The only one NOT investigating CMS is Candace Owens | 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. All right. So I guess now we're going to make a federal case out of this. I didn't think we needed to make a federal case out of this, but apparently we do. It's Charlotte Mecklenburg schools. We started counting off all of the different probes that have been launched into the financial irregularities of the Charlotte Mecklenburg school board school district with these consultant contracts. And, uh, Yesterday, Brett Jensen from WBT broke the news that it is now a federal case. So the feds are now looking into it. We've got the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office confirming that they too are investigating CMS. Okay, so you got U.S. Attorney's Office, you got the FBI, you got the State Bureau of Investigation. Their probe was launched after a request for a formal investigation was made by the local Mecklenburg County district attorney. So I'm going to count him also because they, the DA's office obviously did some sort of a, a look into that. So you got four now, and then you've got the department of public instruction. You've got the state board of education. You've got the state auditor and, um, Mecklenburg County, uh, not sure it's an investigation at this point, although they have probably been looking through some of their contracts and documentation because the County manager says that he is considering options. If Charlotte Mecklenburg schools is found to have misused County money. So that's eight. So we're up to eight, eight different, reviews, probes, investigations, whatever you want to call them, right? We got eight different sets of eyes. Yesterday, we. Identified the only one that hasn't gotten involved appears to be Interpol. But, you know, there's still a chance. And at this point now, I Candace Owens is going to be all over this thing. That's like, I feel like she's missing out. Like if ever there was a case for candy to just jump feet first into like, this would be it. I mean, I know there's no, you know, dead conservative influencer for her to stand upon in order to get clicks, but still like her investigative skills would be invaluable to. In this, I feel. So the Mecklenburg County manager. Made a statement yesterday, and it comes as the SBI, the state auditor's office, I listed them all, that they are all probing the district's finances. Charlotte Observer's Mary Ramsey reports in a statement Monday, County Manager Mike Bryant. said he is, quote, exploring what options might be available to the county should these investigations reveal that county dollars were misused by CMS. Now, luckily for the city of Charlotte, their $ 1 million payment to CMS for the affordable housing project that's sort of at the center of one of the contracts here, um, They never cut that check. So they have not spent any money on CMS at this point that they know of. So maybe they're also taking a look. Maybe we're now up to eight. We had eight different entities. Is the city of Charlotte looking into whether or not it has been funding anything in CMS that may have been impacted by these consulting contracts? It's different because Mecklenburg County is the sort of the funding source for local dollars for the school district. In North Carolina, the way it's broken down is the, you know, the state pays for sort of operations. So the state is paying for the teachers, the principals, like a lot of those salaries. And that's based on the number of kids that And then you have the counties where they generally in the, up until recently, they've always been in charge of the capital expenses. So building buildings and such, and they could offer more money in addition to what the state provides. And Mecklenburg County has been doing just that for a very, very, very long time. In fact, according to the observers piece, um, About. $ 730 million came from Mecklenburg County taxpayers. Okay, so this is county money going to the school district for the fiscal year 2027, which began on July 1st. $ 730 million out of a $ 2. 1 billion budget. Now, I don't know what your thoughts are. I don't know if you watch any of the school board meetings. I do bring some audio clips, you know, to the program here. So you can kind of get a, a feel for the flavor of, uh, of the, the board members. But I really don't think that any of them have ever been in charge of a $ 2 billion budget, nor do I have confidence that they should be in charge of of a $ 2 billion budget. See the school boards, school boards are. These unique animals, you know, Thomas or Mark Twain rather wrote about this, you know, first God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. Because they have this built in shield. The, this built in protection where it's like, Oh, you know, vote for me for school board. I'm a former teacher. or former principal, right? So I know what this is all about, right? And people use the for the children defense in order to sort of paper over an otherwise complete lack of credentials to be managing a $ 2 billion operation. County commissioners are scheduled to discuss CMS funding at their meeting tonight, according to the agenda. That should be fun. In a September 25th email to the county commission that was obtained by the Charlotte Observer through a public records request, the county manager told the commissioners that he has directed staff to research all past agreements and transactions that the county may have had with two companies that are at the heart of this scandal. And both of those companies. are connected to Racky and Kimberly McGregor, a husband-wife duo. They have their own companies, their own consulting firms. Racky has Quonect, LLC, and Kim McGregor has Sid Kimmel, S-Y-D-K-I-M-Y-L. All caps. Don't know if it's an acronym for something, but that's the name. Sid Kimmel. Bryant told the county commissioners, that the county has not found any past agreements with Quinect LLC. That's Racky's firm. But he said the county did have contracts with Sid Kimmel Consulting LLC. Those contracts ran from fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2025, totaling $ 3. 1 million. Does is this starting to smell a little bit like the leering centers? You know, it's starting. It's it's starting. I'm starting to catch that vibe. The county's agreements with Sid Kimmel were terminated at the beginning of fiscal year 2026 as part of the county's review of nonprofits during the budget process. According to the email, in addition, another factor that resulted in the termination of the contract was that county leadership perceived Sid Kimmel was double dipping by receiving funding from the county as well as CMS. Also, County executive leadership viewed Mr. McGregor's role as an employee of Sid Kimmel, which was led by Mrs. McGregor. They viewed that as a conflict of interest. So that's interesting that he was an employee of Sid Kimmel because we were assured that his thing was separate from his wife's thing. But now I learn he was an employee of his wife's consulting firm while running his own consulting firm. Yeah, now that does appear to be double dipping. Actually, it sounds like triple dipping or maybe even quadruple dipping when you look at the money being passed through the law firm. Mm-hmm. Not good, CMS. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. Create-A-Video's skilled team will professionally transfer your family's stories onto easy-to-use USB drives or DVDs, that won't deteriorate over time like the old photos and tapes are doing right now. They will create a keepsake video that you can share and copy and keep forever. I can see it now. You're gathered around the holiday table with your loved ones, watching all these memories and people of your lives. You're sharing laughs, maybe some tears, telling stories that make your family uniquely yours. Beat the holiday rush and get your memories in now. Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. From the text line, Jennifer says, I'm honestly kind of surprised none of these clowns have skipped the country yet. I guess they're so stupid. They really believe they are untouchable. Yeah. Or, you know, maybe there's, you know, maybe there isn't anything there and, or maybe they think they'll just get a slap on the wrist or they'll be protected or whatever. But if you do flee. The country, like that does kind of give away the game, you know, kind of, you know, it kind of makes the case. That, you're, you're worried about prosecution. So, um, Lynn says the incredibly sad thing with CMS is nobody will go to jail and nobody will see that money ever again. Okay. Well, Lynn, that's, that's a prediction. You don't know that you're predicting that and that your, your prediction is based on your, uh, uh, bias. This is why I warn people against doomerism, because once you proceed down that path, this is now your prediction for all things. You go from. Pessimism to cynicism to nihilism, and that's not a healthy frame of mind to live in. And for people who say no one ever goes to jail, well, I mean, the Charlotte City Councilwoman the formerly incarcerated Tijuana Brown is about to be futurely incarcerated for her fraud. So people, people can face punishment. You just have to have the evidence, you know? And so that's what we're in the process of, um, of developing is all, all of the evidence. Um, now John says, um, someone on the school board is going to prison, you know, for the children. Um, John thinks somebody is going to prison. See, I don't know. I'm not going to predict one way or the other because all we have right now are, you know, we've got a lot of smoke. We have so much smoke that everybody is looking into CMS and these contracts. And John's other text here says, what is the common thread of people being I guess, investigated a certain local political organization. And what the DOJ and FBI brings is potentially federal RICO charges. Now, that is not Napoleon Dynamite's uncle. This is racketeering. And this is what I this is what I was thinking out loud last week. Okay, I was saying this stuff. Okay, I was just spitballing, but I was curious as to why so many of the people that are connected to these allegations, to this scandal, so many of them have these connections to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus. And as I pointed out, the BPC is a bit of a kingmaker now. because we are a one-party town that controls all of our local governing bodies that you now have as a Democrat-aligned organization, the BPC, this Democrat-aligned organization can get people through primaries and then they don't have any opposition in the general election, right? So the primaries become very, very important and... primaries have very low turnout as such. If you can mobilize several thousand people, you can, you can win elections in Democrat primaries. So the BBC has become more powerful as the city has become more Democrat. When I was covering local politics, local government, you had Republicans. In fact, you had Republican majorities for some of the years. when I was a reporter. But it has become progressively more and more and more Democrat controlled to the point now where I think we have a single Republican on the city council, none on county commission, none on the school board. And so that means that you have these internal organizations like the Black Political Caucus or any of your DSA organizations party for socialism and liberation, right? You have all of these left-wing groups. They now have outsized influence in getting people into office because there's no real opposition in the general election. And as I've said many times, the Democrat party does not have any natural immunity to this kind of extremism inside their ranks because they've been saying the same things that these far left groups have been saying too. Right. The quote unquote moderate Democrat position is held by people that give lip service to the exact same slogans as the DSA. So the DSA comes in and they're like, well, this is what we actually want to implement. You've been telling us that you're going to do it and you haven't done it. So put us in charge and we will actually do it. So how do you as a quote unquote moderate Democrat now say, oh, no, we shouldn't do that thing that I've been saying we should be doing? You can't. You have to go along with it. And as a party that basically embodies moral relativism, you can't say this is a bad thing and this is a good thing. You can't say that because who am I to judge? It's all relative. Except that statement, which is absolute. Let's see here. Grumpy guy says, that's why we can't have events like Speed Street or CityFest anymore. Democrats have failed the city. Is this why Vi Lyle's retired? I don't believe so. Wayne also says where there is smoke, there is the school board. It does seem to be the case. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. Let me jump over to the phone lines and chat with Ralph. Hello, Ralph. How are you? Hey, I would. Like to commission you to write a split screenplay. about this situation, and the name of the movie would be The CMS Shuffle. And we could... We could use the song Me and Bobby McGee and change some wording around Mr. McGregor. We could get, like, Weird Al to do the parody. Yeah, and we could have Crystal Hill do a cameo. Oh, of course. And then we could also, you know... I would like a 7% cut, though, and I'll get my lawyers Schuster, Shoster, and Hoodwink to draw paperwork. But you would be the perfect person with your broad knowledge of this case with you covering CMS for a long time. What is the advance? What is my advance for this project? You're going to get 85% of the gross. No, no, no. That's on the back end. I need something up front as part of an advance. Okay. All right. Well, I've got about $ 10, 000 worth of green stamps. I could use them as a type of bond to secure your agreement. But, you know, we could do it like the Wells Fargo or the armored car heist near your station. And we could also, you know, see what all the luxury items. that all the participants bought. Velvet Elvis, the humidor. You know, $ 3. 3 million is nothing to see that, but I mean, you know, it's amazing what a one-party rule system looks like. Yeah. The great a great tidy town that we live in. Yeah. We, we're a long way from tidy town. I think, uh, that was so 2000, 2005, you know, uh, 20 years is a, uh, it's a lifetime. It's a generation, if you will. Uh, Ralph, I appreciate it, but I don't work without any advance fees. I gotta have, I gotta have some solid cash in the hand for the advance before I'm going to dedicate my time to writing up a script. And honestly, like we don't even know how it's going to end yet, but I appreciate the offer. Thank you, Ralph. You know, you got to shop these things around. You never, you never get a script sold on the first pitch. All right. That's very rare in the biz over on the text line. Let me see here. I have to go back a little bit of ways here. This is from bill. Who says, I was skeptical that anything would turn up because I think there are too many protections embedded in the Democratic Party and politics locally, but I'm very hopeful that with the feds involved, which is a whole different layer, that the truth will come out, whatever it is, and not get papered over. My shining star hope is the state auditor. He seems to be the real deal. Yeah, and I mentioned this last week as well. When you have the... all of these different agencies now that are all looking at the same issue. You don't want to be the agency that gives CMS a clean bill of health or a pass on any of this stuff. You don't want to be the one that says, Oh, nothing to see here. And then you've got these other agencies that turned up a bunch of, a bunch of stuff, right? That makes you look stupid, incompetent or corrupt. So now the pressure is on all of these agencies to actually find something because of all of their involvement. That's a positive development for outing whatever was occurring. Tom says, you need to look into a mirror. Why? Do I have something in my mustache? What's up? I have something. Is it my teeth? Something on my teeth? Hang on. Hang on. No, I don't, I don't see anything. Uh, you need to look into a mirror because much of what you say is your perception. Really? Whoa, dude. That's, Oh, that's really deep, man. Yes, Tom. Uh, much of what I say is my perception. You are correct. Um, Or your understanding, yep, check on that one too. What I say is it's my understanding. In fact, I use that term. Or even your desires, just as it is for your listeners, we all fall short and having all the detailed details. Oh, my gosh. People, please, read your text before you send them. So I understand you're doing voice to text or something, but oh my goodness, it makes it difficult to understand the point you're trying to convey here. We all fall short and having all the detailed details because too much interferes with us not wanting to have the details. That's just life, but I do enjoy your show. I do enjoy you most of the time. OK, well, thanks for listening. Not really sure what the point of the message was, Tom, but feel free to clarify that. Danny says the doomers don't take into account that North Carolina has a rich history of prosecuting political folks for fraud. That is true. That is true. We have had quite a few political corruption convictions. Right. I mean, we just have the formerly incarcerated, now futurely incarcerated city council member. We had the former mayor of Charlotte, Patrick Cannon. Right. He went he went down. We had the former speaker of the House, Jim Black, with the envelopes of cash at the IHOP bathroom stall off of I-85 in Salisbury. We had him go to federal prison for corruption. Frank Balance was another guy. Right. Meg Scott Phipps, remember her? Probably not. Former agriculture commissioner. Last Democrat to hold that seat. She went to federal prison. So we do prosecute in North Carolina. We have had a bunch of our elected officials go to prison. And again, I'm going to wait and see what these investigations turn up. I'm going to wait and see what, you know, reporters, what journalists are able to uncover. what whistleblowers come forward, because you know there are some. They've already been blowing whistles, so you know there's going to be more stuff that gets out. So we'll see. 980 number says, Pete, as you know, with tax-paid government-led investigations, it'll take years and results will be irrelevant to future current events. The culprits know and count on this. Well, I don't actually. I don't actually know that it depends on the complexity of the, the investigation and the crime that you're pursuing, right? This thing could be very straightforward. It could be one or two contracts alone, and they've got all the paperwork. They got all the emails and it's open and shut. And it's, it's very easily proven in which case it could proceed very quickly. Now it could, it could be way more involved than, way more expansive, right? And that could take longer, no doubt about it. We'll see. A couple more messages. Dave says, has anybody ever told you your voice does not match your face? Every time I bring up the WBT website to listen to your show online, I see your picture, and I think, that can't be him. Just saying. I have been told I sound taller on the radio. Kevin says, I don't know that this would be possible, but it would be awesome after Crystal Hill has been fully absolved of any wrongdoing, hire her to the board and have her fire those that fired her. Nice idea, but not possible. The superintendent works at the pleasure of the board. So there's no way to fire board members except from a cannon. That's... No, I'm kidding. There's no way to fire board members unless... The voters have to do that. John says, where's Andrew Dunn? I don't know where Andrew is. He just said he couldn't be here today. So we did not have Andrew Dunn from Longleaf Politics. But I have the column that he wrote regarding this topic. And he says, Charlotte could use a little legislative overreach right now. Mecklenburg County was once known as a hornet's nest of rebellion. But these days, that independent spirit only seems to surface when Republicans in Raleigh get involved. From the airport control, HB2, I-77 tolls, Arena's law, our city's political leaders have had plenty to say about Raleigh meddling in local affairs over the years. After watching the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, I'm beginning to think a little overreach might do us some good right about now. Ideally, he says... the board would clean its own house. Stephanie Sneed has stepped down as chair but remains on the board. At the very least, she should resign her seat. Preferably, all five members who voted to oust Superintendent Crystal Hill should go too. But resignations seem unlikely. So, lacking that, the General Assembly should ensure that the search for the new superintendent has some kind of outside supervision. So this is a unique idea. I've not heard anybody suggest this heretofore. But I like the idea. The General Assembly should have somebody or somebodies that are part of the search for a new superintendent. Because remember, last week, as I've outlined here, you've got this You've got this breakdown in the Board of Education, and then you've got a breakdown in the board of the membership. So you've got nine members. Five of them seem to be voting together as a majority block. I call them the fivers. And then you've got the quad, which is the minority block. They seem to be voting with each other on these controversial items. So that's why you end up with these five-four votes so often. And so the fivers versus the quad. Well, what did they do to set up the search committee? They said, we're going to appoint the board chair, which is now D Rankin, who was the vice chair, also a black political caucus guy. So he's now the chair, also convicted felon. So he's going to make all of the appointments to the search committee. from the Board of Ed. And there are going to be four appointments besides himself. So five. Oh, isn't that convenient? So you're going to have a superintendent search committee made up of the Board of Education members, and it's going to comprise five members of the board appointed by a member of the fivers. Now, maybe he puts one of the quad people on there. I don't know. But you know what? Maybe you should have, as Andrew Dunn suggests, Maybe you should have some assistance from the general assembly on this. He says over the course of a few months, the board unexpectedly rejected the superintendent's budget, suspended her, then spent about $ 379, 000 investigating her and then reinstated her. Its own public report says investigators did not find evidence of improper conduct, but six weeks later, The Fivers fired her without cause. That whiplash is troubling enough, but woven through it are Hill's questions about financial decisions involving the people who controlled her employment. He then goes on to talk about the 14-page memo, the 200 pages of exhibits, the description and the concerns outlined by the superintendent about these contracts to Racky McGregor. Before her firing. The superintendent emailed the county manager warning him that county funds were involved in some of this stuff. Andrew says perhaps there are reasons behind the scenes that would change this picture. From what the public can see, though, it certainly looks as if Hill lost her job for blowing the whistle. The other thing is that CMS is constantly pleading poverty. Right. Teachers ask strangers to help make their classrooms more engaging. They're always fundraising for Play-Doh and for, you know, supplies and stuff. Somehow the district finds considerably more money for executives in residence. And for investigations into the superintendent. Right. Then they do for these these supplies and the board has no credibility left. A statement that they released last week promising accountability does very little to explain the decisions that brought us here or why families should trust the board to make the next decision on who the superintendent should be. He says, I'm tempted to ask the legislature to disband the board of ed split up the district or take similarly drastic action. Perhaps things have reached that point at the very least. Lawmakers should establish outside supervision before this board chooses another superintendent. 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.