Four potential NC constitutional amendments and cameras on the NC border | Hour 1

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 vpekclendershow 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 a lot to get to today. First off, starting in North Carolina, we now have the potential for four constitutional amendments that we the voters, may be able to weigh in on during the November election. It's going to depend on whether or not the legislature can get these things through, so we'll see, but I'm gonna run down what those constitutional amendments may be. This from Laura Leslie, the reporter formerly of WRL, the Raleigh bureau chief. Now now she does her workover at NC news Line, which is part of the state's newsroom system. They describe themselves as the nation's largest state focused nonprofit news organization. Okay, but they are essentially a propaganda mouthpiece for the left, the hardcore left. They are funded through Hope Well Fund, which mixes and mingles. It's funding from the Arabella Group, which is funded in large part by If you guess George Soros, you'd be correct. And so they go around and they hire for reporters that are obviously in line with them philosophically, ideologically, and they bring them into their little nonprofits and they crank out quote news stories and the whole point is to launder stories. Okay, so you and this has already occurred with NC news Line. I forget what the previous story was, but oh, I think it was the it was the speeding tickets that Michael Wattley had, right, Wattley's got a lead foot, And so they went back like I don't know, twenty years, thirty years or something like that, and they found speeding tickets and they then do a big story about it. Then the Cooper campaign, which probably gave the information to the NC news Line folks, and they then so they do the story and then the Cooper campaign takes the quote headline off of the blog because that's what it is. It's just basically a website. It's a blog, and they, you know, take screenshots of it, and they're like, put some ominous music behind it. Michael Wattley claims to love the police, but then why is he always speeding. Well, maybe he wants to have more interactions with law enforcement officers because he loves them so much. I mean, now, like that's the launder. The laundering mechanism. Feed the oppo research to a reporter, they do the story, then you cite that story. This is what Nancy Pelosi referred to as the wrap up smear, right, And it's sort of like the LBJ line where back when he was running for a congressional district in Texas and his campaign manager was talking with him and LBJ said, I want you to accuse my Republican opponent of having relations with farm animals. And the campaign manager's like, well, that's ridiculous, that's not true. We can't just go out and say that. He's like, you're just lying about the guy. And LBJ said, well, I know it's not true. I just want to hear him deny it. That's the smear. So anyway, so just I give all of that background here so you are aware when I'm going through this piece of the n SEE news line that you have that in the back of your mind. Okay, So North Carolina's Republican legislative leaders filed two new constitutional amendments yesterday aiming to load up this falls ballot with proposals tailored to attract conservative voters to the polls. Okay, First off, there's no corroboration that that's the motivation behind this, especially when I read through what these amendments are. But even if that is true, and let's assume that it is, let's assume that Republicans don't really care about these things. They just know that the voters do, and so they're going to do this in order to get conservative voters to the polls. Okay, and oh no, wait a minute. The politicians are giving their voters, their base voters, their party colleagues. They're giving them what they want. Outrageous, How dare you. Wait? Isn't that what they're supposed to be doing? Right? But note how it's framed in this negative context, like, oh, that's the real reason they're doing it. Yeah, But even if that is the real reason, that's actually a good reason, because they've been elected to bring these things forward, things that their voters want them to do. The two new amendments. Were filed in the Senate and are already scheduled for an unusual Monday meeting of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Senate Bill ten eighty one would guarantee North Carolinians the constitutional right to quote engage in farming and forestry. Okay, you have the constitutional right to engage in farming and forestry. And when people think forestry, they're probably thinking, you know, like, uh, I don't know park service people or something. But no, no, no, this is growing timber on your own land and then harvesting it. Right, Like, you could do this if you have enough acreage, you plant a bunch of trees and then you know, every other year you take a portion of it and you get the you know, you bring in a contractor they take the trees down. You make a bunch of money, plant more trees. I dare say. It's a renewable resource, you know, and so you have the right to do that on your property. Is that necessary? Do we need a constitutional amendment to protect one's right to farm and forest for farm and forestry right? I don't all either way, Like, do you need this protection? Does it need to be stated? I don't know. We did the fishing and hunting constitutional right, remember that one. So again, this is probably something that conservatives would like to see enshrined, reason being, we don't trust the left. We just don't trust you guys. And if you guys got back into power in North Carolina, I could actually see you banning forestry, banning people from selling timber on their own land. I could see you doing that. Because you would rather the land be clear cut and a. Bunch of solar panels installed. Stub Senate Bill ten eighty two. This would guarantee a constitutional right to work, banning any requirement to join a labor union. Well, you know why the left is against that. They would very much like to force you to join a labor union. And if Democrats ever did win back control of the legislature, I have no doubt that they would seek to make us a union state with collective bargaining rights for public sector unions the ability to strike. I have no doubt they would do that. Why because that's who makes up their base. And the more money you can extract from taxpayers to give to your union pals, the more money they have to fund your reelection campaigns and keep you in power, so you can give them more money, so they can give you more money, and you can give them more money, and. Blah blah blah. See. So this would preserve the right to work status in the Constitution, which makes it much more difficult for Democrats to unwind. And Democrats are not going to like this. Good good I said this a couple of weeks ago. The North Carolina General Assembly, under the control of the Republicans, need to adopt active measures that not just repel leftists from moving here, but may even induce some of them who already are here to leave. Right if you don't want to live under these rules, under these laws, then go to a state that has the laws that you want. That's what Republicans should be doing for their voters, for our citizens. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos, and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They 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 creative video dot com. Let us mosey on over to the old text line and Jason asks, would the Farming and Forestry bill trump the hoa's that prevent chickens and other animals? It is unclear. I do not know because right now it's just a constitutional amendment question on the ballot, and it would read fussly constitutional amendment protecting the right of the people to engage in farming and forestry or against. So that's the question now. It's still being debated, and so maybe they refine that language or something. But if you go to the bill that enables this vote, Section thirty nine. Right to engage in farming and forestry, the right of the people to engage in the cultivation of crops, the raising of livestock and poultry, the production of dairy and apiary products, the harvesting of timber, and other practices for the production of agricultural and forestry commodities is a value and essential part of the state's heritage and shall be forever preserved for the public good, subject only to laws enacted by the General Assembly and rules adopted pursue into authority granted by the General Assembly. So that little last part there. That I'm not sure, subject only to laws and acted by the General Assembly. So the HOA laws in North Carolina are enacted by the General Assembly. And so I don't know if like hoas would still be able to ban the raising of chickens in your backyard. But depending on how many chickens you had, even if like this, even if this, even if this would essentially prohibit hoas from banning chickens, And now all of the hoas have to allow chickens, depending on how many chickens you opt for they could, you know, be walking all around your yard and depending on the size of your lot, which might not be very big, like maybe it's under a quarter of an acre or something, and you know in your backyard is like a third of that and so you know, if they destroy your yard, then the hoa can come after you for that because you're not maintaining your backyard, you know what I mean, the turf stuff. So I don't know. I don't that's the It's a long way of saying I don't know, but it's a good question. Beth's favorite Russ says a friend with a grading company had a client who wanted to clear a couple acres, sell the timber, and lease the land to a neighbor for cattle grazing. The state denied the permit on environmental impact grounds. Less than a year later, the state approached him on behalf of a solar company and told him they had pre approval for twenty five acres if he would lease it to them. Yeah. I remember getting a. Video from someone I know who shall remain nameless, and they own a whole bunch of farmland that was adjacent to a bunch of woods. And the person who owned that property next door did one of these solar deals, and he, the person I know, shot video of the process involved to clear the land. They did not even harvest the timber. They burned it all. They scraped the entire surface, cut down all the trees, ripped them all out, put them in a massive burn pile, and set it on fire. Obviously for the environment, right, I mean obviously because you got to put the solar panels there. So those are two constitutional amendments I've already run through. Let me see a couple more texts. I'm embracing for another annoying campaign from Democrats. What's the equivalent of twenty eighteen's nicks the six quash the quad? Oh gosh, that would be Yeah, that does sound like that does sound like a slogan they would adopt. And remember when there were the six constitutional amendments that were floated to the voters in twenty eighteen, four of those six did in fact pass. Eddie says, I saw a guy in Gastonia that had a zebra in his fenced in backyard. Are you sure? Maybe he just painted the stripes on him? All right? The other two constitutional amendments that may be put to US voters. Senate Bill ten eighty, part of the budget deal announced earlier this week by Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall. This would cap the state's income tax at three point five percent beginning in twenty twenty seven. That bill's going to be heard in the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. So right now, you'll recall in twenty eighteen, there was a constitutional amendment to bring the maximum income tax down from I think it was ten percent down to seven percent, and Democrats were raising holy haitis over that, saying, you know. We may need to go higher. You don't know what kind of economic environment we may be facing in the future. You know, in all of this now, they never told you that the original cap was seven percent, and it was seven percent for a really long time in the North Carolina Constitution. Democrats had that changed, pushing it up to ten percent, and then the Republicans came back in twenty eighteen and brought it back down to the historical seven So this would now cut that in half at three point five percent. So do you think this might be popular among conservative voters? I do. Do you think they may want to turn out and vote for Republicans and these amendments, I do, Oh my gosh, that's terrible. Pete, Wait a minute, I thought we wanted more people to vote. Isn't this a good way to increase voter turnout? Write Democrats? Or is it just your voters? Is it just you want your voters to turn out. It's not like a universal voter turnout. It's just Democrat voter turnout. So anything that helps to jack up your numbers good, anything that jacks up Republican turnout numbers bad. And the final one is, and we've talked about this one before, House built ten eighty nine, a constitutional amendment to impose limits. On property tax increases. That's going to be heard on the House floor probably next week. Meredith Poll director and political scientist David mcclennan says it's reminiscent of twenty eighteen, when Republicans were facing a blue wave in the midterm after Trump's first election and responded by putting six constitutional amendments on the ballot. He said, quote, it's not really about establishing constitutional rights as much as it is to signal to their voters, Hey, look, we could have some trouble this year, but these things might bring you out because you care about taxes and property taxes and farming. Once again, I say, okay, so what so what? Good Again? They're doing what their voters want them to do. Isn't that good representation? We have some breaking news because I am here. Thank you very much for breaking it while I am here. Congressman Steve Cohen, he of the bucket of fried Chicken, Democrat from Tennessee. He ate a bucket or a piece out of a bucket of KFC during a congressional hearing he's from, and which is weird because it's Kentucky fried chicken, not Tennessee fried chicken. But whatever. He has announced he will retire at the end of his term. Cohen's congressional district in Tennessee was drawn out in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision Calais Right. So they redistricted his district, and now it appears the residents of Memphis, Tennessee will finally have a black congress person. I mean, she's a Republican. But isn't that what Democrats say? They have been wanting to have black representatives for black populations. Anyway, Steve Cohen's out, Yay, Okay, next up, how do you feel about traffic cameras. I'm not talking about the red light cameras. I'm talking about cameras that simply read license plates. That's it. We're not talking about. Speed cameras or traffic or red light cameras or anything like that. It's just license plate readers. Much like I guess on the toll lanes. You know, it'll just read your license plate and put it into a database. Well, the State Bureau of Investigation here in North Carolina, along with the Department of Transportation, they actually run a program, and the SBI put out a report to the North Carolina General Assembly and they say they want every point of entry to North Carolina to be covered by an automatic license plate reader. Now, I know that all of. A sudden we're going to have a lot of Democrats that are going to become newly minted civil libertarians on this. But when it comes to this. Topic, I will tell you, and I say this as one who has been a long time lowercase el libertarian, not capital l because like a lot of their foreign policy and immigration policy is literally insane. So the but lowercaseell libertarian like I tend to default towards freedom. But see, here's the thing. If law enforcement wanted to set up a cruiser with an officer at every point of entry into the state and track everybody's license plates. That came in, they would be allowed to do that. They can do that. They're not arresting anybody, right unless they run the plate and it turns out that like you're wanted in another state, or there's like an amber alert or a BOLO that's out on. You, then they would pull you over. Right. This is a lot like the facial scans that they were doing. Remember gosh, this was probably ten or fifteen years ago when they were introducing this stuff at like the Super Bowl, remember, and people were all upset about it, and at first I was too, But then I remember reading a piece I think it was written by a lawyer who pointed out that if they wanted, if local law enforcement wanted to deploy you know, thousands of officers that had every single mug shot of every wanted person, and they would just scan the crowd and look through all of the mug shots. They would be able to find the person right, and they could identify them, and then they would be able to go up to them and talk to them and maybe arrest them if they are wanted. Right, So the cameras are not doing anything above and beyond the facial ID stuff, was not doing anything that a regular human could be doing. Now you could say that the especially now with AI, it may be more efficient, more effective, but that's not an argument against the practice. That's an argument against the practice being done too well. But then that also would apply if like both you and I are police officers, and let's say I have total recall, so I can look through all the mugshots of every wanted person in the state, and I can commit all of their information and the way their image is to memory immediately, and you cannot do that. And then we both get deployed to a crowd and we are tasked with identifying people in the crowd. Well, I'm going to be able to be more effective and efficient because I have total recall. You don't see what I mean. Like, so for the license plate readers, I'm not I'm not persuaded by this argument that is made. This is in the Charlotte Observer, and they've got a quote here from Pittsborough Commissioner Tina Thube who evoked Benjamin Franklin in an effort to sway her colleagues to terminate the town's contract with Flock. That's one of these programs who said, those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little bit of temporary safety deserved neither liberty nor safety. Okay, what liberty are you being deprived of? When you are driving through, say a toll lane, and it takes a picture, and you don't have one of the easy passes, right, what does it do. It'll take a picture of your license plate. It'll then, you know, use the DMV records and send you a ticket, not a ticket, but a bill. It'll send you a bill for your use of the tolling. Were you deprived of any liberty there? Are you deprived of any liberty? When you're driving into the state of North Carolina and it scans your license plate? Like, what define for me what liberty you have lost there? Because you're still you've not lost any right to privacy unless you go and commit a crime of some kind and then they can build an evidentiary record like oh no, yeah, we ran your license plate through our system and it shows you you know, you were here at this time and you had the body in the back of your car in your trunk. You know. That's so Again, I'm not really persuaded by that. Also, you don't have any expectation of privacy when you are out in public. Do you know that people who complain about, oh, you're infringing on my right to privacy, Yeah, you don't have that when you're out in public. That's the difference is public versus private. It's right there in the word privacy. So point they say every road into the state, at least that's the goal. On state maintained roads. Over one hundred cameras have already been set up on state rights of way from Raleigh to Ocean Aisle Beach as of early April, and according to the piece of the Charlotte Observer by Nathan Collins, the cameras have captured over one hundred and fifty million scans of license plates. According to the Department of Transportation, there are only about six point seven million passenger vehicles registered in the state. Okay, well, yeah, but you got people that are going to be going back and forth on that road. You know, if somebody lives along that road and they're making a commute every day, you're gonna get what ten scans a week. It's not like it knows. Oh, I already. Scanned your license plates, so I'm not gonna scan it again. No, it's scanning everyone. I mean, I'm just imagining. Like the record's retention on this must be crazy. The server space required. The program is overseen by the SBI and the NCDOT. Local law enforcement agencies can opt in to the program. Thirty two agencies across the state are in the program, which became effective in twenty twenty four. The list includes Charlotte Mecklemburg Police and UNC Charlotte Police. Some agencies have opted in, but they have not installed cameras yet, but one hundred and forty automatic license plate readers have been installed a long state rights of way by over half of the departments that do have cameras. Along with seeking a program extension until twenty twenty eight, the SBI is asking state legislators to provide grants to local law enforcement agencies to install the cameras. Local leaders have voted to terminate contracts with license plate Scanner Venus after fierce community backlash and concerns over privacy. Again, what are the concerns over privacy. They just keep. Saying this in the article about privacy and they have concerns, right, but what are they? You know, be specific? What is the difference between a cop sitting on the side of the road logging every license plate that drives past him and an automatic system that does the exact same thing for pennies on the dollar that it would cost otherwise. Right, Like, I don't I don't get it. The agencies that opted into the program include a dozen highway police department sorry, a dozen police departments, nineteen sheriff's offices, and highway patrol. Not all of them have installed cameras yet. Only seventeen have their networks up and running at this point. But you can see the benefits here. You can catch violent criminals, so you can solve cases missing persons, abducted people. Right, do we get. Fewer Amber alerts blaring on our cell phones? Like that might be helpful? I mean, just a from a nuisance standpoint. You know, the cameras have helped locate a vehicle in homicide in a homicide case after the suspect fled to South Carolina, and it's already been used to help find a missing child? So is that worth it? What are the privacy issues here? Let's jump over to the phone lines and chat with Adam. Welcome to the show. Hey Adam, Hey Pete, what's happened? Happy Friday to you, Youtobe you too. Hey. It's funny you're talking about cameras on the interstates and I was driving down the Interstate seventy seven toll lanes as you were talking about it, and I really didn't want to do it, but I'm late for an event of my daughter's school, so I had no choice. Oh yeah, yeah. So anyway, I don't have a transponder in this car because it's in my life car, which normally take on road trips. Yeah, so not only am I going to pay more for bill by mail, but my picture was taken. I'm gonna guess at least you know twenty to thirty times going down the Interstate, but I knew that going into it. So I think if you're going to leave the house, you're at risk of a lot of pigs. And one of those things is government surveillance or in my case today, I seventy seven Mobility Partners. Surveyla surveillance right, Yes, yeah, I mean, but these are the trade offs. I mean, you could have been late to you know, you could have just been late to your event and protected your anonymity in driving to that event. Right, I think it's worth being just slightly late in set up, really late, I protecting my anonymity now. I mean, look, life is trade offs. As Thomas Soul would say, there are no solutions, only trade offs. So oh, he's Thomas Dole is always right. Yes, exactly, Adam. Good to hear from you, sir, Have a great weekend. See you Pete, all right, buddy, see you. All right. I got a bunch of texts here, so many texts. This is from David. Why would sheriff not my fault McFadden participate in a system that nabbed more criminals? I thought he wanted to let him all go. That's now, To be fair, I don't believe the Sheriff's office is involved in the program. Cmpd is I did not see any reference in the article to the Sheriff's office being involved. David says license plate readers can be very helpful for solving crimes, and you have no expectation of privacy when you are in public. Sorry, just don't commit crimes. The people complaining are probably the same people that dutifully asked me for a vaccination card so I could get into a venue. Privacy, myb butt seven oh four number says, why would you be okay with the traffic camera and the tracking of our cell phone tracking? Okay, this is a license plate scanner. It just scans the license plate. That's what it's doing. So it's this isn't a this is not a traffic camera. However, there are traffic cameras. And once again, when you leave the house, you should not have any expectation of privacy. You are literally in public. Anything you do in public. This is why, like, for example, you can be amorous with your spouse in private. If you do that in public, you're going to get arrested. Okay, Like, because there's a difference between public and private. As for the cell phone tracking, well you could. I mean that's on you. You got the cell phone, and that's part of their terms of service. So Dot puts cameras out on the interstate to look down in cars. Okay. The DOT cameras that I am aware of are used for traffic purposes. For example, the the WBT traffic center. Back there the closet, it's got access to the dot cameras. You can pull up the dot cameras. You can see what the dot cameras look at. And they just have them fixed on the roads to see the traffic. Now, can they zoom in? I imagine they could. Does somebody sit there and zoom in and look inside of every single car as it drives by. I don't know. Maybe somebody does. I don't think that's what they're supposed to be doing all the time. If so, let's cut that job, because that doesn't make any sense. Let me see, this is Bebop and rock thrill. Be careful what you wish for, Pete. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Again, just a license plate scanner. And again, if I could put a cop out there to read every license plate, that would not be any a violation of anybody's civil rights. So the technology just eliminates it's that task. Deacon says driving is a privilege, not a right. Bill and Huntersville says they're already over four hundred statewide cameras that feed into Roy Cooper's escape destination at the Emergency Management Operations Center, in. Raleigh, just as info. They may not be at the borders of the state, but you're already being watched. Yeah, I mean they've got cameras on all of these roads. Nine eight zero says I would settle for keeping the violent, repeat, repeat, repeat offender criminals locked up instead. Well, that's a false choice. I don't have to pick one or the other. Three three six number says license plates are technically the property of the state, so it's sort of like the state just taking selfies. But it's not a picture, it's just a scanner. Thank you for saying that about the cameras. Your tag does not have a right to privacy on public roads. Yeah, I mean think about it. What is the license plate? It is a public display of identification. If you have a problem with the plate being scanned, I kind of feel like you should have a problem with every license plate being displayed, right, Like, where is this outcry from these local governing officials that are like, my right to privacy is being infringed by having to have a license plate that is visible, right, nobody makes that argument. That's a great point. Logan and Nicky says, I live in Lincoln County. We've had cameras for about a year and they have been very effective at catching criminals and drug dealers, so I'm in favor of them. Joseph says, is anything going to happen with constitutional carry? I mean, it's not like they prosecute gun charges anyway, as we have seen in the rap sheets of the repeat, repeat, repeat offense who finally act so heinously that they draw the public's hire. Somebody asked me this at the News and Bruise event. I don't if I had to wager, I would say, no, it's not going to pass, or I should say it has already passed. I don't think it's going to get the veto override because you have to convince one Democrat in the North Carolina House to go along with that. And even though you've got two Democrats that flipped and became unaffiliated because they got primary by their own Democrat Party leadership, I don't think that they I don't see them as pro Second Amendment people, you know, but I could be wrong. 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 thepetekallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.