NC's 'Pol-to-Prof Pipeline' resurrected for Roy (02-07-2025--Hour1)

[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, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Good news, the Pol-to-Prof Pipeline has been resurrected for old Roy, our good friend Ray, former Governor Roy Cooper, benefiting from what I thought was maybe now a defunct Pol-to-Prof Pipeline. But no, no, it is still alive. Man, what would we, and by we I mean Democrat lawmakers, what would they do without the pipeline?

[00:00:58] They might have to fend for themselves in the private sector for a couple of years while plotting their next run for public service. That's right, former Governor Roy Cooper is taking a teaching role at Harvard University. He told the McClatchy newspapers exclusively quite the get.

[00:01:22] The position will take Cooper away from North Carolina for eight whole weeks as speculation continues to grow that Cooper, a Democrat, may challenge Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican, for his congressional seat. Well, it is Congress, but he's a senator. But don't worry, don't worry.

[00:01:45] The teaching gig, the eight-week teaching gig will not interfere with, in fact, it'll probably help promote, his run for Senate. He says in a written statement to McClatchy that a run is still on the table. The Pol-to-Prof Pipeline. What are you talking about, Pete? What does that mean? Well, it is the politician-to-professor pipeline.

[00:02:15] And while that is what I call it, it is not technically just professorships. These can be fellowships. These can be chairs of departments. These can be, you know, visiting lecturer gigs. The key is that you pay these former office holders tons of money. That's really the key.

[00:02:41] And then they get to go back to a college campus. They get to stand in front of a class of people who have paid, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the credentialing service that is Harvard. And listen to Roy Cooper drone on about, let's see, the topic is the intersection of government and public health. Fascinating.

[00:03:12] Man, that's going to be a dynamic class. Oh, as one who sat through virtually every single press conference that Roy Cooper did during COVID, I have pity on the students. My goodness. And I was chatting with my pal Casey O'Day. He does the mornings up in Raleigh and Greensboro on WTKK and WPTI.

[00:03:41] And I joined him on Fridays and I was chatting with him about this topic. And he pointed out, I hadn't even really considered it, but like you don't need a lot of material if you're going, if you're Roy Cooper going up there. You really don't need a lot of material because the pace at which he speaks is so slow that you could probably just take one week's worth of curriculum and just drag it out for eight weeks. Again, my sympathies to the students.

[00:04:38] Eight weeks. Five hours worth of work. That's less than I do for show prep for a single show. So like I think I could probably do it. And I bet I would I bet that I would charge way less than Roy Cooper. Now, to be fair, he's probably not charging Harvard. They probably just made an overture to him, much like they did to his predecessor. No, no, no, not not Pat McCrory. He's a Republican. Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:05:06] I forgot to mention that the the Paul to Prof pipeline is not available to Republicans. Sorry about that. It is. It's just for our North Carolina. Elected officials and sometimes their wives, sometimes their wives. I forgot about Mary Easley. That's not I'm not saying people are quick to wed. I'm saying Mary Easley. That's her name.

[00:05:34] And she was the or still is, I think, right, the the the wife of former governor Mike Easley. Now, Mike Easley, he was a he was a little bit radioactive. What with all of the corruption and such lost his law license and everything when he was governor of North Carolina.

[00:05:54] But no matter, you know, voters still put in a Democrat after that, despite several decades of corruption that led to many other Democrats going to prison, including Mecklenburg's own Jim Black, the former speaker of the House. Meg Scott Phipps, Frank Balance. But I digress. So you had Mary Easley. She got a gig, too. You got to go back. And and I did, by the way, you got to go back. To Jim Hunt.

[00:06:24] He served four terms as North Carolina governor. Now, you're not allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms. But Jim found a way around that. His daughter's now the lieutenant governor, Rachel Hunt. Because, you know, Democrats love a good dynasty. And so Jim Hunt, he did two terms and then he was out of politics for like four years or eight years. And then he came back, came back and did another two terms.

[00:06:51] And after he was done, he created the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy. It's referred to as the Hunt Institute. It is, according to Influence Watch, a left of center education advocacy organization based in Durham.

[00:07:18] Founded in 2001 by former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt. The organization was an instrumental force in the creation of federal government directed common core education standards. So with a record like that, who wouldn't trust him to advise on all sorts of other educational reforms, right?

[00:07:41] Since 2002, the Hunt Institute has received at least $17 million from left of center Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That is just one of their funders. It was founded in 2001. I don't know what you're going to say. Pete, this is just an institute. What's the big deal? I will get to it. Founded in 2001. It's an education focused advocacy organization. And here you go.

[00:08:07] It was an affiliate of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill from 2008 through 2015. And in 2015, the Republican-led state legislature ended the institute's state funding. Right? This is the pipeline. This is the jobs program for out-of-work Democrat elected officials.

[00:08:34] This is also the same pipeline that you see with the USAID scandal. Oh, and oh, I should point out. That is a scandal. That is a scandal. And that's why you are seeing journalism in rule number two take hold, which is when the scandal is about Democrats, the story is not the scandal. The story is the Republican reaction to the scandal. Right?

[00:09:00] The corollary there is that if the scandal is about a Republican, then the story is the scandal. Like you focus on the Republican scandal. Right? But if it's a Democrat scandal, then you focus on Republican reaction, which is why there's all this focus on Elon Musk and the Doge dudes that are, you know, that descended onto the USAID program. And they're going into these other departments and they're just going in there with laptops and they're just pulling data. And then what are they doing? Are they hiding it from us? No.

[00:09:27] Are they like using it to attack people online? No. They're just telling us. They're going into these departments. They're pulling the grants. They're looking at the funding. And they're saying this is what's being funded. And the outrage that American taxpayers have towards the funding priorities must be ignored because the story is that would be about the scandal. So instead, we get the Republican reaction to the scandal. All right.

[00:09:57] 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. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete.

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[00:10:54] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Just real quick, I got a message here from Representative Dean Arp, who there is a GoFundMe now up to help Miss Esther rebuild after the fire that engulfed her entire home. Dean Arp was on the show on Wednesday, I think.

[00:11:23] And, yeah, because he talked about how he stopped to help her. He saved her life, basically. She's wheelchair bound and saw the house burning and he ran in there and got her out. But the house was a total loss. So there is now a GoFundMe that has been launched by her family. They're trying to raise $50,000. Help Esther rebuild after fire loss.

[00:11:47] That's the name of the campaign put up by the Haley family. Esther is the oldest sister of the bunch, has outlived most of her siblings. And she is battling cancer as well. She's wheelchair bound. But she is alive and she's in good spirits. They took her to the hospital. So if you, you know, have a heart to help somebody, Miss Esther is probably a good candidate to help there.

[00:12:17] So if you go to GoFundMe and look for Help Esther Rebuild, you'll probably find it that way. I tweeted it out also at Pete Callender on the Twitter machine. So, all right, Roy Cooper goes to Harvard. And Dennis says in an email to Pete at the Pete Callender show dot com. If Cooper really wants to make a big splash teaching Harvard or teaching health at Harvard,

[00:12:43] he should bring that whirlwind of a speaking personality, Mandy Cohen, along with him. That should go over bigger than Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. That's I don't know if the Harvard class would be able to withstand the dynamism of a Cooper Cohen, you know, a CNC production there like that would be.

[00:13:09] Oh, I mean, we were all just galvanized by their oratorical skills during the pandemic. So I don't know if the kids would be able to. I don't know if they'd be able to make it through there. With that kind of. John says, do you think Professor Roy will use that same irritating, condescending third grade teacher voice when he lectures the students at Harvard that he always used during his daily free hour infomercial COVID news conference?

[00:13:40] Yes, I do, John. Absolutely. He's going to talk to them like they are four year olds. I don't think he knows any other way to address a group of people. His his press releases are are. You know, biting and scathing when he's going after Republicans. But when you put him in front of a class of, you know, probably progressive minded people, he's going to lecture them like they are children.

[00:14:11] Which kind of makes sense, actually. But yeah, that's what I said. I have sympathy for the students. They're going to have to sit there and listen to this. And I have I would be surprised. If he does not bring Mandy Cohen into the class, I would be surprised if he doesn't do that. Because like she was the one that. Was there as you know, trying to.

[00:14:38] Trying to tell all of us what was going on and what they were doing and everything. So he would always turn it over to her anyway. So why not just turn over your class to her to just make sense. But this is just the latest example. And by the way, he's it's an eight week class. It will not impede his ability to run for the U.S. Senate, which we all expect him to do. We have all expected him to do it.

[00:15:00] The purpose of the gig is to give him an income for a little while. So he will be able to tread water long enough to get to his next run. Right. That's the point. It's a scholarship program. He's on scholarship. Harvard gave him a scholarship. And so he's going to go there. He's going to talk about how he locked everybody. No, I'm kidding.

[00:15:28] He's going to go there and talk about how he got Medicaid expanded, except he didn't actually get Medicaid expanded. The Republican legislature did that. So I'm at a loss to understand what exactly like I can't wait to see what his his his course curriculum is like. What is it? I forget what they call it. The syllabus. There you go. I can't wait to see what the syllabus is going to be. What is he going to cover? Right. What is the program description?

[00:15:59] So this goes way back for Democrat politicians. Jim Hunt did it with his Hunt Institute. He got a whole bunch of state government money, taxpayer funds to run his little institute. And then, of course, you know, all the money pours in and when the from these left wing groups and I've got their their donor lists. Let's see here. We've got the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation.

[00:16:25] By the way, if you ever listen to NPR, you're going to know like all of these names because these same groups, these foundations fund NPR, too. I mean, besides us, the Lumina Foundation, the Foundation for the Carolinas right here in Charlotte. Shout out to the Foundation for the Carolinas.

[00:16:42] Arnold Ventures, Robbins Foundation, the Bezos Family, ACT, Altria, Aris Foundation, the Belk Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates, Brady Foundation, Burroughs Welcome Fund. That's a big one. Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, College Board, Dominion Energy, the Duke Endowment Foundation for Child Development, John Belk Endowment, the Kresge Foundation, New Venture Fund.

[00:17:10] Oh, the New Venture Fund, by the way, you know who that's managed by? Arabella Advisors. Right. So that's who that's the Hunt Institute. And they were getting tax dollars. And Jim Hunt drew a salary while he was over there. He's not the only one. After Jim Hunt, it was Mike Easley as governor. But as I said, Mike had a little bit of taint to him. And so they tried to line up his wife. Except now you had a Republican legislature and it did not go well. Here's a great idea.

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[00:18:57] He was the next governor through the Democrat machine that has basically controlled North Carolina politics for a century and a half before Republicans were able to break that. That grip in 2010. So Mike Easley then is governor. And as I mentioned, he had a bunch of problems. They took his law license for a while, suspended it.

[00:19:20] He had some, you know, some problems because he had this habit of like lining up a bunch of stuff for his family members, you know, from. Yeah. Yeah. There are some scandals involved with that. So anyway, so North Carolina State University. They gave Mike Easley's wife. A big fat contract.

[00:19:47] Because he was a little, you know, sketchy. And this goes back to 2009. Okay. Mary Easley, the wife of former Democrat Governor Mike Easley, got fired from her position at North Carolina State University as the controversy over her hiring and promotion continued to swirl with a federal investigation and the resignation of three top university officials.

[00:20:44] Okay.

[00:21:10] And then it goes, the article goes over. I'm trying to see here if there was, I thought there was something about. Yeah, here it is. Emails released by the university show that Campbell. All right. I'll have to back up and tell you. See, I highlighted this. I should have just done what I had. I should have just gone with what I highlighted. But sometimes I highlight too much. Okay. I over highlight and then I never get to a lot of this stuff.

[00:21:37] So she has served as an executive in residence and senior lecturer at NC State since 2005, developing the Millennium Seminars Speakers Program and teaching a graduate course in public administration and courses in the administrative offices management program, which provides leadership training to law enforcement officers. Last year. Last year. So this would have been 08. She got an 88% pay increase.

[00:22:04] Coincidentally, when Easley was leaving the governor's mansion, when she signed a five-year contract, NC State officials defended the move, saying she had taken on new roles, such as directing pre-law services and serving as a liaison to area law firms and law schools at other universities as she developed a dual degree program. Provost Larry Nielsen and McQueen Campbell, the chairman of the board of trustees, resigned last month amid questions over their roles in her hiring.

[00:22:32] Chancellor James Oblinger submitted his resignation after officials questioned the lucrative payout that he had negotiated with Nielsen as he transitioned into a faculty position. And so the emails that were released by the university show Campbell and Oblinger discussed her hiring in April of 05 when she was first brought on. But Oblinger said in a statement that he didn't recall the communications until he read the emails again last week.

[00:23:01] The emails were among documents that NC State turned over to a federal grand jury that was investigating the dealings former Governor Mike Easley had with friends and contributors while in office. If I recall correctly, there was a car dealership that gave free cars to the Easley family members like his son and maybe his wife. I forget. There was the the lucrative land deal that Easley got to take advantage of down at the coast.

[00:23:28] He bought some property, sat on it for a while and then was able to sell it to some connected person for way more than it was worth. Things like that. Right. They have ways of taking care of their politicians on the way out the door. OK, so then that was Easley. Then there is Bev Perdue. Bev Perdue, which this was also something that Casey O'Day pointed out. We now have two governors, two former governors that have gone on to teach at Harvard University. What are the odds?

[00:23:57] These these apparently we are able to select the most brilliant minds to be our governors, so much so that they get offered professorships up at Harvard. Bev Perdue. Finished her term in January of 2013. She was a one term governor. OK, she saw the writing on the wall. The polling was terrible. Pat McCrary was going to beat her. And so she steps aside, leaving the the seat open, basically.

[00:24:25] And the lieutenant governor, Walter Dalton, who Walter Dalton? That was literally his campaign ad because nobody knew who the hell he was. So he had to run an ad saying, I'm Walter Dalton. It's me. You know, and I'm running for governor. And of course, he got waxed. And. She had gone to Asheville, hung out in a brewery, drank some beers and the next morning said, I'm not running for reelection. Like, that was what happened. I was up in Asheville at the time.

[00:24:53] And so I still remember, like, it was like breaking news. Holy cow. She's not running for reelection. But the writing was on the wall. She wasn't going to win. And so she steps aside. And then lo and behold, she gets a gig up at Harvard. Harvard and she I'm reading the bio here on the on the Harvard page, trying to find out where she managed the state.

[00:25:17] She was this awesome person, earned a reputation as an innovative, disciplined and transformative chief executive. Really? She she headed for the hills after one term. Talks about facing a budget shortfall of 11 percent when she took office because because of the structural deficits that the Democrats, while in charge, had run up that Republicans then came in and had to fix.

[00:25:46] So anyway, she got she got this professorship up there. I forget what they call like Institute on Politics or something like that. They called it. So they gave her they gave her a gig. Um, so that was Bev Perdue. Then there was John Edwards and he deserves his own segment. 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.

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[00:27:11] Eddie is not listening, he told me, because we South Carolina folk don't need a rehash of NC political history. Okay, Eddie. Thanks for taking the time to tell me that you turned off the radio. If anything that I am ever discussing is of zero interest to you, I give you permission. Not that you need it, but you can turn the radio off. That's okay. I don't mind. There's a lot of content out there. You can go find something else to listen to. My feelings are not hurt.

[00:27:40] But people do have an interest in going over the history if they live through it. But also, people who don't know the history need to understand that this is a pattern. And North Carolina is giving us a very good chronology of how this operation, the Paul to Prof pipeline, works. And, as I indicated at the beginning of the hour, this ties into the USAID scandal that's unfolding.

[00:28:10] So, if you give it time, it'll connect. The dots connect. Believe it or not, I actually chart these shows out, like, from beginning to end. So, I have a flow and the things connect, the topics connect. Okay, so, John Edwards. Not simply a North Carolina U.S. senator. No, no. He ran for president. Twice. He was the vice presidential candidate. So, that's of national import, I would think.

[00:28:37] Back in 2007, John Edwards, according to the New York Times, ended 2004 with a problem. That was when he ran for president the first time, became the VEAP nominee for John F. Kerry, who, as I understand it, served in Vietnam, if I remember correctly. He ended 2004 with a problem. How to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.

[00:29:06] Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution. Creating a non-profit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, called the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005. And, unlike a sister charity that he created to raise scholarship money for poor students,

[00:29:33] the main beneficiary of the Center for Promise and Opportunity's fundraising effort was, that's right, John Edwards himself. See, it was to keep him out of poverty. It was a promise to him for his opportunity. A spokesman for Mr. Edwards defended the Center as a legitimate tool against poverty.

[00:30:00] I'm not aware, by the way, if there was ever an analysis done on exactly how many people he lifted out of poverty with his seminars. I'm sure it was substantial, though. The organization became a big part of a shadow political apparatus for Mr. Edwards after his defeat as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004. And before the start of his presidential bid, this time around in 2008.

[00:30:28] See, so he had, it's like a, it's like when you want to go backpacking across Europe for your gap year. Like, that's what he's looking at. But how do you fund this thing? I mean, I know he's like a really, really wealthy guy. But that's just part of the equation here. You know, he's got some money, sure. But how do you stay in the public eye? He's got to keep his profile. So this is how you do it.

[00:30:53] And then you get to put it on the resume and you get to then say on your next campaign trail, you get to say, all the work I did at the Center for Promise and Opportunity, working on these poverty-related issues and stuff, you get to use it. See, so it's a dual purpose, really. Actually, a triple purpose. Because it makes him money, too. Right? It makes him money, keeps him high profile or higher profile than just some former guy.

[00:31:21] And again, keep in mind, this was in the days before he could have just done a podcast. So now he could just do a podcast. Like Anthony Weiner. Who's going to... Anthony Weiner is like running for mayor now in New York City. He's back. The Weiner has returned. So... I'm sorry, but it's true, though. He has. He's, I think... Or maybe it's city council. I think it's the mayor, though. But he's weighing his options, I think.

[00:31:51] So he needed to cover the gap years between 2004 and 2008. It's officers of this Center for Promise and Opportunity. The officers of that organization were all members of his political staff. So he kept them employed, too. See, it's not just him. He's spreading the wealth around. And it helped pay for his nearly constant travel, including to the early primary states, like New Hampshire.

[00:32:22] Right? Wait. There's a lot of poverty up there, people. Okay? Look, he's doing a lot of poverty work up there. And this was through UNC Chapel Hill. Right? This was... It's the same racket. It is, as the New York Times called it, a shadow political apparatus. 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.

[00:32:51] 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. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.