Latest / The SEANC View / Federal cuts will affect state budget debate

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Federal cuts will affect state budget debate · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Jonathan Owens, the communications director here at Scenic,
• 0:07
  joined by Artis Watkins, executive director, government relations director,
• 0:12
  Suzanne Beasley, and podcast producer, Sam Klein. Let's have a great show.
• 0:17
  Music.
• 0:27
  So we missed you last week suzanne did you have a good vacation you didn't have
• 0:32
  it wasn't a vacation it was i had baby crud i still have a little bit of it
• 0:37
  going on you can hear the hear it in my voice so sorry that i'm croaky y'all
• 0:40
  but yeah it's good to be back thanks awesome well today is thursday July 17th.
• 0:46
  For those wondering, it is National Dole Whip Day.
• 0:49
  It is National Lottery Day, National Tattoo Day, and World Emoji Day.
• 0:56
  So it's a lot of national days. Now that's kind of strange because Dole Whip,
• 1:01
  we just talked about a few weeks ago.
• 1:03
  Sammy did. The Dole Whip. Yeah, the Dole Plantation in Hawaii.
• 1:07
  Got to go there and have some made there. I'm a fan. So National Lottery Day.
• 1:11
  Happy National Lottery Day to all the state employees over at the...
• 1:14
  Are they state employees? They are. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:17
  So thanks for all your hard work. Like I said, today is July 17th.
• 1:22
  What's going on in North Carolina?
• 1:24
  I guess we always start with the budget, it seems like.
• 1:27
  Seems to be some growing anxiety among the political class around Raleigh about
• 1:32
  the state budget since the federal bill has passed. Seems like more and more
• 1:36
  people want to talk about when are we getting a budget?
• 1:39
  How are we going to cope with these cuts? What's going to happen to Medicaid?
• 1:43
  We've heard it on a couple of shows and podcasts, and we've even talked about it a little bit.
• 1:48
  And one thing you always hear, it seems like, from one side is that,
• 1:52
  oh, don't worry, it's not going to affect us until the midterms.
• 1:55
  Now, is that really the case? After the midterms, yeah.
• 1:59
  Well, I guess some of it may be true, but, I mean, I would think that the legislature
• 2:03
  is planning right now for what's coming. No, I'm cool with that.
• 2:06
  Yeah. If they're saying it won't affect us until after the midterms, that's awesome.
• 2:10
  So there should be no problem giving raises and cost of living adjustments or
• 2:14
  bonuses or something meaningful for retirees this year because we have a dire need for that.
• 2:20
  And we have a surplus right now, right? I mean, theoretically. We have a surplus.
• 2:24
  Which is funny because, you know, when there's money. Yeah, like a big surplus. Yeah.
• 2:29
  Yeah, funny that there's any money, but when there's money, we don't generally get it.
• 2:34
  We're at the last of the line. Yeah, and when there's not money,
• 2:37
  we're the first place that experiences cuts and those kind of things.
• 2:42
  And there's always a yin to the yang in politics. So on the other side of saying,
• 2:47
  oh, no, some of these cuts are going to happen right now.
• 2:50
  And I think there's probably a happy medium in there or not happy medium in
• 2:53
  there somewhere, right? Some of these cuts are going to.
• 2:57
  Yeah, it's hard to imagine any state. Cracking a budget without having to work
• 3:02
  around some of these cuts in a more immediate fashion.
• 3:05
  But what they choose to fill the gap with is the big question.
• 3:09
  So what we always have to watch out for and for our members who might be listening,
• 3:14
  you need to call the legislature because everybody's going to say,
• 3:18
  don't cut me and definitely give me stuff.
• 3:22
  Everybody is going to say that downtown. And the legislature is going to have
• 3:25
  to figure out what they're going to do about continuing the tax cuts that they've
• 3:29
  kind of had built around how much surplus there might be and when they would
• 3:35
  kick in, those tax cuts would kick in.
• 3:36
  And what they're going to do about Medicaid, they expanded it.
• 3:39
  And now the federal government, after the midterms, is going to yank a ton of that money back.
• 3:45
  There's also, in addition to the question of the tax cuts, there's the Medicaid
• 3:49
  money that won't be coming from the feds after the midterms based on what was
• 3:54
  in this federal budget bill.
• 3:56
  And then you've got every other thing anybody wants.
• 3:59
  And there are so many ways to nickel and dime yourself out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 4:04
  And we were talking a little bit before we started recording that it seems like
• 4:09
  state employees are always the first to hit when there's maybe a shortage or cuts are mentioned,
• 4:15
  but also the last to be mentioned when there's a surplus.
• 4:20
  Yeah, we're the last to get and the first to give. Definitely.
• 4:24
  That's not okay because it affects everyone in North Carolina.
• 4:29
  And everybody was really proud last week of where we came in as a state on those
• 4:34
  rankings you were talking about, John.
• 4:36
  Yeah, we were number one in the nation, the top state in the nation for business,
• 4:40
  according to CNBC. We've won that three of the last four years.
• 4:44
  And I think you can go back and listen to our awesome podcast from last week for all the details.
• 4:49
  But one of the things that stuck out to me when I listened back to it was the
• 4:54
  whole thing about us being 29th in the nation in quality of life.
• 4:59
  And, you know, you're. It was crime, health care.
• 5:02
  You had mentioned that, you know, more investment in state employees and public
• 5:07
  services may bring that up.
• 5:09
  Oh, without a doubt. Public services is why people come to North Carolina.
• 5:12
  It's why businesses come here
• 5:13
  to thrive. It's why people want to come here and raise their families.
• 5:17
  But, you know, there's always that public perception issue that they don't connect
• 5:22
  state employees providing the services that they get here in North Carolina.
• 5:26
  I don't know where people think they come from. I don't either.
• 5:28
  They don't come off a tree.
• 5:30
  I mean, the things we did well on in this ranking for businesses are the things
• 5:34
  where we have invested, not necessarily enough, but more than we have in the
• 5:40
  areas where we came in 29th.
• 5:42
  Like I said, health care, definitely.
• 5:45
  I mean, we're just a mess in terms of health care in every way as a state.
• 5:49
  Law enforcement is definitely not getting what they need. at every level in
• 5:54
  the point we made last week is that's not just folks with a badge and a gun.
• 5:58
  In a traditional police sense, you have an entire justice system set up with
• 6:03
  people who work for the courts, who work in probation and parole once somebody's
• 6:06
  been assigned to one of those state employees.
• 6:10
  The number of people who literally are just handling administratively our criminal
• 6:15
  justice system, you never think about them, but you couldn't do anything without them.
• 6:19
  You couldn't keep your crime cleaned up without the people who are tracking
• 6:24
  all of this it's a lot to take care of yeah so one side is saying oh our great
• 6:29
  tax cuts have made this the greatest state in the nation for business and the other side is saying.
• 6:34
  You know, it's our incentive packages or our. Yeah.
• 6:38
  And neither side is saying what really makes the state great,
• 6:42
  which is the state employees. Right.
• 6:44
  So give us a little bit of credit. Oh, everybody's fighting over it right now.
• 6:47
  Whether it's the governor or the legislature that caused this.
• 6:50
  And yes, we say it's the state employees that caused it. Because without that infrastructure.
• 6:55
  Yeah. At least give us a little credit. I want them to think about how happy
• 7:00
  they get about these awards and these titles. and think, if you guys keep cutting
• 7:04
  these public services, you're not going to get those awards and titles anymore. Right.
• 7:08
  And then you're going to be so sad because, oh. Businesses are going to want to leave.
• 7:12
  Yeah. I mean, it's awesome to be number one for business because without businesses,
• 7:17
  I mean, we all should be very pro-business, to be clear, because without businesses,
• 7:22
  you don't have jobs for people here.
• 7:25
  And you don't have tax revenue. Right. You don't have revenue.
• 7:29
  You have to have business, and you have to have it be business friendly.
• 7:32
  But I'd a whole lot rather be lower on that pole for business and not be number
• 7:38
  one most expensive for health care. You know what I'm saying?
• 7:40
  Like there's a handy medium.
• 7:41
  The worst in health care out. The worst. Right. Yeah. So it is a tremendous
• 7:46
  juggling act. So whoever wants to claim the credit, fine.
• 7:49
  But nobody's stepping up to say, hey, I acknowledge we're the worst for health
• 7:54
  care. And so here's how I want to fix that.
• 7:56
  Do you want to talk about those issues? On Tim Boyum's podcast,
• 8:00
  I listened to that today, the Tying It Together.
• 8:03
  Shout out to Tim. He had Brian Lewis from New Frame and one of your favorite
• 8:07
  podcasts on, and Billy Warden from RLF Communications.
• 8:12
  And they talked a lot about the big, beautiful bill and Medicaid expansion and
• 8:17
  the impacts on the budget.
• 8:19
  Cuts on the federal level have an exponential impact in state level.
• 8:24
  Yeah, North Carolina gets a lot of money. And that's kind of a fight that you're
• 8:28
  hearing all over the country, you know, like Gavin Newsom talking about California
• 8:32
  being a donor state where they—
• 8:34
  pay more in than they get back. Seems like that's going to be a real hot button
• 8:38
  issue in the next election. So.
• 8:40
  Well, and then depending on what
• 8:42
  the state gets, helps also determine what sometimes the local governments.
• 8:47
  Yeah. The part of that that they can get assistance on things from the state
• 8:52
  outside of just their tax base.
• 8:54
  So it's a huge trickle down effect. It is. The trickle down.
• 8:58
  So maybe this is a good time to give DOT some love after all this flooding that we have.
• 9:04
  We're talking about infrastructure and literally infrastructure like bridges
• 9:08
  are having to be inspected and, you know, make sure they're safe after all of
• 9:13
  this flooding that we've had.
• 9:14
  Yeah, Governor Stein issued a state of emergency after the Chantel.
• 9:19
  I guess it was a tropical storm, right? It came through all the flooding.
• 9:22
  And, you know, you don't really think about what all that affects.
• 9:26
  It's not just a flood. You know, there's all kinds of.
• 9:28
  Well, it's everything that's left after, you know, those waters have moved through.
• 9:33
  Things may not be safe. So our state employees are out there working hard to. Yes, they are.
• 9:37
  As always, to mend the roads and get North Carolina moving again.
• 9:41
  So I want to bounce back for one second because this. OK. Kind of struck me
• 9:45
  when you were saying it. And it's something we used to talk about a lot.
• 9:49
  I want to go back to it. You were talking about how North Carolina gets two
• 9:53
  dollars back for every dollar we send to D.C.
• 9:57
  There was a similar study assessment done by Michael Walden,
• 10:03
  an economist at NC State, who was looking at retirees.
• 10:06
  This was years ago, maybe 10 years ago.
• 10:09
  Who was pointing out that for every dollar you give a retiree in terms of a
• 10:14
  COLA or something, a cost of living adjustment, they're putting that back in the economy.
• 10:19
  They're not putting it in some hedge fund somewhere as an investment.
• 10:23
  Yeah, they're not taking it with them to Switzerland to vacation.
• 10:28
  They're literally putting it in their local economy to go to the food line,
• 10:31
  to go to Lowe's Home Improvement, to go for basic things.
• 10:36
  For health care. Right, for health care. So, I mean.
• 10:39
  Especially state retirees. They obviously, I mean, you know.
• 10:43
  Yeah. They mainly stay here. Yeah. They don't have to think in this end, you know.
• 10:47
  No. Especially public sector. If somebody's just getting by,
• 10:51
  they're spending that money locally.
• 10:53
  So for every dollar you give those retirees, this economist had said,
• 10:57
  look, that has a multiplier effect in your state economy.
• 11:01
  And that's always been, you know, one of our talking points for pay increases.
• 11:05
  That's important to your local economy. I mean, you know, if somebody gets a
• 11:10
  pay raise and they're going to go shopping or pay some bills or,
• 11:13
  you know, they're going to spend their money.
• 11:16
  Yeah. That's correct. I'm not buying a yacht from Austria.
• 11:19
  Right. Yeah. Oh, that money's going here. Yeah.
• 11:24
  That could be a huge topic, but. Yeah. For some other day, we might want to
• 11:29
  delve more deeply in it and actually walk through.
• 11:31
  Yeah. What people have who know what they're doing and have studied this have come up with.
• 11:36
  I was just thinking about, you know, the tax cuts and the big,
• 11:40
  beautiful bill and how that money probably goes, a lot of it goes into bank
• 11:45
  accounts and, I mean, into like savings accounts and things like that.
• 11:49
  Yeah, I mean, anything you do for state employees and retirees,
• 11:52
  like we were saying, those are not wealthy people.
• 11:55
  At the end of the day, that's the message. If you call your legislators,
• 11:58
  you need to express how you need to be a priority, but also how making you a
• 12:02
  priority is good fiscal policy for the state. They're going to get your money back plus some.
• 12:08
  And our retirees definitely need help.
• 12:11
  I mean, because there's been since 2017, there was a real cost of living adjustment.
• 12:17
  I think that was just 1%, right? 1%, yep.
• 12:20
  And I think the average pension payment is like $20,000 a year.
• 12:24
  That's close to the poverty line. Yep.
• 12:26
  And these are... And let's not kid ourselves. There's going to be people listening
• 12:30
  to this who are not state employees or retired state employees who think to
• 12:34
  themselves, and I understand this would be your initial thought, why do I care?
• 12:39
  There is no pension where I work because those have gone away in terms of something,
• 12:44
  a check you get once you retire.
• 12:46
  These days, it's whatever you have in your 401k. You do your best with that.
• 12:50
  You're on your own. Good luck. Good luck.
• 12:53
  So people sometimes are very angry if we even bring it up, like,
• 12:58
  hey, they have a retirement plan. I don't.
• 13:01
  Forgetting that the retirement plan they have was funded largely by them,
• 13:06
  because people who are retired now always put that 6% in every year out of their check.
• 13:12
  When, as we said last week, there was one time the state put in nothing and
• 13:16
  multiple times the state put in next to nothing.
• 13:19
  So they were funding their own system for many years. But they also took less
• 13:24
  pay than they would have made in the private sector to be in these jobs. That was the deal.
• 13:28
  So if you don't continue to recognize those retirees, why in the world would
• 13:33
  somebody come take your lackluster, inadequate, disrespectful pay to work in a state job?
• 13:40
  Yeah, and your eroded benefits. Yeah, I was going to touch on that.
• 13:43
  I mean, one of the biggest benefits that we had was health care,
• 13:47
  you know, after you retire. I mean, that really.
• 13:51
  That was huge. That was a huge recruiting tool, if you think of it.
• 13:54
  And we hear a lot about that. I mean, we still, there's a lot of talk about
• 13:58
  that. You know, they need to get that back.
• 14:00
  You would attract, you know, more employees.
• 14:02
  But this is what's happening. I think, like we were talking about,
• 14:05
  a dollar here comes back later.
• 14:07
  I don't think we're looking as long-term when legislating at any level of government as we used to.
• 14:15
  Now it's just, what sounds good now? We'll cut this out. That'll be helpful.
• 14:19
  You might not see anything from that cut for 30 years.
• 14:22
  And in the meantime, you might do all kinds of devastation as side effects of that cut.
• 14:28
  That don't make the 30-year payoff worth it. And I think the health care upon
• 14:31
  retirement for state employees is definitely an example of that.
• 14:35
  And it's a thing, like, when I took this job here, I think my parents thought
• 14:38
  it was a state job. And so they were like, oh, you'll have health care at retirement.
• 14:43
  And I was like, not exactly. But even people in the private sector know that
• 14:47
  that would be a huge thing to entice someone for the state. And that ended, was it 2021?
• 14:55
  Okay. Okay, so anyone hired after 2021, but everyone hired before still has, right?
• 15:00
  And then in the meantime, everybody who works for the state gets called everything
• 15:04
  but a child of God by the public because it's popular.
• 15:07
  Yeah. It's always been popular, but it's newly invigorated popular to poop on public employees.
• 15:14
  Yeah. We're going to have to talk about that metaphor or whatever,
• 15:17
  that idiom you just said, because that sounds like a Texas thing.
• 15:20
  I've never heard that. Well, it's not the way you say it normally,
• 15:23
  but this is a family podcast.
• 15:26
  Oh, okay. Okay. It's funny. You also.
• 15:29
  There's a real Texas way I could have said it. Oh, okay. Okay.
• 15:32
  You're thinking now. Yeah, you got me.
• 15:35
  It's funny, though. I was listening back to the podcast. I always do to pull
• 15:39
  out clips so we can promo it, you know.
• 15:41
  And it's funny what I kind of miss during our conversation.
• 15:45
  And then I hear on the podcast, I'm like, yeah.
• 15:49
  Go, Artis. That was awesome.
• 15:51
  You think the attention span is fully there, and then you go back and listen
• 15:56
  while you're editing, and you're like, did I miss that? That's a drone on.
• 15:59
  At some point, you have to click out for your own.
• 16:02
  There was a part last week you said, you know, something about the treasurer
• 16:06
  talking about how since we make more investment money, we're up $8 billion this year.
• 16:11
  We can ask the state government for less money. Right. And you pointed out.
• 16:16
  Yeah, that it's back to what Suzanne said. when times are good in this situation,
• 16:21
  investment returns have been good. It's like, hey, the state can get a break.
• 16:26
  Yeah, yeah. But no one ever says, hey, maybe these employees should pay less
• 16:30
  than six percent a month into this retirement because we're getting pretty good investment returns.
• 16:35
  And every time we go to ask for a COLA, if we're not getting good,
• 16:38
  oh, we don't have good investment returns.
• 16:40
  They can't have it. You have to get that out of the investment returns and not
• 16:43
  the General Assembly. Okay, fair enough.
• 16:45
  So we try to find policies. But when you have, yeah, when you have gains like
• 16:51
  this, The first thing you're going to say is, oh, let's cut state investment. Right.
• 16:54
  So when do the retirees win when that's the equation?
• 17:00
  Especially when they were already for years putting in as little as possible.
• 17:04
  You need a break from that?
• 17:07
  Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, you made that bed and we're all laying in it.
• 17:11
  But you want the retirees. And when I say you, this current legislature did not make that bed.
• 17:17
  None of them there were there. At this point, I don't think any of them were.
• 17:21
  That's how old we are, Suzanne.
• 17:22
  But when they were putting in nothing right at the beginning of the 2000s,
• 17:28
  it was a whole different crowd.
• 17:29
  It was. But the thing that hasn't changed is retirees come in literally last
• 17:37
  on the list of priorities. It's insane.
• 17:39
  And employees don't fare much better. Yeah. And when times are good,
• 17:44
  they're told they're not that good. Yeah.
• 17:46
  And even if you have huge surpluses, they still don't want to give it.
• 17:49
  It almost goes against common political thought, though, if you think about it.
• 17:54
  Like, politicians seem to try to cater to older citizens because they vote more, it seems like.
• 18:00
  But in this case, they don't really care, right?
• 18:03
  I mean, is that— I mean, that is kind of a—that was an old political philosophy,
• 18:08
  is that your block that really would vote is older folks.
• 18:13
  But I think that kind of turned on its head— Really? Some time ago,
• 18:17
  when older folks started voting.
• 18:19
  Not as much with their pocketbook anymore. Right. Yeah. Who are they catering
• 18:23
  to currently? Because it doesn't feel like they're catering to anyone. Well.
• 18:27
  I mean. I mean. Because they're not catering to state employees.
• 18:30
  No. To help them. They're not catering to the retirees to help them. Who are we catering to?
• 18:35
  So I do think taxes have gone down. So in terms of all of us as taxpaying North
• 18:40
  Carolinians, yes, we're paying less in taxes.
• 18:43
  If you look at state taxes, though, they're not really a massive part of what's
• 18:48
  coming out of your paycheck. Right.
• 18:49
  Yeah, that's the federal taxes that are really.
• 18:52
  So when you think about reducing that by the amounts we're talking about,
• 18:57
  it's not going to change your life.
• 18:59
  Whereas if you're in line three hours at DMV, you would probably give somebody
• 19:02
  two hundred dollars to get that line to go away.
• 19:05
  So you have to look, as with any investment, at ROI, the return on investment.
• 19:11
  What kind of return are we getting on the investment we are making in public
• 19:15
  services? See, I think I just caught your brilliance in real time right there, though.
• 19:20
  I caught it before, so I don't have to listen back to find that one.
• 19:23
  But that's an awesome point.
• 19:26
  I already forgot it. I don't know what I said. What did I say?
• 19:29
  What you pay in state taxes is minuscule compared to federal.
• 19:34
  But it sounds good. Yeah. It sounds really good.
• 19:37
  Yeah, if you cut 3% down to 1%, that's like, oh, that's like 66%.
• 19:42
  That is not changing your life. Yeah, but it's really $200.
• 19:46
  Great thought to try to keep the costs down for people who are just working hard to make a living.
• 19:51
  And I'm not talking about state employees. I'm talking about everybody.
• 19:54
  Everybody's going, for the most part, people aren't going to cushy jobs,
• 19:57
  sitting in a podcast room with foam on the walls.
• 20:00
  People are going and working very hard for not much.
• 20:03
  And they need the government to be as careful and prudent with spending those dollars as they can.
• 20:10
  So I don't think there's a soul that would argue that keeping the taxes as low
• 20:14
  as possible is important.
• 20:16
  But if you ask those same taxpayers, he gave them examples.
• 20:20
  Of what they might wait for or not get at all and told them the amount of difference
• 20:25
  in making their paycheck, depending on their answer to this question,
• 20:28
  I think you'd be shocked how many would say, well, that ain't worth it.
• 20:32
  Yeah. Would you pay another $80 a year to not have to wait six hours at the...
• 20:38
  Right. I guess that's a bad analogy.
• 20:40
  Well, I do it. It's the one that makes sense to people.
• 20:44
  That's why we keep talking about DMV. It's what people think of government as. Yeah.
• 20:50
  You think there aren't people who do make more money who go to the DMV and say,
• 20:54
  I'll give you a hundred bucks if you let me cut you in line.
• 20:57
  And then they do it. Is that a market?
• 21:00
  I'm going to start camping out. Every day you get a hundred bucks.
• 21:04
  Hold a spot. It's probably worth it.
• 21:08
  DMV was in the news. Oh, yeah. They can't stay out of the news. God bless them.
• 21:12
  Nope. They had another networking problem the other day that they couldn't take payments, I think.
• 21:18
  They couldn't take credit cards. Yeah, which is a pain. But,
• 21:21
  you know, that it was just another thing of people yelling at employees about that.
• 21:26
  And that was not the employee's fault at all.
• 21:30
  Well, honestly, none of this stuff is the employee's fault. But it always turns into it.
• 21:37
  Well, I mean, you know, they're public facing. So that's who,
• 21:40
  you know, people walk in the DMV and that's who's going to catch whatever that
• 21:45
  person is bringing through the door.
• 21:47
  But, you know, all these problems are from lack of funding, not being appropriately
• 21:51
  funded over all these years. And here we are.
• 21:55
  I mean, you know, it's like working at Walmart. You're going to get yelled at
• 21:58
  for something Walmart does.
• 22:00
  But Walmart employees can grab the security, tell them to take you out of there
• 22:04
  for talking ugly to them.
• 22:06
  Although, apparently, based on videos off the Internet.
• 22:10
  Yeah, that doesn't always go very well either.
• 22:12
  Yeah. Well, at this point, most of it's like self-checkout anyway, right? at Walmart.
• 22:17
  They're not yelling at anybody. Well, and I'm sure we're moving towards more
• 22:21
  and more and more automation of DMV to where it won't be as many people working at DMV.
• 22:26
  Yeah, I mean, there's already a couple of kiosks somewhere, which,
• 22:29
  I mean, you can't do everything, but... And then you can already renew your
• 22:33
  driver's license if you're just, like, changing an address or something online. Yeah.
• 22:37
  I pulled up to the Bojangles in my hometown yesterday.
• 22:42
  Tiny town. And the drive-thru thing was AI. Yeah, it was like, oh, wow. Yeah.
• 22:48
  And I'm like, how in the world? I don't like Carthage, North Carolina.
• 22:52
  Interesting. Speaking of areas near Sanford, I have a question.
• 22:55
  Yes. I had a law school classmate who was from Broadway.
• 22:59
  Yeah, Broadway. And he described it to people when they would say Broadway.
• 23:03
  It's a suburb of Sanford. It is. How can Sanford have suburbs?
• 23:09
  We have two suburbs. People from Sanford really think it's like New York or something.
• 23:14
  We actually have like maybe four, I guess. We got Tramway where I live.
• 23:16
  I live in Tramway, which is a suburb of Sanford. We have Broadway.
• 23:21
  Broadway is like the carry to Sanford's Raleigh. So Broadway is like the big suburb.
• 23:28
  Yeah, he dressed very nice. Broadway's nice. It's a great little town.
• 23:32
  It has a state veterans memorial there.
• 23:35
  Check it out. It's an awesome little town. They have an awesome Christmas parade.
• 23:39
  But we also have. I think John wants everyone to move. We're on Sanford Minute now. This is not cool.
• 23:45
  Carthage has the Boy Scout camp. Yeah, I would say Carthage is its own town.
• 23:50
  Carthage is probably like the Durham to Sanford, Raleigh.
• 23:54
  I just think of it. He doesn't want to claim it. The barbecue joint that burned
• 23:58
  down. Yeah, right there on the air, the airfield.
• 24:01
  Yeah. Some neat stuff out that way. Yeah. So that's Central North Carolina.
• 24:06
  Yeah, I just had to ask you about that. I would have forgotten it again.
• 24:09
  So along all these political lines we've been talking about today,
• 24:12
  I saw a story in the News and Observer today, I guess, that registered Republicans
• 24:16
  are almost passing Democrats in North Carolina.
• 24:21
  But that's for second place. You know what number one is? Most registered voters are.
• 24:26
  Independent. Unaffiliated. Unaffiliated, yeah. Yeah, people don't like the parties as much at all.
• 24:34
  That seems like a kind of a newer phenomenon to me. But you see that the Republican
• 24:39
  Party is pretty strong now here.
• 24:42
  Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of, you hear a lot, but that doesn't mean,
• 24:46
  I mean, most people that you're trying to capture as voters are the ones that
• 24:50
  don't ever say anything about politics at all. Yeah.
• 24:53
  I'll say as a Broadway musical Hamilton fan, George Washington said in his final
• 24:58
  address, he warned people about partisan fighting.
• 25:01
  And now everyone's saying, no, I just want to be independent. I don't want to party.
• 25:06
  Well, as we were talking about earlier, we're fighting the same fights that
• 25:11
  we have fought. I don't care who's in charge.
• 25:13
  People always say, oh, well, if this group was in charge or if that group.
• 25:17
  No, you have to take every legislator one by one because they believe what they believe.
• 25:25
  And they're trying to do for their constituents what they believe in doing.
• 25:29
  And do you see? You never know. Our Gen Z correspondent over here,
• 25:33
  do you see as the younger folks rise into the of age to vote,
• 25:38
  are they choosing to be an unaffiliated voter as opposed to selecting a party or?
• 25:43
  I think that there has been a big shift to choosing unaffiliated slash independent.
• 25:50
  When I first graduated college, there were a lot of people who were part of
• 25:55
  those radical ends that I kind of corresponded with and talked to.
• 25:59
  But I think there has been a much larger shift to just being like,
• 26:04
  I don't want to claim either side because both sides make mistakes.
• 26:08
  Both sides have said that they're gonna do one thing and then absolutely don't
• 26:12
  do it and they're just like I don't want to claim to be a part of either so
• 26:17
  I'm just gonna and they also just think both sides make good points.
• 26:20
  Well, and, yeah, both sides make good points and both sides make bad points.
• 26:24
  And in the line of work we're in, you know, I've been accused of being hardcore
• 26:28
  Republican and hardcore Democrat,
• 26:30
  which is comical because I'm fighting with everybody all the time.
• 26:33
  Like, only when there's a reason to fight. The rest of the time we're thanking people.
• 26:39
  There's plenty of people showing up and doing the right thing in the General Assembly.
• 26:43
  And we will always support. I think it's harder for people to stand out there
• 26:49
  on that limb and do the right thing for people and really fight hard for it
• 26:53
  if it's not what a group wants.
• 26:55
  I do think it's a much different place in terms of it's real hard to be independent
• 27:00
  down there in terms of spirit.
• 27:02
  With that in mind, let's go to the Gen Z minute. What's going on in Gen Z world?
• 27:07
  So something that has widely spread on TikTok is something called the Gen Z stare. I've seen this.
• 27:15
  And it is having workplaces worried about Gen Z's communication skills.
• 27:20
  So I first noticed it being a lot of millennials just kind of making fun of Gen Z's.
• 27:27
  And it seemed like it was more of revenge, quote unquote,
• 27:32
  for how the Gen Z's made fun of them for the millennial pause,
• 27:36
  which is inherently an awkward time to pause before they would start a video
• 27:40
  or doing like a transition on TikTok. people were making fun, being like, uh-huh.
• 27:45
  We're going to have to do a lot more explanation here.
• 27:47
  I'm never going to do a video again. Oh, you're talking. It's like when you
• 27:51
  start the video, and they'd, like, stand there, and they'd be like.
• 27:55
  Okay, now go. Oh, like I just did with the podcast, right? When I was like,
• 27:59
  are you ready? Okay. Like that? Okay.
• 28:02
  It's kind of like that. And Gen Zs were making fun of a lot of millennials. What do y'all do?
• 28:06
  Start talking before you hit
• 28:07
  play or record? No, like we start as soon as the record button's going.
• 28:12
  It's the video started, you're going. Okay. The millennials,
• 28:16
  it seems like for the trend that it was on TikTok, it seemed like almost they
• 28:22
  would sit there, stare at the screen, be like, I don't know if it's going.
• 28:26
  And then they would process it and start.
• 28:28
  But the Gen Z stare is something more than that, right? Yes. It's just general.
• 28:33
  It is among the articles that I found talking about it.
• 28:36
  There was one from the International Business Times in which the author of the
• 28:42
  article was a Gen Z and defended it and said that as much as it feels like a cop out for some people,
• 28:50
  COVID is one of the things because I feel like this is much wider spread among
• 28:54
  younger Gen Zs and not the older Gen Zs.
• 28:57
  But COVID is one of those things that she refers to as a reason for people like
• 29:02
  thinking the Gen Z stare comes from a limited capacity for small talk and communication.
• 29:09
  So let's define what the Gen Z stare is. It can come up in certain situations.
• 29:14
  Main situation seems to be in small talk situations in customer-facing roles.
• 29:21
  In one instance, millennials have said that it comes from...
• 29:25
  What is it, though? What do you do? It's a blank stare.
• 29:29
  So Sam and I were talking about this before we came in to record the podcast,
• 29:33
  and she gave me an example of a person asking about a smoothie.
• 29:37
  Does a banana-strawberry smoothie, does that have bananas in it?
• 29:41
  And instead of being customer service-like,
• 29:45
  our generation has decided that we are going to give you the face that you deserve
• 29:49
  from that kind of question and just have the face of, that is the worst question
• 29:55
  you could possibly ask me.
• 29:57
  I try to be very supportive of Gen Z, as you know, but that's just mean. That's ugly.
• 30:01
  But some millennials have also said that it's not like that.
• 30:06
  That's not when the instance that they're talking about it is.
• 30:09
  They're talking about you're at a grocery store customer
• 30:12
  service comes up to you and says hi how are you
• 30:15
  can i help you and they are getting the gen
• 30:18
  z stare of just a blank stare of like oh no just looking at them from the person
• 30:24
  yes from the gen z who's like looking at them like why are you talking to me
• 30:29
  yes yeah like you don't have people's skills yes like you can't yeah okay i i see what Yeah.
• 30:36
  So some people are blaming it on COVID because, again, I feel like this is more
• 30:40
  widely spread amongst the younger Gen Z's because when they were in high school
• 30:44
  and could have been getting after school jobs, they were stuck at home.
• 30:47
  They also weren't talking to classmates in hallways.
• 30:50
  They weren't interacting with people like that.
• 30:53
  They would log on to their computer, stare at their teacher for an hour,
• 30:56
  log off. They didn't have those socialization aspects.
• 31:00
  But another defense for it was that Gen Zs are just genuinely done with fake
• 31:07
  small talk conversation and don't want to be bothered by anyone really when
• 31:12
  they're out in public because they know that these people don't usually mean
• 31:17
  it. They don't want to help you necessarily.
• 31:19
  They're just saying it to say it because it's part of their job.
• 31:24
  And they're just like, just leave me alone kind of thing. Well,
• 31:27
  devil's advocate, what if sometimes those silly interact, not silly, but just being polite.
• 31:33
  Sometimes those end up with more interaction happening between the two people.
• 31:37
  And I don't know, when I'm in store, you know, I talk to everybody.
• 31:40
  So when I leave, sometimes I'm like, that was nice.
• 31:44
  You know, I ended up learning something about the person I was talking to some weird way.
• 31:49
  Yeah. Yeah. I personally don't know how much to defend it.
• 31:53
  Like, I can defend it when it comes to the nonsensical questions of saying things
• 31:58
  like, does a strawberry banana smoothie have bananas in it, I can kind of defend
• 32:02
  it and just be like, okay, that instance of people complaining about the Gen
• 32:06
  Z stare, I understand that.
• 32:08
  However, when it comes to just genuine small talk, it's okay to look at someone
• 32:13
  and say, I'm good. How are you? That's allowed.
• 32:16
  Just because you guys don't like small talk doesn't mean you don't have to do it.
• 32:20
  So my kind of question to you guys is, do you think that the Gen Z stare comes
• 32:26
  from a lack of soft skills and communication?
• 32:29
  Or is it that they are just responding in a more honest way than previous generations?
• 32:35
  Maybe a combination. Yeah, I think that's a combination. Maybe a combination.
• 32:39
  Because I get being done with the fakeness and the, but I also get being polite.
• 32:44
  And like you said, you never know. Yeah, I don't like it when honesty is used
• 32:47
  as a reason for rudeness.
• 32:49
  You can still be polite. But yeah, and I still think some of it too has to do
• 32:53
  with COVID shut everybody down. You didn't get to socialize.
• 32:57
  She didn't get to do the things that she normally would have done.
• 33:00
  Well, it definitely was a disservice to y'all to have that happen to happen
• 33:04
  at that point in your lifetime.
• 33:05
  I mean, that's a rough thing. I think it's also because so many Gen Zs are moving
• 33:10
  away from customer service facing jobs as their first jobs that they're not
• 33:15
  experiencing how to first have those.
• 33:18
  Put them at the DMV and let them have some people yell at them and they'll learn how to do it.
• 33:24
  They'll wish people were being polite. At my first job, besides babysitting,
• 33:29
  like I was great at that. Love kids.
• 33:31
  I babysat. But my first job outside of that, I worked at an American Eagle and a Burlington.
• 33:37
  You deal with a lot of angry customers. You deal with a lot of kind customers.
• 33:41
  The best way to get past either of them is just be nice. And you can fold, I bet.
• 33:47
  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm great at that. I'm great at that.
• 33:52
  My clothes look like I work in a store still because I will fold my like T-shirts,
• 33:58
  pajamas, everything. It looks like I work in a store still.
• 34:01
  Cool. So once again, we learned something about you. Yeah. Gen Z.
• 34:05
  We're always sitting here just thinking after you're done like, huh? Oh, OK.
• 34:10
  Yeah, that was a trending topic that I kind of thought was. Any pop culture?
• 34:15
  Elmo had a crash out. Oh, that was crazy.
• 34:17
  Suzanne sent that to us. By the way, for anyone who does not know,
• 34:22
  that was a genuine hacking, especially after there were some very negative anti-Semitic
• 34:29
  comments made on that Twitter.
• 34:30
  They were able to track down and figure out that that was a hacking because,
• 34:35
  of course, our favorite five-year-old friend teaching us how to be kind on Sesame
• 34:40
  Street would not say those things.
• 34:42
  Elmo's not my favorite on Sesame Street. Who's it? Cookie Monster?
• 34:47
  Big Bird. Grover. It's always been Grover. I don't like Sesame Street.
• 34:50
  First year I went to New York City, I saw Big Bird in Central Park. Nice.
• 34:54
  Just walking around. That would terrify me.
• 34:58
  Our policy platform committee met today. You missed it. To do the important work. Yeah, they did.
• 35:04
  Okay, well, before we wrap this up, what's the biggest takeaway from what the
• 35:08
  scenic members who were on policy platform were? So always money.
• 35:12
  You know, money is always at the top of the list. There were also some motor
• 35:16
  fleet issues with a certain amount of mileage that you have to meet or the agency gets penalized.
• 35:22
  So explain policy platform. So policy platform is the committee of members who
• 35:27
  make a decision on what we're going to address in the legislature or policy
• 35:33
  wise with agencies independently.
• 35:35
  And it can be as large as like pay raises and it can be as small as like boots
• 35:40
  for DMT. Exactly. Exactly.
• 35:42
  So we had we had a good handful of policies to address today.
• 35:47
  Yeah. And they were good. There's some concern in adult correction,
• 35:51
  which we expanded to maybe address the issue in other agencies about being able
• 35:57
  to carry your personal weapon. OK.
• 35:59
  For non-certified or certified employees already have a weapon.
• 36:03
  So for employees who are driving maybe a DAC car, you know, that identifies
• 36:09
  them, a DPS car, it identifies them.
• 36:11
  There have been some incidents where people have been approached and,
• 36:15
  you know, just felt unsafe.
• 36:16
  So that was one of the big discussions today was for them to have some kind
• 36:20
  of policy of being able to bring their own weapon. And weapon isn't just a firearm.
• 36:26
  That's actually kind of something that we talked about with Ramona today.
• 36:30
  By the way, guys, new Gen Z episode next week. Woo-hoo.
• 36:35
  She was talking about how when she has to go downtown to Wake County quite often.
• 36:40
  She has to park far away. She is a probation and parole officer,
• 36:43
  having to go downtown for things.
• 36:46
  And sometimes people target because they know you're a state employee.
• 36:50
  And it gets a little dangerous. It was a big conversation. And they don't have
• 36:54
  any special parking. And they will get ticketed if their meter runs out while they're in court.
• 37:00
  Forward to hearing from her. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think about things like that.
• 37:04
  So all of those things will go to our convention where our delegates will vote
• 37:09
  on. Actually, every one of the policies that they addressed today was approved
• 37:13
  by the committee, and it will move on to our convention to be considered.
• 37:17
  The convention passes it, then it becomes part of our platform.
• 37:19
  And if you're still listening, God bless you. And also, we do have slots for
• 37:25
  five for the convention scholarship.
• 37:27
  So if you're interested in seeing what our convention is all about,
• 37:31
  you can apply for one of those, and you get to join us up there and be part
• 37:34
  of the action. It's a big deal.
• 37:36
  We'd love to have you join us. That's where you learn all kinds of things,
• 37:41
  just like you just talked about, that we would never know are issues out there.
• 37:45
  So let's get to my question, and then we'll get out of here.
• 37:48
  Music.
• 37:48
  John Swaggy, weird question of the week.
• 37:55
  So it'll be a quick one today in honor of World Emoji Day. What's your favorite
• 37:59
  emoji? Anyone want to start? The huggy one.
• 38:02
  The hug? The hug. The one where it's got, like, the little smile and the eyes
• 38:06
  closed and the arms out. Yay!
• 38:08
  I think it's the woman shrugging because when in doubt I'm confused,
• 38:14
  I'm just like, and so I just kind of send that one to my family very often.
• 38:20
  They get that one from me quite often. They'll ask me a question and be like,
• 38:24
  do you know what time your brother is doing this?
• 38:27
  And I'm like, ask him. Why are you asking me?
• 38:30
  And I'll just send like that emoji. And I'm like, so I like the roll eyes one.
• 38:35
  And it's like, like, it's easy to mistake, though.
• 38:37
  Like, people don't really get
• 38:39
  it all the time because it really just looks like a face looking up. Yeah.
• 38:43
  Yeah, I would probably not catch that. It's just like a face with the eyes.
• 38:47
  You probably do it to me and I don't know.
• 38:50
  Do you have a favorite emoji? I'm not a big emoji-er. Oh, hey, is that a verb? Yeah.
• 38:56
  No, now. Some people are really into emojis.
• 39:00
  I do also love the emoji. That's like, it's not the heart eyes one,
• 39:05
  but it's like smiling face. And then it has a couple hearts around it.
• 39:09
  Because whenever, like, I'm texting my mom, I'll be like, I love you. I miss you. Hearts.
• 39:14
  Affectionate. They're so small. Yeah, that's why she gets. I'm afraid of clicking,
• 39:18
  like, the wrong one. The wrong thing. They also have so many meanings.
• 39:22
  Yeah, I know. Yeah, I'm not.
• 39:25
  I'd do well to get by with words. Artist accidentally sends the purple devil
• 39:29
  emoji just being like, ha ha, I'm being mischievous. That's not what that means,
• 39:33
  artist. Oh, what does that mean? I don't know.
• 39:35
  That is more of a spicy emoji for a lot of people. I would never know that.
• 39:40
  See, I need to stay away. Yeah, stay away from emoji days. We're too old for emojis.
• 39:44
  Shout out to podcast number one fan, Cliff Johnson, for his emoji.
• 39:48
  He always sends the little hat. Yes, with the hat. Yes.
• 39:52
  Every email, every text message. Get better, Cliff.
• 39:56
  Yeah. Oh, is he? He's bionic now. Oh, okay.
• 39:59
  Knee replacement surgery. Oh, okay. Yeah, you mentioned that.
• 40:01
  Telling all of his business. All right, I just told you business.
• 40:03
  Thank Cliff. Spitting it, yeah.
• 40:05
  Well, we love you, Cliff, and we love you Scenic members. Thanks for tuning in.
• 40:09
  One more thing. Oh. Do not forget to like, follow, and subscribe the podcast.
• 40:14
  Subscribe on YouTube, and then you can like and follow on Spotify.
• 40:18
  So that you will be notified whenever we post a new episode.
• 40:21
  Yes, very important. Thanks for tuning in.
• 40:23
  Music.