Latest / The SEANC View / Gov. Stein Makes Bold State Budget Pitch

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Gov. Stein Makes Bold State Budget Pitch · The SEANC View

0:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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I am Jonathan Owens here with Artis Watkins and Sammy Klein.
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It's a beautiful day. It's almost 80 degrees today, right? We don't need to
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be cooped up inside all day, so let's get to it.
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So, is winter over, y'all? I want it to be.
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Seems like it. I mean, you know how North Carolina, you know what we go through.
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My dad said it may be getting cold next week again. Yeah, but not cold, cold.
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So let's dive right into this week's episode. And I guess we should start with
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the election that we talked about in length last week.
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If you didn't listen to that episode, go back and listen.
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It's still timely. And I thought it was a great episode, by the way.
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Well, the update is that there is no update because they're the only race that's
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really still up for grabs is Senate District 26, which was the main event between
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Phil Berger and Sam Page.
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And there is no resolution so far. No, not yet.
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I mean, my prediction is coming true. The winner is the lawyers.
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Yeah, they're about to get paid, from what I understand.
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Page has widened his lead from
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two votes to 23 as of Friday because of provisional ballots being counted.
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Waiting on military, right? Yeah, and I think Flint had told us that they didn't
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think there were many of those, so I don't know if it'll be enough.
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After that count, they'll go to a machine recount, from what I understand,
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from the Under the Dome podcast this week.
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And then there's like a sample recount, hand-rate recount.
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They don't do the whole—it could
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be a few more months before we know the outcome. So stay tuned, I guess.
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You have any inkling on what's going to happen there? None.
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Less than none. I mean, election night was kind of shocking all over the country
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in different places, and that was our North Carolina— Well, when I say shocker,
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just such an unusual race that brought so much national media attention camped out.
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The president weighed in on it. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't Charlotte or, I mean, this is unusual.
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If you've ever been to Rockingham County, you would not expect it to be the hotbed of political.
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No, it's a pretty peaceful, not, yeah, not tremendously New York Times-y kind
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of place. And we talked about, like I said at length, about what this means
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for state employees and what it means for the legislature in last week's episode.
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So Governor Stein seems to have seized the opportunity by releasing a critical
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needs budget this week on Monday. Kind of out of the blue, right?
2:43
Yeah, I haven't talked to anybody who knew that was coming.
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I mean, I think that everyone would agree that we do have critical needs,
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especially for state employees and retirees. Well, we would say that.
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So, you know, there's the Medicaid rebase money that the legislature had already
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been talking about and dealt with it in part.
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And everyone knew that at some later time, DHHS would be back saying,
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listen, we need more just for rebase.
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And rebase is just to, if you keep everything at current levels of funding in
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terms of what they're reimbursing doctors and other providers for the care of the folks on the plan.
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And sure enough, HHS said,
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We really have to have this money, and it's not insignificant.
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Yeah, $319 million for Medicaid rebase.
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And is that, I guess, that's a direct result of all the changes in the big, beautiful bill?
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So, Secretary Songbhai was asked that question during the press conference on
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Monday, and his response was like,
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you know, and of course I'm paraphrasing, but he said, yeah,
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kind of in part, because you know what's coming, and you know you have to go
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ahead and deal with the providers and what your agreements with them are going to be.
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And he does attribute it to a lot of the changes in the big, beautiful bill.
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I do want to point out that the governor's critical needs budget he put out
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and proposed on Monday is literally just a proposal.
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I don't want anyone hearing this and thinking, oh, wow, so that was his budget.
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This is a really odd thing, right? Because we didn't have a budget,
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part of Governor Stein's point appeared to be, hey, let's not forget we didn't have a budget. Yeah.
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So let's address these things and then come back and have a budget for the coming year.
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He was just saying, as I understood it, the list he gave are the things that
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if you didn't have a budget from last year and we didn't, that you at least
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had to cover these certain items. Yeah.
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Or else North Carolina was going to go that much further backwards.
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Do you think it's kind of like setting the tone as we head into the short session?
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One would think that he's, yeah, he's just making a statement.
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And in part, you know, I get that very much because we've talked about on this podcast,
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we don't want the legislature to come in this year and say, you know,
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here's your 2% or 3% election year raise and forget that last year happened
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or the year we're currently in that ends July 1 happened.
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Because it did and it happened with no money. So let's go ahead and address that too.
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So it needs to be more like a 5%, 6% raise. So another part of the budget is
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something that came up through our podcast with Secretary Dismukes, the $82 million budget.
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Shortfall that DAC had last year, and he proposed a non-recurring funding for that.
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Yeah. But that's just going to happen again next year, right?
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And without a... You know, yeah.
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And Secretary Dismukes did a good job laying out with us and with the legislature
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and committee that they're having to literally pay bills with lap salary money,
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that they're having to not pay some bills because they don't have the money to pay them.
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And the state not being able to pay its bills, not because they went and bought
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something, you know, super cool for the office, but because money's just not there.
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That's a problem that we've been trying to draw attention to as well.
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The agencies are not properly funded.
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We can't say it enough times, and we'll say it again. Since 2009,
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according to information on the General Assembly's website, the population in
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North Carolina has increased by 2 million people.
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Agency budgets have not increased to reflect that, because that's 19 percent
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growth, and agency budgets haven't increase like that.
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And she kind of covered this as well in the podcast. But if you think about
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it, like they have such a high vacancy rate, their funding is even worse, even more dire.
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Thank God they have these lap salaries, money to spend on. And aging facilities.
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Like what if every job was filled? They'd have an even bigger deficit.
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And that's the point. They can't. They can't fill them. And they're not the only agency, though.
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And I do think in this whole lap salary discussion, That's a point we've tried
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to make is that if these agencies can't fill these jobs, they can't fill all of them.
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If they could find people who would take them at the salaries they're at,
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we couldn't afford to run the agency and do the work of the public. So we have a problem.
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And I get it. I get where Stein was coming from.
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Obviously, that's going to be pretty much dead on arrival at the legislature.
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And I think the legislature kind of indicated that.
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So let's get down into the nitty gritty of the proposal, even though,
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as you just said, you know, it's just a jumping off point. and it's not like
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these numbers are set in stone or anything, but
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The crisis budget did call for a 10 percent raise for correctional officers,
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law enforcement, youth counselors, nurses and behavioral tech and state run facilities.
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So I guess that's DHHS facilities.
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And then a 6.5 percent raise for juvenile court counselors, probation and parole officers.
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2.5 percent for pretty much everyone else, all the other state employees.
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Yeah. And that's as they've gotten really sick of being called by everybody,
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the other state employees. and it's always a much lower number,
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so it sounds like the afterthought it pretty much is.
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He did have a package for teachers as well, increased starting teacher pay by
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13% to at least $49,500, 5.8% average raise for experienced teachers.
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Support personnel, psychologists, pathologists, and audiologists,
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2.5% raise for principals, and then restoring extra pay for teachers who have master's degrees.
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It also included a 2.5 percent one-time bonus for retirees.
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And by the way, the governor's office in that press conference said the same
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thing that Governor Cooper used to say in his budget and the legislature likes
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to say in theirs, which was a cost of living adjustment for retirees. Let's talk about this.
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One-time cost of living adjustment. That's like saying sweet and sour.
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But during the press conference, they didn't say one-time cost of living.
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They just said cost of living adjustment.
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I'm just sick of it. Use other words, y'all. Just say a one-time bonus.
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Or they'll say a cost of living supplement or something like that, you know.
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But let's, you know, cost of living adjustment has a specific meaning.
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The cost of living went up. You adjusted pay accordingly.
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If it's one time, it's not addressing the cost of living. So just stop doing
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it, y'all. Please, all y'all. Semantics.
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It matters. I mean, it upsets, it really upsets retirees.
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They see the words cost of living, especially cost of living adjustment or COLA.
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They'll sometimes just use the acronym.
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And they think that that's a thing, that they're going to get an actual adjustment
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to the base amount. You're not. They're not trying to recommend that.
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And so anyway, that's upsetting this critical needs budget.
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I don't think those places in state government that he's trying to suggest increasing
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salaries by a lot more than most state jobs.
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I don't think that that's an incorrect thing. He pointed out we're 49th in the
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nation on teacher pay and we're 49th on correctional personnel pay.
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So you've clearly got, I mean, there's a problem there and it's a more dire
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problem than some others.
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Everybody needs a raise. What I think would probably go over better with,
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quote, the other state employees is if you would just say, we need to adjust those salaries.
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We need do salary adjustments, not raises.
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Because he pointed out you could raise those jobs by 10% and you maybe move
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one or two slots up from the bottom because we're that far behind.
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That means we need to take a really more serious approach at what the salaries
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are in each agency and do adjustments.
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And Secretary just pointed that out when she said, I think the starting pay
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for correctional officers is what, like $37,000 or something?
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And that's well behind any of our neighbors, you know.
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And you even said like the local. Well, that's where you're really behind the
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detention centers. You can get so much more to work there.
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You might have said this, but does this list that we are 49th on take into consideration
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cost of living per state as well? No.
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I don't think you'd have a way of doing that. Because in my head,
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it also just came up of, in certain states, it does cost a lot more to live
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in those states in comparison to North Carolina.
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So it would make sense for their paid. Yeah, I get what you're saying.
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Which is why a good thing to do is look at the southeast. Yeah. Yeah. And then...
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Well, it's like when we were looking at that map, and I was like,
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look, West Virginia is way higher than we are.
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Like, that's exactly what I mean, you know. But it doesn't cost you near as
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much to live in West Virginia. So, you know, no.
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But if you look at the southeast, we're really behind people.
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So we know it's not just about the fact that it costs more to live in New York
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State or something like that.
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If you look at those states, my goodness, it's probably twice at least what
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our correctional personnel are getting.
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But I think that, again, the best way to look at that would be make suggest
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salary adjustments, you know, there because everybody needs a significant raise.
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But I think people get it. And it also would be helpful, by the way,
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start the press conference with most state employees rather than at the very
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end of a long list of big numbers, put a small number and say and other and
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other state employees will get this. Yeah.
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I think that would help, too, to not make people feel so left behind.
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I think people get it, that their job may not be life risking to them or the public. Or it may not be.
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To have those jobs vacant. As hard to feel. Right.
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Now, I will say what, you know, what's not being factored into any of this,
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and it's something this podcast has been trying to hone in on.
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We've got agencies, and Elaine, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall,
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we've talked about this, made such a good point in the legislature.
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She's got positions she can't fill that need more money to make them competitive,
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but bring in a lot of money to the state.
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I think that's a critical need. So it's interesting to me, and Commissioner
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Causey, the same thing about fraud investigators.
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There are positions that are critical in that they would bring in revenue,
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and we've got to do that. So I had a question about the retirement part of this whole budget.
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Is it time for us to start talking about any funding we get from the legislature
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will likely be one-time bonuses?
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Because there's just no way they're ever going to give a real...
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Cost of living adjustment, right? Right. So we talked a few weeks ago about
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how the Retirement System Board of Trustees had met, and they did not recommend a COLA.
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And the reason they weren't recommending a COLA is that despite really good
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investment gains the past fiscal year, the system is not in a position yet to
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afford the COLAs because the unfunded liability keeps getting bigger.
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Basically, y'all, we have less people putting into the system right now than
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we have drawing retirement check.
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So that means the The amount of profit they're going to have to make off of
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the investments, to put it, you know, the most clear way I can think to put
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it, is going to have to be pretty extraordinary.
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A cost of living adjustment would cost 12 times more than a bonus for the legislature to put in.
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But if the system can afford it by itself, that's more like— They still have
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to get the legislature to approve it.
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But yeah, if the—I mean, you're right. If the legislature was funding it out
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of the general fund, they would insist on multiplying the actual cost by 12.
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Yeah, if it was sitting there, they had enough money in the system and gains,
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the board could recommend the COLA and the legislature could bless it.
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Or the legislature could say, we're going to take our employer contribution
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down greatly, and we'd rather do that than have you give COLAs.
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I mean, this is just the reality of what can happen.
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So that's something we've been publicly as an organization trying to let everybody
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know if this were to happen, it would be absolutely wrong to do to retirees. But let's face facts.
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We've got in terms of just for the actives, what we've got, what we had in the
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House budget was similar, you know, pretty good raises for the pockets that
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Governor Stein just identified, law enforcement, teachers, things like that.
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And the same thing for the rest of state employees, two and a half.
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They also said they wanted to cut 20 percent of the 3,000 vacant jobs in state
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government. And I'm not sure why they didn't just say we want to cut 600 jobs
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out of state government, even though we don't have any more state employees
15:01
than we had in 2009, despite two million more people living here in the state.
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We'll cut 600 more of the people giving service to the public.
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So if that is the stance they're taking on the active workforce serving the
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public, the taxpayers, I am greatly concerned about what they're going to want
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to do if there are a lot of investment gains, how the General Assembly is going
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to look at what they want to do with that.
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I think they're going to want to take burden off of that.
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The general fund. Right, the employer contribution.
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So we have to make sure we fight for the rights of those retirees who spent
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their whole career thinking they wouldn't become forgotten.
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Yeah. And the system they financed with the 6% of their check every month wouldn't
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become something that people treated like some sort of gift to them.
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They funded it. It's not a gift.
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And at the same time, when you cut jobs, you're cutting possible people to fund
15:53
retirement for current retirees. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean,
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not that I would ever argue state jobs should exist to fund the retirement system.
16:02
However, the bottom line is you already have not even remotely kept up with
16:08
the population growth in terms of the people to serve that population.
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That's a no-brainer. You need more state employees. The silver lining is your
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employer contribution would likely come down what you had to put in to keep
16:21
that retirement system going because you would have that 6% out of the salary
16:25
of those people you definitely need to serve the taxpayers.
16:29
So what was the reaction from the other side on this budget?
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Have you heard anything? From the General Assembly? Yeah.
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Just that, yeah, we, you know, they feel, hey, our individual budgets kind of pointed out the same.
16:45
Yeah. I think the biggest discrepancy they had between the critical needs budget
16:49
Stein just proposed and what their budgets had been is this fight over Medicaid.
16:55
Yeah, I see here House Speaker Dustin Hollis spokeswoman Demi Dowdy said that
17:00
teachers in law enforcement receive less in this budget than the House has already passed.
17:05
We urge the Senate to join us in passing these raises for all of our state employees.
17:10
I mean, they're not inaccurate. The House did propose bigger numbers in some
17:16
cases on the law enforcement piece, pretty similar numbers on the other pieces,
17:20
including most state employees or other state employees.
17:22
Now, that being said, we can't forget that the House also said,
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hey, cut 600 jobs. So I don't know how the people left standing who are serving
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so many, you know, several million more North Carolinians can do that.
17:38
I mean, they're already doing the jobs, you know, of two, sometimes three people.
17:42
We're talking about making that worse. I don't see how this helps.
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I mean, it doesn't help state employees. It's dreadful. But I don't see how it helps the public.
17:50
That would be a really bad move.
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So do you think they will pass something in this short session?
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I think there will be a budget. I do. I don't. I think that.
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And I do think there was some sentiment.
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And, you know, no one knows for sure. But that some of the primary races were
18:05
incumbents. There was an anti-incumbent sentiment of some kind.
18:09
And I don't think it helped. It never helps in an election not to have a budget.
18:12
But now we're in a war or a conflict or whatever we're calling it today.
18:17
And so that will have effects on federal spending, depending on how long this
18:22
lasts. And it will also impact the market.
18:25
And then that impacts retirees. And gas prices will impact the economy in general.
18:30
I mean, we're running a lot of, and we already had DOT saying we're having to
18:35
spend some of our lap salary money just to keep everything rolling down the
18:38
road. I do think it's more complicated.
18:40
As complicated as last year was, and in fairness to the legislature,
18:44
that was really tough to write a budget with all these very different things happening.
18:48
They had just expanded Medicaid and the big, beautiful bill basically,
18:51
you know, gutted some of the money they would get that way back that states
18:55
were used to getting back.
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And then they were facing a really different situation in availability.
19:00
And it's all a trickle-down thing. If the feds cut back greatly,
19:04
it affects the state and then that affects the local. So we'll see what happens with that.
19:08
Another topic this week, you were invited onto Capital Tonight on Spectrum to
19:13
talk about all the new providers that are coming aboard onto Lantern program.
19:18
Yeah, well, first of all, thank you very much to Treasurer Briner's team,
19:22
Thomas Friedman, Loretta Benigni, and the team of the health plan for including us in that.
19:27
But we did get a chance to sit with them.
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And as they talked about the real progress they're making with Lantern,
19:34
which, by the way, just to recap.
19:36
It is a program where state employees can get free surgical procedures with
19:41
qualified providers, but they have to agree. They have to agree basically not
19:45
to rip the state off and charge too much. And so that's how it can be free.
19:49
And it's like volume for them as opposed to.
19:52
Yeah, yeah. So if you're a provider and you're interested in doing a reasonable,
19:56
decent deal with the state health plan, with Lantern in this case,
19:59
because they're using this third party to kind of be the clearinghouse to make
20:03
sure they meet standards of quality, but also keep prices low.
20:07
Yeah, so Novant Health joined on November 4th, and it's one of the large providers in North Carolina.
20:13
Then we also have Emerge Ortho, which is pretty popular in the Triangle,
20:17
and I guess all over the state from what I understand.
20:19
And then... They're expanding for sure. Ortho Carolina, they're a Charlotte area provider.
20:25
That has a large surgical network. So that's progress.
20:29
Oh, it's huge progress. And they have so many more people signing up to use
20:33
Lantern than they had even thought they would. So it's a win-win.
20:38
It's a win for the employees and it's a win for the bottom line for the state
20:42
health plan, which affects everything.
20:44
Yeah, so we need to solicit some testimonials from anyone in our membership
20:48
who have gone through it.
20:50
Yeah, if you have used Lantern, if you've called Lantern, you need a surgery
20:53
and you've called them since the beginning of the year and you have an experience with it, let us know.
20:58
We've got the email for the podcast.
21:00
Podcast at scenic.org. We'll put it in the scoop. I'd like to hear some stories,
21:04
maybe some good experiences or something we need to look into.
21:09
And if you want to know more about Lantern, go to the state health plan website
21:13
and you can read a lot about it. It's really interesting.
21:17
I didn't know when they first said it, the state health plan staff first said
21:22
they were looking at it. I just wasn't sure how that was going to go over because
21:24
people hear the word free and they think, yeah, I don't want anything you're
21:28
trying to give me for free. It'll be substandard.
21:30
But it really does not look like that. I mean, obviously, if you've got an entire
21:35
health care system that's signed on, you can have anybody in that system.
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It seems counterintuitive.
21:41
It really does, even for me.
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But once you hear more about it, you understand. Think how many decades,
21:47
though, it took to condition us all to think the more we paid for something,
21:50
the better it was. Yeah. Brilliant.
21:54
I think that's all I have for news. Let's go to the Gen Z moment.
21:58
We got a couple of Gen Z moments today, actually.
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So first, we'll talk a little bit about a study that I found talking about how
22:06
Gen Z is changing the meaning of independent voter.
22:09
So in a podcast from NPR.
22:13
They cite a poll done by Gallup,
22:17
which is a nonpartisan analysis of critical global issues in which they talk
22:22
about how in their most recent poll, and by the way, this was done right after
22:27
the primaries, this article was released.
22:29
In a most recent poll, 45% of American voters identify as political independents.
22:34
More than 56% of Gen Z say they identify as independent, which,
22:39
according to these political analysts, is very different from what they've seen in the past.
22:44
And they, in past years, have seen it as very much of a 30% split roughly three
22:50
ways of 30% roughly being Democrat, Republicans, and independent.
22:54
And it's kind of showing that my generation does not have the same allegiance to political parties.
23:01
No, but the political party, I'm telling you, they don't get it yet.
23:04
They still think you do. They think everybody does.
23:06
It's being reflected in the polls and it's showing that our generation is more
23:11
likely to vote off of issues, not just a D or an R next to a name.
23:16
And then they also mention in here how we're not running to a third party.
23:20
We're not looking for a third party.
23:22
We want to see ourselves, because it even mentions in here, and I've kind of
23:25
talked about this, especially with the Epstein files in the past few weeks,
23:29
it's talking about how our generation views both parties and all the parties
23:34
essentially as corrupt.
23:36
And they even cite how...
23:38
There's nothing in the U.S. Constitution about political parties,
23:41
and George Washington used to warn about parties.
23:45
Saying it's going to be a problem if people start fighting and dividing themselves
23:49
into parties, which I think we've seen a lot, which I think is probably contributing
23:53
to the fact that Gen Zs want to be seen as independent.
23:56
And we're not saying, like, no, I want a third party or a green party.
23:59
We're like, no, just leave me alone.
24:01
So Gen Z does what? They look at the news and decide, you know,
24:05
who they want to go with or? Do you think that means they're registered unaffiliated
24:11
or do they usually pick a side when they?
24:13
I think typically a lot of us are registered unaffiliated and I think that's
24:18
kind of what they're going by with this poll.
24:21
But it also talks about how the thing that's really uniting this generation
24:26
and this generational factor is the fact that a lot of us were young teens or
24:31
children during the Great Recession.
24:32
And we've only really known periods of economic uncertainty since we've come into our adult age.
24:40
Of most of us became adults during covid and
24:43
that became a big thing of economic uncertainty as
24:46
well with jobs and not being able to go out and do much of anything during that
24:51
time and it's really just showing how little faith we have in our government
24:57
to fix these issues yeah i think that's sad too because i think that there is
25:01
a lack of just patriotism in general and faith in our system you know.
25:07
I think that I've always thought that, you know, America is good at its core and that.
25:12
I think people can think that because personally, I do love America. I love living here.
25:17
I love that I do have the rights that I have. However, I can still not have
25:21
the faith in the government that I should have.
25:24
That's kind of what the whole idea of coming here and establishing a government
25:26
was, is that it's okay to say, yeah, the government stinks or I don't like the
25:31
government if that's how you're feeling at the time.
25:33
Because they couldn't say that or be who they wanted to be. I would say I love
25:37
living here and I love the opportunities and the rights that I have without
25:40
saying that I support what our government is doing.
25:43
But, you know, I kind of wonder, though, at the end of the day,
25:46
is it our government or the people controlling the ones who are representing
25:49
us in our government? Yeah.
25:51
What are we really against, right? Like, as a nation, things are changing so much.
25:57
I think that at our core, we've forgotten that the government is us,
26:02
you know, that we are the government.
26:04
Well, I mean, after Citizens United, not really. But we could be.
26:08
Theoretically, we should be. Again, I think that we're just kind of.
26:12
I think there's a lot of confusion amongst all the generations these days.
26:16
Well, yeah. Okay, so look at retirees.
26:19
Retirees, they grew up and then worked their careers with a certain relationship
26:24
of trust with the government, who was their employer, that they are.
26:29
This is why retirees are so especially upset. We see it on our social media.
26:33
They're like 10 times more upset than anybody else all the time.
26:36
Because they really had a deeply held trust and belief in their government as
26:42
an employer keeping implicit promises.
26:44
They didn't have to be written out. They believed they'd keep them.
26:48
And I think Gen X, our generation, has already been like, oh, yeah, no.
26:54
So another thing that this kind of talks about is,
26:57
just seeing this now, it talks about how we are a generation that grew up with
27:02
increased rates of school shootings, increased rates of general political inviolence
27:06
that we were kind of thrust into no matter what.
27:10
We didn't get the option of being ignorant to it. And it's kind of like my generation.
27:15
We're too focused on everything. thing. People say that we're unaware.
27:19
A lot of older generations will say that we're unaware of things that are going
27:21
on. Our problem is we are too aware.
27:24
We grew up in the age of the internet, so we see every political problem that
27:31
is happening thrust into our faces, whether it be like different immigration
27:36
movements, environmental movements,
27:38
different things like that. It's thrown all at us.
27:41
And so if anything, I think a big thing that makes my generation more independent
27:45
is that we are too aware of everything going on all over the world.
27:50
Yeah. That we're just like, well, there's no right answer to anything.
27:55
Yeah. We didn't have a fraction of the news y'all have, and that was probably
27:59
best for our mental health.
28:01
But, you know, I do think these are interesting issues moving forward.
28:05
I think how the government of any, you know, any level of it,
28:09
whether it's local, state, federal, how and how it interacts with its employees,
28:15
because that level of trust is going to need to be there to keep people.
28:19
And obviously, you know, and that may be a decision that's ultimately made.
28:23
We don't care if people stay.
28:25
We'll be a training ground. We don't care. I think that's bad for taxpayers.
28:28
I think we've made that pretty abundantly clear. And on a lighter note,
28:31
something that my generation, particularly I care about, because I'm a big concert
28:35
goer. We've talked about this in the past.
28:38
Massive lawsuit with Ticketmaster and Live Nation and them being monopolized,
28:43
basically monopolizing the music industry and the concert industry.
28:48
That's where... I've heard about that. Yeah. So there was a massive lawsuit
28:51
that included, I think, 30 states as well as the Department of Justice.
28:56
And the Department of Justice has recently decided that they're kind of done
29:00
fighting and they're able to reach a settlement.
29:03
Okay. North Carolina is not done fighting, along with 25 other states. They're not done.
29:08
Yeah. So that's how I saw it. I saw something about Jeff Jackson. Yes.
29:11
He spoke about how him and I think 25 other states at least and the District
29:17
of Columbia are still fighting because they don't agree to those settlement
29:21
terms. They're not doing it.
29:23
So, I don't know. What is you guys' thoughts on— Well, the Ticketmaster fight
29:29
has been going on forever.
29:31
Yes. And I just have to call back to the Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder fights of my youth. Yeah.
29:38
It was cool. It kind of was like,
29:42
the first salvo in this war against Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is a monopoly.
29:48
It seems like it was even more back then, although now they have Live Nation
29:52
and they kind of merged and it was this whole thing.
29:55
So basically, I wonder though, are concerts less popular now? No.
30:00
I don't know. It seemed like everybody was going to concerts.
30:03
Concerts were the thing you did, like the entertainment.
30:07
Well, I don't think concerts have as much money for them. Well,
30:10
concerts are still very popular,
30:11
but it's also the dynamic and the etiquette has changed because there are people
30:17
who are now going to concerts that didn't get to go when they were younger because of COVID.
30:23
And so concerts have changed and the etiquette has changed. It's not that people
30:27
want the etiquette, it's changed.
30:28
But I've seen so many videos of people online talking about concerts they've
30:32
gone to and they've been in the pit or on the floor.
30:36
And how some of the people who are younger go into some of these concerts and
30:40
getting those kinds of seats.
30:42
Are just treating the workers at these concerts atrociously.
30:46
They're treating people who are also attending the concerts terribly,
30:50
and they just don't understand basic concert etiquette.
30:54
Recently, last year, I went to a concert where there were seats. There were seats.
30:59
There was a kid in front of me. I don't care how old you are.
31:02
If you were 13 years old, stood on the seat in front of me. I could not see
31:06
the entire concert. Couldn't see.
31:08
I got to see the openers and got called out by the openers for being the only person in the section.
31:13
Well, I think we have an etiquette problem in most places right now.
31:15
But about the Ticketmaster issue itself.
31:18
So this is consumer rights that are being.
31:20
And I think good. I mean, I want people to fight for their rights as consumers.
31:24
But I have read a lot about that. And I have thought about that and about the
31:28
TikTok fight from before.
31:30
We have to figure out how to harness that kind of energy around.
31:34
Something that matters.
31:35
I'll tell you what, if you can get my generation focused on one thing,
31:41
then they will destroy whatever it is, which I think is one of the reasons why
31:47
this Ticketmaster fight is so strong, because my generation,
31:51
we want to go to the concerts, we want to enjoy ourselves.
31:53
But when Ticketmaster is pricing a single ticket for a concert at $1,000, we can't afford that.
32:01
And it's crazy because a lot of these artists, they want to do something and
32:05
they're trying to do things to prevent price gouging and prevent some of these
32:09
crazy, ridiculous prices.
32:11
Noah Kahn, he had a lot of things set up for his presale for his tour that he
32:15
just did. I mean. And it still was getting.
32:18
They don't want to do too much, though, or else they'd just.
32:21
Find a different way to promote their concerts or maybe just go play a different venue.
32:26
Well, the thing is that Ticketmaster and Live Nation own most of these venues. Yeah. We can't.
32:32
They don't own clubs, though. I mean. Well, OK, we're right back around to health
32:35
care because, see, that's what's happening with the consolidation of health care.
32:39
I mean, interesting. But again, it comes back to why are things happening?
32:43
They're happening because of the increased coalescence of power by. Billionaires.
32:48
Corporate behemoths. Yeah. So
32:50
at the end of the day, all of it's going to connect for people eventually.
32:53
Fight the power. There you go. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good topic.
32:57
Maybe we'll fight about that again. I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying.
33:01
Gen Z can't have their moment without you saying they're wrong.
33:05
I'm all for the Ticketmaster fight, too. Well, this week's question of the week,
33:09
since it is approaching next week, I know you guys have heard of St.
33:13
Patrick's Day, but have you heard of St. Jonathan's Day?
33:17
Oh, my word. It's the day before, and it's my birthday, March 16th.
33:21
I'm pretty sure calling yourself a saint is the light. Yeah, that's probably bad.
33:27
But in honor of St. Patrick's Day.
33:36
Whenever Suzanne's not here, I feel like we are. The ADHD controls the room.
33:42
Oops. So what's your favorite St. Patrick's Day tradition? And I'll go first.
33:47
My favorite is when they turn the river in Chicago green. You just took mine. Oh, no.
33:53
I've never seen it in person.
33:56
So I was there like a few weeks after and it was still green.
33:59
That's awesome. I remember that. I think it's neat. Yeah. Because it doesn't
34:02
apparently hurt anything.
34:03
No. The Savannah St. Paddy's Parade, I also think is super cool.
34:08
Well, Savannah just has a huge, huge St. Patrick's Parade. Oh, my gosh, yes. Cool.
34:14
The whole town gets into it. The number of people in Savannah for the St.
34:19
Patrick's Parade is four times the number of residents of Savannah.
34:22
That's how many people go in for that thing.
34:25
It's huge. It's a massive thing. Seems like I would have heard of that.
34:28
Huge Irish population. Very cool. What about you, Sam?
34:32
Typically, me and my friends will do a bar crawl downtown Raleigh. Okay.
34:37
It's like 20, 30 bucks for a ticket. And then you get discounted drinks and you can just hang out.
34:43
They have a big like music and just fun times downtown.
34:48
But I won't be here this year. Do you drink green beer? No. Yuck. No. Yeah.
34:53
No. My friend, she was actually, I was talking to her and she's like, nope, won't do it.
34:58
We'll never do it. I'm like that. Personally, I agree. So when you were in school,
35:01
did you pinch people who didn't have green on? No. No?
35:05
I've gotten pinched several times for not wearing. I got pinched,
35:09
but I wasn't the one pinching.
35:11
And I would usually typically just wear socks. So I'd be like,
35:14
ha ha, now I get to pinch you back.
35:16
Yeah. I forgot more than once. And it's kind of funny because my birthday is
35:19
the day before. I should have known, right?
35:21
I was too busy celebrating. Celebrating yourself. Yeah.
35:25
So everyone enjoy St. Jonathan's Day. Oh my gosh, stop saying it.
35:29
I'm pretty sure it's sacrilegious.
35:31
And have a great week.