NC AG claims credit for doing what his predecessor claimed credit for (04-10-2024--Hour3)

[00:00:00] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day

[00:00:09] from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte and if you want exclusive content like invitations

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[00:00:23] episode for free, write your smartphone or tablet and again thank you so much for

[00:00:27] your support. By the way, if you did not catch the call halfway through the last hour, the

[00:00:38] consensus so far is that the call or Davis was full of crap. Just a heads up on that

[00:00:43] one. Just reading the messages. Nobody believes you. So they don't believe what you said

[00:00:51] and they don't believe that you are what you claim to be. Alright, North Carolina has officially

[00:01:01] ended a decades long backlog of untested rape kits, sexual assault kits that are taken from

[00:01:12] victims at the hospital and then they're sent off to the state crime lab to be processed

[00:01:18] so they can get DNA and then they can get convictions. Rape kits. These have been, the

[00:01:28] backlog has been an issue in North Carolina for a couple of years now if I recall correctly

[00:01:34] and so the Attorney General Josh Stein is taking a victory lap. He did this yesterday

[00:01:40] I want to say and let me see, let me pull up my bookmarks here. Yes, so yesterday he sends

[00:01:52] out a series of tweets saying North Carolina has ended the sexual assault kit backlog.

[00:01:58] This is a milestone more than six years in the making to deliver justice for victims

[00:02:03] and survivors. We owe a debt of gratitude to the survivors who have advocated for this

[00:02:08] work. I want to say a special thank you to Ms. Linda who turned her tragedy into tireless

[00:02:13] advocacy for other survivors. I am so grateful that we are working together on a bipartisan

[00:02:20] basis to pursue justice by reviewing and testing these older kits. Each kit belongs to a person

[00:02:26] who experienced a brutal trauma. They deserve our best efforts to seek justice and get

[00:02:31] their rapists off the streets. I want to thank legislators of both parties in

[00:02:37] the General Assembly for their support. This bipartisan effort demonstrates we can rise

[00:02:45] above politics to make a real difference for North Carolinians when we work together. I

[00:02:55] also want to thank the law enforcement officers who have worked hard to get these kits tested

[00:03:00] and are now pursuing leads on these cold cases. They've made 114 arrests already and

[00:03:05] we're just getting started. And then he thanks the crime lab people and then says to the offenders,

[00:03:13] you know, we will do what we everything in our power to hold you accountable to the victims.

[00:03:18] We care about you and we'll never stop pursuing justice into the public. We are

[00:03:22] committed to working with the community partners to keep pursuing justice. Right.

[00:03:26] Okay. So first off, good, good, right? Good news. They have cleared the quote backlog. Okay. Good news.

[00:03:41] I don't know how long it takes them to process a kit that now comes in because like in the past,

[00:03:48] it took like months, like seven and a half months. So I'm not really sure that if you haven't

[00:03:56] reduced that is that really clearing a backlog? Right. Because the idea is that you're so backed

[00:04:03] up that things take too long to process. And that delays justice. You know, you got the

[00:04:09] rapist on the streets that you can't take them off the streets because you can't get the

[00:04:12] kit tested. So do we have an accelerated timeline now? Now that you got rid of all the old cases,

[00:04:20] they're all processed through. So now you can work on current cases as they come in and then

[00:04:25] you can get rapists right off the street. So that's a that would be a good thing to know.

[00:04:30] But we don't learn that in his tweets nor in the press release that WLOS TV wrote. I'm just

[00:04:38] kidding. It's not a press release, but it kind of reads like one. Yeah, North Carolina has

[00:04:42] officially ended a decades long backlog of untested rape kits. Attorney General Josh Stein,

[00:04:47] who is running for governor is credited by himself with spearheading the effort that started

[00:04:53] seven years ago. So this is Josh Stein using the rape kit backlog and clearing the

[00:05:01] backlog as proof that he cares about victims. He's tough on crime. He works across the aisle.

[00:05:09] He works with law enforcement, right? And he's going to keep you safe. Right? These are all

[00:05:15] very handy messages to have in an election. There were also the very same messages that

[00:05:23] Roy Cooper used in his election when he allegedly cleared the backlog of rape kits back in 2016

[00:05:37] when he was running against Pat McCrory. Roy Cooper at that time claimed to have cleared

[00:05:43] the backlog. It wasn't true then. I have to believe because as soon as Josh Stein got

[00:05:53] into office, he started talking about clearing the backlog and people like me were saying,

[00:05:57] well, wait a minute. I thought the backlog was cleared. Roy Cooper just ran a campaign

[00:06:02] on it, then HP two, but on the crime front like this, Roy Cooper was the attorney general

[00:06:09] for 16 years. 16 years, he was AG and the AG is in charge of the crime lab. So how did

[00:06:19] the backlog begin? How did it persist? How did it get cleared, quote unquote, but then

[00:06:27] not cleared when Stein got in to the point where the state legislature majority, the

[00:06:32] Republicans, they actually had to pass a law, the Survivor Act, which you would not know

[00:06:40] by the way, based on the report at WLOS which just says the state's bipartisan survivor act.

[00:06:50] So like what did Stein pass that law? Is that how that works? Does the attorney general get to

[00:06:56] pass laws now in a bipartisan way? No, this was the legislature and the legislature was

[00:07:02] like, we're going to do this thing once you come on down to the press conference.

[00:07:07] And Stein looked super uncomfortable being there, but he kind of had to be there and

[00:07:12] Republicans knew this too. I mean, look, I'm not going to tell you that the politics had

[00:07:17] nothing to do with this either. Right? Stein had just come out of an election or was going

[00:07:22] into the election, right? Because remember, he ran against that guy, Jim O'Neill, who is,

[00:07:25] I think, the DA at Forsyth County. And Stein tried to accuse O'Neill or Neil, Jim Neil,

[00:07:32] I forget, but he tried to accuse his opponent, the Republican DA, of not having the rape kits tested

[00:07:44] while Stein is in charge of the lab that does the testing. So Democrats have been using this

[00:07:52] issue now for what? Going back to 2016, right? At least. The legislature, the Republican legislature

[00:08:06] under the Survivor Act launched a kit tracker system and a requirement that officers quickly

[00:08:13] submit tests for timely turnarounds. North Carolina had this backlog. It had lasted decades.

[00:08:23] Stein's office reported more than 16,000 kits sat untested on shelves in 2019, 2019,

[00:08:31] which is three years after he took office, right? And what, 19 years after Roy Cooper

[00:08:40] took over as Attorney General. Thanks to state and federal funding, more than 11,000 kits that

[00:08:45] needed to be tested have been resulting in more than 5,000 DNA CODIS data submissions and 114 arrests.

[00:08:55] By the way, one of the ways that they were able to accelerate and clear the backlog

[00:09:03] was the labs that they were using for all the COVID testing. Although, all those private labs,

[00:09:12] they started funneling a lot of the work to them. So they outsourced to the private sector

[00:09:19] in order to clear the backlog. Yeah.

[00:09:22] Yeah. In 2016, Roy Cooper had to run an ad about this because he said when I became a,

[00:09:33] because the Republicans had attacked him over the rape kit backlog. So he had to come out

[00:09:39] and say that when he became Attorney General, he discovered a backlog of more than 5,000 DNA

[00:09:44] test kits. So keep this in mind. He says there was a backlog of 5,000 kits when he took over.

[00:09:52] But yet, Stein's office reported 16,000 kits in 2019. So it just grew. So the number of untested

[00:10:02] kits grew under Roy Cooper's tenure as Attorney General and the first three years of Josh Stein.

[00:10:12] But now that it's been cleared, thanks to the Republican legislature passing the Survivor Act

[00:10:18] and the outsourcing to these other labs. Oh, and also local jurisdictions getting so fed up,

[00:10:24] they went and built their own crime labs like in Mecklenburg. They went and were like,

[00:10:28] we cannot count on the state to do this stuff. We're going to do it ourselves.

[00:10:32] Roy Cooper actually had to put out an ad to try to beat back this negative image.

[00:10:40] So going back to WURAL's story from 2016, eight years ago, piece by Mark Binker,

[00:10:50] quoting Roy Cooper, my good friend Ray, the governor, but then he was Attorney General and he was

[00:10:55] running against the incumbent Republican Governor Pat McCrory. And Cooper's ad said,

[00:11:00] when I became Attorney General, we discovered a backlog of more than 5,000 DNA test kits

[00:11:06] and years worth of shoddy investigations in the state crime lab. But what Governor McCrory

[00:11:11] isn't telling you is that we cleared the backlog. We also solved over 2,000 crimes and put killers

[00:11:17] and rapists in prison from cold cases. We fixed the problems at the crime lab.

[00:11:24] That's what Cooper said. And it wasn't true. Now WURAL says that, you know,

[00:11:31] fixed is a strong word. Yeah, because it indicates that you fixed it, right? Problem solved.

[00:11:38] And while it is fair to say some problems have been addressed at the lab, not all of them have been.

[00:11:46] The spot could leave viewers with the impression, this ad could leave people with the impression

[00:11:52] that the state crime lab has fully addressed all of its various problems.

[00:11:56] So we give it a red light on our fact checking scale, which is the equivalent of a lie. They did

[00:12:02] like a red light, yellow light, green light kind of deal. In 2009 and 2010, when cases involving

[00:12:11] shoddy evidence and practices were the subject of reporting by the News & Observer, WURAL News

[00:12:17] and other outlets, that led Roy Cooper, the Attorney General to call for an outside review

[00:12:23] which was led by Chris Swecker, a lawyer and a former assistant director of the FBI's

[00:12:28] Criminal Investigative Division, right? Former special agent in charge here in Charlotte as well.

[00:12:35] And Swecker did this report on the state crime lab. This was 09. By the way, 2009, 2010,

[00:12:43] Democrats still controlled the legislature. So when there were complaints about the

[00:12:49] underfunding of the crime lab, Republicans had nothing to do with this. This was all Democrat

[00:12:56] action. This was prior to 2011 when Republicans first took control of the General Assembly

[00:13:02] and then McCrory won in 2012. Following the audit by Swecker, the crime lab was once again

[00:13:10] the focus of an improvement campaign in 2014. Part of the issue is what Cooper described

[00:13:16] at the time as a deluge of evidence. He said, you have 20,000 law enforcement officers across

[00:13:22] North Carolina sending tens of thousands of cases to the lab, many of them with multiple pieces

[00:13:27] of evidence and you have about 124 scientists positions who are trying to handle all of this.

[00:13:32] The problem is that the cases keep coming and the scientists who are working as hard as they

[00:13:36] can, they can't keep up. Right? So he's blaming funding, resource problem. So when Cooper

[00:13:42] says we fixed the problems, DA said, well, that depends on what you mean by we. Like, what do you

[00:13:48] mean by we? You got a mouse in your pocket there? Right? There's a lot of people who have fixed the

[00:13:52] lab. Law enforcement agencies worked to clear up lab issues as well. Wake County, Mecklenburg

[00:13:57] County local police agencies made their own local labs so they could get quicker turnaround times.

[00:14:06] WRAL asked Cooper's office for the current number of backlogged cases

[00:14:10] and they said there is no backlog figure, but the average time to process a case was seven and a

[00:14:15] half months, which is kind of a backlog. Right? Right? If you can't turn the evidence around in,

[00:14:25] I don't know, a couple of weeks, right, two weeks to turn it around, instead seven and a

[00:14:30] half months, kind of sort of seems like there's still a backlog. So last night, it was Tuesday

[00:14:37] and so as I am known to do on certain Tuesdays of the month, I sat around watching the Charlotte

[00:14:43] Mecklenburg School Board meeting because that's my idea of a good time. But no, this one was

[00:14:50] particularly important meeting last night because the Charlotte Mecklenburg school superintendent

[00:14:57] rolled out the budget proposal. Now, this is the very beginning of the process. So

[00:15:03] we don't know what the final numbers are going to look like, but I got to tell you,

[00:15:07] they're not asking for a lot of extra money. I mean, they're asking for a lot of money,

[00:15:12] but proportionately what they're asking for is not a whole lot more than what they've already

[00:15:17] gotten, and they never get cut. And I'm not even talking in like a government

[00:15:23] accounting sort of way of a cut, which is when you ask for $100 extra

[00:15:30] over the hundred you're already getting. So you want $200, but you don't get the extra hundred,

[00:15:35] you get $90. So now you're getting $190, but then you would say I got a $10 cut,

[00:15:42] right? Because you didn't get the full ask. That's government accounting. That's

[00:15:46] Govco's mentality on what a cut is. So it's not even like that. They're asking for more money

[00:15:51] than what they currently are getting. It's like a $1.9 billion budget, which is astounding.

[00:16:03] Absolutely amazing. They've got, hang on a second here,

[00:16:08] 141,000 students, 141,000 students,

[00:16:13] $1.9 billion. If you do the math, by the way, and this is just for the operating side of it,

[00:16:23] this does not include any of the capital like the buildings, right? All of the fields and all

[00:16:31] of that stuff. No capital costs here at all. This is just for operations, operating.

[00:16:37] You divide the $1.9 billion by the 141,000 students and the budget cost per pupil,

[00:16:46] $13,053. So just a little bit above $13 grand per kid per year. That's what it costs to educate

[00:16:58] the children in Charlotte Mecklenburg, $13,000 a year.

[00:17:05] Which is like that's pretty close to college tuition levels, right?

[00:17:16] Charlotte Observer Reporting by Rebecca Noll. It includes a $632, roughly million

[00:17:23] request to the county government, which is a 5.86% increase over what it currently gets this year.

[00:17:31] So they're asking for about $35 million extra from Mecklenburg County commissioners.

[00:17:37] Of that additional $35 million, 14 of it would go towards increasing teacher pay.

[00:17:45] All teachers in North Carolina are paid according to the same salary guidelines,

[00:17:48] which are set by the state legislature. The current base salary for beginning teachers

[00:17:54] in the state with no experience is $39,000. It'll reach $41,000 by the end of next fiscal year

[00:18:03] rather, next fiscal year, the 24-25 fiscal year. Individual districts then can boost

[00:18:11] teacher pay by offering a supplement. Okay? Mecklenburg County does that. Mecklenburg

[00:18:16] County has a supplement of almost $10,000 and they're proposing a boost to that of about $1,000.

[00:18:25] And as it was expressed last night during the meeting, they want Charlotte Mecklenburg

[00:18:30] schools to offer the biggest supplement in the state. They want teacher pay to be the highest

[00:18:38] here in the state so as to attract all of the people that want to get into teaching

[00:18:43] for the right reasons. I mean to, sorry, to attract the best teachers.

[00:18:51] Right. And you can only do that by offering $10,800 in supplement versus $10,270.

[00:19:04] Right? So that, so the extra $600, that's how you get the best. Okay.

[00:19:10] The plan calls for an average teacher supplement of just under $11,000. That's a 5% increase.

[00:19:18] And they say that that still leaves starting teacher salaries below a quote livable wage. Now,

[00:19:27] I thought this was interesting because look, I've covered budget cycles in Charlotte Mecklenburg,

[00:19:32] City Council County Commission, school board did it for like a decade covered state

[00:19:37] budgets as a reporter for the same amount of time and have continued to monitor. I mean,

[00:19:42] I don't cover them as a reporter when I became a host but I still monitor the budget process.

[00:19:49] But I'm not doing deep dives into all of the budgets like I used to as a reporter.

[00:19:55] However, there was a slide that I was watching last night and I gotta tell you,

[00:19:58] I never remember the livable wage being factored into the budget discussions.

[00:20:04] And I'm not saying they shouldn't, I'm just saying this is a sort of a new metric that

[00:20:09] they've introduced. Well, they put up a slide last night that shows the average listing price for

[00:20:17] a home in Charlotte at $522,000. The average cost to rent, they peg it at just over $1,400

[00:20:26] a month for a one bedroom apartment in Charlotte is over $1,400 a month.

[00:20:31] And then they have income needed to rent a one bedroom apartment based on that $1,400 a month

[00:20:38] and they peg the salary then needed at $61,500. So $61,500 roughly, little bit less.

[00:20:49] But here's the thing in when you're doing budgeting at your household budget and you want

[00:20:54] to determine how much you should be spending on housing, there's the 30% rule. You don't want

[00:21:02] to spend more than a third of your income gross on and I believe that's gross, maybe I'm mistaken

[00:21:10] in its net but when you're factoring how much you spend on housing, you don't want to spend

[00:21:17] more than a third. So if you do the third, you do a 30% and well, you actually don't come to a $61,479,000

[00:21:29] salary. You come up with about 10 grand lower than that. So I'm unclear as to why

[00:21:37] this livable wage and this home rental deal at $1,400 for the monthly rent

[00:21:44] because by my math, it's like $52,000 you would need, not $61,500.

[00:21:55] So I don't know how they got that number. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

[00:21:59] Now also, do you know why the cost of living is high in Mechelber County?

[00:22:06] Could it have something to do with a $1.9 billion budget for one local governmental agency,

[00:22:15] not counting the city of Charlotte's budget and not counting Mechelber County's budget?

[00:22:21] Oh, and also all of the zoning regulations that the city of Charlotte controls. Do you think

[00:22:26] maybe these four items I've just listed, three government budgets that total somewhere north

[00:22:32] of $6 billion a year plus the regulatory regimes in place for the zoning? Do you think these might

[00:22:39] have some sort of an impact on the livability, the cost of living in Charlotte that you are now using

[00:22:45] as evidence for raising government spending? I'm just spitballing.

[00:22:51] Okay, if you're listening to this podcast, you are obviously paying attention to the world

[00:22:55] around us. You also have really great taste, I might add. But if you haven't started

[00:22:59] getting prepared for various emergencies, I got to ask, what are you waiting for?

[00:23:04] Please call my friends Bill and Jan at Carolina Readiness Supply and they'll help get you started.

[00:23:09] If you have no idea how to start, they can help you. If you're an experienced prepper,

[00:23:13] they can help you too. Being prepared is just smart. We've already established that

[00:23:17] you're smart. I mean, you listen to this podcast after all. So let's put those smarts

[00:23:22] into action. Go to carolinerreadiness.com. That's carolinerreadiness.com or call them at

[00:23:29] 828-226-7239. Carolina Readiness Supply has 2,000 square feet of supplies as well as

[00:23:35] educational materials that you're going to need for any kind of emergency. Veteran-owned

[00:23:40] Carolina Readiness Supply, will you be ready when the lights go out?

[00:23:44] So things are going to be very difficult here at WBT for a long time, I think.

[00:23:52] It's been a difficult day. I noticed there was something odd. We got our schedules kind of printed

[00:23:59] out, sent to us via email, I should say, from the boss, Mike Schaefer. And I noticed that

[00:24:07] our morning guy here, Beau Thompson, that he had taken a couple of days off and then

[00:24:13] the schedules showed that he was off again for a couple more days. It got tacked on to the

[00:24:17] end of it and I thought, oh, that's weird because Beau, like, he doesn't really take

[00:24:20] many days off to begin with, but then it's odd that there would be the days he had that he was off

[00:24:27] like middle of the week and it just really didn't make any sense. And what I found out this morning

[00:24:34] as a lot of others found out that his daughter who was at Wake Forest, she died. She passed away.

[00:24:42] She had a blood clot in her leg that traveled to her heart. She was a Myers Park grad.

[00:24:50] She played basketball and softball. She then went on to Wake Forest. Myers Park put out a message.

[00:24:59] Wake put out a message. Radio One, our parent company here, put out a statement here.

[00:25:08] The WBT and Radio One family is deeply saddened by the tragic passing of Beau Thompson's daughter,

[00:25:16] Janie. There are no words to provide adequate comfort under these circumstances,

[00:25:21] but we are committed to supporting Beau and his family in any way possible during this difficult

[00:25:27] time. We know that the Radio One community of listeners joins us in prayers for the

[00:25:34] Thompson family. So I'm not aware yet of any arrangements that have been made

[00:25:45] or anything like that yet to pass along so I cannot. I don't have any other information

[00:25:51] to pass along. I heard Vince today offer up a prayer. I thought that was very,

[00:25:58] very nice of him to do. He does it very well. I do not. I've never been good at it.

[00:26:07] So I would recommend going pull Vince's prayer at, it was at 11 o'clock this morning.

[00:26:16] Or say your own prayer now.

[00:26:21] I'm sure they would appreciate that.

[00:26:29] Yes, that's one of the things about this job. It's like you're supposed to know what to say

[00:26:35] and I don't know what to say.

[00:26:39] There's a, I mean, I don't have children so I could not even imagine.

[00:26:45] So all I can say is that, you know, we have prayers for comfort

[00:26:51] and for strength for the family, for the friends.

[00:27:00] Because I'm speechless in grief but also my inability to understand for the family.

[00:27:13] There is information at WBT.com

[00:27:17] talks about the work that Janie did. She volunteered for the Isabella Santos Foundation.

[00:27:23] She served as a student assistant at Footbridge Clinic,

[00:27:28] which provides free dental care to local veterans.

[00:27:39] She was a sophomore at Wake Forest University.

[00:27:43] She was majoring in biophysics and she was a member of the National Society of Physics Students,

[00:27:51] Sigma Pi Sigma, as well as Delta Delta Delta Sorority.

[00:27:57] She was active in Women's Club Basketball and Wake Radio Club on campus

[00:28:04] because of course she's Bo's daughter.

[00:28:06] So don't know what the, you know, the broadcast schedule looks like for any time soon.

[00:28:13] I know you understand that.

[00:28:16] But again, if you've got the heart and the mind and, you know,

[00:28:22] even if you don't have the words, just say a prayer for the Thompson family.

[00:28:31] We appreciate it.

[00:28:32] All right, that'll do it for the next episode.

[00:28:34] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:28:35] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:28:40] So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:28:43] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalinarshow.com.

[00:28:49] Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.