NC Democrats complain that GOP fights back | Hour 3

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 dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. As we do every Monday at two o'clock, we chat with Ap Dylan. She is a reporter over at the North State Journal and sjonline dot com. You can also subscribe to her newsletter over on substack. It's called more to the Story. Hello, Ap, how are you? Hey? P How are you doing? How is your fourth? It was good? It was all right. I mean I did have to suffer through a thirteen minute speech by zoron Mamdanie, so thanks for that. But yeah, otherwise, yeah, I was freedom maxing, as the kids say. Over the weekend, How was yours? It was pretty good, laid back, relaxed, watch a lot of the fireworks. The DC firearms were absolutely insane on TV. I mean, he really Trump promised eight hundred and fifty thousand different mortars, and well, I think they's all with that. I lost count. Yeah, I was trying to count and I could. Yeah. I stopped at about like two hundred. Yeah, so there was a lot. It was awesome, all right. So also awesome. We had a couple of Supreme Court decisions that came down over the last two weeks and I've been covering them. Some of them not so awesome, to be sure, but one of them that was awesome. We finally got some lawyers with some robes to tell us what a woman is, so that was helpful. They also told us that arrives means rides and temporary means temporary, so we had that going for us as well. But regarding the Supreme Court rulings on whether or not boys could play on female teams, sporting teams and such, and this was in response, I thought you did a good job of sort of tracing back how how we got to the Supreme Court. So lay that out for folks. As to how this thing ended up at the Supreme Court. Okay, well, back in twenty twenty late going into twenty twenty one, the Biden administration's Department of Education decided it was going to rewrite Title nine to include general identity, which through the doors wide open for men in sports and locker rooms and all other female spaces and vice versa. If a girl was identifying as a boy, etc. So that became an issue, and within the proposal of those changes those rule changes, at least twenty three states sued and several other private entity sued as well as interested parties. So there were a bunch of lawsuits that ramped up, and heading into twenty twenty three they had paused the rule, and then going into twenty twenty four they move forward with it. But then they quietly rolled it back in December of twenty four, citing the number of lawsuits that were coming to a head which were going to rule not in their favor. Yeah, this is this was and I believe Obama did this first where they and it's another example of the way the left corrupts the language. They tried to say that, oh, sex now means gender, which was an odd thing to argue, particularly when you had been saying that sex and gender are two different things. Right. The same people that were like, oh, no, sex is different than you know, your biological sex is different than your gender. They're totally different. Accept if we need gender to also mean sex for purposes of Title nine, and that's exactly. So that's really yeah. And so this prompted a flurry of lawsuits, like two dozen of them, and North Carolina was one of the states. I guess that was a part of this. Yeah, North Carolina was involved. But not oh, not in a lawsuit. Not in a lawsuit. The Attorney General's office under Josh Stein decided it wasn't going to go down that road, right, But multiple other entities within the states, I believe Family Values Coalition wrote an amicus in brief and support, and there were other lawsuits at the time that were happening. With the state's House Bill seventy four. I believe it was the Fairness of Women's Sports Act. There was a lawsuit lobbed against that, which was pretty much quickly dropped after the Biden administration rolled back the changes and a federal judge in January of twenty twenty five basically said yeah, you're done right. So North Carolina legislature, the Republican legislature, passed the Fairness in Women's Sports Act that was their response because they weren't going to get anything from the Attorney General to try to litigate this matter. And so House Bill five seventy four, you right, that had passed the Senate with the support of two Democrats, Michael Ray and val Applewhite. And at the time this. Was Roy Cooper's tenure, right, so he was still governor and he vetoed that bill and he and I found this interesting because Josh Stein says the very same thing in the Overriding of the Vetos when he put out his statement on that talking about, oh, the Republicans are just trying to fight political culture wars, right like this, So that's what Roy Cooper was saying at the time. But it's like, the Republicans are not launching these culture wars. They're responding to the left's transgression. The term politicians and flaiming their political culture wars. These are not These are not political culture wars that were started on the right. They were started on the left through proposals like this, but also through you know, things like housepill Too. Most people forget how spill Too returned everything to the status quo. It was the Charlotte Ordnance that made all bathrooms, locker rooms, any kind of private space like that. Basically, unisex men could go in women's places, women could go in men's places. But it wasn't just for public spaces inside the city of Charlotte, it was for private ones too. So that was a bridge too far, and so the HB two is what returned it back to normal, you know. I mean the obvious would have been, you know, well, hi, just install a unisex bathroom and be done with it. But nobody wanted to go that route. They wanted to be able to use the opposite sex right, So that's what happened. And Cooper at first kind of flinched at that topic when he was running his first term as governor, and then when he realized what a big deal it was becoming and he could fund raise off of it, he pivoted and he made his entire campaign, pretty much his first term campaign, about House Bill too. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about Yeah, we've talked about this before, where he you know, he made phone calls and he helped to whip up a boycott against his own state as as a sitting attorney general. Great, yeah, just so he could I mean, and what and that that is his m O. Like he will he will definitely harm citizens of his state. If it means an advantage for him in his personal political prospects, he will do that. He also we've heard the bill that was supposed to prohibit eventually was a wridden that prohibited transgender sex change surgeries and puberty blockers and dangerous drugs that were now coming to see have serious effects. He also vetoed that bill and it was you know, it put a ban on it for my under a certain age, I want to today with the eighteen unless there was you know, serious printal input and everything. It basically said no, you can't, you can't do these things anymore. He betold that too. So he has a he has a track record there, and the folks have asked him on the campaign trail about it. And you know, you got those videos out there of him, you know, being asked that question if he's leaving an event in him basically ignoring and continuing walking. But you know, other times I've I've yet to see any of the legacy media in North Carolina no be able to ask him that. No, they'll ask him if he can name the players on the hurricanes. Yes, you know, well even the Washington Post said that this was something that was going to come back to Hanum. It was it used to be a bonus in his in his pro in the in the checklist. Now it's the John Kahn, So he's avoiding that topic. All right. So I mentioned Josh Stein, the current governor, and he criticized this sies of Veto overrides that occurred, saying that they are stoking the culture wars that divide us, which is classic Darvo behavior. This is reverse victim and offender. As we just went over, like, these are things that the left has been transgressing and pushing and when the right responds then it's, oh, you're stoking culture wars that divide us. These four over rides, basically three of them were on essentially eliminating DEI from state agencies, from public education, and from the university's the public higher ed as well. That was three of the four, right. And then the fourth one was to make the state agencies cooperate with immigration Customs. Enforcement, correct, right, Yeah, it was basically that's in a nutshell, the main thing that that bill did. Yeah, all right, so to make sure that we're entering the MOUs with ice and customs and moorder patrol. And Democrats were crying foul over the votes to override these vetos because how dare the House leadership schedule a vote on the day when they said they were going to schedule the vote? Do I have that right? Yes, it's so bizarre. Yeah, several Democrats got up and objected, saying that the House rules were being suppressed on debate. They had already debated to live in Hell out of the Yes in the past, and I don't think that anyone in the chamber other than those who were objecting really had an appetite for more of it. It was just a delayed tactic and everyone knew it, and House Speaker Dustin Hall basically was having none of it. So every time one of them got up and said that their their speech was being suppressed into House rules, he literally would quote the rules to Aconne that they approved themselves in a vote and moved on with it. So things didn't go as far as as they would have liked to with drag ancel vote. Yeah. I mean, like the first thing he did when he became Speaker of the House was to publish a calendar and say yes. Right, it's like, here are all the days where we're going to vote, and so now you know, like the whole session, here's every day where we're going to do a vote. And they've got you know, seventy one whatever members in the House. And if that means if two Democrats are not there, they will have enough votes to override any veto. And it just so happened that Carla Cunningham and Shelley Willingham both were not there. So I guess what did they like one I think one had an excused absence and the other took a walk right, so they were not present when the vetos were brought forward. Now I don't know if there was some sort of a deal made where they wouldn't be there on purpose to allow for the vetos to be overridden, but that's how that happened, right it is. And I mean these were two Democrats that were former Democrats. I'm sorry, Shelley wilming h it's still a Democrat, but Carlin Carlin Conningham went unaffiliated at the Nasife Majid. All three of them were targeted by the Democratic Party as well as Josh Stein. Carl and Conningham was targeted personally by Steinstein back to opponent, so that was kind of a big deal. And I mean this might be their way of thumbing their nose on so on their way out the door, and I think that's you know, they're they basically didn't have huge objections to these bills, so they thought, well, we just won't be there, yeah, and that gave them Republicans the majority. I think part of the deal though, was, you know, House spill fifty is the only one left with a veto override outstanding, and that's the freedom to carry one. It basically removes the need for you know, concealed carry permits in order to carry, and a lot of states already have that, but North Carolina doesn't. And I think that that maybe that was the one that bothered them. So I think there was some horse trading there and they said, okay, well we'll take a powder if that one doesn't come up for a vote. Right yeah, because and there are two Republicans that are opposed to that one as well, and it seems like they're pretty firm on it as well, So. There was some pushback on that one. So I mean, it is what it is, and I know a lot of the gone owners were upset and they're not happy with that. But I mean, when you're getting four vetos for the price of one, you know, I think that you know they'll live to play it another day. Yeah, all right, we'll leave it there, Ap Dylan. You can read her work at her newsletter on substackets called more to the Story, and you can check her out at North State Journal nsjonline dot com. Thanks Ap all right. For over a year now you've heard me talking about Create a Video. 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For all the griping in the press and weird videos from a certain senator. That was Senator Sidney Batch, the Senate Minority leader member. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago where she put out a video where she was just like behaving. Well, she was vulgar. She's being very vulgar. Cussing all up and down is some sort of a parody of a key and peel sketch. Anyway, So for all the griping in the press, the budget passed with nine Democratic votes in the Senate and twenty three Democratic votes in the House. Tax cuts, hurricane relief, and a rainy day fund that will now sit at more than four billion dollars. All of this reflects the responsible governing philosophy that has guided the Reform Majority for fifteen years. By the way, that's what the Republicans have been calling of their ascension. Right their victories they took control of the General Assembly, they called themselves the Reform Majority. They go on to say, we should talk about governing philosophy for a minute, because it anchors everything. Have it and you have a good chance of winning, lose it. And it's game over. To endure, any political movement needs a center of gravity. It keeps the constituent parts of that movement in orbit, stable, steady, and continuous. The center of gravity must be a philosophy, an ideology. It cannot be a person because they come and go. It can't be money or power. Those are means to achieve the ideological goal, not ends in themselves. If money and power become ends, that road will eventually lead to ruin. The philosophy that anchors the movement can adapt with time. Circumstances change, orbits can shift. That's part of enduring. But the philosophy, whatever it is, must always be the anchor. The north star. We can point to a lot of different reasons that the reform majority has endured now for fifteen years, but they all come back to a compelling, successful governing philosophy. And I agree, I have some bad news for Democrats and media, but I repeat myself to have to get a different talking point regarding the North Carolina budget. Sorry, I'm sorry. It passed last week. So we have a budget now, and you guys have been talking a lot about we don't have a budget, So now we do have a budget. Well, I mean unless the governor veto is the budget. But that would be weird because like almost three dozen Democrats voted. In favor of the budget. So there is that kind of feel like I kind of feel like he's just gonna let it become law. He's got the it's not a pocket veto, it's a pocket approval. So if he doesn't do anything in ten days, it becomes law. It's kind of like the it's like an Alford plea of vetoing. It's like I'm not saying I'm guilty. I'm just saying you got me dead to rights. All the evidence says I'm guilty. So North Carolina lawmakers released a long awaited state budget last week, setting up votes for a thirty four point four billion dollar spending plan that pairs broad pay raises and continued income tax cuts with new investments in Hurricane Helen recovery, medicaid oversight, education, and public safety. The release comes as the state approaches the July first start of the new fiscal year and during what was currently scheduled to be the final week of the legislative session. Okay, so they did their votes on Wednesday and then on Thursday, It then goes to Josh Stein, who could sign it, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature. So this from The Carolina Journal piece by Andrew Pomerans regarding the raises. The final agreement includes an average eight percent teacher pay raise, with budget negotiators say that the plan would make North Carolina starting teacher pay number one in the South. Teachers would also get bonuses ranging from five hundred dollars to one thousand dollars. State employees would receive a three percent raise, with larger increases in certain high need areas of state government. State employees would also get bonuses ranging from one thousand dollars to two thousand dollars. The deal also includes raises for law enforcement officers, including a twenty point three percent average increase for SBI and al officers. For state Highway patrol, that average increase is going to be just under eighteen percent, correctional officers, fifteen point four percent average in and a ten percent average increase for probation and parole officers, and a thirteen percent average increase for other law enforcement officers, including state capitol police. Local law enforcement officers would get a one time bonus of one than seven hundred and fifty dollars. So there's your pay raise information tax cuts. The agreement makes no change. This was one of the points of contention. It makes no change to the corporate income tax rate reduction schedule. Okay, so this was put in place years ago under the reform majority. When the Republicans won power, they said, we are overhauling our tax code because it was built in a different era when we were you know, furniture manufacturing date right, and tobacco state. So they revamped everything, and they were like, we're going to start knocking down the corporate income tax and the personal income tax rates, and we're going to do it on a defined schedule based on the revenue that comes in. So this way, if you hit that trigger, that revenue trigger, then it would drop the tax rate down like another quarter percent. And this was scheduled to take I think it was something like fifteen years or something like every other year knockdown you know, quarter point, half point whatever. And they published the whole schedule. So the deal. So right now, the personal income tax rate, and this is a flat rate for everybody, is three point four to nine percent, and that would get lowered to three point two four percent, so just under three in a quarter. That would happen in the year twenty thirty and then, depending on revenue, two years later in twenty thirty two, it would drop to two point. Nine to nine percent. After that, there would be two additional revenue triggered cuts of a quarter point which could eventually drop that rate all the way down to just under two and a half percent. Data centers, the budget repeals the sales tax exemption on electricity for data centers, So they've been getting data centers have been getting a sales tax exemption for the electricity that they buy, and so that now goes away. It also raises the tax rate on sports wagering operators. Okay, so the gambling is going to be more heavily taxed. It's going from eighteen percent up to twenty three percent, and there's an additional seven hundred million dollars that will go into the Hellene Recovery Fund. It keeps the opportunity scholarship funding unchanged. Okay, so the school voucher. Program will get the same amount of money as it did under the current budget. However, I have some bad news here for Democrats. And media, because the budget identified about thirty six million dollars in savings that was that was tied to students that got the scholarship grants below one hundred percent of the average state per pupil allocation, and so those savings are getting redirected to public schools, so actually the we're not depriving public schools of the money. A couple more highlights from the North Carolina budget real quick, just because I ran through it pretty quickly before. Actually I already covered this, but just to reiterate again, thirty six million dollars in savings in the Opportunity Scholarship program. So the school voucher program that democrats and media, but I repeat myself that they keep saying takes money away from public schools and all of this. It's like, well, no, the kids are not in the public school anymore. They're going to a different school, and so you're not getting the money associated with educating that kid because they're not there. Why should you get the money. Well, thirty six million dollars in savings in the Opportunity Scholarship program funding now going back into public schools, So there was some There was thirty six million in savings. So now that's going back into public schools and they don't even have to educate the kid. So no kids going into the public schools. But they're getting an additional thirty six million. So there's another Democrat talking point busted. What else more than a billion dollars for Medicaid and a three hundred and thirty three million dollar Medicaid contingency reserve. The plan includes new guard rails for applied behavior analysis, or ABA therapy, which has drawn increased scrutiny from lawmakers and state watchdogs after a rapid growth in Medicaid funded autism therapy costs. Under the budget, ABA therapy assessments would have to be conducted in person. Service plans would require approval from prepaid health Plans or dhhs, and plans involving more than sixteen hours of therapy per week would face more frequent reapproval. Why because of the potential red flags that have gone up regarding potential fraud we have seen in other states. Right when you when you. See an explosion in these types of therapy services and a you know, an explosion in the Medicaid billing, it's possible that that is a red flag alerting you to fraud. So that's why they're, uh, they're tightening those those regulations. Also in the budget, finally a little bit of progress here a repeal of certificate of need laws, not all of them. This is such a stupid law, all of these things so stupid certificate of need or con laws. The ones repealed would only be for inpatient rehabilitation services facilities and beds. Okay, inpatient rehabilitation services facilities and beds. Certificate of need is this ridiculous program where in order to set up some type of a medical clinic or facility or something, you have to get state approval that there is a need in an area. And as you might imagine, yeah, you've got medical providers that gain this system to eliminate competitors. They will file protests and say, oh, we don't need more than there was the one I remember from up when I was working in Asheville, right on the county line, there was a there was a proposal, a con proposal for approval to open. I think it was like a colonoscopy center, and so they have this public hearing and you know, the company is there. I think it was pard Health that was there. Saying, yeah, we you know, we've identified that this area needs a you know, colonoscopy services, and you had like these like four or five you know, random people that show up and they're like, I don't feel like we need this here. Uh I'm sorry, Like, do you have some money that you're putting up in this endeavor? No? Okay, Well, then like your opinion does not matter. You are not an expert on this. You've done no market analysis, you're not putting any skin in the game. My bet is that you're there at the behest of somebody else who is a competitor. You know, that's my That would be my bet. There's no reason for the con laws. If a hospital system or a private practitioner, if they want to open up a clinic, they should be allowed to open it up. They should not have to get a certificate of need from the government that says there is need in this area for your particular service, so we are going to allow that one service. You want to know why healthcare costs are high, This is one reason con laws they're just ridiculous. We need more repeals of these types of laws, more faster. Also, the North Carolina House last week voted seventy three to forty to pass House Built four thirty seven, which would ban what it calls unauthorized sleeping in public spaces. Local governments instead could direct homeless people to a designated space, so long as it's not located near residential areas, commercial properties, or schools. Local governments would be required to provide security, toilets and water. Right, if you, as the City of Charlotte, you want to set up an encampment someplace, then here are the rules for you to do so. You don't just get to let an encampment sprout up right next door to some condo building or a school or in a commercial corridor. No, if you want to have one of these encampments because you care so much about the homeless population, then you need to give them toilets, and you need to give them water, and there needs. To be security. And the bill would also impose harsher restrictions on people who try to sell drugs in the homeless shelters, which that seems fair. Supporters of the bill say it will improve public safety, but opponents say it criminalizes homelessness while doing little to address the cause of the problem. Well, the cause of the problem is addiction, and unless we're going to talk about involuntary commitment, this seems like a workable response. All right, that'll do it for this. 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 dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.