"Icky" and "shocking" | 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 peak 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. Okay. So I mentioned in the last hour briefly, um, Icky and shocking. This was the description offered up by the former Mecklenburg County manager, Dina DiIorio, when describing a meeting that she held. With the. Controversial consultant for CMS named Racky McGregor. And his wife, Kim. She had a meeting with them. This is a story by Steve Harrison over at WFAE, the NPR affiliate, who spoke with Dina DiIorio. Now, DiIorio is retired. She stepped down, retired as the Mecklenburg County manager. But she was in charge when a lot of this stuff was getting set up, a lot of this. Corruption, when it was getting set up. When they were trying to get the contracts and stuff, when some contracts expired and they were trying to. Get them renewed and the like. So this is an interesting point of information because it shows where these people, the McGregors, Stephanie Sneed, for example, also, where they were going to try to get public funds for their consultant firms, for their nonprofit, right? Yesterday, I mentioned the story We gave you details on, I think it was a WSOC, I. Think it was a WSOC story. Hang on. I've got the whole, yeah, here it is. Oh, sorry. It was the. Charlotte Ledger that reported on how Stephanie Sneed, along with Racky McGregor, as well as former police chief Johnny Jennings, fresh off of his $ 300, 000 payout because he got his feelings hurt by Tark Bakari, the former city councilman, right? And then he retired. So they went to the sheriff's office in order to pitch the sheriff, Gary, not my fault, McFadden, on a. Proposal, a $ 400, 000 proposal. This story proves that Racky McGregor and Stephanie Sneed were more than just friends, more than just political allies. They were business partners because they went and made this presentation to the sheriff to try to win this contract to do a one-year, quote, organizational transformation proposal. Now, the sheriff turned it down. They then came back with him with. A sort of a stripped-down version of it for a cheaper price point. He still turned it down, which makes sense, you know, if you know McFadden, like, he doesn't need help with his agency at all. He's doing just fine. Thank you very much. Okay, so you've got the WFAE story now today. about Racky McGregor and his wife who had these contracts. The, uh, short former Charlotte Mecklenburg superintendent, Crystal Hill, right. Said in this leaked memo, which we covered two weeks ago, which got her fired that Stephanie Sneed, the chair of the board at the time had secured. A $ 30, 000 per. Month consulting subcontract 30 grand a month. That's like a producer Nick money right there. Um, for Racky McGregor without the knowledge of Superintendent Hill or much of the board. And this is why I keep saying when people are like, oh, it's the whole school board and they're all in on it and they all need to go. I don't believe they all were in on it. It seems to me like there were a lot of these board members that were kept out of the circle of trust. The push to secure a contract for McGregor came after the county manager, Dina DiIorio, severed ties with McGregor's wife's consulting business. That business is called Sid Kimmel. S-Y-D-K-I-M-Y-L. All caps. Don't know if it's an acronym, but it's a terrible name. Sid Kimmel. Anyway, the county cut that contract. They severed ties with Sid Kimmel, and Sid Kimmel had already received more than half a million dollars from the county. Then they cut the contract. DiIorio, former manager, said Racky McGregor was angry at the loss of funding and threatened to sue her if she publicly alleged that he had a conflict of interest. And she said dealing with the McGregors was, quote, icky and shocking, which I feel like needs to be the name of their new consulting firm. Reached by text message, the McGregors declined comment. The county had given Sid Kimmel this contract during the pandemic. Sid Kimmel, run by Kim McGregor, her husband, Racky McGregor, is a political power player and a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus with a particular focus on CMS. Dina DiIorio said that originally Sid Kimmel appeared to meet a need. Quote, primarily, I think they do sort of tutoring for kids. And that was obviously a big need during COVID. So we funded them through that. And then after COVID, we continued to fund them for some period of time. Sid Kimmel also had a contract directly with CMS. So they got their double dipping. They got two contracts, one with the county and one with CMS. The Mecklenburg County contract by itself was lucrative, paying the organization half a million a year. DiIorio says the county questioned in early 2025 whether it was getting its money's worth. Spoiler alert, it was not. Quote, we had our Office of Contractual and Clinical Services look at these contracts, and there were some questions raised about the overall return on investment on the return on the Sid Kimmel contract, in particular on the amount of kids being served. And that was sort of a red flag. Gosh, does this sound familiar? Have you heard about all of the. Medicaid fraud, all that stuff going on in all these states? Right? You set up a nonprofit, take a whole bunch of government money, don't actually serve any customers, that kind of a thing. DiIorio says the county was paying not only the Sid Kimmel contract, but after Racky left his job with Novant Healthcare, they were paying Racky McGregor $ 13, 000 a month as an executive in residence with CMS. I've said before, I still don't know what that is. But according to this report by Steve Harrison, the idea was Racky McGregor would act as a liaison between corporations and CMS while he was on loan to the school district by the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council. So they loaned him to CMS so he could act as a liaison to businesses. Okay, $ 13, 000 a month. Okay. But when McGregor left Novant, the district began paying his salary through money it got from the county. And DiIorio says, It didn't seem to make sense that we should be funding all of that. So we made the decision at that point. It felt like a conflict of interest. So we ended up eliminating the contracts out of the budget process. And then you had to tell the McGregors, right? They're not going to like this. This seems to be their main source of income. These consulting contracts, this executive in residence position. So now they're all being eliminated all at. The same time. Oh, and by the way, the Charlotte Ledger reports that the McGregors had some financial difficulties. Yeah. In fact, they even had a lien on them from the IRS. Almost $ 100, 000 at one point. Guys, look, there is a reason why this looks like corruption. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation here. It's because it is. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. 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Going over some of the highlights or lowlights, if you will, of the WFAE report by Steve Harrison about the dealings that former Mecklenburg County Manager Dina DiIorio had with Kim and Racky McGregor. These two, this couple, they have a couple of consulting nonprofits and such, and they had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contracts with CMS and the Mecklenburg County. And when, and so the county was paying Kim McGregor's nonprofit during the COVID pandemic to try to tutor kids because, you know, learning loss, which remember, was it Tamika Walker Kelly, I think is her name, the head of the teachers' union in North Carolina at the time, and she said learning loss is a myth, but apparently not for the Mecklenburg County manager and county commissioners who thought it was actually occurring, and so they tried to get some help for the students that were being kept out of schools by Governor Roy. Cut-Em-Loose Cooper, and so now running for U.S. Senate. And so when the county told Kim McGregor and her company, Sid Kimmel, that it was ending the contract. DiIorio says that the McGregors began to lobby county commissioners to reverse her decision. See, again, this is one of the problems when you have. Local governing bodies that are completely captured by one political party, as the Mecklenburg Board of Commissioners is. It's all Democrats. And so. You can just go and lobby like half of them And if you are shot callers, power players in the Black Political Caucus and Charlotte Mecklenburg, like that puts a lot of pressure on these county commissioners because they are worried they're not going to be able to get through a Democrat primary because the Black Political Caucus can primary Democrats. And they have, right? Their list of endorsed candidates carries a lot of weight. And so this is a pressure point. For these local elected officials. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. So from the report, DiIorio says they began to lobby county commissioners to reverse her decision. So she scheduled a meeting with Kim McGregor to talk about her recommendation for ending the agreement. Again, so this is the county manager recommending that they end the agreement. COVID's over. Don't need this anymore. And also not really sure you helped a lot of kids, right? Not really sure the juice was worth the squeeze on this. So she sets a meeting with Kim. And Racky McGregor apparently shows up with her. Now, according to the report, Racky McGregor has distanced himself from Sid Kimmel, saying he's not directly involved with his wife's company. So when DiIorio set the meeting. She assumed it was only with Kim McGregor because Racky has distanced himself. Why has he distanced himself? Well, he is an executive in. Residence, right? He's doing all this work with CMS. He's got a contract with them. And so it would be a conflict of interest if he comes in and is now lobbying on behalf of his wife's business to get more money, right? So DeOrio says, when Kim McGregor arrived, Racky McGregor. Was with her. So going back to this conflict of interest, it sort of solidified that there was something that. Was not appropriate. DeOrio says she told the McGregors that Sid Kimmel was not serving enough kids. She also said she believed it was a conflict for the county to be funding both the Sid Kimmel contract and Racky McGregor's CMS salary, through a separate county appropriation. At that point, she says, Racky got a little heated and sort of stood up and leaned over the table and said, if anyone accuses me of a conflict of interest, I will sue them. So, you know, she says, we ended the meeting and that was the end of it. She said, my instincts were saying there was just something icky about it. Yes, icky things. and shocking. Also, here's a little nougat for you. State Auditor Dave Bullock made an unannounced visit to CMS headquarters on Wednesday. I don't know, by the way, if this was last Wednesday, because I know he did a press conference, or if this was today. I got to believe it was last Wednesday. Now, I also mentioned that the McGregors have had some financial difficulties. Now, granted, This was a while ago, 2011. Okay, also 2020. Okay, and also 2014. Okay, anyway. So, Racky McGregor and his wife, Kimberly McGregor, faced a series of debt-related problems, according to the Charlotte Ledger, including a $ 96, 000 federal tax lien before their companies began getting the public contracts with Mecklenburg County and CMS. Interesting. Kind of, yeah, kind of brings it into focus as to why Racky McGregor may have gotten a little heated when they were going to be losing their contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Kind of brings that into focus. 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 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. Ian says CMS is as farcical as a Monty Python sketch. It is getting to be, like, comically bad. Comically bad. It's like every single day there's something else. Although I do appreciate it, again, from a show prep standpoint. I do appreciate it. 704 number says, Pete, how can D Rankin... be serving on a public school board as a convicted felon. Is that legal? Yes, it is. You can serve in public office if you are a convicted felon in North Carolina. You may have already addressed this, but I just got in the car. He had his voting rights restored, according to the paperwork that he filed with the Board of Elections in 2025. I do not know if he filed the same paperwork in 2022 when he first ran for the District 3 school board seat. I don't know. All I've seen is the file, the paper from 2025 that WBT's Brett Jensen published onto his Twitter feed. Margaret says they should take the Three Stooges law firm, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe. Right, but there's only two of the McGregors. There's only two people there, so Icky and shocking consulting. David says that sweet, sweet COVID money sure brought the cockroaches out in force everywhere. Yeah, well, I mean, look, I quoted this yesterday. Jordan Peterson, he talks about if you have an unguarded store of value, it will be beset upon by parasites. That's why you have to guard your store of value. whether it's actual physical goods or it's an institutional reputation, whatever it is, whether it's taxpayer-funded local government, whatever, you build up a store of value, if you don't guard it, it will get raided. It will be eaten. That's why you have to guard it. Bill says, Pete, it sounds to me that the superintendent got suspended because she found the corruption, then got fired when she went public with it, so they fired a whistleblower. Sounds like a superintendent could have a lawsuit for that. That's possible. I don't know. I was accused yesterday of elevating former Superintendent Crystal Hill to hero status. I'm not calling her that because I don't really call anybody heroes. except actual heroes, I do appreciate that fact that she put this memo out and then it somehow ended up in the media's hands. Right? I don't know if a board member passed it along or Hill did. I don't care. The fact that she documented this in order to put it into the record, into the public record, that this is what's been going on Now, whether she did it for personal grievance because she knew she was going to get fired or something, it doesn't matter to me. It really doesn't. I mean, yes, her intentions matter to. A degree, but the disclosure of the information is more important to me. And I appreciate the fact that she did it. And it does seem to me, with my limited knowledge, just reading the reports, it seems to me that she was, in fact. whistleblower. She may have protections as such she may not because you know people forget that the managers whether it's the city manager the superintendent the county manager they work at the pleasure of the board that's why when the board fired her they did not fire her for cause she. Didn't do anything illegal or that would. Break her contract so they fired her for convenience Now, the investigation that they launched into her that took two months and they suspended her while they were investigating or had a law firm investigate at a price of like $ 380, 000, I suspect that that investigation was done in order to try to find something so they could fire her for cause. Because on the one hand, if you can fire her for cause, you don't have to pay out her severance, right? But I think more importantly for these. political. Hatchet people that are on the board, it would provide them a counter narrative, right? Because if then Crystal Hill comes out like it, but let's say they found something going on. Let's say that the investigation into Crystal Hill found something that she was doing that then allowed the board to fire her for cause. Now they can't talk about. It, because personnel records are private and we don't want to violate state law and personnel matters and all of that. So they would never tell us what they found, but they could say, we found a reason to fire her for cause. Then she comes out and says, oh, yeah, you guys are doing all this stuff here, all these contracts, blah, blah, blah. Now the board could say, well, that's just sour grapes. She got fired for cause. We found her violating her contract. She's just doing this because we caught her. it would provide them a counter-narrative. But the fact that they did not find anything and the report from the law firm says that, they don't have a counter-narrative. The only thing they can say now is what? This is a distraction. We need new leadership. Let's reset leadership for the children. It's all for the children. We got to get back to focusing on the children. And the media is blowing this out of proportion. You media people, you're the real problem here because, you know, you noticed something. So that's the way it looks to me. Oh, here we go. A wall of text from Candy Crusher. True, the Democrats love to co-opt. Oh, this is about the earlier comment about how when Jack was texting in saying, what about Trump? He's a convicted felon, all that. And I pointed out that the left will appeal to your standards, not because they share your standards, but because they are trying to get you to stop talking about them violating your standards, okay? So they know you care about these things. They will appeal to your faith, your standards, right? So you shut up. They don't adhere to this themselves. Right? It's like atheists saying, well, you know, your Jesus was a socialist. Like, they don't believe in Jesus. They don't believe Jesus was the son of God. So they just say that because they think you care about it. So you'll agree with them and do what they want in their quest for power. Anyway, that's what apparently Candy Crusher is responding to. By the way, Candy Crusher, thoughts and prayers to you today. Well, with all of the latest about Candace Owens, that's why I named him Candy Crusher. Anyway, True, the Democrats love to co-opt Christianity whenever it suits their needs, even though they hate Christians. But to the topic of the rampart, I think that's supposed to be rampant, corruption and money grabbing on the school board and other public institutions, you're seeing this all across the nation on every level of politics, from national to local. We treat our nation's future like day traders. It is the Epstein class. It's the Jews. Day trade mentality infecting an entire nation. We can no longer build wealth here. No, that's not true. Most people don't view the future brightly because you're blackpilled. So it has become the goal to extract the wealth and harness power at every public position because everyone else is doing it. So why shouldn't I get a piece of the pie and get on the scam and the grifting? Right. Well, if you have no morals or ethics, sure. Yes, it's very easy. Once you go down the path to nihilism, which is blackpilling, once you are on that path, sure, it's very easy to end up grifting. Absolutely. That's why I try to keep people off that path. Oh, gosh, Candy, you're so close. You're so close to getting it. Dude, I believe in you. I have faith. I have faith that you will see this. More from ye olde text line. John says, whoa, whoa, you can't just nonchalantly drop that thing about Candace Owens into the conversation without details. Oh, but I can. I'm not going to get into all of the details about her potential LGBT behaviors and such. It's just not the kind of. Show that I do here. Okay, John? But you can find that which you seek on x.com and x is the name of the twitter platform now i don't mean that as like any kind of uh it's like not any kind of you know like x-rated stuff i'm not saying that there wasn't anything like that i mean visible okay um Let me see here. Everybody, this is from 704 number. And by the way, the internet out here is pretty spotty. So I'm trying to get through the texts, but it's. A slow slog. Everyone in Mecklenburg County should refuse to pay property taxes until we get legit answers from and significant changes to CMS. Okay, yeah, I do not recommend not paying your property taxes. I do not recommend that. It generally ends up with lots of penalties and maybe even jail or something. Penalties like this, for example, the McGregors, back in March 2020, the IRS filed a $ 96, 000 federal tax lien against Raymond, Racky, McGregor, and Kimberly, his wife, for unpaid income taxes, interest, and penalties dating back to 2014. They released the lien in October of that year. Just right after, I guess, they were getting the contracts from CMS and the county. I could see why they were very upset that they were losing these contracts. It does make sense. Don says the current happenings with CMS and the city council are a great example of having no pushback or oversight from a second party. If it's all Democrats and they'll do whatever, if it's all Democrats, they'll do whatever they want to do. At least with some opposition, there are other voices who can keep them straight. I would say this either way. Yes, I've been talking about this as well for several years. This is the problem you run into whenever you have complete control of a body by one political party, Democrat or Republican, because a lot of this stuff is happening below the public level in the internal party machinations, you know. And so that's what makes this dangerous when you have one party in control and all of the incentives then start aligning with just not saying anything, not calling out your fellow party members, right? You can then be targeted in your primaries for defeat. You know, all of the incentives start stacking up against you being a whistleblower. Kevin, the fake Republican, this is why I call him the fake Republican because listen to this, uh, Calling it easy show prep is certainly one way to spend three weeks of recycled, lazy material. The first three days were at least somewhat interesting. After that, it's been painfully boring. So first off, Kevin, thank you for listening even when it's been painfully boring. I appreciate that because I know you've been listening all the time because. Then you would know. And we haven't been doing anything new. Like, I didn't talk at all today about anything new. Like, for example. the news that the newly appointed board chair is a convicted felon. Right? That wasn't new. We didn't learn that today. That wasn't new. Also, we didn't mention the meeting between the McGregors and the county manager that prompted her to say that this was icky. They were icky and shocking. Conflict of interest. That wasn't new either. I mean, I know the story is published today, so that would fit the category of new, but you apparently already knew this, and so this is all just boring and painfully boring to you, yet you are still listening. So I do appreciate the hate listening, though, Kevin. The haters listen longer. It's one of the ironies of talk radio. And then there's this, also not new to Kevin, but maybe new to you because it was published yesterday afternoon, that there was a back and forth on the Facebook between one of the school board members, Shamae Haynes, versus state representative Jordan Lopez. Both Democrats. Okay? This is D on D action. All right? The Zingers started after Lopez, a Democrat who represents East Charlotte, wrote on his Facebook page, Haynes replied, Jordan, the next time you whine about how you can't be effective in the General Assembly, remember your remarks here. As an elected official, I see you all around town skating by and using the super majority, the Republican super majority, as an excuse for not getting it done. Okay, first off, they don't have a super majority in the House, just for the record there. They do have one in the Senate. Republicans have one in the Senate, but they do not have that in the House. And she called it selective outrage. And that's unbelievable. Lopez responded that the board fired the superintendent after a report that exonerated her, and he called it a retaliatory action. And she said then in reply that the board based its decisions on legal advice and said, quote, it's a known fact that you are constantly getting outsmarted and maneuvered by the other side. See, this is what I mean. She's attacking him as D on D. But what he's raising questions about are not partisan. It's all Democrat. 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 thepetecalinershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.