Democrats are mum on plans if they win | Hour 2

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 the pete calendar show.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 so um Do you remember last week, I believe it was Friday, I was on a bit of a rant about my good friend Ray Cut-Em-Loose Cooper running for U.S. Senate and how North Carolina political reporters seemed completely uninterested in what Cooper would vote for or against if he were to be our U.S. Senator. And, you know, I highlighted several issues like abolishing ICE, packing the U.S. Supreme Court, opening the border back up, right? Among other things. And their incuriosity, is that a word? I feel like that's a word. Their incuriousness, their lack of curiosity, let's say, about his answers to these questions, if they've even thought of the questions at all, is... This is media malpractice, okay? For a guy who's leading the polls, you should be asking him what he intends to do, how he intends to vote on some of these very, very large issues. Will he support impeachment against President Trump? Would he vote to convict Trump on something? Does he have that in mind? Will he fall in line with the Democrat leadership if they impeach Trump? I feel like that's something that we should know. because I'm old enough to remember when Pat McCrory ran for governor and I believe it was WRAL, but I think this thing moved around between the news and observer and RAL or something, but they did a, they called it, um, the McCrory promise keeper or promise tracker or something like that. And so they made a list of all of the promises Pat McCrory made on the campaign trail. And then they kept their site live and they would track all of his promises. Oh, he broke a promise there, broke a promise there. Like that was the whole point, right? So then Roy Cooper wins. And first off, they don't set up anything like that for him. Then they get like browbeaten on Twitter and they finally set up one, but they didn't call it a promise tracker for Cooper. You remember what they called it? The cupo meter. See, isn't that? That sounds cute. Oh, my goodness. It's the cupometer. Oh. And then they abandoned it. So why not dust that bad boy off and bring back out the cupometer? And write down some of his promises, right? Don't you want to track that sort of thing? That is part of what journalism is. Keeping journalists. you know, a record of what people say. And then when they don't act that way, or they don't deliver on those things, or they do the opposite of that thing, then you can say, Hey, you promised a, and then you did not a right. Well, okay. So while I was on this rant, I was saying that, uh, or I did say that, uh, uh, Roy Cooper seemed to be engaging in sort of a, uh, a, a redux of, uh, Biden's basement campaign in 2020. He's like, he's running as like a blank slate. You go to his website. There's like nothing on there. He's got one. It's not even an issues page. Like usually back in my day, we used to have proper campaigns. Like you would have candidates that would list all of their, their perspectives, their opinions on all sorts of issues. You would have all this stuff on the website. You don't have that. All you have on Cooper's website is the make stuff cost less tour. And you click on that and it's just bullet points of. I'm going to bring down prices. I'm going to bring down prices over here. I'm going to bring down prices over here. It's like, okay, first off, you're a U.S. senator. Now, unless you're going to stop spending and borrowing money and bankrupting the country and driving up inflation, which, by the way, I don't trust you that you're going to do that because you were all in on the Green New Deal. You signed us up as a state to the Paris Climate Accords, trying to hit these goals, which has driven up the price of energy, as was predicted to you during hearings. About this legislation. We told you. You were told, the Utilities Commission was told, they were projecting it too. They're like, yeah, the energy prices are probably going to double. That's the cost of your Green New Deal that you were all in on, Roy Cooper. So, I came across this piece over the weekend. Well, yesterday, as I was laboring on Labor Day. at PJ Media by Matt Margolis, headline, Democrats have a midterm secret they don't want voters to see. With roughly two months left before the midterm elections, Democrats still don't have a lock on winning back the majority, despite nearly everything in the political environment supposedly being in their favor. Between history, President Donald Trump's approval ratings, gas prices, polls show consistently, uh, that they have this huge edge, yet the most recent Harvard-Harris poll showed the GOP actually ahead by two points among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot, which, okay, I'm not a huge believer in this polling question. Like, they don't tell you an individual candidate's name, and you know I always say, you know, candidates matter. If you have a terrible candidate, that's going to matter. So if you just say, as a, if you're a poll taker and you call somebody up and you're like, Hey, um, who would you prefer the, you know, a, a generic no name Republican or a generic no name Democrat. So, I mean, okay, yes, it can measure some bit of sentiment, you know, I would want to see the trend line, but obviously if this is such a, a blue wave year, then why is the Republican generic ballot performing better than the Democrat generic ballot? You would not expect to see that, right? Margulis says, the reason is not complicated once you look at what Democrats are actually campaigning on. Nothing. Blank slate. Think about it. Their entire pitch is basically resisting Donald Trump. Ask what they would do with a majority and you'll get vague talking points about affordability, like Cooper. something which they failed miserably at when they were in power, instead of an actual policy agenda. And this is all deliberate. It's the same playbook Democrats ran in 2020. Did I call that or what? I mean, yes. I mean, I'm bringing you this story because it corroborates what I said too. But still, somebody else is saying it. Tell me if this sounds familiar, what Margulis writes. sound moderate enough to win the general election, then govern like radicals when you are in power. If that doesn't describe Roy Cooper and what we saw in eight years while he was governor, I don't know what else does. He pitches himself as this moderate, but he falls in line with the most radical agenda on the left. Margulis goes on to say, that this has put the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, squeezed between two factions that want opposite things inside the party. You got the activist wing of his caucus that wants confrontation. They want impeachment votes, government shutdowns, investigations into anything connected to Trump. The party's presidential hopefuls want the opposite because they know the general election electorate has no appetite for it. So think about this. You've got people running like the House and the Senate, right? And they are all in on this kind of agenda. But you've got presidential candidates that have to pay lip service to the base or else they will never get into the general election. But they know if they get to the general election and you've got two years of the House and Senate under Democrat control waging perpetual warfare against Donald Trump, like at some point, if you are seen to be part of that effort, that might not redound to your benefit in 2028. So you have this tension. 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, Creative 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, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams. 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You can email Katie. Katie at GroupTravelVideos.com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. This from thehill.com. Headline, Democrats weigh how big to go on health care reform in midterm push, which seems a little late. You know, like Labor Day just passed yesterday, and so this is now sort of like The election season is now in full swing. That's generally, like, after Labor Day, that's when everything ramps up, okay? People start paying attention that don't normally pay attention to politics. And so we have this window of a couple of weeks before early voting starts, although I think early voting, I think in California, it's still going on from the primary. And I think they started early voting, like, two weeks ago or something like that for the next election. They're just always voting. It seems like, and counting always voting and counting up there. Um, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I was being hyperbolic. I'm not telling people I'm not spreading election misinformation. It was just a joke. Okay, here, I'll give you, all right, there you go. Proof that it was a joke. Okay. So it feels like this is something, this healthcare, uh, issue, uh, seems like something that, I don't know, they could have come up with prior to, you know, 50 days before the election. But apparently they're still hashing it out, almost as if by design. Democratic lawmakers and policy groups are all throwing their ideas for a health care reform in the ring, but it remains to be seen what the party is willing to consider as it seeks to retake control of Congress. But I thought we had affordable health care. That's what Obama promised us. He was going to bend the cost curve down. If we liked our doctors, we could keep our doctors. This was going to be the Affordable Care Act. So after the ACA enhanced premium tax credits expired last year and with no momentum to revive them at the Capitol, Democrat-aligned groups in recent months have been putting forward their proposals for new health care reform initiatives. And by the way, these are not reforms, okay? All this is is to try to push us another step towards the government controlling the entire health care system. That's what Democrats want. They want a single-payer system, but they have to do it incrementally. Ideas have ranged from proposals like Medicare by choice to a public nonprofit option for all. There is a senator, Democrat from New Jersey named Andy Kim, who unveiled his bill called the MediKids Act. The MediKids Act. He unveiled this in July. It would automatically enroll every child into Medicaid at birth. It would provide continued eligibility until the age of 26 and cover 100% of the federal medical assistance percentage for this cohort. So everybody gets on the government Medicaid. Every baby. Every one of them. Yeah, that never gets taken away. See, that's the thing. I've talked about this before. There was a study done a long, long time ago. You put a bunch of babies in cribs. and you hang one of those mobiles over their heads. I mean, we're talking very young babies, right? And, you know, the mobile will have, like, two things dangling off of it and spinning around, or it'll have four things dangling off of it. And when they replaced the mobile with, like, let's say, you know, crib A has a mobile with two items dangling. And then they swapped it out for one that had four items dangling. The kid was happy. When they went the opposite way in crib B, they went from a four item mobile to a two item mobile. The baby starts crying and they replicated this. Like. Even babies understand when you're taking stuff away from them. They can't even really see very well, but they're still able to determine that I had something and now I don't have that something. That's why government programs never go away. Expanding Medicare coverage and government-run insurance programs is another idea. Lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare and expanding coverage to include vision and dental and hearing. Right. So just so the Democrats are all of these, quote, reforms. It's all just more spending. Meanwhile, they're running around complaining about 40 trillion dollars in debt. As they're advocating to layer on more debt to expand the entitlement programs. There is a renewed appetite for healthcare reform within the Democratic Party and a growing interest in going beyond the Affordable Care Act. Right. This is simply, we're going to keep reforming it until we control it all. Which is funny because the other day, somebody came to our door, despite our very visible, no solicitation, you know, don't bother us sign. People just ignore it. And this woman, she's a pleasant woman, but she came to the door and she self-identified as a health care worker. And she has a little palm card to hand us. And she's out there drumming up support for Roy Cooper and Anita Earls and asking us how we're going to be voting on the tax constitutional amendments, the cap on the income tax and the property tax cap. And she's a healthcare worker. And she told me, first off, she said we were the nicest people that she met in the entire day canvassing. We had a good conversation. She thanked us for being so nice. But she's out there getting information about us as to whether or not they're going to devote any more resources, you know, to try to get us out to vote. And given our answers, they probably marked us off their list. especially mine. They don't want me to go out and vote because I told, no, I'm not voting for Roy. No, I'm not voting for Anita Earls. And I'm voting yes on both of the taxes. And she says, oh, are you Republicans? I was like, well, I'm, I'm an independent. I have, I'm unaffiliated. I have voted for Democrats in Democrat districts where I live and I have no, no other choice. And I go in there operation chaos style. But yeah, I'm not going to vote for Roy Cooper. But this is why a healthcare worker is out there knocking on doors for the Democrats. Because it's a way to expand their power. A way to expand their professional options. And maybe people are going to buy that. I don't know. I didn't. I mentioned last hour a pretty remarkable story. This is from Amy Curtis at townhall.com. Back in July, the FDA approved Lekembe, a series of injections that specifically targets the plaques that build up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Those plaques are what cause the memory loss, the behavioral changes, and terminal decline. That medication was given to Gail Youngsdale about three years ago. her Alzheimer's disease was progressing. And at the time, Lekembe was a trial drug. So doctors gave her injections to target the nine spots of plaque in her brain. Fast forward to today, every spot of the plaque is gone. She's gotten married, and she says she has most of her memory back. Not all of it, but most of it. of her memory is back. The FDA has also approved a subcutaneous injection for home use as well. So progress in the fight against Alzheimer's. That's why I walk every year with the Alzheimer's Association. It's the walk to end Alzheimer's. If you would like to join Pete's PAC, which is my team. Uh, we're going to, uh, walk in, uh, the Charlotte walk. And we are also, well, I'll be emceeing, uh, the Gastonia walk, but there are walks all over the country. So if you can't walk with me on my team, or you want to go in a different, uh, go to a different city and do that walk, set up your own team, go to ALZ.org. If you want to make a donation, we're trying to raise money, obviously for the Alzheimer's association and this stuff, uh, the money fund stuff like, uh, education programs, outreach. It supports the caregivers. It funds critical studies and connects scientists around the world with the work that they're all doing. So it's a great organization. I've been a supporter of the Alzheimer's Association for almost 30 years myself. And so if you want to join the team, you can find a link in the podcast description. You can also go to ALZ.org and just type in Pete's Pack. do a search and you'll find my team. And then you could donate to the team. You can join the team. You can make a donation anonymously, whatever you want to do. And I thank you very much for the support. We're trying to raise five grand and we're about $ 1, 500, I think so far. And this is, we got about three to four weeks before the walks. All right, let me jump over and get Bruce on. Hello, Bruce. Welcome to the show. Bruce. Bruce. All right. Good talk. So the hill.com talking about the various healthcare quote unquote reforms that Democrats are kicking around. And remember like the, what Matt Margulis was talking about in the PJ media piece where he says the fact that Democrats won't tell you what they're planning is the clearest evidence yet that they already know you would not vote for it. So they're trying to figure out a way to message on health care because that's where they're strongest. They have an advantage when people cite health care. They think Democrats are better on health care because Democrats just promise you free stuff all the time. Amy Dacey is the executive director of the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics at American University, also former CEO of the Democratic National Committee. She said, I think there's a recognition that the Affordable Care Act certainly solved an enormous coverage problem, but it did not necessarily, you know, solve some of the underlying affordability problem. You don't say. So wait, so it didn't make it affordable? So when you guys are out there saying that the Affordable Care Act would make care more affordable. That's why you named it that. And people like, oh, I don't know me. We were saying this is not going to make it more affordable. In fact, you're going to drive prices up and you're going to reduce options for people. You're going to be consolidating power into the health insurance companies and hospitals and such. Well, I guess we were right and you were wrong. So we should totally trust you now when you are floating these new reforms that will totally this time get to the underlying problem of affordability. Right. Several progressive lawmakers are still pushing for Medicare for all. And Senator Andy Kim characterized his MediKids Act as a stepping stone to achieving this. There you go. See, so when I'm telling you, whenever they're pitching quote-unquote reforms, all they are are stepping stones to get to universal government control of health care. That's what they want. That's the holy grail. Always has been. More centrist Democrats are rather leaning towards strengthening and expanding existing programs, though. Daisy said, quote, to me, the interesting political question is whether these groups can agree on a common first step, you know, and go from there. The next democratic healthcare project, I think it's more likely to be about affordability and market power. Well, okay then. I mean, if you can't trust Democrats that are being completely corrupted and cooed by socialists, if you can't trust them to figure out a way to to make a government-run program, quote-unquote, affordable, and to harness the power of the free market. Really, who can you trust if not the Democrats? Brad Woodhouse, longtime Democrat strategist and executive director of the health care advocacy group called Protect Our Care, When asked if there are any ideas that may be a step too far for Democrats and their base, Woodhouse said proposals to do away with all existing coverage options and replacing them with a one-payer system would be one example. He said that would be a big step too far because that's not what the American people are asking for. See, so they know that what they want to do is not what you want them to do. So they're going to just nibble a little bit. Just keep on nibbling. Nibble, nibble, nibble, nibble. And then eventually, well, okay, fine. There's like nothing left here, so I'll just go ahead and gobble the rest of it up. All right, we're going to try this again. Bruce, welcome to the show. Are you there, Bruce? Yes, I am. Okay, I can hear you. Okay, good. I wanted to talk about the unions a little bit. Not all unions are alike. My experience was in Las Vegas for these soundstage people, the union they had. And to join the union actually takes a couple of years because you have the apprenticeship and there is a long list of people who want to get into the union. A lot of it has to do with training people for safety, and they take that responsibility, the union, to make sure people are doing their job safely, to protect everyone. So they don't just hire people. They don't get people in just to play a union deuce. One of the good things about the union, too, is their pension was phenomenal. Hang on, hang on, hang on, Bruce. When states enact laws that restrict the ability to have a right to work, like North Carolina is a right-to-work state, right? If you are to force union membership on all employees in a particular company or field or industry. Right. Then that is about empowering a union through the collection of dues. Yeah, that's true. And I could have joined the union for state government workers, and we were all benefit from the collective bargaining part of it. But, yeah, I didn't rejoin that union because I couldn't see any direct benefit for me because even I was in a technology area, so wages would go up anyway. So I didn't see any reason to join the union. Right, well, and the union would call you a free rider. Yeah, exactly. But I'm not really, I'm just saying. No, and that was the point of the discussion from the first hour, was that the free rider problem is baked into the Marxist cake. And they talked to all the Marxist philosophers and thinkers. They all recognized that problem where you had to then force people to do work because you would have slackers and free riders that wouldn't do their part. Right. Okay, I thought you were kind of lumping all the unions together. No, I mean, I have no problem with private sector unions. I do have a problem with public sector unions. I don't think those should be allowed because I'm not at the negotiating table. You're squeezing me as a taxpayer, not you, but like the union then squeezes the politicians together. And they make donations to the politicians to put their preferred candidates into office so they can secure better contracts. But the politician isn't paying for that. And the union isn't paying for that. I, the taxpayer, am paying for that. So that's why I don't think public sector and FDR said the same thing. JFK said the same thing. They were all against public sector unions. Yeah, but in a private sector, you could totally have– I don't care if people want to organize as long as I have the ability to not join a union. Yeah. It's interesting, too, because like Estonia– I was reading about this recently. They had– in 1929 when they had the strike there, they actually had communists– they say they're communists– come in and try to get the changes made to the mill down there. Sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's hand in glove with Marxism. It's the union operations of a century ago. Yeah, I appreciate the call, Bruce. Thank you, sir. The Nice Marie wrote on the text line, what socialists do not understand is the fact that private insurance keeps hospitals in business. Medicare and Medicaid pays extremely low rates. Yep, we pointed all of this out during the debate over Obamacare a decade ago. Happy Friday. Oh, no, sorry. Um, your information blitz on my friend ray is very welcome in his commercials he promises to reform the health care industry and force insurance companies to provide coverage for all physician care directives i was fighting my insurance company while ray was governor and he did nothing He can't. It is all contract law, and as a senator, he is not going to dismantle the Unaffordable Care Act. As for enrolling infants in Medicare at birth, who will decide what gender they are assigned? I'm not sure. Probably the babies. I think they would decide for themselves at some point. You've just got to raise them as a gender-neutral fluid something. Jeff with a G says, I remember the good old days before Obama made healthcare quote-unquote affordable. I used to pay a $ 25 copay to see a doctor. These days, I'm lucky to get out for less than $ 200 for every office visit. Yeah. Well, that's the thing about socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money, right? 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 ThePeteCalenderShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.