- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman, coming up on "Front Row", the U.S. army recommends food stamps for soldiers dealing with inflation, a whistle blower comes forward at Twitter, and the Republican party sues the North Carolina state board of elections, next.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[serious music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Democratic state representative Graig Meyer, Michael Hyland with CBS 17, and Republican state Senator Vickie Sawyer.

Mitch, why don't we begin with the recommendation by the Pentagon for soldiers dealing with inflation.

- First of all, Mark, let's start off with the fact that we learned this week that inflation, once again, ticked up a little bit over the past month and year to year is still 8.3% higher than it was a year ago.

And that news follows what you're just talking about.

The fact that the U.S. army is now recommending that soldiers apply for food stamps, otherwise known as SNAP benefits, supplemental nutrition assistance program, if they're having problems dealing with inflation.

This is official guidance from the Sergeant Major of the army and basically the Pentagon has said that almost a quarter of enlisted personnel are food insecure and so might need this type of help.

The food prices are rising at their fastest rates since the 1970s, people have been feeling it for themselves, but I think now that they hear that people who are in the military, the ones who are protecting and serving us, protecting us from outside threats, that they're having to deal with inflation and might have to go on food stamps.

That really brings it closer to home.

- Michael, what struck you about this story?

- The thing that got me about this is, as Mitch was saying, this is something we're all dealing with, we're seeing it everyday.

Food prices are up 11.4% over the last year.

But when you hear about it affecting the military it got me to think about what we were talking about the last time I was here when they were passing the PACT Act and you know how those people had to fight so hard to be able to deal with the issues with the toxic burn pits, with the toxic water at Camp Lejeune.

And you have these people who we ask so much of to serve our country and then you turn around and see stories like this, it's dismaying to see people having to fight so hard at the end of day to not get that much.

- You know, Congress and the White House are spending trillions of dollars.

Surely we can do better by our soldiers.

- That's exactly what I was thinking.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

It seems at a time when we have all these pet projects that we're spending trillions of dollars on, we should be able to spend money on those who protect us and allow us to live a free life.

- Well, inflation, Graig, is a tax on folks, is the Biden administration getting a handle on inflation, you think?

- I mean, we've seen the rapid rise of inflation start to come down, and as everybody knows, there's only so much that one administration can do.

There's many players that impact inflation.

But the other side of this is you gotta look at the pay side and we're in a period of time where there's just not enough pay for government workers across all sectors, that government pay's getting outpaced.

And what do we do for teachers who are on food stamps?

What do we do about massive vacancy rates in our department of corrections and at the DMV?

And I think this example with soldiers is just another one of we're not paying our entry level folks enough.

- Mitch, we were at 1.4 inflation when Biden took office, is this about spending?

Is this about Biden's energy policy?

- It's partly about energy policy.

I mean the main thing, inflation is always a case of too much money chasing too few goods.

We've pumped a ton of money, and this is not just under the Biden administration.

It happened as well under the previous administration with Donald Trump, but we've talked about all of these stimulus bills, ways of dealing with the COVID pandemic, and there's just a ton of new money, which is mainly borrowing from the future, pumping more money into the economy now for about the same amount of goods.

That's always gonna be an inflationary problem.

And unless we see some major changes in policy including putting the breaks on new spending, inflation's gonna continue to be a problem.

- A lot of people are talking about if the Republicans take over, they're gonna have another Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act, to try to get control on some of this money.

- That could happen, we remember that one of the last times with major inflation which we ended up having was a recession because the the feds stepped in and said higher interest rates, much higher interest rates to tamp down inflation.

And so you saw that we had to deal with a recession for a couple of years, but that was followed by a long-term economic expansion once we got a handle on it.

- Vickie, close us out in about 30 seconds.

- Well, I think Graig is actually right.

We do need to look at all of our entry level folks that are in government and something that we need to value is the people who work for us to take care of us every day.

- Well, surely we can take care of the folks who go out and fight wars for us.

I wanna come right back to you and talk to you about the whistle blower who came forward at Twitter.

Spies, Chinese spies, sounds like a novel to me.

- It really does, and I try to keep the number of conspiracy theories that I've prescribed to to a minimum, but I have often harbored and thought that the dark one has created Twitter to come and take the world over, and this week Peter's like, oh, they did absolutely everything to confirm those conspiracies for me.

Look, within 10 minutes, he said that he had reached out on a user on Twitter, that Twitter employee was able to tell him where he was, who he was, where he was using his phone, all of his other Twitter handles and all of his other social media.

Now couple that with the thought of a Chinese foreign national working there and just recently a Saudi Arabian fellow was found to be working there and actually persecuted for spying for Saudi Arabia.

All of that compounded really does cause concern.

And I hope the federal government can finally get their arms around some regulations to protect us all from some really bad actors on Twitter and all kinds of social media.

- Well, let me ask you this, Mitch can the FTC and the federal government and Congress really get a handle on these big tech companies?

- Well, they certainly could try, but then- - They pretty much slow walked this so far, haven't they?

- They could try, but the problem is the solution might be worse than the problem that we have now.

Once government gets involved, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get better.

To me, one of the key things that came out of this was that the guy who's a security expert said Twitter doesn't know what it has and where it lives and how it's being used.

That's your company, you should know these things.

And so that to me is a major problem.

Plus remember this follows up the fact that we saw a similar whistleblower issue with Facebook.

So all of the major social media outlets should be making us scratch our heads, plus there's TikTok which we know is tied to the Chinese communist government.

- Well, how do you think this is gonna impact, Michael, Elon Musk and his bid to take over Twitter?

- Yeah, I mean, that's been the whole side show to all of this at the same time.

- Right?

- 'Cause the concern he's raising with all of that is I can't find out how many people are just bots on Twitter.

I can't get a clear answer.

- Tell people what bots are.

- So they're automated responses, you know?

- Okay.

- And sometimes could be people from foreign countries.

So you can't figure out who the heck it is sometimes.

And so he's trying to argue he should be able to get outta the deal, essentially, 'cause Twitter can't give me a decent answer, a straight answer, about how many bots are using the service.

How many are actually real users?

But to the bigger point about all of this is that at the end of the day, do I have to be on Twitter?

No, but the reality is it's become our public square.

Facebook, other social media outlets, to participate to in society at this point, to some extent you've gotta be on one of these social media outlets.

Politics and government happens on Twitter now.

- And there's a lot of stories on Twitter.

That's how I found a lot of stories I look through.

- It has this capacity for good.

- Right.

- You can find out breaking news so quickly on Twitter.

Probably faster than anywhere else.

It does have a capacity to serve society but there are a lot of issues too.

- Greg, weight in here.

What's your thoughts?

- We all have such a love/hate relationship with these big social media companies.

I mean we use them.

We find enjoyment in them and yet we make these jokes about, "Well, you know my phone is listening to me or how did that show up on Facebook" or whatever it is.

And it is largely because the technology has outpaced the regulation.

And so what is the regulation?

- But they are public companies though, right?

How do you regulate a public company?

- There's all kinds of public companies, - [Marc] I mean private company.

- There's all kinds of companies that we regulate especially for safety and security and that's what comes up here where, you know it it's tougher to say how do you regulate a media company for telling the truth?

But this isn't about telling the truth.

This is regulating a media company for being a national security threat.

You gotta have some way of trying to weigh into that.

- Well, they do censor too, don't they?

- Well, if you think from - Ask Donald Trump.

- I was gonna say, you can talk about conspiracy theories and Republicans.

I mean, that's one of the big things that my party harbors against that platform in particular.

But yeah, you're right.

We will continue to use it, but I hope that we look and find some regulations around these big companies.

- Okay.

Great conversation.

I wanna come right back to you, Michael.

It looks like we got a lawsuit from the Republican party.

You covered this this week and a state Board of Elections.

Talk to us about it.

- It would not be election season if lawsuits weren't flying in North Carolina.

- [Marc] It's a good season for lawyers.

- Absolutely.

So a few days ago, state and national Republicans filed a lawsuit against the state Board of Elections over a couple of issues, one of which dealing with observers at polling places.

But the other one that's getting the most attention is what we've talked about a lot for last few years.

It's mail-in ballots.

The issue is that about a month ago, the state Board of Elections sent a memo out to local election officials saying that under state law, when you submit your mail-in ballot, as long as you postmark it by election day, the deadline is three days later.

What happens this year?

That's Veteran's Day.

State and national holiday, the mail does not get delivered.

So the Board of Elections said that means that moves to the next business business day, which happens to be Monday the 14th.

So that's a six day gap between the date of the election and when the mail-in ballots would have to come in.

- Excuse me, does this apply to absentee as well?

- Yes.

This is the mail-in absentee ballot.

- Okay, okay.

- That's what we're talking about here.

And so the Republicans have sued, essentially saying the board didn't have the authority to make this change, but they have said that, look we are just following what state law says.

When you can't operate and do something on one day, it falls to the next business date.

This happened in 2016 as well.

The calendar fell the exact same way.

Nobody made a fuss about it.

And I did ask the Republicans about that.

I said, you know, this is the same issue we just saw six years ago.

It wasn't a problem then.

Why is it a problem now?

I didn't get a clear answer to that other than them saying that well, it's about transparency.

People wanna know the outcome of the election as soon as possible.

- Mitch, are they changing the game in midstream and do they have the authority to do this?

- That has been the complaint that they don't have the authority, that this is something that should be handled by the General Assembly rather than the state Board of Elections, but as Michael pointed out, the issue of the extension of the absentee ballots is a November 8th election issue.

Had the election been on November 7th, the three day deadline would've been November 10th which is not a holiday.

So it would've been extended.

It is entirely a factor of the calendar this time.

I think to me, the other piece of it that Michael alluded to is probably the more interesting one in terms of the lawsuit and whether has any legs and that is new restrictions on these observers that the parties put in the polls - Great point.

- where they say you have to stay there for at least four hours before you can be relieved.

And basically the argument in the lawsuit is this is the type of thing that lawmakers, like our two colleagues here, should be deciding, not the state Board of Elections which is appointed.

- Do we have secure elections in North Carolina, Greg?

- I do believe we have secure elections in North Carolina.

I don't think we have any significant evidence to show us otherwise and I think those of us who regularly participate in elections certainly put our trust in that process.

But part of the reason why we trust that process is because elections are run at the local level, for the most part, by people that we actually know.

If you vote at the same place regularly, you probably know some of those folks who work there.

- You've seen 'em before.

- Yeah.

My friend?

- Well, I say a lot of this probably is coming from just the hangover from the last election and seeing a lot of these where the state Board of Elections did a lot of game changes under the name of COVID, you know after the game started to be playing, Republicans are naturally suspicious of that because it's a Democratically controlled board.

So I understand why they filed the lawsuit.

- Does Trump you think contribute to this by rerunning, Mitch, the 2020 election all the time?

- Oh yeah.

I think that's certainly major factor.

Donald Trump and his continuing pressing of this notion that the election was stolen or taken away from him.

And also Senator Sawyer made a great point that part of this is what happened in 2020 because we do know that the state Board of Elections and Democratic super lawyer Mark Elias were involved in coming up with a deal that changed election rules.

- He was Hillary Clinton's lawyer too.

- He was.

He's been involved in a number of lawsuits always designed to help the Democratic party, even on the times when he says it's designed to help voter access and making sure there's no voter suppression.

It's always designed to help the Democrat party.

- So what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

- Well, you know in 2016 though Greg, Democrats did question the legitimacy of the election.

- I mean, we, there's always.

- I mean, Hillary Clinton, all the way down.

I mean, the Russians stole it right?

- There were those conversations among some Democrats to the point that Senator Sawyer made.

I choose not to pursue many conspiracy theories.

Let other people stay up to that.

I do think there's one other related point here that we will probably end up talking about even after the election, which is the governor bringing a lawsuit about the legislative control of the Rules Review Commission which was the commission that invalidated some of those Board of Elections' rules.

And so who actually does have control?

Is it the legislature?

Is it a legislatively appointed body?

Is it the Board of Elections who's largely appointed by the governor?

This is gonna be going on for awhile.

- I'm coming right back to you.

The governor says, speaking about the governor, that Medicaid expansion, there may be a deal before the end of the year.

What are your thoughts?

- What are you hearing?

- I mean, I am amazed and pleased at how the tone in the general assembly has changed towards Medicaid expansion over the last two years.

We're in a place that I never thought we would get to under Republican control when I first entered the legislature almost 10 years ago.

But here we are, where, for a variety of reasons, almost everyone is at the same place, saying it is time to expand Medicaid.

And as the governor pointed out, it's costing us $521 million a month.

- Well, he says we're very close.

In September there may be a bite at the apple then.

Is that correct?

- The hold up is in the House Republican side.

House Democrats are ready to go.

The Senate Republican and Senate Democrats have said we're ready to get to a deal.

There's some things that need to be hashed out, but I think we can get to a deal probably in December after the election, because it's a little bit easier when there's some people who are done with their term to take that vote.

- Mitch, is it the, Is it the House Republican caucus or is it the hospitals that are hold this up on the certificate of need?

- It seems to be both of those issues.

And I work for the John Locke Foundation, and we have found it very interesting that we have consistently been against Medicaid expansion.

So we're in the minority now, if you look at what's happening elsewhere.

But we have been- - We had a chat with governor Robinson.

He's against that too, right?

- He is, but we've been consistently for, either getting rid of, at least reforming the certificate of need process.

And it seems as if reform of CON, something we really want, is what's holding up Medicaid expansion, which we don't want.

So we've been sitting on the sidelines saying, "Hey, we're not really sure.

", because if we'd like you to do the CON and not do the Medicaid expansion, it seems like, for some at least, and I know the Senate has been very adamant that if you're going to have Medicaid expansion, you need to do something like CON reform that's going to increase the supply of healthcare because otherwise you're gonna have a couple hundred thousand more people on Medicaid, but no new services for them.

- [Graig] I'll support certificate of need.

can we get you on board?

- Vickie, what are you hearing?

- I'm hearing more at this table than I have in the last month to be quite honest with you.

And I actually called the Senate leadership to double check that.

And as of yesterday, there may be conversations going on, but the Senate has passed Medicaid expansion.

We've made our will known, and we're looking forward to seeing what deal has been happened because we're not aware of any.

- Michael, if the Republicans have a super majority in the house and Senate in 2023, does the deal change?

- It could certainly change.

It still does sound like when I've asked Speaker Moore and Senator Berg about that, they're still committed to trying to get something done on this next year, if that does indeed happen.

And to Senator Sawyer's point, yes, I've heard, essentially, the same thing.

They are close but they've been close for a while.

So close but not imminent.

The legislature is technically in session next week but, correct me if I'm wrong, you all have not been summoned to come to Raleigh to vote on Medicaid next week.

- Well, do we expect anything to happen in the legislature next week?

- I don't think there'll be any votes next week.

I don't think we'll have any legislative action before the election.

But after the election, and we look at a session that's been scheduled for mid-December, there's five or six weeks there to actually sit down without the tensions of the election, work on closing out that final part of the deal and to get some people - What are you talking about, who don't have to run again.

- 10 days before Christmas?

Somewhere around there.

- I think we're scheduled to be there.

I think on the December 12th is the first date.

So yeah.

- Mitch, wrap this up in about 40 seconds.

- Yeah, that's gonna be very interesting to see.

And I think representative Meyers is exactly right, that if there's going to be some action on this, it's likely to happen after the election.

No one really wants to rock that boat right now, given where people have stood, politically, on this issue.

But there could be some sort of deal.

We of course hope that there's nothing on Medicaid expansion, but we'd like to see certificate of need.

If somehow you could get the certificate of need reforms without Medicaid expansion, but I'm not gonna hold my breath that that's ever gonna happen.

- Okay.

I'm coming right back to you.

Let's go to the most under-reported story of the week, Mitch.

- The election season is heating up, and as it does on back-to-back days in early October, our North Carolina Supreme Court is going to be dealing with a couple of major election related lawsuits.

One, on October 3rd, is the lawsuit that challenges our voter ID law.

You might remember, in August the Supreme Court already said a trial court should go back and look at the voter ID amendment.

But this was a separate suit that challenged the law itself.

As things stand, status quo, there's no voter ID, a ruling from a trial court blocks the voter ID, but that lawsuit will go before the State Supreme Court.

The very next day, the election maps go back before the Supreme Court.

We've already heard that the election- - Are we gonna have an election this year, with all these lawsuits?

- Well, the thing is one of the reasons, One of the reasons that this is interesting is because nothing that happens with either of these cases affects the 2022 election.

And that's why the court already split four three on whether to hold hearings in October.

The Republicans who dissented said, "This is just gonna confuse voters."

- Graig.

- Under-reported story is that North Carolina law currently means that those folks who got the Biden student debt relief are gonna get taxed on it.

- Well, have they gotten it yet?

Is it still up in the air?

- They've not gotten it yet.

- Is it constitutional, you think?

- Assuming it comes, yeah, I think it is constitutional.

I think that got vetted by the White House.

- Well, it might have gotten vetted by the White House but it's probably gonna go to the Supreme Court.

Don't you think?

Doesn't the Congress have the ability to forgive debt?

How can the president just wave a wand and do that?

- It may get challenged in court but I think that the Biden administration went through their due diligence, and looked at what executive action is possible.

Now, if that happens, here's what's gonna happen here in North Carolina.

You get $10,000 worth of debt forgiveness, you might have to pay 5 or $600 in taxes on money that you never had because that was a loan that was given to your university.

You never took it as income.

You have to now pay taxes on it.

Similar to what happened with the PPP, where people got loans but they actually got that money.

And then the loan was forgiven, and they were gonna have to pay taxes on it.

And we said, "You don't have to pay taxes on that."

Other states don't require taxation on forgiven student loans, and people like Senator Sawyer and myself are gonna get pressure from all across the political isle.

- Do you think that's popular with American public, real quick?

I mean, do you think that a plumber should have to pay for somebody that went to Harvard and their loan?

- That question is a question about taxation at its fundamentals, that we all pay for things, services and things that we don't use.

But education is a collective good that we all pay for.

- Michael, good answer.

[laughs] - Tying into what we were talking about, related to inflation earlier, there was a report that Fox Business put out, talking to Redfin, and for the first time, since March of 21, the average home is selling for below list price, which, as somebody who was, very recently, in this crazy housing market.

In my neighborhood, I actually am seeing them start to go below list.

I've been watching it really closely for a while.

But I think the important thing here to know, Everybody goes, "Oh, the prices went so up.

There's gonna be this massive crash."

They're not predicting one.

This is fundamentally different than what happened in 2008 because a lot of that was driven by mortgages going to people who absolutely should not have gotten them, could not afford them.

The banks were giving out too much money to people they should not have.

And there have been some changes since then.

- But there will be a slow down, you think?

- It's already happening.

- Vickie.

- So thank you for leading in with the PPP loan because our federal government, in its infinite wisdom, gave about $1.3 billion of that PPP loans to foreign countries.

So the SBA, obviously, was doing the best job that they thought they could - The federal government at work.

- That's our federal government at work.

And 14 million of that was actually given to IP addresses that were listed into countries that were listed, that are high-risk countries.

You think there would be some bot somewhere, or maybe it's that Twitter foreign national that would actually, Was in there, pushing the numbers there.

But they were absolutely milking us for our hard earned tax dollars.

- Alright, let's go to lightning round.

Mitch, who's up and who's down this week?

- I think it's the Nigerian Prince getting all that money.

[group laughing] My who's up is Paul O'Neil and I'm not talking about the former major leaguer, but I am talking about the former Currituck County Commissioner.

His local Republicans suggested him as the replacement for Bobby Hanig in the state house.

He's not running in the election so he is only have a very brief term and may only vote on something like Medicaid expansion.

My down is state workers.

We talked about this earlier.

Workers in state government, 21% vacancy rate as of this past spring.

Labor commissioner, Josh Dobson has said he wants to see some recommendations for changes next year.

- Okay, up and down please.

- Up is Highway 421 where all these new businesses are coming through and the way that this clean energy and transportation sector is gonna help existing North Carolina businesses like Thomas Built Buses and Volvo trucks.

- Down?

- Down is pollsters.

I've seen so many polls and I don't think any of them know what they're talking about.

North Carolina is such a closely-divided state and I honestly cannot believe that elections professionals and candidates are making decisions based on what they see on the polls, because like, we just don't know.

- They've got it wrong for the last couple cycles.

Who's up and who's down this week?

- Who's up?

The makers of diet soda and Diet Sun Drop specifically.

Governor Cooper had a quasi-viral video where he's apparently a diet soda sommelier, self described, and he loves his Diet Sun Drop.

Who's down?

All the doctors telling us to stop consuming so much artificial sweetener.

- Okay.

Up and down this week, Vicky?

- Legislator's anxiety, 4,200 applicants for help from six years ago from hurricanes and only 800 of those have been helped.

If the money runs out in 2026, that means they need to process at least 20 homes a week to even catch up.

Of course, down is the price of EVs.

GM is advertising a new EV that's gonna be about $35,000 and has a 250 mile range.

- Michael, did we miss your down?

- Nope.

We got it.

We're good.

- You got it.

Okay.

- We're good.

- Good.

Okay.

What's the headline next week, Mitch?

- Trump heads to Wilmington, tries to boost Ted Budd and other Republicans.

- How do you think that's gonna work out for him?

What are they expecting there?

About 25,000 people?

They'll get a lot of people and of course it'll fire up the base.

I'm not sure that's exactly what Ted Budd needs for the general election, but they'll give a shot.

- Well, let me ask you this.

If you were the consultant, would you take him to Wilmington?

- Wilmington would not be my first choice, and I'm not sure that I would want him to come in for the general election for Ted Budd.

- Headline next week?

- Mark doesn't like it, but the walls are closing in on Mark Meadows, North Carolina's own Mark Meadows.

I think as you see the January 6th investigation- - Former former chief of staff.

- Former chief of staff coming to Donald Trump coming on.

- To the President.

- Former Congressman.

- Supposedly he is complying with subpoenas but complying with subpoena doesn't mean that you're not in trouble.

- That's the DOJ as asking him to comply?

Now, this is the same information that he gave the January 6th committee, correct?

- I believe, I mean, who knows what information he's given but presumably so.

I think that if anyone's gonna be the fall guy for Trump, when all of this comes tumbling down, it may very well be Mark Meadows.

- I think people are worn out with investigations.

Headline next week?

- The fed raises interest rates by at least 3/4 of a percentage point.

- How's that affect inflation?

- Well, so far we've seen it with the housing market probably the most substantial impact that we've seen with that.

But I think the big problem in terms of getting that headline number, the 8.3% down, I mean, rents are not going to come down quickly.

- Headline next week, Vicky?

- Ap State wins again.

"ESPN GameDay" is broadcasting from Boone, North Carolina.

and I have to give a little shout out 'cause my daughter is a very happy Appalachian State.

- Appalachian state?

- Yeah.

Mmm-hmm.

- Okay.

Great job, panel.

That's it for us.

Thanks for watching.

Hope to see you next week on "Front Row."

Have a great weekend.

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