FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Pete Riehm - Jeff Poor Show - Friday 10-11-24
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine, I keep my eyes watered. I'm looking back to the jet pours show what if I'm talking one oh six five hatred staying with us on this Friday morning two five one three four three zero one zero six that's the text line. I will read your text as they come in and maybe I will snarl or sneer or whatever or maybe I will say thank you for contributing to the program anyway it's up to you you control your destiny there joining us now on the line he reads a this is a column you can read in various publications around the state but I always get to hear from him Pete ream joins us on the line. Pete good morning. How are you? Doing great. Jeff good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. Doing well. We'll start here. You're on the way to North Carolina talking about that real quick. Well yeah my just a lot of folks know my all my adult children and grandchildren they live in Western North Carolina in in those hardest eight counties and they they're all thank praise God. Everyone's safer. Read good but a lot of home damage matter of fact my oldest daughter her house got completely washed away. They lost everything so we're going back up there helping clean up and rebuild and what the other daughter and son of a while they're going to we're moving them back. They're going to move down here for a while so we're we're in the middle of doing all that. My my roots are in Western North Carolina too. I think it was further south the Brevard Transylvania County and just for days didn't hear from anybody. It was kind of spooky very spooky we didn't there was no I mean I didn't know they were okay until I literally drove in Monday morning Tennessee and I found them at our cabin. Just no way to get in touch with people and and I mean you know the roads are blocked you know how those roads are there there's you know it's it's it's going in and going out it's I tell you it's crazy to see and so my son and I went up to we spent a little time in Western North Carolina the very beginning of August and that that some of those roads are gone and some of them were just like rivers around Asheville that I don't know like I can't imagine like in my you know and like I said I'm almost 50 years old at any point in time that it would have been ever that kind of a landscape. No I've never seen anything like it to see it looks like parts of it look like the Mississippi Gulf Coast every free yet just completely wiped out just simply well let's get into what we we're having you had you on the talk about and and this isn't like fascinating but not necessarily a you know something to be excited about Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs Admiral Davis effectively resigning at the end of the year but the board there is at least putting up a fight against the governor yes some really strong opinions on what's going on here kind of walk us through what your take is and explain to us well I mean I I'm very naive on this but I'm kind of watching this from the outside but what do you make of it well I really appreciate that you had me on an hour after Alabama Proppeda was interviewed the the propaganda Todd Stacy from Alabama Proppeda I listened to that and that was pretty infuriating to listen to the misrepresentations and just inaccuracies and he's acting like oh he's got the inside story we'll see if we can address them for that but really the issue is mental health care in this state is inadequate inefficient and it's been that way for decades in contrary to that crap the speaker put in his office this morning blood better accounting what they've all done they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars for very little effect so I don't know where that propaganda came from but where this got to is over the last five to ten years in a good portion of it is under commissioner Davis's leadership veterans organizations and nonprofits across this state have risen to the challenge with innovative programs in ways to bring real services and treatment to veterans particularly with PTSD and substance abuse and those things and we've been having great great success at that and I will say that success has come despite the resistance in obstacles thrown up by the Alabama Department of mental health and all of the monopoly of health care providers in this state they have tried to keep the veterans organizations from doing what they have successfully been starting to do and so the problem is the big picture is that the success of the veterans department has exposed the incompetence of the Alabama Department of health and it is also a mental health it is also exposed the utter corruption in trans corruption and complete waste of money because really the veterans are being targeted right here but really that every citizen in the state of Alabama should be incensed that hundreds of million dollars a ridiculously high budget is spent on mental health and we are number 47 in the country and we can find all sorts of places in every town of the inadequate inadequacies of finding mental health care for substance abuse for PTSD that's why we have homeless all over the street that's what the real story is that we've exposed that the way we didn't expose it we just happened to step into it because of the success of the veterans affairs and I'm really living about the way they talk about Admiral Davis because we've known several VA commissioners over the last couple decades. Admiral Davis is heading shoulders far away above the best commissioner that we've ever had and he has done more for veterans in his tenure than they've done in the last 50 years for veterans from the state veterans department and then for Josh they should get on there and malign the Admiral and his agency who they I will put that agency who let's go have audits let's go have audits independent audits and compared to every other state agency and I will bet money that the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs will come through with flying colors and I guarantee you ain't going to say that for the rest of them though it's ridiculous for him to do that and the other one and I know I'm rambling here the fact that he said the board is a problem like they don't know what they're doing this board is part of the problem of the way of function you know the department doesn't function correctly and then you got this board that's sort of out of touch or whatever he was trying to apply there making it sound like oh we just went down to the local VFW we got the two drugs that sit there every day and that's who sits on the board I really that is an affront the people on the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs are the top veteran senior leaders in the state of Alabama these are people who have distinguished records of service in the in uniform and they are now still serving very noble and very capable this is the better as the citizens overseeing government for him to make it sound like there are a bunch of truth balls who don't know what they're doing in an offense because I'm telling you they they have a that board has a better feel for what's going on that agency overseeing it and any other thing in Montgomery because there's no corruption in the in the department of veterans affairs and you cannot say that for the rest of all sorry I get I'm really upset the way he characterized those people and their self with service well hit the governor and in my extension of that Todd Stacy's uh Quibble here I guess is that they they misappropriated or are misstated some ARPA money now um the general flood chairman Greg Albright and says that's not true that that never happened and the story here is the way Todd explained and I hadn't heard this until now that no it didn't actually happen but uh the the finance director or whoever called it before the error was committed so like to me if it was like maybe there was the potential for the foul but the foul didn't get committed and this warrants a whole shake up it just it seems like they were kind of looking for a reason to do what they have done well you're you're exactly right because when you do you look at you know we we stopped if you assume that that's correct we stopped it before the foul was committed but look at every other state agency how many files do they commit constantly and they don't fire any of those people but this one we supposedly we caught it before any infraction we fixed it but all that's untrue that pretty much I mean Todd Stacy might as well go work for CNN or MSNBC because he got about the same veracity that that ARPA funds never got to the Department of Veterans Affairs but the part they don't tell you is that they ironed out memorandums of agreement memorandums of understanding with all those agencies Department of Mental Health Department of uh uh uh uh the finance they were a part of this this was not done in the stove done with complete coordination and interaction with all these other agencies and they'd all signed off on it and they were already do they knew all the stuff that was in there right they knew all that stuff it wasn't until the Alabama Council of Behavioral Health those were obvious caught wind that some of these funds would be going to programs that support mental health treatment that's their rice bowl that's their money they don't want anybody to ever there's a total monopoly on mental health that's a whole other story but they went back to the Department of Villences you cannot let any kind of money go outside of our purview to mental health that we can't control mental health care so they went and stopped it and that's where all the ethical stuff came in because it was unilateral by the commissioner say oh well we just withdraw from the from the memorandum and we're not going to support those because that the truth is they didn't give them the seven million dollars in ARPA but the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs took it out of other parts of their budget to fund those 33 programs that Todd Stacey maligned into stupid stuff like they didn't know what they were doing and trying to misuse the funds I mean it's really in front because it's those people who are actually providing services to real people on the ground and we we can prove it we can show it and they're maligning those people to try to suck us back into a a lethargic monopoly that doesn't provide the real system for any real treatment he's wrong about almost everything he said so that that I guess it was this if I recall that they were going to use ARPA money to hire a lobbyist to lobby the state for more money which was taboo. Pete I don't know how much time you spend in the state house I know you ran for state senate but you go up there and I'd say probably at least half of the lobbyists in the hallways are working for state agencies at the taxpayer expense which is always not even just state agencies you throw in all the other governments the local county whatever and I'm surprised like it how that is I mean I can see where people might hear that think well that's not good spending a lobbyist but that's sort of the Montgomery game. Why did you make of that part of it? Well it's incredibly hypocritical because of what you just said I mean there's so many lobbyists that are basically state funded working for agencies and everybody else up there and it's like really that that's what upset y'all but the other thing is that wasn't in there that was not in there they did this the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs was not trying to hire lobbyists they were just trying to get support and funds to support VSOs and non-profits who are doing the real work on the ground and then we can show the success across the state that wasn't in there anything about the ammunition so I could have ammunition. That is a peer support program a marksmanship program peer support to take veterans out and they do marksmanship training with those guys but it's one of those therapeutic things kind of like the guy remember the Navy SEAL was doing it it's a therapeutic rate the legitimate program but he threw it out the way you get by guns and ammunition made it sound like we were arming the veterans or something totally misrepresented and in any sense something about the those ethics complaints oh wow those were really inaccurate thrown out let me tell you something all of them people in Montgomery are going to ruin the day they said that because they know that those are legitimate complaints and when an actual ethical ethical ethics commission or some real attorneys look at it they're going to come back and revisit all that stuff they won't be talking about that being frivolous or inaccurate yeah and and that I you know the the the the way I don't know I just all in all it just feels like there's there's some kind of if it's just a personal thing and I don't know the governor to me isn't very clear thinking or doesn't seem like she's clear thinking on this and I wonder if she just kind of this is more of like her inner circle steering her in this direction or something yeah I mean I you know I can't say where the governor really is I don't know really how much he knows uh well the kib it the kib balls the kib balls will and the department of mental health commissioner which is on the governor's cabinet what would assume is in her inner circle and maybe that's why she's going in a direction that she is I know I'm going to say well that could be I'm not going to say that I'm telling you what this really is and we can do a lot more programs because I've had experience with this going back 10 years what this really is is the monopoly of mental health care mental health care in the state of Alabama is run pretty much by a single monopoly and they they will not allow any competition whatsoever and that's that's really what's at the root this it really doesn't have to do with the veterans it doesn't really have to do with commissioner Davis that really had to do that they don't like the programs that we're doing this is the monopoly of mental health care asserting their dominance and they're gonna make sure that nobody else can get in to their little gravy train that's what this is ultimately about Pete got to leave it there uh we do appreciate you making time for safe travels uh stay safe up there man yes sir thank you very much have a great day all right we got to get a break here we'll be right back this is the jeppe or show it at the clock one oh six five you