put out was an attempt to blow the whistle. Her motives for that are unknown. DA says the former fired CMS super may well not have been in on the fraud, but dollars to donuts, she knew about it and wouldn't be coming forward now if she was still tight with her CMS board homies. And they certainly wouldn't have hired her in the first place if they didn't think she was going to play. ball. Well, she, remember she won, she won the post. She was the chief of staff. I want to say, I think that was her position in CMS for the previous board superintendent who they fired. Ernest Winston. Remember that guy? He was a, He was an education reporter for the Charlotte Observer and parlayed that into superintendency. And she worked for him, and then she was promoted to superintendent, but that was not a unanimous vote. That was a split vote. I think it was 6-3. So Oscar says, can the state take over the CMS board? I believe the State Board of Education could try to do something like that. Yes. Yes. Um, I have a better title for that movie school board gone wild. Uh, I think miss Hill's going to file a wrongful termination lawsuit and it's going to cost us even more money. Um, I've heard this prediction as well. She very well could. I don't know. Uh, I, I, I cannot tell the future. Um, however, um, the board can fire her for convenience, which is what they cited. They did not fire her for cause they're paying out her contract. So yeah, I, so I don't know if there's something actionable there, you know? Um, Steven says, yes, Sneed and greed, the story of how your government failed your children. You got to have, you got to have the big title and then you got to have the very large subtitle, right? So this way you get more keywords that pop up in the search engine optimization. That's true. So it's like you got to have sneed and greed. The story of how your government failed your children. And you got to say it like that. We got to get that guy who does all the voiceovers for the movie promos, you know. In a world where your children. Something like that. I like it. We're just spitballing here. 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 Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.