Michael Whatley Joins the Show| 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 of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow 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. Now we are just seven weeks from absentee ballots heading out into the mail for the November November election joining us now US Senate candidate Michael Watley, thanks for joining us. It's great to be on with you, Dona. Great to talk to you now. You have a new ad out and you've been on the road. I mean all one hundred counties, is that right? That is a long drive, A lot of miles on that truck. Yeah. North Carolina's a pretty big state. We've got a array of counties all across about sixty sixty five thousand miles to drive all one hundred counties. I did it every year as the state Party chair, and obviously important for us to do it here because if you want to represent every family in every community in North Carolina, you got to know them, You got to get out there. And you know, Roy Cooper is running from the basement right now and he's missing out on a lot of the most amazing parts of this state. And everywhere I go, you know, the one refrain that I constantly hear from people is they want a fight or they want to know that when they send somebody to the Senate that they're going to fight for the people of North Carolina, fight for their families, for their communities. And that's that's the message that we are talking about everywhere we go. You've been visiting mountains to the coast. What issues are you hearing from folks around North Carolina most often? You know, the two big things that we continually hear are on the economy. Right, we want to make sure that people are going to make more and keep more, so we want to bring down prices, we want to bring down costs. We want to make sure that taxes are going to be lower. Roy Cooper has been wrong on that on every instance that he can. You know, this is a guy who raised taxes as a legislator. He's a guy who vetoed tax cuts as the governor. He said that he would have opposed the one big, beautiful bill, the working family tax cuts that just got passed last year. Saved the average North Carolina household fifty seven hundred dollars on April fifteenth, and Roy Cooper said, I would rather take that money out of your pocket and give it to bureaucrats up in Washington, d C. The other huge issue that we continually hear about is safety and crime. You know, the fact is Roy Cooper let forty two hundred criminals out of prison back in twenty twenty one, and the worst of the worst. You know, these are pedophiles and predators and rapists and murderers that he let out of prison because he didn't want him to get COVID. And of course, as soon as they did, they went right back to the life of crime. And unfortunately, there are twenty five North Carolinian families right now that have an empty seat at the table on Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and every other holiday because criminals that Cooper let out went on to commit murder across North Carolina. Sure, in this new ad that you have out. Highlights your support for President Trump's America First Agenda. Tell me, are you hearing from folks when you're out on the road that these are issues that they're supporting. Yeah, they absolutely are. You know, people want a strong economy, people want a strong border and safe communities. People want to know that our military, you know, we have ten percent of all men and women in uniform for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard are based here in North Carolina. We need to make sure that they're going to have the support and the supplies that they need to carry out their mission around the world. It's a common sense agenda that I'm fighting for. Roy Cooper, on the other hand, you know, this guy is fighting for criminals. He's fighting for illegal aliens. He's fighting for men who want to play in women's sports and go in girls' locker rooms. That is not the agenda of the people of North Carolina. Sure you mentioned you know some of these top concerns for families. Of course, cost of living is right up there for most folks. What specific actions would you take in the US Senate to support lowering cost of living for North Carolinians. Yeah. The first thing we got to do is get interest rates and inflation down, you know, and and fortunately inflation is down. We had a great inflation report yesterday. It is still you know, too high, but when you think about it being nine percent under Joe Biden and Roy Cooper championing the inflationary spending levels that we saw during Biden's administration, you know, we got to get that down. Interest rates will will certainly come down, you know. From that, we also need to make sure that we have gasoline prices coming down. Obviously, you know what's happening in a ran right now is a factor there. But you know, energy prices, those are directly affected by public policy. And Roy Cooper has you know, supported efforts to shut down domestic oil and gas producing which would raise prices. He also raised electricity rates by thirty percent in North Carolina while he was taking a sweetheart deal on a solar farm and making millions of dollars for him and his family. So, you know, we've got a very big differential in terms of my plan, my common sense plan to make life more affordable, to make sure that people can make more and keep more, and Roy Cooper's plan, which is to make everything more expensive. Sure so you've seen North Carolina. Of course, we've had a ton of growth, a lot of folks moving here, but that that has meant some challenges. Right Our housing costs are going up, we have more infrastructure needs, and you mentioned energy. The pressure on our energy demand is something we've been talking about a lot. What federal policies do you think would be important to help support state our state's growth in some of these impacted areas. I think we need to get energy here. You know. The fact is Roy Cooper, you know, veto or killed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have been a major line to bring natural gas, would have fed several new natural gas plants, would have provided natural gas for our farmers, you know, and for for other interests across the state. Those are very big, real things where he has been wrong on those issues, and we need to make sure that like President Trump has done, where he has unleashed American energy, that we are going to be the world leader when it comes to oil and natural gas production. You're running as a first time candidate for elected office. Any surprises as you've taken this on and this is this is big. How do you think your background prepares you for it, and what has surprised you in the process. Well, look, I'm excited about this race. I'm not a forty year career politician like Roy Cooper, you know. I am a guy who has been working with, you know, the people all across North Carolina trying to make sure that we elect Republicans, and very proud of having the opportunity to work, you know, and help run President Trump's campaigns, you know, here in North Carolina and across the country in twenty twenty four. The thing that I love about being on the ground is just getting a chance to talk to community leaders, talk to families, talk to faith leaders, talk to sheriffs and law enforcement officers all across this state. Because as varied as we are from wa Taga to Wilmington, or from Murphy to Manio in terms of geography and rural versus urban and everything else, ultimately it comes down to the family, you know. And I'm not running for me. This campaign is not about me. This campaign is about our families. It's about our kids, It's about our grandkids. And I really want every kid and every grand kid to have the same opportunity to grow up here in North Carolina and live the American dream that I have, and I think that dreams under assault right now by radical politicians like Roy Cooper. You know, these are guys who are going to fight harder for criminals, they're going to fight harder for illegal aliens, and they're going to fight for a radical agenda that's being driven out of New York and California. And that is not what North Carolina wants or needs. All Right, thank you so much, North Carolina's US end it. Candidate Michael Wattley, you have a great. Day, absolutely, take care 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 two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS, tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. 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Unanimous three judge panel determined that the city lacked the authority to charge the to require payments as a condition of development, so the fees were tied to a residential project, and the developer argued that they really were an unlawful tax. So the ruling now raises some questions on whether that municipalities can charge some of these fees. So it is possible that the city could go to the North Carolina Supreme Court to review the case. So North Carolina's most expensive private schools receive little voucher funding according to a new study. That story is over on Carolina Journal dot com if you want to look at. More of it. But the study found that the state's elite private schools are taking very little money from North Carolina's Opportunity scholarship program. We're going to be talking more about that if you want to head over to Carolina Journal dot com because the study revealed about one hundred schools in the Opportunity Scholarship program. There's also a study out on Johnlot dot org if you want to take a look at that, about the energy poverty Index. So this is really interesting. What it really looks at is whether of how much a new report that ranks counties in North Carolina according to their energy poverty gap. It's a ranking on what impoverished households pay for electricity compared to what they could reasonably afford. So joining us now, John Sanders, director of the Center for Food Power in Life. He worked on that energy poverty index. John, thanks for joining us. Well, thank you so much for having me. Great, great, Well, So this is so interesting to me. Tell me what is energy poverty because I've never really heard that term before. But this really is a telling marker of what families can struggle with across the state. Right, and so the report looks at three there's kind of like three different ways you can get energy poverty. It's whether there's energy and insecurity, which is you may not be able to maintain adequate home energy, or there's your energy burden, which is how much of your household income you devote to energy needs. We took a look at something called the energy affordability gap, which is the difference between what a what an impoverished household pays for energy and what is considered reasonably affordable according to a lot of the research literature, which basically would put it at six point five percent of household income. Very interesting, So let's talk about that. What does that mean in you know, this isn't necessarily that they don't have electricity, right, and what can we do about it? Are there public policies out there that you study that that could help folks who are paying too much of their of their you know, family income on electricity. Yes, okay, So what it means in practical terms is that everything has a trade off. So if electricity is too expensive, then it's requiring trade offs of people in very poor families too. You know. For for wealthier families, it could be we don't go out to eat as much, or or we don't have a movie night like but maybe once or twice a month or whatever. But for a poor family, that their question becomes do we pay them to build this year? This month? Do we pay do we buy the groceries that we need? You know, maybe we cut back on on paying or getting our medicine this month. So the trade offs get to be pretty pretty severe. So that's why we look at it. And what we did in the report was look at the gap between what a household paid as far as the percentage of their income versus what was relatively affordable. And the higher the gap, obviously the worst the energy poverty index rated debt right right. You know this is interesting because it you know, we've talked a lot about food deserts in North Carolina, and we've talked about the cost of living and you know, housing affordability. These really are part of the daily life, the kitchen table issues that North Carolinians are facing. Why study energy, Why study energy poverty in this case. It's a very good question. That's because electricity is a household necessity. It's not a luxury pursus. It's not something you you could go without easily, especially living in the United States. Uh, there their serious implications for not heeding or colling your home, or not not refrigerating your your groceries. That resounds to negative health effects on top of everything else. So also, our expectation in law in North Carolina has always been that electricity would be as reliable and as affordable as possible. And that has been the case up until really the last decade or so, where public policy, public policies have been passed with different goals in mind, with with outcomes regarding environmental emissions and things like that. So whenever we we elevate different concerns above affordability and reliability, we're going to get different outcomes than affordable and reliable electricity. Sure So, some of these policies that we've talked about about energy, you know, they end up a little bit in the weeds. The folks who really understand them understand them well, and everybody the rest of us just want to flip the switch and the lights come on. What real things could we do in North Carolina from a policy standpoint to improve the level of energy poverty in our state. Sure So, the report has six main policy outcomes that we promote, and all of these would would restore the focus in law in North Carolina to affordable and reliable electricity. The top the top one is to repeal our Carbon Plan law, and the reason being for that is that it calls for closing working power plants that have already been paid for. These are primarily cold, but eventually they are also going to be natural gas. These are not only working power plants that have been paid for, but they are also some of the most reliable ones that we get, especially the ones that we rely upon as we've shown here at the log Foundation when we are having majorly cold or very hot days. So that's one is to not cause us to close all these working power plants and then have to build a lot of new ones, especially expensive solar pass basedload for baseloads legislation, which would mean if we do have to close something, we're going to replace it with something equally as reliable. Have the utilities commissioned compare the all in cost of new power plants. We've learned here at block in the in the last few months that the price of a solar facility when it's compared with all the other facilities. When utilities commission is helping do make a choice in what resources that they need to start providing, they don't look at the all in costs of new solar plant. They just look at the cost of building the facility, but not the extra generation from a natural gas turbine plant that they say they need or all of the new transmission lines to be built out to it because they're very land intensive, which they say they can't operate without. Sure. Sure. Very interesting. Oh that's that really is helpful. So if anybody wants to read this report and read the energy poverty index, where should they go? They should go to John Lock dot org, j O H N L O C k E dot org and look up our reports and you should find it. Have you ever had jury duty? That's a big one. So you know, a lot of times are like, oh I got the notice, I got a call in. Maybe they won't pick me. But you know what, there's a big history to jury service and there's a lot of honor in it. I'm joined right now by Jeanette Doorg. She's a constitutional studies expert over the Locke Foundation, and Jeanette, welcome. I appreciate you spending time with me today. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Donna, absolutely so. You have a great column over on Carolina Journal dot com called twelve Citizens The Enduring Promise of the Jury. This is so interesting because I think most of us when it comes time to looking at jury duty, they don't want to do it. But you really talk about the history of it and why this is such an important part of self governance. Tell me about your column and what inspired you to write it. Well, honestly, it came out of a pretty ordinary moment. I've I've been an attorney for twenty six years. I've been to courthouses countless times as an attorney, but I had never been as a prospective juror. And I sat in the jury pool in Lake County and I was expecting a very different experience. What I found was an extremely efficient process on the clerk side. But I also found and was really inspired by my fellow perspective jurors, the ones who actually showed up. I mean they were busy people. I saw people with their laptops and you know, making last minute phone calls on childcare arrangements, but they took time out of their busy life to fulfill their responsibility as citizens. And I just wanted to encourage more North Carolinians to do that. So why do you believe a trial by jury is one of our most important rights as Americans? Oh? Wow, It's a right that we don't just hold, we actually get to exercise ourselves. And it has a tremendous history going back to the Magna Carta in twelve fifteen across the Atlantic as the colonies were formed. It was one of the grievances listed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that the King had been depriving us in many instances of our right to a jury trial. It's in the US Constitution several places. It's in multiple places in the North Carolina Constitution. This isn't something that is just born in a philosopher's shop. We had real reason, real experience to know that we needed the kind of accountability that a jury trial provides, and that continues today. Sure. I mean, how do you think that that's serving on a jury, putting your life on hold for a moment, going down there, serving on a jury. How does that strengthen our system of self governments? Well, I mean that goes back to the entire theory of government as articulated by so many of our framers, but especially James Madison. You know, you think back to Federalist fifty one and he wrote, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. We have jury trials for the same reason that we have a separation powers and checks and balances and federalism. A jury is the same kind of logic, it just applied on a very personal level. The prosecutor works for the state. The judge is elected and he's a state officer, but a jury isn't either. So it's the one moment in the whole process where government has to convince the people in the form of twelve ordinary people who owe government nothing right because they're just Joe citizen. It functions really as that what I call a distributive veto. It's the community's way of telling the state, you know, you've got to do this, but you've got to do it the right way. You can't do it the wrong way or an illegitimate right way, and say you're doing it in our name. And juries are also by their very nature, they're not subject to corruption or institutional capture. They aren't elected to a term. They don't wield power for two years or six years or four years. They're in, they've got a job to do, and then they get out and they go back to their ordinary lives. So that makes them unique in terms of the power of accountability to government. What would you say to somebody who just got a jury summons and wants to get out of it. You know, Golly, I get it. It's not always convenient. It interrupts your your week, interrupt your day. But what word is me is if people aren't participating in that, either because they don't answer their summons or they elaborate on a hardship claim so they can get an excuse, it means that the whole system isn't working the way it's supposed to. It means the community isn't being represented in the room where the verdicts are actually going to be decided. And that's not to say that there aren't real and legitimate reasons to be excused, because certainly there are. But we can't let oh, this is inconvenient, this is a pain, become a foundation for opting out, because if we opt out, the whole system stops working the way it's supposed to, and it's supposed to work as a check on government power, and it's supposed to be an exercise of self governm. Thank you so much, Jeanette Dorin, constitutional studies expert and lawyer for the John Locke Foundation, Thanks so much for joining us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. So if you've been outside today, you notice how hot it is, certainly, but you also might see a bit of a haze in the sky. There is a there's a warning out, an air quality alert for Charlotte today in this really hot afternoon. Officials are saying that we could see pollution from cars and other things over the area that might make it unhealthy for anyone with respiratory illness. But later in the week, it's really interesting you could notice air quality diminishing around parts of North Carolina's Charlotte because there could be some smoke coming from wildfires in Ontario, Canada. This is so interesting this several wildfires have been burning in Ontario and sort of northern Minnesota, but the smoke from those fires, mostly from Canada, is now across the Great Lakes parts down into eastern and southeastern United States, and we could be seeing it here in North Carolina. That and create some air quality concerns later in the week in North Carolina, so officials are saying, if you have asthma or other respiratory concerns, you may want to limit your time outside later in the week, certainly because of the heat, but some of the smoke from wildfires from Ontario very very interesting. We're also getting officially notified that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is issuing some warnings about the parasite cyclospora. This is something you've probably heard about. Causes some gastro intestinal problems, but it can only be seen with a microscope. People get sick when they eat, eat, or drink food or water that's been contaminated with it. We have thirteen people in North Carolina that are now hospitalized with it. We have three hundred and seven cases as of this morning of this cyclospora parasite infection. What they're saying is that you need to be watched for a loss of appetite, weight loss, stomach cramps, that kind of thing, nausea, fatigue, vomiting. But they said was wash all your produce thoroughly, particularly with a brush, because they said this is a very difficult parasite to remove. Cut away any damaged or bruised areas of produce before eating it, Rinse it, of course, before you peel it so that the bacteria doesn't get into the fruit. But using a scrub brush, and really the only real way to kill this parasite is to cook it. Cook fruits and vegetables up to one hundred and fifty eight degrees, so you know we're going to be tracking it. They've not been able to track where it's coming from because they said you could get sick up to a week after you consume this, and so good hand hygiene, washing your hands is an important piece of this puzzle and making sure that everybody stays healthy, particularly in this hot weather. We're also seeing that North Carolina is changing the way that the state is handling involvoluntary commitments for people with serious mental illnesses. Governor Josh Stein has signed the state legislature's bill into law aiming to improve the process after lawmakers examined two high profile killings involving suspects with documented histories of mental illness. So The change includes expanding options for court ordered outpatient treatment, allowing some commitments to continue for up to one hundred and eighty days, and requiring additional study of how the state's mental health and criminal justice system are working together. Supporters say the change will help make sure people who may be a danger to themselves or others can get treatment before a crisis happens, but other mental health advocates say the state's biggest challenge really is that the lack of resources. They say there's just not enough psychiatric beds and treatment options for people who need that help. The law is part of a broader debate over public safety, individual rights, and how North Carolina responds to mental health emergencies. So would you like to stop changing the clocks twice a year? The US Health has voted to end the twice a year daylight savings time change. Lawmakers approved a bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight savings time permanent across most of the country. The bill passed three hundred and eight to one hundred and seventeen and now had heads to the US Senate. President Trump says that he does support the measure. If it becomes law, Americans in most states would no longer spring forward in March or fall back, although states that have already observed a permanent standard time, including Arizona and Hawaii, would continue. To do so. Democratic US Senate candidate Roy Cooper is facing renewed scrutiny about a twenty twenty one settlement that resulted in the early release of about thirty five hundred North Carolina inmates during the COVID nineteen pandemic. So that settlement resolved a lawsuit filed by the NAACP over prison conditions. Cooper, who was governor at the time, was named a defendant in that lawsuit. On Monday, he addressed it for the first time. He told reporters that while he did sign the order, the releases were part of a court ordered settlement, and that the Department of Adult Corrections actually determined which inmates qualified for release under the settlement. It's really become a central issue in the Senate campaign because some inmates released under Cooper's order later committed violent crimes. The New York Post reported that eighteen people under the settlement were later charged with murder, while others reported having hundreds of additional arrests involving violence. So we'll be cut talking about that and a lot more coming up in the last hour of the Pete Calendar show. We're looking forward to spending some more time with you. Among the things we're going to be talking about is a new investigation of unc system research. So David Bassober at Carolina Journal has a four part series. If you want to go go over and read it on Carolina journal dot com. What you know how a lot of professors have to publish in journals. Are those journals, how's the research vetted? And what happens if there's a problem with some of those journals. David Bass joins us in just a few minutes, plus the latest on the Dominic Moody case and funding in the state budget. Andrew Pomerantz from Carolina Journal joins us, coming up. 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.