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My name is Jamie Martinson.
I'm Brian Nune.
We're glad you're here.
Yesterday, the house actually stood up to Donald Trump.
I know, it's hard to believe.
Even some Republicans jumped in on this.
It was a big deal because the House voted 219 to 211 to rescind President Trump's tariffs on Canada.
You remember he said, well, Canada struck a trade deal with China, so we're going to kick this up to 100% tariffs.
Six Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in supporting the resolution.
One Democrat.
Representative Jared Golden, not so golden, from Maine.
voted against it.
this measure in case you're wondering is purely symbolic because the president will almost certainly veto this particular bill.
And Congress does not have enough votes to override.
However, it was good to see six of six Republicans say, no, this is not actually how this works.
And we're not going to stand for the higher costs for our constituents.
I mean, I'll take whatever little ray of hope I can get.
As we know, Trump imposed the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and he cited some sort of national security threat from drugs, illegal migration, and border issues.
He actually put a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10% on some Chinese goods.
We've talked about these tariffs, right?
Over and over.
Democrats argue that there's really no real national emergency and call the tariffs more of an impulsive economic move than any sort of strategy.
They point out that less than 0.1% of fentanyl entering the US last year came from Canada.
Well, now that we shot down those Mylar balloons, we definitely took care of most of that.
And we got rid of all the boats that were coming from Venezuela that probably somehow got to Canada.
I don't know, but that seems to be the way this administration paints drug epidemics.
Well, that's also why, you know, that's why the president now is not going to open the, or threatening to not open the Gordy Hell Bridge, which was constructed under.
His watch, but why quibble, but yes.
Details.
Canada has always been such a good neighbor.
No, drugs are a huge problem.
The problem...
The problem is, people want them.
That's the problem.
People want them.
People who are addicted need them.
There's always going to be a market.
The problem comes when it's these quote, unquote, illegal drugs, not big pharma's drugs.
Because if you want to take oxycontin and
you're prescribed
Because I was always under the impression that most of the illegal drugs coming into this country came from various sources.
Yes, I'm not naive to that, right?
Never did I learn that Canada was one of the biggest drug importers.
I'm sure that there are things that come from Canada illegally.
Again, not...
naive to these things.
I just didn't realize that it was such a threat that we had to invoke 25% tariffs on a good neighbor and also potentially shut down a bridge.
Like, somewhere I missed that along the way in the reading I've done.
So enlighten me, please, if you
people hear what they
whether it's the border to the north to the south whether it's from the water on the east and west Whatever it is you're gonna get some some leakage and that that happens and that needs to be Addressed absolutely not it is not
The main the biggest problem coming out of Canada the biggest is the way they pronounce the word about that is that if we want to
a
Have you ever seen South Park?
I've never heard of that.
Not much.
No, oh
a good look for
Lynn from Golden Valley brings up one of the funniest things I've heard.
Don't forget, Trump warned that China would ban hockey in Canada.
If Canada enters into a trade deal with China, which they have, China is going according to the president, China is going to take over Canada and ban hockey.
And you know, somebody went, you know what they like up there?
They like hockey.
Well, we'll tell them that they're banning it.
and
longer can count on the United States to
Be a partner, a good partner.
If you want to use the word friend again, yeah, absolutely use it.
But we are not accounted on country anymore for the things that other countries need us to uphold and do.
And that's the unfortunate part.
And have
No, because that's the one thing that you need to understand about this, no matter what this administration says.
Tariffs are not a foreign penalty.
They're taxes that U.S.
importers have to pay, which means that those costs almost always get passed on to us as consumers, American shoppers.
And research shows that nearly 96% of the tariff burden hits U.S.
businesses and consumers, which is why if you're a small business right now...
Things are probably getting a little tougher.
Why when you go to the store and you notice that some things are a little bit more expensive?
Because they actually are.
I don't know where this $1.50 gas is.
I still haven't figured it out.
But we stole all their oil.
We should.
We should.
The vote that took place yesterday in the House regarding these tariffs, it's coming ahead of the midterms, let's be honest.
Because lawmakers, especially the six Republicans who crossed party lines, are facing pressure from voters on economic issues in their home states, including affordability, which all comes right back to these trade impacts.
Obviously, the president loves to voice his opinion on social media.
And so he went over to truth social last night after this particular vote and said, quote, any Republican in the house or the Senate that votes against tariffs, all capital, by the way, because it's always more important when you can capitalize
Well, he went on, because I do have to read a little bit more of this, because tariffs, again, all in capitals, have given us great national security, because the mere mention of the word has countries agreeing to our strongest wishes.
Tariffs, again, all capitalized, have given us economic and national security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege.
Mr. President.
We're all paying the price for these tariffs every time
we try to
He's made $4 billion since coming into office this time around.
So no, absolutely.
Now, the other thing to keep in mind here is that the Supreme Court is currently reviewing whether Trump exceeded his authority by using an emergency declaration to impose tariffs.
Those hearings took place last year, back in 2025.
The justices actually are questioning the legality of applying decades-old
emergency powers to nearly every trading partner.
And if you had a chance to listen to any of that a few months ago, even the most staunch conservatives, including John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, were a little skeptical of the government's arguments as to why these tariffs had to be imposed.
However, they still have not ruled on it.
So we'll see if they kick the can or actually make some sort of decision.
Tariffs.
It's like the new word, right?
Like, that's our big new word and we just throw it around willy-nilly and people don't actually understand how it all works or how it's actually affecting them right now.
Don't stop.
That's a Democratic invented word.
Nobody ever said affordability.
You all have Trump derangement syndrome.
Everybody's upset about everything.
No, but this is...
This is one of those things where we have alienated.
It's another step toward isolationism,
And it's obvious.
And yes, you bringing back something that you mentioned earlier, you know, the the president's yelling about Canada having a trade deal with China.
Well, where do you expect?
Where do you expect people to go if you're not willing to negotiate and trade with them in good faith?
If you want to penalize them for
whatever perceived wrong you've done and then he's mad because they won't carry our products up there.
I wouldn't either.
No.
Sometimes you have to think of it in your common sense terms.
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Good morning.
If you want to get involved in the program, we'd love to hear from the 855-75 Civic, 855-7524-842.
Marks in a quick text.
If SCOTUS members who claim to be conservative actually were, they would look at the Constitution and see that Congress is supposed to set tariffs and Trumps are not constitutional.
Yes, that is true.
That is 100% true, Mark.
Thank you.
Yes, they don't do this.
I have never lived in a mobile home park or a modular home, as some people call them, but it is a big...
big world,
And yesterday, Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin are proposing legislation that would limit rent increases in manufactured home communities, or as we used to call them mobile home parks, used to call them trailer parks.
You know what we're talking about, the prefabred...
Homes which have really man you talk about evolution from right old days of Jim
And really, this particular bill being brought by the Democrats here in the state, they're responding to concerns about rising costs and growing influence from out-of-state corporate owners because these parks or these areas are becoming systematically overrun by companies coming in and then jacking up the rental price, right?
And so this bill has been proposed by two Democrats.
Jeff Smith and Jody Emerson and it would cap annual rent hikes at 2% or 4% based on the federal consumer price index data.
It would require annual state inspections
of these communities, and it would also give residents the chance to purchase their communities through cooperatives, with a tax incentive for sales to resident-owned or nonprofit groups.
And, you know, for a lot of people right now in this housing crisis that we're in, with these astronomically priced homes and even property taxes, manufactured homes are providing an affordable path to home ownership, and that is true throughout most of this, a lot of...
portions of the state.
Residents often face though unpredictable rent hikes and also poor management because private equity firms come into these communities they buy them up and then last year for instance in Racine County there was a community there that saw an 18% rent increase after being sold to an Illinois based company.
So now we're talking about an option for people who are looking for a better path or a different path to home ownership.
and then being completely exploited by large companies.
And so that is what the Democrats right now are trying to get control of in this particular state.
Well, they need to also look at not only the companies that are buying up these mobile home parks, but these these companies that are amassing all this real estate.
They come in and they buy all these homes that are for sale.
And then they decide to rent them.
But they rent them at such astronomical rates that you can't, you know, if you had that kind of money for rent, you could pay a mortgage.
But the mortgage companies don't look at it that way.
They don't look at somebody who's been paying
a few thousand dollars for rent every month and say, oh, well, then they could pay half of that in a mortgage.
Right.
They just don't have the big chunk up front to put down.
It's the system is the system is not consumer friendly.
No.
And yes, it's all about the money.
I understand that.
But it's also this is what Jamie, this is why I'm as crazy as I am because I try to apply logic to things.
It does because there's no reason to look at look at something and go all right They might not have 50 grand to put down right or a hundred grand to put down But the track record of what they've been paying in rent over the last 15 years more than would cover a mortgage So right can we work with people that way?
Why do we have to let these companies buy up all these?
mobile home parks and all these other homes and then just create more of a shortage because
You get these major equity firms that come in and they buy up or they build these complexes and they're doing the same thing.
Then they're jacking up the rent and it makes it essentially unaffordable for most people.
Now lawmakers say that this particular bill for manufactured homes is about protecting affordable housing, giving residents some stability.
It has
no Republican support though right now.
So it is unlikely to advance.
Well,
I mean, that's crazy.
Well, we haven't seen any support for that yet.
And it's unlikely that this bill will advance in this legislative session.
Sponsors of it though hope the proposal sparks some momentum for some future action.
I mean, if the Republicans won't even support or discuss a bill at protecting residents of their own state.
essentially their constituents.
It signals that they're okay with us paying higher rents, higher property taxes, and really just leaving us vulnerable while doing very little to help the family, to help families take care of themselves.
And Wisconsin still doesn't pay a true living wage either.
So for a lot of people, we don't have a minimum wage that's competitive.
And so for a lot of people, that's
This is an option.
This is their only option to home ownership for their family and Republicans won't even have a serious discussion about how how they can help make ends meet for a lot of these families and at that point That's just unserious.
It's literally unserious and not doing your job
I'm
clipping the deals, I'm looking at all the flyers, I'm trying to figure it out, because prices are high for everybody.
And there's ways that you can keep prices low.
Some people have tried to go to co-ops, other people do other things.
But this is one place the government has figured it out.
But they're not sharing that idea with everybody until now.
And that's the commissaries.
in New York for Mayor, and Mayor Mondami said that he was going to combat rising grocery prices by setting up city-run grocery stores in the five boroughs of New York.
Well, the Defense Department, like we said, the military's been doing this for a long time.
Claire Kelleway is a food program manager at the Open Markets Institute, and she wrote a big story on this in Washington Monthly, and she joins us now.
Claire, thanks for being here.
I was just starting to talk a little bit about commissaries.
Can you explain the concept of a commissary to someone who's only heard about it from a movie or a TV show?
Absolutely, yeah.
Thank you for having me.
So, I mean, in simple terms, a military commissary.
looks a lot like a normal grocery store.
You'll walk in, you'll see familiar brands, a lot of variety, but you can only get to them on a military base in most cases and you need a military ID to get in.
The idea is they were started a long time ago in the 1800s as a way to provide food to military members.
Most of them are in the United States, but they're also a lot on bases around the world.
And that's particularly a way for military families to access, you know, peanut butter, name brand American products that might be harder to find when they're stationed overseas.
Yeah, that's that's the case.
I'm trying to make in my in my story that when you have the You know buyer power of the government behind you that we could see Grocery stores get access to better wholesale prices right now There's an issue in the grocery industry where it doesn't necessarily always matter if you reach the highest economies of scale economies of scale don't always determine
the prices that grocery stores receive, it actually has a lot more to do with buyer power.
That's why we see chains like Walmart getting some of the best prices, prices that they can sell goods at retail markup better than an independent co-op can purchase those same products for at wholesale.
And so if you have the government involved and they have this mandate to get the best price, then that can kind of
level the playing field, so to speak, and yeah, you could have more grocery stores getting access to the best wholesale prices.
I mean, the scale of the military commissary is part of what makes it effective.
So economies of scale and grocery do exist.
You need a certain amount to...
to be able to fill a truck, for instance.
And we don't, at least in the U.S., have a public grocery system that's as big as the military commissary system.
We've seen some cities, especially small rural towns, actually try to open a city-run grocery store because it might be the only way to keep the store open.
And those trials have had some mixed results, mostly because they're so small.
So, yeah.
We're
She is the food program manager at the Open Markets Institute.
You mentioned places like Walmart and we also look at other chains like Dollar General.
How would these...
What kind of competition would these public options create for some of these bigger chains?
And how would that affect our pricing and also some of our choices that we get at the store, Claire?
Yeah, I think the idea with having a civilian commissary system is that you would have at least one player in the market that you know is not profit driven and is
offering the fairest price they can.
And so we assume that a chain like a Walmart or a Dollar General, famously they offer really low prices, a big challenge in rural areas is they're really out competing the small stores and offering super low prices.
But we also see in the data that when you have a true grocery monopoly, just one option,
that consumers tend to pay higher prices.
So it could be hard to know if consumers are actually getting the best deal.
And when you have that more direct competition, then we would hope, yeah, chains would have the incentive to compete more aggressively and offer the most fair lowest prices.
Yeah.
So I'm proposing either we open, you know, very similar to the commissary, public run grocery stores across the country, or we could achieve, I would think, substantially similar effects if the
government ran a wholesaler effectively that you could have independent grocers would have the option of of buying from them.
This isn't a totally new idea.
Independent grocers do have their own wholesaler, but the difference is that that wholesaler doesn't have the same, you know, heft
as
the government to get the best wholesale prices.
And so this is what, you know, effectively level the playing field.
So hopefully independent grocers would have
similar access to wholesale prices as something like Walmart.
And I would imagine there might be some conditions that if you're buying goods from this public wholesaler, you have to have a fair duty to not price gouge or charge more than is necessary.
But yeah, it could be a way to have a real fair wholesale price option for
private players potentially in the market.
There's a couple towns that don't even have grocery stores.
People have to drive 15, 20 minutes just to access food unless it's at a convenience store.
So let's kind of focus on that for a second.
How would these public options improve that type of access?
What would it do for areas that are food deserts or even for very low income neighborhoods?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that the hope would be if you're justifying this public involvement in the grocery industry that it would be targeted at places where private industry isn't serving the community, right?
So I think going into food deserts would be a prime example of where this could make a lot of sense.
I was listening to the either current or former CEO of the commissary system and
you know that he was talking about one thing that is really different about the commissary system is you know the government tells them where they have to have locations and he's like yes I you know I run this like a business to the best of my extent but if I was really running this like a private grocery business I would go in and I would close 30 commissaries and I'm not allowed to do that and I could see you know the benefit of
having a player in the system that can provide food where, you know, private industry just won't, I think, could provide a really great public service and ensure people have access to healthy, affordable food.
She's the food program manager at the Open Markets Institute.
You can read her story about this at washingtonmonthly.com.
So check that out.
It goes into a lot of detail.
Claire, the biggest worry that I have, and I'm sure a lot of people listening, is anytime the government gets involved in something, it tends to get muddled up.
There's so much bureaucracy.
What are the big concerns about this public option model, which, again, on the surface seems to make perfect sense?
Yeah, I think when people hear about the idea of a public grocery store,
the idea of the Soviet Union comes to mind.
I don't want to stand in line
Yes, no one wants to stand in line.
No one wants to have limited options.
I think there's that anecdote about one of the leaders of the Soviet Union coming to the US and seeing our abundant grocery stores and realizing, oh, if this gets out, I'm in a big PR problem.
But yeah, I think that the commissary system really stands
to show that it doesn't operate that way.
It really looks and feels like a normal grocery store.
So I think it's a proven system that's working.
And if the idea is to build upon that and expand it, yeah, we haven't really seen the same pitfalls that we have in other...
Whatever public grocery systems, and I think that probably has to deal with their procurement and their you know local management Systems they you know really bring in people from private industry to run these stores and You know there's an expectation to carry a certain number of products like maintain a certain variety
Yes, yes, there was a request for information put out.
It's not quite a request of proposals, but trying to see, hey, like, you know, Walmart, Amazon, whomever, like if you were to take over the system, what would it look like?
There's been a lot of pushback.
This system is really beloved by military members and veterans, and there's some pretty bipartisan support to push back against the
the privatization, but it's something that the current administration is on the record saying they want to do and are taking some steps to explore what that would look like.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine.
I think the concern is that there is a subsidy that goes into the commissary system that it's seen as a benefit to military families.
And there's a concern that if a private industry took it over,
you know, it would just be a pass through basically like, you know, military families would automatically get like a 20% discount and we would be subsidizing that and yeah, it's not the same in terms of maintaining all those locations and and the discount.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think we're coming up on the clock here.
Yep.
Claire Calloway, she is the food program manager at the Open Markets Institute.
Check out her article over at the Washington Monthly again.
Thank you so much for your time.
It is 7.48 right now.
You are listening to Civic Media Mornings.
My name is Jamie Martenson.
Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Good morning.
We did get a tell.
We were talking about commissaries.
We had a comment on the YouTube stream from one of our listeners who was in the Navy and said she loved the commissary when she was in the Navy.
That was from Alicia.
So thank you, Alicia, for jumping in.
You can always jump in, whether it's on YouTube or by phone slash text, 855-75-CIVIC, 855-7524842.
The
Yeah.
We finally had to take my mom off Facebook because she was getting hacked nonstop because she was accepting friend requests from everybody that she thought she knew and she could not understand that it was fake.
But that's not an unusual problem.
One of the things I enjoy...
is, throughout all my travels, is I love a good dive bar.
I've always been a fan.
I'm not a, I was never a like club guy, like a disco or those kind
I like, right.
And I'd go out like back in the day, you go to drink, I go to a tavern to sit.
and have some drinks.
And there's a guy in Wisconsin, Jared Schutz, and if you don't follow him, Wisco Dive Bar Reviews is his website.
And it's great, because no matter where you're going to travel in Wisconsin, if you're looking for a dive bar, he's been there.
And he goes around, well, they just named their 2025 Dive Bar of the Year.
And this is what we want to know from you.
Do you have a favorite dive bar?
And I know some of the network towns, because I've been in a lot of them, no slouch when it comes to dive bars.
One of them is in Appleton at Cleo's.
I don't know if you've ever been to Cleo's.
It is.
Now, some people may argue, is it really a dive bar?
Would say yes because it's very dark.
It's a it's a dive bar that has a unique character because it's all Christmas decorations and it is they make strong drinks
atmosphere and it's so that's That's always tops my list and I trust me Jamie when I tell you this this is not bragging I have been in
dive bars across this great land of ours and in foreign lands.
So I have that.
The other one is Snake and Jake's in New Orleans.
It is, it should be condemned.
It is in a residential neighborhood.
It is an old house between two houses.
It is literally falling apart.
It doesn't open until 10 o'clock at night.
That's how you know you're in a good dive bar.
is when it's dark and there's Christmas lights hanging everywhere.
I also have a couple.
One of my favorites is actually in Green Bay, Lenny's Tap.
Wonderful place if you wanna go check out a Packers game.
Lots of great drinks, good camaraderie, Packers fans galore and big screen TVs, it's always a good time.
And then my other favorite dive bar is actually in Minneapolis, it's called The Nook.
There's probably four tables in The Nook, but you can get the damn best.
juicy Lucy burger you have ever had to go with your drinks see now
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