NC county allegedly use race & gender to award Helene relief (02-18-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.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.

[00:00:28] I got a story here out of Buncombe County, where apparently they've been prioritizing Helene relief money by race. I'll get to that in a second. But first, we have a call from Jeff calling about something I talked about last hour regarding Margaret Brennan's stupidity. Jeff, welcome to the show.

[00:00:53] Jeff, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking my call. To a certain extent, Ms. Brennan does have a point. When the Weimar Republic was founded after World War I, there was free speech. They had multiple parties. The Nazi party didn't get started until I think around 1923. And most of these parties did have something of a private militia. And their job was basically to bust up rallies.

[00:01:20] And so Hitler, you know, he had his stormtroopers that would stop the opposing parties' rallies and cut down the speech. Sir? Have you heard of the Weimar fallacy? The what? The Weimar fallacy. Have you heard of this? F-A-L-L-A-C-Y? Correct. No, sir, I haven't. This is what you are describing.

[00:01:45] This idea that freedom of speech led to the rise of Hitler, when in fact, the Weimar Republic had speech codes. And they cracked down on, specifically, the Nazis. They threw them in jail. They banned them. Hitler was banned from public speaking for years.

[00:02:06] There were various organizations that would act as sort of like there was a Jewish organization, similar to the Anti-Defamation League, that would identify, you know, the targeting of Jewish people in speech. And then the government would crack down on them. So, yeah, they had speech. They had anti-free speech laws in the Weimar Republic. Well, I wonder about Hitler being banned from speaking.

[00:02:35] I think part of that was his punishment for initiating that rebellion in Munich. Well, like I said, this is – there's a – there is – it is such a – it's such a theory that it then grew or it spawned a response, which is dubbed the Weimar Fallacy, which is addressing the very thing that you're outlining,

[00:02:59] which is that the Weimar Republic had free speech and that allowed the Nazis to go around and do their pamphlets and cartoons and all this other stuff, when in fact the Weimar Republic did not have free speech as we have it. They actually had speech restrictions and censorship efforts and people were fined and thrown in jail and such. Okay, I appreciate you enlightening me on that. I'd never heard of that. I've just read a lot of books about, you know, the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. So –

[00:03:27] Yeah, go look up – there's a – I played a clip of it yesterday. It's called thefire.org. It's a fire organization. It's a free speech organization. And they had a clip on it talking about the Weimar Fallacy. So if you just look up Weimar Fallacy, you'll probably find it. Okay. All right. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, you too. Appreciate it. All right. So a North Carolina citizen group – this is, by the way, from thedailywire.com,

[00:03:56] piece by Leif Lemahieu. I think he's Spanish. A North Carolina citizen group is asking the Trump administration to intervene after local leaders prioritized Hurricane Helene small business relief grants on the basis of race and sex.

[00:04:21] I can't believe that Buncombe County would do such a thing. Actually, I totally can believe it. It is completely captured by the left. Western North Carolina Citizens for Equality – that's the organization, citizen group – filed a complaint with the Treasury Department last month

[00:04:44] after Buncombe County announced that it would focus on supporting small businesses damaged by Helene that were BIPOC and women-owned. BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color. Right? So three different groups there, I guess. Although I kind of feel like Black would fall into the POC, right?

[00:05:10] And wouldn't also Indigenous fall into POC? Wouldn't they all just be POC? But, I don't know. Whatever. BIPOC is what they go by. At least for leftist women that control these governments in Buncombe County. Buncombe County, home to Liberal Asheville, funded the program by using repurposed federal COVID relief funds. Quote,

[00:05:40] In this situation, there is no doubt that Buncombe County intended to discriminate against white business owners in its Helene Relief Project. The county directed that the funds be used in a manner that prioritizes one group of business owners over another based solely on skin color. That's according to the president of Western North Carolina Citizens for Equality, President Carl Mumpower, who was a former city councilman, Republican.

[00:06:09] I think he may have actually been the last Republican ever elected to the Asheville City Council. Although I think technically it's nonpartisan. No, it's a nonpartisan race. So nobody knows what political affiliation these candidates are, except everybody really knows.

[00:06:33] So they have filed a civil rights complaint with the Treasury Department. The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, all Democrats now, rolled out its small business relief grant program in November, announcing that it would prioritize helping businesses not owned by white men. The program would make business owners eligible for tens of thousands of dollars

[00:06:59] in repurposed American Rescue Plan funds, or ARPA funds. The county said that the focus area of the small business support program would be BIPOC-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and sole proprietorships. So I guess if you're a white dude and you're a sole proprietorship, then I guess you could get access to the money maybe?

[00:07:24] From November 13th through the 17th, the county partnered with the non-profit Mountain BizWorks, and that is spelled B-I-Z-W-O-R-K-S, BizWorks. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, so Mountain BizWorks is going to administer the $1.5 million in funding appropriated from the ARPA. The non-profit Mountain BizWorks says that it focuses on working with, quote,

[00:07:53] people of color, women, and immigrant entrepreneurs and works to promote racial equity. It's also targeted in the complaint by this citizens group. Statistics shared by the county show that grants were disproportionately awarded to women and minorities. Well, of course it would be because that's the focus, right? That's the intent.

[00:08:20] Of the 137 awards given out, 28.5% were given to minority-owned businesses. About 61% were given to women-owned businesses. The county, by the way, in case you are wondering, which has always been a point of hilarity to me when I worked in Asheville for eight years, and all of the focus on race and ethnicity and equity and diversity,

[00:08:50] like all of their focus on this stuff, and just the denigration of whites and Republicans and all of it. Buncombe County is 90% white. Like, it's so much whiter, right? Which, like, it's where these leftist white people retire to, to then virtue signal to everybody else about how they really do care about all these minority people,

[00:09:19] just as long as they don't live in my county. I just stay over there. Mumpower believes that the process not only violates federal law, but also Buncombe County's very own anti-discrimination law, that ordinance describes discrimination as treating people differently for a number of different factors, including race and sex. Yes, you are not allowed to discriminate based on race and sex, and this program does that very thing. Here's a great idea.

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[00:11:13] in front of the Asheville town hall, city hall, and the government building, whatever. They're right next to each other. But so you got like two trees. It's probably separated by about 15 feet, these two trees. And then in between the two trees, just this pile of, you know, debris. Logs, branches, just all piled up like a big bonfire or something. It's getting ready to be had.

[00:11:44] And so Trudy says, I see so much Helene debris every day, and I thought that this pile of debris was some of that. Right? That's obviously a, you know, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras, right? Obviously, you would think this is just a pile of debris left over from Hurricane Helene. But Trudy says, I have now been informed that it is an art installation.

[00:12:14] It's called the Eagle's Nest. She says, Now most people here in the mountains know that a pile like this attracts vermin, snakes, etc. Yeah. Like, I'm just waiting for some of the local activists or homeless folks to go light the thing on fire. You know? Because they're not going to know. I mean, the homeless folks are probably not going to know that that is an art installation. You know, the...

[00:12:45] Again, this is what I call art by explanation. You know, if I can't tell that this is artwork unless you put some sort of a placard in front of it that tells me specifically this is supposed to be art, you know, here's its name and this is what it represents or whatever. Like, if I can't look at something and immediately know that this is a piece of art, then it's not art. Sorry. Like, I make the rule on that for myself. Okay?

[00:13:15] Or as somebody else told me one time, it's not art if I can do it. That's... It's just a pile of yard waste, people. Really. It's just a pile of yard waste. It's not art. Although I'm sure the taxpayers coughed up a couple grand for this... I mean, it is ridiculous. It is, like, literally just a pile of logs and... Or branches. Probably no bigger than, like, four inches diameter branches.

[00:13:45] And... It's just all piled up. Like a bonfire. But somebody's going to come along and light that baby up. Somebody is going to do it. Okay? They bathe in the water fountains like 20 feet away from here. Don't tell me they're not going to light this puppy up to stay warm at some point. All right. It'd be like... Yeah. And then the scandal would be like eating the banana duct taped to the wall. Right? Okay. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too.

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[00:15:11] as they make the media landscape more transparent. Out in Asheville. Do you know what Reddit is? Reddit.com. It's a website, a forum. People post threads and stuff and there are all sorts of these subreddits they call them, Reddit threads where they'll be like they all start with like an R and then a slash and then a topic or something and so like R slash Charlotte. And so people will go in there

[00:15:41] and talk about Charlotte and then it can get very specific about different things. You have subreddits of different, you know, more specific categories or whatever. But anyway, there is one for Asheville as there are for like most cities and somebody posted up over there a hit list of businesses to boycott because the businesses are at least perceived to be

[00:16:10] conservative owned. that's it. So they're now posting lists and this is not just Asheville by the way, there are lists like this all over the country because Reddit has become what virtually all of these types of forums become when the moderators boot all conservatives off the platform. Up in Asheville there were when I first got there and I don't even know if this

[00:16:40] I guess I could check and see but I really don't care to. There was a Facebook group well actually before the Facebook group there was a website called Scrutiny Hooligans and one of the guys who started the blog who went by the online name of Screwy Hoolie actually became a city councilman. That's the kind of people you're dealing with in Asheville. He became a city councilman. Just a nasty guy online and but

[00:17:09] same thing happened at that website where they would boot off any kind of conservatives who would post comments after the blog posts and stuff and so they would just ban all of these conservatives much like the Germans are doing now but without the force of law. So they would ban them and then there was a Facebook group started up by a couple of leftists and it was called Asheville Politics and a lot of people and it was like and so when I got there Asheville Politics then started up

[00:17:39] I joined Asheville Politics and I made it I want to say about six months and they one of the like the first interaction I had though was the moderators accusing me of running some other account because this other account was some conservative guy who happened to like my page or was a friend of mine on Facebook or something and that was it. that was the only that was the only friend and follower the guy had and so they said

[00:18:08] that I was running that account and I said I'm not running that account I don't have any other accounts this is my account I don't know who this person is and they didn't care the evidence was overwhelming for them and so they kicked that guy off accusing him of being a sock puppet of mine which he wasn't and then they kicked me off because they would allow personal attacks against me in fact the moderators would engage in personal attacks against me and then when I

[00:18:38] started responding in kind because you know me I would prefer to have the conversations about policy and philosophy and such but if you are interested in only the name calling well I'm your huckleberry there too I can engage like that as well I prefer not to but I am skilled at it so I proceeded to employ those skills they didn't like it very much because some of them were kind of they stung a bit particularly the you know the twisting of one guy's one of the moderators

[00:19:08] names he didn't like the name that I thought his name was Shad and I thought that that sounded very similar to another word and I just would call him that word instead because he would call me different names so anyway they banned me so what ends up happening on all of these types of sites is that they kick off everybody that disagrees with them and then the site dies it's what happened to scrutiny hooligans the actual politics page became a freaking ghost

[00:19:37] town and that's what reddit is now becoming because there isn't any there's no disagreement permitted and if you cross you know if even if a lefty crosses another lefty then they file complaints against each other and one of them gets booted off or they get warned or something and so it just becomes this echo chamber of moon battery right so they have this list

[00:20:08] and I'm actually kind of surprised that they got as many names as they did because it is Asheville so I didn't think there were that many conservatives or Trump supporters in Asheville but it does make some bit of sense because these are business owners so anyway so I figured well you made the list so I'm going to go ahead and tell my audience who these businesses are so they can go support them because they're obviously being targeted for a boycott so if you would

[00:20:37] like to support these companies I'll give you the names so if you're going to Asheville to spend some tourism dollars you want to spend it at these places to help out people that aren't crazy that aren't insane all right I hope you had a happy holiday season but tell me if something like this happened at your house your family and friends are gathered around maybe y'all are in the living room you're laughing swapping stories reminiscing and then somebody says hey dad remember

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[00:21:37] per tape you have a big collection they've got a discount for you and next year instead of talking about those memories imagine gathering the family to watch them together talk about a memorable gift so do what I did trust the experts at create a video conveniently located in mint hill right off I-485 and online at create a video dot com so here's the list of the targeted businesses by leftists in western North Carolina because these business owners

[00:22:06] have made the unforgivable sin of not being a leftist so they created this hit list on reddit and I don't know how accurate it is but if these businesses are being targeted for boycotts I figured why not pass the information along to you so you can go to them if you so choose so here they are earthling coffee affordable mufflers and brakes I mean obviously like if you need a

[00:22:35] muffler or brakes but anyway laurel ridge country club river top landscape wnc tire granddad's apples workout anytime I believe that's a gym uh the pisgah inn frank's roman pizza arabella's fast track at erwin hills which fast track I think is a gas station which like guys you're really struggling if you have to

[00:23:06] does anybody check the political affiliation of the gas station owner anyway uh pieza p-i-e-z-a-a allen's jewelry and pawn odom locksmith's dragon puff smoke and vape shop apotheca vicious biscuit and monford deli that's it that's the massive list that they could come up with uh of business owners that I am not really sure like some of the comments

[00:23:36] here that got them on the list um let's see here I mean because some of it's like always has right wing news plus radio on pro-trump stuff inside the store right employees wearing MAGA gear while working like this is the stuff that's got them WNC tire they don't even have a reason they're the reason that they give is

[00:24:06] reason question mark question mark question mark they don't even have a reason they're just they're just on the list you right on the list that's it on the list um I think some um some more people might be getting added to the list if this is true abc11.com it's actually an associated press story uh published at the abc11.com site um some in western north carolina hit by helene embrace president trump's push to abolish fema

[00:24:37] no really why could it be that the people most directly impacted and affected and had interactions with fema might know a thing or two about their effectiveness they're open to president trump's suggestion about getting rid of fema it's a common sentiment in the mountains of western north carolina days after trump took office on january 20th he surveyed the fallout from wildfires in california and the hurricane in north carolina and suggested that states primarily manage the

[00:25:06] response to natural disasters um he said as a candidate he had uh disparaged fema's work in the southern states hit by helene that criticism which began almost as soon as the wind stopped blowing has not stopped see again the scandal is not the story the story is the republican reaction to the scandal rule number two of journalism

[00:25:36] more recently the ap reports fema has criticized or was criticized by trump advisor elon musk over payments to reimburse new york city for hotel costs for migrants four fema employees were fired accused of circumventing leadership to make the transactions which have been standard for years through a program that helps with costs to care for a surge in migration got really shoehorned the word care in there didn't they

[00:26:06] helps with costs to care for a surge in migration yeah it's overrun and also as musk pointed out the other day at that oval office press briefing the roosevelt hotel which is where the 59 million dollars went to after trump said freeze all the funding and then they still push the money out the door that hotel is completely full and they're paying twice the market rate so yeah like that's that's

[00:26:36] not to care for a surge in migration okay during his remarks trump said he may sign an executive order to fundamentally overhaul or get rid of fema north carolina's government estimated that helene caused a record 60 billion dollars in damages fema has contributed about 380 million through public assistance grants to the state and local governments as well as approximately 372 million directly to north carolinians as of february 11th according to

[00:27:05] the agency fema's responsibilities include direct financial assistance to individuals and reimbursements to governments for recovery tasks like debris removal and rebuilding roads which by the way the army corps of engineers this is not in the ap story but the army corps of engineers has made more progress in two weeks with debris removal than in the previous four months right there

[00:27:35] are people posting videos and pictures all over twitter all over social media showing the army corps of engineers rolling in and clearing out debris that had sat there for four months what happened in the last two weeks how did the army corps of engineers all of a sudden be able to deploy all of these trucks to get out there and start scooping up all the debris out of the lakes and off the

[00:28:05] sides of the roads what happened something i feel like something important happened within the last i don't know month less than three weeks man three weeks now it'll come to me all right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for listening i could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast so if you'd like please support them too and tell them you heard it here you can also become a patron at my patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com

[00:28:35] again thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while i'm gone