Teaching 5-year-olds about copyright and cultural practices | Hour 1

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 the peak calendar show.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. And as we do every Tuesday at noon, we welcome to the program Andrew Dunn. He is the publisher of Longleaf Politics, the website longleafpol.com. Also a contributing columnist to the Charlotte Observer. Also the author of the book, The Change Agent, Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning and Legacy. Andrew, how are you, sir? Oh, I'm doing all right. I got a tooth drilled this morning, but I didn't let the listeners of the peak calendar show down. So I'm here. I'm still a little numb, but you might have to give me a little grace. All right. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. You're playing hurt. We all appreciate that. I do have an email from Bill who said, if you're talking to Andrew Dunn today, make sure you tell him how much I am enjoying reading his book, The Change Agent. Being in the construction business for my entire 40-year career in Charlotte and North Carolina, not being into politics until the last seven or so, it's crazy cool the parallels to my company's success with Pat's work. Do wonder if he knows or believes of how much power and decisions go through Quail Hollow Country Club's leaders. Do you know anything about that? Oh, gosh. Well, thanks for reading that. I mean, that is just a tremendous compliment, and I really appreciate it. You know, I am sure that former Governor McCrory would have some great stories on the Quail Hollow leadership. There's a couple in there in the book, The Change Agent. Your listener is not wrong that there is definitely still a power center there. Do you think so even still today? I mean, I think it's greatly diminished versus what it was 20, 30 years ago, but I think. It's still there. I guess if you know the membership list, then you would have an advantage to identifying some of those pathways, I would assume. Exactly. All right. So I think we can all agree on a couple of things. First off, you read way too many teaching or education materials. And also, I think we can agree that a quick reference guide should not be 52 pages long. And probably also kindergartners don't need to describe how fair use, copyright, public domain, open source, and creative commons affect the ability of musicians to create original, transcribed, and arranged music. But that is apparently one of the bullet points in the quick reference guide that we are using, apparently. So first off, why on earth would you look into this sort of stuff? Well, I'm on, I guess, a quixotic mission to understand what North Carolina public schools actually teach children. I have a kindergarten student myself, and it just seemed like a natural first place to start. It's actually kind of incredible how difficult it is for a parent to actually find out what's going on in their kids' school, even with some of the good laws the General Assembly has passed lately to make it a little bit more transparent. But I went with the resources that have been given to me. I pulled up this quick reference guide to kindergarten, thinking it would be maybe one page, maybe two page with a couple things like tie your shoes, see spot run, count to 100, that sort of thing. But instead, what I found was 50-plus pages full of jargon, including what you just said, and also cultivate and manage their digital identity and reputation. They're not even supposed to have accounts at age five. Right. Exactly. I mean, and, you know, it's easy to point your finger at this and laugh at it, which I have and people should. But I think there is something really disturbing in this, in that we clearly have given over public education completely to the educationists. education bureaucracy that puts a premium on, you know, make work and keeping themselves employed by dressing up what should be a very simple concept into all sorts of pages and pages of jargon. And I don't think we're going to fix public education in North Carolina unless we take the standards out of their hands. Yeah, I would have thought a standard would be more along the lines of don't eat the paste. Versus know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts, or solving authentic problems. I don't even understand that sentence, let alone a kindergartner. I'm unclear, but I think you've put your finger on it. These are the educrats, as I call them, the education bureaucrats, right? And it's because they are– see, I have learned over the years to always try to identify potential incentives, right, as for why people may be behaving or advancing certain positions or policies, right, or why are they doing certain actions. And so if you have people that are brought in to create these kinds of 52-page quick reference guides, they are employed to develop these things, right? And so what happens when you finish the work? What happens when you're done with all 52 pages, right? I'm sure it didn't start as 52 pages. It may have started as 10 or something. But now you've worked yourself out of the job, and so you have an incentive to keep rewriting– and editing and developing new stuff and whatever. And it just, this is sort of the government creep or project creep. It just, you can't constrain it because you have people incentivized to keep doing it. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And you can tell by looking at the quick reference guide, places where it has grown and expanded over time. And I know the State Board of Education is on a cycle where they're continually updating, revising, renewing. And there's a lot of things. I mean, what do you learn in kindergarten probably does not need to keep up with the times, right? There's only... So much that you can do with five and six year olds and only so much that they need to learn. But to your point, I mean, there's a whole industry that has grown up around the idea that education is a highly specialized, highly professionalized thing that is best left to the experts. And the reality is that that's just not true. Now, to be fair, in your defense, you use the word experts in the quotes in your piece. Yes. Right. Okay. I just want everybody to understand he's using heavy air quotes there around experts. Very heavy. I mean, maybe a four-year-old should be comparing cultural practices of people in local communities and around the world. Yeah, maybe so. That sounds like something that— or describe the emotions evoked by dance movements. Yes. Like at four or five. Years old, which I'm thinking cultural practices, I think is a whole nother conversation. Should we be comparing that before the kids even learn what American culture is? Um, but we could spend, we could spend a whole nother hour talking just about that. Well, and you also tell the story in your piece, uh, back when you were an education reporter, which I started to think back, I didn't know you were an education reporter. Did we ever cross paths at a school board meeting? What years were you an ed reporter? I did that. It was 2014, 2015. Okay. I was already, I was already up in Asheville at that point. All right. So we never crossed paths at the old edge shit, but you say here that you would tour a handful of schools on the first day of classes. That's standard operating procedure in media world. Right. And in one kindergarten classroom, you were told by an administrator that a lot of the kids enter the school system, not knowing how to hold a book. I'm assuming they didn't know how to read then either. If they don't even know how to hold a book, like they don't, they literally don't know like what the front of the book looks like versus the back of the book. Yeah, exactly. Don't know, you know, if you hand them a book, they don't know what to do with it, which is, you know, that anecdote or that story has really stuck with me just because it's so incredibly sad, but it's also kind of, I think it should be a wake up call to people to kind of understand this is where we are. This is where the education system is starting and we don't have time for, you know, the emotions evoked by dance movements if we are needing to teach kids how to hold a book. Yeah. All right, let's shift gears here. We have a Senate race here in Mecklenburg County. This is your district, I believe, right? Senate District 42. OK, so of personal interest for you. You've got the Democrat Woodson Bradley, and she's the incumbent now because she beat Republican Stacey McGinn in the last election. And now McGinn is running against Bradley Woodson. this year as well. So it's a rematch of this seat. And Bradley barely won this seat by about 200 votes last time around. And you got a mailer, as I understand it, from the Woodson-Bradley campaign? I sure did. So one of the most interesting things about Senator Bradley's background is that she was a very high up person in a multi-level marketing company. uh i think most of your listeners probably understand what that means it's where you know purportedly you're selling beauty products or something along those lines but really what you're trying to do is get more people under you to then sell the beauty products uh and in the last election obviously the the mcginn campaign went after her on that um I think reasonably so. And Woodson Bradley kind of tried to distance herself from it saying, Oh, you know, it wasn't that big a deal or like I wasn't that involved. Uh, but this year she's taking a very different approach. She is trying to claim here that she was the victim of this pyramid scheme. Not that she was one of the trainers and one of the national ring of honor members and a high up that she was the victim. And I, I, You know, when I saw that, I just thought, this is such an astonishing rewriting of history that I just couldn't let slide. You know what I found particularly galling and grotesque is she says she is an abuse survivor. And she's using this as sort of the open door that this predatory pyramid scheme company used to target her And, you know, trick her basically into becoming... a high earning member who then went on to recruit all these other people in where, and it's a pyramid scheme basically relies on you getting new people underneath you. You take a cut of their profits, whatever they're making, you take a share of, you kick some of it upstairs. And the more people you get in under the pyramid underneath you, then the more money you make, but then eventually it all collapses because usually you have to pay in to become a member of the, of the operation, right? So it's like a, $ 150. Or $ 200. So you're constantly bringing in more people to pay out the upper levels. And that's why the pyramid scheme usually collapses at some point. But the abusive relationship that she cites as the reason she was targeted, according to your piece here, she was using this as a recruitment tool when she was in the company. Yeah, I mean, that makes the mailer particularly rich because as I went through some of the videos that are still publicly available out there where she is selling this multi-level marketing scheme, she says directly, you know, if that happened to you, if you had an abusive relationship, you use this multi-level marketing company as the way to escape and change your life forever. So she was directly using that story of abuse to bring people in. So, all right, so your advice for the McGinn campaign is to make a. Bigger deal out of this? Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, that's the hardest thing, and especially in a midterm election cycle. The hardest thing is just getting the information out to people. And people in Charlotte and voters across North Carolina are just now starting to wake up to election season and what's going on, even though we do have some absentee ballots already out. So, you know, I wanted to tell this story to help candidate McGinn get the word out, and I hope more people will pay attention and learn about what's really going on here. All right, Andrew Dunn, you can read his work. Both of these pieces are at longleafpol.com. Also, his book, Change Agent, Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning, and Legacy. Andrew, thanks for your time, buddy. Appreciate it, and I hope you feel better. Yeah, thank you, sir. All right, take care. It's never fun getting the chompers worked on. All right, for over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create-A-Video, great local company in Mint Hill that has helped more than 2 million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. 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They'll professionally turn your shared moments into a beautiful storytelling video that your whole group can stream and download and treasure for years. Check out GroupTravelVideos.com. That's GroupTravelVideos.com. Or call 704-846-7870, extension 206. And when you do that, ask for Katie. But Pete, can I just email? Well, yes, you can. You can email Katie. Katie at GroupTravelVideos.com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. Some other details on the Woodson Bradley story here that Andrew Dunn wrote about at Longleaf Politics. The name of this company, this multi-level marketing company, is called Fortune High Tech. Fortune High Tech. And Andrew writes that as one of its senior salespeople, she appeared in promotional and training videos, she being Woodson Bradley, the Democrat state senator running for re-election in southern and eastern Mecklenburg County, running against Stacey McGinn, whom she beat two years ago by 209 votes. So she was then called Woodson Goodman. Yeah, Woodson Gardner. But now she's Woodson Bradley. And at the time, she was one of the senior salespeople. She appeared in promotional and training videos and addressed rooms of recruits, teaching them how to sell the opportunity to even more people. In one recruiting speech, She told a story of leaving an abusive relationship and connected it to the multi-level marketing company. She said, quote, if that happened to you, in other words, you were in an abusive relationship, you take that, you run with that, and you ensure that no one in your life ever lives hell on earth again. And that's what you have your hands on here. So she's using. Her story, her trauma, her experience, in order to recruit more people into the pyramid scheme. And now she's blaming the pyramid scheme, saying that it targeted her because she was in an abusive relationship. But you did that, though. You did the same thing. You used it as a sales pitch to get people to sign up for this scheme. She was a platinum sales manager, and she was placed in its ring of honor. So she was like a top earner for this company. And if she wants to say she made a mistake, well, people can decide what to do with that, but that's not what she's doing. She's using it to sell voters on something admirable about her character. So you have a choice in Senate District 42. What goes better together than pork and politics, as I often say? I don't actually often say that, but I can say it now. And there is an event coming up that you might be interested in if you like pork and or politics. And to discuss the event with me is Jen Reap. She is the president of the Montcross Area Chamber of Commerce. Welcome to the program. How are you? I'm doing great, Pete. Thank you for having me here. Certainly. Certainly. So first off, Montcross area. I had to I had to look this up. What is because this is actually what Belmont, Cramerton, McAddenville, Lowell, Mount Holly, Stanley, Gastonia and Ranlow. So there's what, eight different cities and it's all under one chamber. It is. So we used to be the Belmont Chamber of Commerce. And when development started happening in the Montcross area, if you're on Wilkinson Boulevard where Walmart and Lowe's is located, that's the Montcross area, started growing. We became the Montcross area. So we serve the majority of the eastern side of Gaston County. So do they all still have their own chambers? They do not. Okay, so it's all unified. It is all unified. Okay. How long ago did that happen? Oh, geez. A while back, yes. Okay, all right. And so Montcross is a region? I've never heard the word before, so that's why I asked. Yeah, it's the area that is right on Wilkinson Boulevard and 85 near the Belmont Abbey exit. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right, so how long have you been with the chamber there? I'm going on two years. Okay, all right. All right. And you're local, though. You said you've been here since, what, five? Yes, I've lived in Belmont since I was in kindergarten. So I've been here all my life. Okay. All right. So tell us a little bit about what this event is. It's called Meet the Candidates, M-E-A-T, the Candidates. Kudos to your marketing people who came up with that. Or did you come up with that? We did it. Yeah, there you go. Meet the Candidates. All right. So what is this event? So we we recognize in our area there were a lot of forums taking place where candidates were going and having official conversations um based on questions that were pre-planned and we felt like it was we wanted to do something that was a little more casual and community oriented and allow um citizens just to come out and talk to politicians. And so we created this event last year so that we could have just casual conversations without an emcee, so to speak. Okay, so is it like everybody sit down, eat at a table, and then what the candidates just mill about? Or do you get to like go to a table where a candidate is? Or is it like thinking of the old Mallard Creek barbecue where they would funnel people through the cattle shoot basically. And like you could. Either avoid the politicians or you could go into the line and do the grip and grin. Last year was our first year. And so we had politicians kind of at the end of the tent and they mingled around based on some recommendations. We're going to set it up probably a little bit more like the Mallard Creek was just so that everybody, people had trouble getting to the end of the tent last year. And we sold over 450 tickets. And so it got crowded at some, at some points in the day. And so we will set it up a little bit different, but the politicians each will have a table where they will have their, I guess their political advertisements, so to speak. And they will be talking to the guests and the guests can also go speak to them. So it'll be a little bit of both. So very informal. What if, do you have like a mechanism in case somebody starts monopolizing a candidate and they're like, like jamming up the lines? I don't know. We didn't have that trouble last year. I guess if we run into that, we'll have to address it at the time. I hope that doesn't happen. But also, if it gives somebody an opportunity to speak to someone that they didn't have a chance to prior, then we've served our purpose. So is it indoors or outdoors? It's outdoors. It is going to be in the parking lot at the Point Church. We do have a large tent, however, in case. So it will be whether rain or shine. Okay. And so it's occurring on October 9th. 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. at the Point Church, which is right there on Wilkinson Boulevard. When you cross over the Catawba River, it'll be on the left-hand side. I go past it regularly. And so you've got a bunch of candidates that have already committed, right, to the event? We do, yes. All right, so I'm going to run through these real quick, and I'm assuming this is the most up-to-date list I'm going off of. I'm assuming if anybody is a is a, you know, game, game time ad. They're, they're allowed to come to any other elected or person running for office. I had somebody sign up yesterday. So yes. Yes. All right. Um, so I'm going to mispronounce. I shouldn't have agreed to read these names. Um, Chez, Chez Adams, Chez, Chez, Chez. Okay. Dot cherry, John crisp, Todd Kinlaw, Brenda Eskridge. Those are all, uh, candidates for the board of education, uh, board of County commissioners, Kathy Cloninger, uh, Tom, Kiger, Bill Ward, who is a Soil and Water Conservation District. House of Representatives, District 14, Tim Moore. That's for the U.S. House of Representatives. And Lakeisha Womack. We have the State House, District 108, John Torbett. He's the incumbent. I know him. North Carolina House of Representatives, District 109, Donnie Loftus and Mark Carver. Senate District 43, Brad Overcash and Steve Rutherford. and Court of Appeals Craig Collins. Any other names that you're aware of that I've left off that list? The only other one, Gaston County Board of Commissioners, Charlie Killian, who is a writing candidate, joined our list yesterday. I'm going to write him in right now. Charlie Killian. Okay. So you've got a whole bunch of candidates that have already agreed to To attend. So you mentioned last year you sold 450 tickets? We did. Do you have a count or any idea at this point for this year? Not at this point. We're really just now getting ramped up for it. So we're hoping to meet that same sale. We're optimistic. Yeah. How much barbecue do you guys go through and who makes it for you? So Chillin' and Grillin' is who we use for our barbecue. And Julie is also from Belmont. And she is... She'll make as much barbecue as we need her to make. Oh, okay. Yeah, she is ready to rock and roll. I will tell you, from a media perspective, we always love, like, how many pounds. Okay. We're all in, like, if you could give us breakdowns on how much coleslaw is being made, how much pork is being made, do we have any idea what kind of sauces there are, that kind of stuff. We love those little details. That's just media tip. All right, and where do people go if they want to purchase some of these tickets for the event? And again, this is October 9th at Point Church. Where do they go to get tickets? You can go to our website and purchase your ticket at montcrossareachamber.com. Go to the Events tab and scroll down to Meet the Candidates Barbecue. You'll order your ticket online and pick it up at the church. We'll have a will call there for you to get your actual ticket. So once you purchase it, and we encourage people to purchase ahead of time so that we make sure that we plan for everyone. What does the ticket get you when you go in? So it's $ 15 for a ticket, and that plate includes pulled pork, sauce, your bun, baked beans, slaw, bag of chips, and of course, you have to have an oatmeal cookie. Oh, there you go. That's a pretty good menu for $ 15. See that? Tackling the affordability crisis right there. You got your. You got your meal set for October 9th. Anything else you want to add that's interesting or important you want people to know before we let you go? Yeah, and so our event is from 11 to 6 or until we sell out of barbecue. We know that that's a long date for our candidates, so we've asked them to be there from 11 to 3. Oh, okay. And so just to kind of consolidate when they would be available to meet people. But we think after that, after that on a Friday, a lot of people will be picking up barbecue to go. So we encourage everybody to come in and join us. Well, and If you don't want to talk to any politicians, you can go at like 4 or 5. There you go. You may not have barbecue, though. That's the risk that you're running. That's the gamble. We will have a drive-thru to pick it up and go to if you don't want to stay and eat. But we hope that you do stay with. Us and have lunch. Sounds good. Jen Reap, she is the president of the Montcross Area Chamber of Commerce. Again, montcrossareachamber.com is the website. Go to the events tab. Montcrossareachamber.com. Yes. Cross area chamber.com. All right. Thanks so much. A pleasure to meet you. Good luck with the event. Thank you so much. All right. Take care. Uh, all right. So next hour, we're going to get into the I 77, uh, toll lane project. Re re vote that occurred last night. I watched it. So you did not have to. And, uh, took one for the team on that one. You're welcome. I have lots of audio though, that I will subject you to, um, I mean, only the best parts, obviously. I curate only the best audio clips for you. Now, we are also awaiting the sentencing for former Charlotte City Council member Tia Juana Brown. She and her daughters, I think. Yeah, all of them, sentencing was supposed to start this morning at the federal courthouse at 10 a.m., Haven't seen any updates posted yet from any of the local gumshoes that are out there. Any of the local reporters? No, gumshoes, those are cops, right? Those are investigators? No, anyway. Because they pound shoe leather or something like that. Anyway, so we have this story, though, the other day from the Charlotte Observer. In preparation for. In advance of the sentencing. That's occurring today. Antoinette. Rouse. Who is. One of the daughters. Of Tijuana Brown. Antoinette Rouse. Is blaming her mother. For the. For the. COVID relief fraud. Of which she is charged. Brown. Brown. So you got Tijuana Brown, Antoinette Rouse, and Tajima, Tajima, Tajima, Tajima. Tajima Brown. I don't know how she pronounces it. So I just covered all the bases there. Tajima Brown, they have all pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in a May 2025 case that accused them of submitting false documents and employee records to get COVID relief funding and then spending that money on Louis Vuitton items. as well as a throne and a horse-drawn carriage for Tijuana Brown's birthday. Yeah. That Tijuana Brown, Charlotte City Councilwoman. Now, hat tip to the folks, right, who I believe they ousted her, right? I believe she lost her re-election bid. Or did she back out? Gosh, see, there's so many. So many politicians going down for corruption. I'm losing track of like who gets voted out in primaries and who I'm fairly certain she got voted out in the primary. Pretty sure. So apparently Antoinette Rouse, according to her federal public defender, she, quote, wouldn't be here but for her mother. This was in a statement to the Charlotte Observer. Ms. Rouse is a nursing student with no other criminal record. She's the least culpable of the defendants here and probation is the right result. Rouse's attorney added, quote, I don't believe she would have been involved in the conduct at all, but for her mother and sister. He also said that Rouse's, quote, own background and role in the offense would have made her a good candidate for a diversion result, but for the high profile. So had her mother not been a sitting Charlotte City Council member, then Antoinette Rouse probably would have got just probation or a diversion program. She would have just avoided jail or probation altogether. Federal prosecutors alleged some funds came through Tijuana Brown's nonprofit called Beauty After the Bars. That's not like the saloon bar. It's like the prison bars. You see, because Tijuana Brown did time for fraud in the past and gave birth to her first daughter while in prison and then turned that into her origin story when she ran for city council as a formerly incarcerated person. And this was why she was obviously well-qualified to become a member of the Charlotte City Council is because she speaks for the formerly incarcerated population. Don't you know? And then she launched this Beauty After the Bars, which, oh, by the way, partnered with, you'll never guess, the Mecklenburg County Jail and Sheriff Gary Not-My-Fault McFadden. to provide support to incarcerated women. After initially dispelling the May 2025 case as a political attack, I don't know if she was actually dispelling that. I think she just denied it. She accused people of making a political attack. She admitted finally to wire fraud conspiracy in a plea deal with the U.S. Government. So sentencing is today. 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 the Pete Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.