Federal union workers singing for supper may starve (02-12-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 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 thepetekalinershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] So first, first thing before I play this next clip, I apologize. I know what this is going to do to people. And so I'm sorry for that reaction. I'm sorry for the response that you are probably going to have. But if I had to hear it, I feel like you should too. But that's all right. So I'll just I'll just say that let me and then I will preface this.

[00:00:59] There are a lot of government union workers that are upset, that are worried. And I understand why you're for probably for the first time ever, you're worried about being fired. And that is something that people in the private sector and specifically, by the way, in the radio industry.

[00:01:23] We live with this every day. I've been let go from two different radio jobs, both for budgetary reasons, never anything I did. It was budgetary. They didn't have the money to pay for enough people or so they determined. And so they had to fire people. And I was on the chopping block. So it has happened to me twice.

[00:01:44] So I understand. I totally understand. And a lot of people in the private sector work every single day with the knowledge that if the boss doesn't like their performance, they will be fired.

[00:02:03] And it's a heck of a motivation to keep doing good work and to show up on time, you know, shower before you come to the office, actually come to the office like that kind of stuff, like to listen to what your boss is telling you to do because you want to keep your job.

[00:02:20] Now, that's not to say everybody's just doing it to keep their job. You know, obviously, people have good work ethic and all of that. But people in the private sector live with this sort of Damocles, if you will, all the time hovering above them. And they somehow manage to not have mental breakdowns or write really terrible protest songs. But I understand this is new territory for a lot of federal employees, union employees that have never had to worry about this before.

[00:02:49] So I guess they can be forgiven for this. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Tell me which side are you on? Which side are you on? We'll fight against George. We'll fight Elon Musk. No way, let's get within our walls.

[00:03:18] We'll fight from dawn to dusk. Oh, which side are you on? Which side are you on? Tell me. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Trump's coming for our unions. He wants us all to fail. He wants us to bow to him. But we want him in jail.

[00:03:47] Oh, which side are you on? Which side are you on? Tell me. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? They say you troll's fat. Or a scabby musk bloodhound. Oh, which side are you on?

[00:04:15] Which side are you on? Tell me. Which side are you on? Tell me. Which side are you on? One more time. Don't take that government into Trump's lies. I swear. I'm out of chance. And let's reorganize. Oh, which side are you on? Which side are you on? Oh, yeah. Tell me.

[00:04:45] Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Not yours. Not yours. And if I was thinking about being on your side, I'm not after that. They actually gave them stage time. They performed that in front of a crowd in the cold protesting.

[00:05:13] Well, you heard Musk and Trump and scabs. I ain't heard people use the word scab unironically since like the NFL strike back in like, what was that? The 80s or something? The 90s? I don't know. Like who uses that term anymore? Sure. Trump wants you to fail and you want him in jail. Okay.

[00:05:42] So I feel like there's a bit of a disproportionality there in who's the villain, you know? Like you're trying to do stuff that's been identified as connected to, if not directly related to waste, fraud and abuse. So Trump wants you to fail in that and your response is incarcerate him for the rest of his life. That's the, because he's old. He's, you know, you throw him in jail.

[00:06:12] He's, so again, like I feel like, I feel like you might have a touch of the TDS, just a touch, a smidge maybe. Now, I don't know. Some of these people did seem to be a bit old. Um, I kind of feel like they are longing or not. Well, they would very much have loved to have been alive during the 60s.

[00:06:40] You know, I get that sense. In fact, I get that sense with a lot of people that do the protest marching. You know, they, they, they, they plagiarize the chants, whose street, our street, you know, one, two, three, four, we don't want your war, like all of that stuff. They just, they rip off the flower power generation. Uh, they rip them off and use their slogans and stuff. And this is another tactic that I've seen these little protest songs, but they're not,

[00:07:09] they're not, they're not good. These are not good. Protest songs. I, I don't know. Peter, Paul and Mary and, and, uh, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, although he'd always reject that, that mantle. I, I, your song stinks, man, woman, or however you identify. Your song is terrible. It's just terrible.

[00:07:38] And I don't know if you're winning. Actually, I know you're not winning any converts. There is not a single person that sees you marching on some random government edifice and says, wait, wait, wait, let me hear their song. And then after hearing that, they're like, you know what? Now I'm with you. I wasn't, I wasn't really decided. I was undecided before, but now that I've heard your song, now I'm on board.

[00:08:08] I don't think there's anybody, the only people that are going to compliment them on that tune are already in their camp. And I suspect they're complimenting them just to be nice. You know, it's like, oh, you did a great job. Don't give them the mic again. You know, but this has been going on for a while. I've seen this for like 15 years or so. Like up in Asheville, they had the, uh, the green grannies. They used to do stupid songs.

[00:08:34] We saw it at the Moral Monday marching, the Momo, um, the Moral Monday movement, the Momo, uh, that would march on, on Raleigh state Capitol. And they had these, these grannies that were singing there. And again, they're all like these either leftover or wannabe flower power protests, uh, singers. And they, they take songs and they change the lyrics. So they don't even make up their own melodies. They're just plagiarists. They're like weird Al Yankovic.

[00:09:03] That's a, I mean, that is the equivalent. They are the protest equivalent of weird Al. So I don't know the name of this, uh, this group. Cause you know, they always name themselves. They always come up with some, you know, clever quote unquote name. I don't know the name, but they are apparently federal unionized workers trying to woo us with song. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too.

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[00:10:24] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. Jason says, Pete, I wish you could play the clip of the woman who said we need to bleep Trump. I cannot play that clip because she says the word, which is weird. I think she was like, you know, we need to defeat him. Maybe she wanted to say something more violent or whatever, but she settled on the F word there, which sends a different message, right?

[00:10:54] Not one of hatred, but one of lust. So I don't, yeah, they're just, they're going a little nuts. Seth says, I can't wait to see the federal protesters during Super Bowl 60s halftime show. Sure. They will surely give Kendrick Lamar a run for his money. That's yeah. I did not understand anything at the Super Bowl licks. Halftime show.

[00:11:26] But that's what L.I.X. Super Bowl licks. Right. Anyway. Are they singing on taxpayer time? Pete wants to know if they are. Can't Trump fire them as Reagan did? The air traffic control folks. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, that's a good question. But those are union workers. Did they all take time off?

[00:11:55] In order to go protest to go march or was it after hours? I don't know. Dave says, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie? She isn't. No. That's true. Tim says, yikes. That was like being waterboarded. It is obvious they will never win on The Voice. Jeff says, sweet mother of all that is holy. Where is Simon Cowell when you need him?

[00:12:27] Jordan wanted me to cut it off. Jordan, I think it's important to know the people that we are dealing with, you know? And if people complain too much about me playing it, I will play it again. Okay? Because I am that kind of guy. James says, can we invite those folks to tour the mine where the government records are stored and then just cut the cord on the elevator? Oh yeah, we'll send it back down for you. Don't worry.

[00:12:57] Just look for some manila envelopes. They may have the key code. Greg says, please never play that again. There is a reason I haven't heard it yet. Just kidding. Great show. But seriously, don't play it again. And let's see here on Twitter. The reaction has been pretty similar.

[00:13:26] At Patriot Girl says, thank you very much, Pete. Now I have that horrible song stuck in my head like an earworm. J.R. Ewing says the same thing, which is weird. I thought he got shot. I can't get that song out of my head now. Moral Compass says, in that song, is that somebody screaming, kill me in the background? No, they're not saying kill me. They're saying, tell me. Tell me which side are you on? Hey, tell me which side. That's what he's doing. He's making it his own.

[00:13:57] No, they're not saying kill me. But maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear. Adam says, that sounds like a Hunger Games knockoff. Hunger Games theme knockoff. Oh, I don't know. Is that? I don't know my Hunger Games tunes. I do know the wave, though. She does the three-finger salute or something up there. Jonathan says, no, sir. You constantly say that you watch and listen so we don't have to.

[00:14:27] Now you're going against the grain there, buddy. That's actually true. You got me. That is true. I do say that. I say I watch so you don't have to because I am a giver. But I kind of gave you the song, too, so I kind of feel like it might cancel out.

[00:14:52] But I can understand why people would be annoyed or upset that I have broken the compact. So I apologize for doing that. Let me see here. This is from Dave. It's a Pete tweet saying, I don't know about that whole mine thing where they're keeping all of the retirement packages down in the mine.

[00:15:18] But I went to local Social Security office to apply for Medicare and Social Security after Thanksgiving because my military retirement insurance requires me to be on Medicare to continue to receive. All went well. Well, I got there is I got my first Social Security payment January 8th. Medicare cards came soon thereafter, turned 65 on December 4th. So basically a month behind. I expected longer because government.

[00:15:47] So I was surprised. But I got a passport in less than six months. Yes. So I was pleasantly surprised to that. See, when you have such low expectations, it allows more opportunity for being pleasantly surprised. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing.

[00:16:14] And then somebody says, hey, dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet, all eyes are on dad who says, oh, you know, well, I've been meaning to, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless memories sit in a box for another year. All right. Create a video has been helping families in the Charlotte area preserve their history since 1997. Simply bring in your old camcorder tapes and create a video.

[00:16:42] We'll transfer them to a USB flash drive for just $14.95 per tape. You have a big collection. They've got a discount for you. And next year, instead of talking about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together. Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Create A Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill, right off I-485, and online at createavideo.com. Pete at the Pete Callender Show is the email.

[00:17:11] I got one from Thomas regarding the which side are you on. Pete, he's giving us a rating of the song. Hard to listen to. Easy to Trump dance to. I give it a 78. Good show, Pete. Thanks. There you go. I do wish I had the gong, though. Yes. Dennis, I think it was. Kevin says, while I am a little concerned about letting a billionaire cut spending in the U.S. government,

[00:17:42] Elon Musk has no power to cut spending. He's not cutting spending. He's going in. He's leading a team that's going in and identifying these basic things like, hey, you should code this stuff so we know where the money's going. But this stuff goes through all of the various departments that he's dispatched his team into.

[00:18:08] That whatever decisions are going to be made are going to be made at the secretary level. You know, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent. And those are the people that are going to be making any decisions inside of the executive branch where they have the power to do so. And in fact, Trump was asked about this, the congressional authority. I'll play that soundbite in a minute. But back to Kevin's email. He says there could be a conflict of interest in some area.

[00:18:39] What you just said makes sense. What U.S. citizen has the most to lose if the U.S. government goes bankrupt? Elon Musk. His businesses will lose hundreds of billions. He is taking action, I feel like, for the American people. But that's not the only reason he's doing this for himself, too. OK. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine with that. Like, I really I don't care. It doesn't matter to me if he's trying to protect his wealth, because in doing so, he'll be protecting all of ours, too.

[00:19:09] And the financial solvency of our nation. So I'm. Yeah, like I'm I'm not dissuaded off of this. Now, I will say this. There's another clip here. I got a couple more to run through from this media availability at the Oval Office yesterday.

[00:19:30] That the media that was there, they seem to be a bit discombobulated by the lack of gatekeeping or as they phrase it, you know, transparency. We want transparency. And what Musk then lays out is the way that this is being done transparently. What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency? Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible.

[00:19:57] In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the Doge handle on X and to the Doge website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been I don't know of a case that we're an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization. And so, you know, the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic.

[00:20:22] They're not, you know, what I mentioned, for example, about Treasury, just making sure that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out, is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the Do Not Pay list, which are, takes a lot to get there, that actually are not paid, which currently they are paid. These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well.

[00:20:51] So it's got nothing to do with, like, say, a contract for some company of mine at all. But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president, I know, has directed you to look into. Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people? Well, all of our actions are fully public.

[00:21:19] So if you see anything, you say, like, wait a second, hey, that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there. I feel like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately. Including you yourself. Yes. But transparency is what builds trust. Not simply somebody asserting trust. Not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency. So you can see everything that's going on. And you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally obvious.

[00:21:48] And we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watch that also. He's a big businessman. He's a successful guy. That's why we want him doing this. We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this. Right. Trump then said he was elected to root out the waste, fraud and abuse. He says the total could actually be somewhere around one trillion dollars.

[00:22:17] That will have quite an impact on the budget. And you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge and he has certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings and he wants us to stop looking. How do you stop looking? I mean, we've already found it.

[00:22:34] We have a case in New York where a hotel is paid 59 million dollars, 59 million because of because it's housing migrants, illegal migrants, all illegal, I believe. And they were being paid twice the normal room rate at 100 percent occupancy. Unbelievable. So it's a racket. It's a racket. It's a racket, he says. And then there are the kickbacks. Here's a great idea. Yep.

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[00:24:14] You would think that for people that are clamoring for accountability when it comes to Elon Musk, would pay a little attention to the fact that Musk and his team are bringing transparency and accountability to the federal government. Right? Like you're running around like, who's accountable? Who's accountable for this?

[00:24:36] And he's saying, hey, I've got like tens of billions, hundreds of billions, maybe up to a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. Somebody should be held accountable for this. There needs to be greater transparency in the spending items. And they just keep saying, what about your accountability? It reminds me of everyone, Mitt Romney. Like, what about your gaffes? What about your gaffes? Like, what are you doing? I know, you're running propaganda for the opposition.

[00:25:05] Anyway, so here is another clip from this press availability at the Oval Office where they talk about what is probably the case here is that there may be kickbacks going on. But we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found. And now a judge who's an activist, judge, wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why? Why would they want to do that? I campaigned on this.

[00:25:33] I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt. And it is very corrupt. It's very, very, it's also foolish. As an example, a man has a contract for three months and the contract ends, but they keep paying him for the next 20 years, you know, because nobody ends a contract. You get a lot of that. You have a contract that's a three month contract. Now, normally, if you're in a small, in all fairness, it's the size of this thing is so big.

[00:26:01] But if you have a contract and you're in a regular business, you end the contract in three months, you know, it's a consultant. Here's a contract for three months, but it goes on for 20 years. And the guy doesn't say that he got money for 20 years. You know, they don't say it. They just keep getting checks month after month. And you have various things like that and even much worse than that, actually, much worse. And I guess you call that incompetence, maybe. It could be corruption. It could be a deal is made on both sides.

[00:26:30] You know, I guess the money he kicks. I think he has a lot of kickback here. I see a lot of kickback here. There's a lot of kickbacks. A tremendous kickback because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts. So he has to get a kickback. There you go. That's possible, too. And as they're saying this, the media is more focused on what if you have a potential conflict of interest? What about you? Like, are you listening to the things that he is saying to you right now?

[00:26:56] Musk said there are two ingredients to cut the budget deficit maybe in half here. Competence and caring. And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half. And I fully expect to be scrutinized and get a daily proctology exam, basically. Might as well just camp out there. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop.

[00:27:24] But with the support of the president, we can cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1. And then with deregulation, because there's a lot of sort of regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good. We need to free the bolivus of America to build. And if we do that, that means I think you get the economic growth to be maybe 3%, 4%, maybe 5%. And that means if you can get $1 trillion of economic growth and you can cut the budget deficit by $1 trillion,

[00:27:55] between now and next year, there is no inflation. There's no inflation in 26. And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So everyone's mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, their student debt, their monthly payments drop. That's a fantastic scenario for the average American. Right. Why are you fighting us on this? This is a good thing for people.

[00:28:24] Trump said if he needs a vote of Congress, he thinks he'll get the vote. But he asked why Congress or that judge or any of the judges would try to prevent them from finding all this fraud. But he says if a judge does block the efforts, he said he will abide the court order. Well, I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it. But then what he's done is he slowed down the momentum and it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books.

[00:28:52] You know, if a person's crooked and they get caught, other people see that and all of a sudden it becomes harder later on. So, yeah, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them and will appeal. But appeals take a long time. And I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show them, here's a corrupt situation. We have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt.

[00:29:18] Do you want us to send this corrupt check to a person or do you want us not to give it and give it back to the taxpayer? I would hope a judge would say, don't send it, give it back to the taxpayer. Yeah, if I can add to that, what we're finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So I think we can all agree that if there's going to be fraud, it should at least go to Americans. Yes. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in the United States and taking advantage of the federal government, especially in the entitlements programs, are actually foreign fraud rings.

[00:29:46] They're operating in other countries and actually exporting money to other countries. We should stop that. I agree. We should stop that. If there's going to be fraud, let it be for Americans. Fraud for Americans first, right?

[00:30:07] Again, I don't understand why Democrats insist on taking the losing side in a rational, moral, fiscal, prudent argument. And also, the polling is against them on this. This need or desire to just find the worst position to take and then to rush headlong to take it. I don't understand it. I don't get it.

[00:30:36] Do you want to keep losing? Or did you think that the administrative state was going to be there forever and it didn't really matter to you? Like eventually you get back in, but in the meantime, you'll make bank. Was that the idea? By the way, I now see reports of two of the judges involved, two judges involved in different cases here that have issued these temporary restraining orders. Both of them have wives that work for nonprofits that get USAID money.

[00:31:04] I'm sure it's just a coincidence though. 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 thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.