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It's now time for a game of fact or fiction.
Here's your host, producer Frank.
And here we go.
much anticipated following Donald Trump's state of the union address last night, which I unfortunately for this job had to stay up and watch.
Thank
you.
Watched an hour.
I'm going to be honest.
That's all I could take.
That checks.
That's all I could stand.
I can't stand no more
checked out the highlight reel for the rest of it.
I feel like I didn't miss a whole
there was a highlight reel.
Wow.
If you got the first hour, just
you
know.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the main thing I was looking for was one, how are you going to spin the economy?
And how is the US men's hockey team going to handle this and how it was handled with them coming out?
I know we're going to talk about that
a
little bit later, but that's what I was looking
for.
And Jamie made me stay up.
Here we go.
Factor fiction.
Like I said, we listened to the State of the Union address.
I'm going to play some clips from it.
Brian and Jamie will have to decide whether it was fact or if it was fiction and we'll break it all down.
Let's start with clip number one.
The Biden administration and its allies in Congress gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country.
But in 12 months, my administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years.
And in the last three months of 2025, it was down to 1.7%.
Was
that fact or was it fiction?
See, here's the problem.
There might be one word of fact in a long statement.
So do we then...
Do we then, Jamie, make the choice?
Is the whole statement fact, or I think one word doesn't make a whole statement fact?
I am going to stick with fiction, even though I know that, Frank, you're probably going to say the word core or something is what makes it somewhat a fact,
Jamie.
I'm also going to say that this is fiction, but I agree.
There's a couple things in there that would be on the partial side of fact.
But fiction, that's our final answer.
pure fiction.
It is fiction.
We're going to chalk this up as pure fiction.
So I know we've said this before on this game, if you listen to our other ones, but it needs to be this point needs to be hammered home.
This is not the story of inflation.
Yes, numbers peaked around 9% while the country was recovering from COVID during Biden's administration.
However, that number lowered to 3% when Trump took office.
Since then, it has ebbed and flowed between about 2.3 and 3.1%.
The number stood at 2.39% last month.
So no, he did not inherit the worst economy and inflation from the Biden administration.
In fact, the number actually went higher than when he took it over midway through the year.
All
right.
I just like that we started with an oldie but a goodie.
Yeah.
It is an oldie but a goodie.
Are you afraid to play along at home and wager amongst yourselves because factor fiction is always fun?
Yes.
Is it?
It's fun for us.
I mean, we're covering things in our fight.
It's fun to play.
That's right.
Brian, I like that you brought up the nuance part of this.
I think that's going to be a theme throughout
this.
Yes.
All right.
So let me ask a clarification for the judges, please.
Are we ignoring nuance and going for the entire statement as more of the factor fiction, or should we take nuance in general into account?
The core of the statement.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
We're
going to the core of the statement.
Thank you.
We need our rules.
Okay, here we go.
In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States.
I'm sorry.
Was that out loud?
I'm going to go with
fiction.
Fiction is the
answer.
Oh, it's both.
And here, this is, again, it is very nuanced.
Okay.
Oh,
give us the nuance.
Explain this to you, please.
What he was referring to, it is a fact that the border patrol abandoned the catch and release practice while apprehending immigrants.
So in that respect, it is true, they didn't catch anybody and let them go like they did under previous administrations.
However, it is complete fiction to interpret this statement as no immigrants escaped capture and entered the US.
The number of gotaways is not a figure that is measured.
So it's one
of
those partially, partially fact statements,
which is why we're breaking it down because it's important for people to really zoom in and.
Try to understand what he's trying to say.
Yes, right?
Okay.
Yes.
Well, that's the hope anyway.
No catch and release.
Okay.
All right.
Everybody is tried and detained on site.
However, this country illegally is absolutely insane and false.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
Next.
gasoline which reached a peak of over six dollars a gallon in some states under my predecessor it was quite honestly a disaster is now below two dollars and thirty cents a gallon in most states and in some places one dollar and ninety nine cents a gallon and when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago I even saw one dollar and eighty five cents a gallon for gasoline
Facts or fiction.
Jamie, you go first.
This one is
hard because in some places
it was
very expensive, but it never reached a dollar or whatever, 80 something in Iowa.
So I'm going to say fiction.
I'm going to say fiction just because AAA never backs up his gas numbers.
And I know even though gas is going down, it's not down that much.
Right.
Pure fiction.
OK, so we're going to mark this one as fiction on grounds of.
misleading.
So they have declined from a national average of $3.12 per gallon on his inauguration day, January of last year, according to AAA, to a national average of $2.95 per gallon yesterday.
However, the average price for a gallon of regular gas in Iowa on the day of his January 27 speech was $2 and 57 cents.
That's a lot more than $1.78 or $1.85.
Right.
I expert on some rural gas station that may or may not have passed.
No,
who may have put the sign up just to placate the president because they love him.
Yes.
They're like, look, look, Mr. President, we're selling gas for 78 cents.
Here's what I will say, though.
Steve Contorno, a reporter from CNN said that the gas station right outside of the venue where the speech was.
The taking place was $2.63.
Reading
is hard.
It's hard.
Can we be honest?
Do you think he looks out the window and takes in anything?
He's looking in a mirror.
That's all he's looking at.
Or he's just looking out the windows at the people waving at him as he goes by and not at anything else around it.
The cows aren't
waving at me, Frank.
I don't want to drive past any more cows.
No cow ever applauds me.
This is the most boring place ever.
How much is gas?
A dollar?
No, OK.
For those of you just joining us, we are playing fact or fiction after Trump's State of the Union address last night.
Jamie and Brian will listen to some clips from last night and have to decide whether it is fact or fiction.
We're moving on to number four.
Okay.
In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.
$18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.
What do we think?
I really want to say fact at some point during this, because I don't want the president to spew this many lies, but I don't know.
I
can't fiction.
It's pure fiction.
That's what I'm going
for.
Well, we know the number from the tariffs.
That's nowhere close to that number.
Is he counting the billion per for the Board of Peace?
Because that takes us that's but still that's not 18 no wouldn't equal 18 trillion the math ain't mathen No, he exaggerates everything.
No, he's not 200 pounds either pure
fiction
I know.
There's a recurring theme here.
This
show repeats itself
excessively.
And so do your sounders,
Frank.
Yes, they do.
So with the data available to us right now, as of last night, the White House's own website said the figure for major investment announcements during his Trump term was $9.7 trillion.
So,
well,
it's going to be 18 and experts believe even that number is greatly exaggerated.
How long before they just take down the White House website because it doesn't match with what he's saying once he figures that out?
That's a legitimate question.
I mean, once he figures out that what he says isn't matching the facts on the website, how long before that's all altered or just taken down so that he
does not
look wrong?
You haven't checked the website this morning.
They may have gone back and adjusted everything to match what he said last
night.
This is very true.
Let me ask you this question, Jamie.
Yes.
Since when do facts matter?
Apparently not to this administration at all.
Jamie, we love your optimism.
The facts are there.
We love it.
I like it.
I don't share it, but I love it.
I try.
I mean, if you don't have some optimism that facts and constitutional law still apply, then what the hell do we have left at this point?
And unless you're watching on the stream, you don't know Jamie's glasses have a nice rose tint to them.
All right, Frank, let's see.
Let's see what's next.
I can only imagine.
And as time
goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will like in the past.
Substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax taking a great financial burden.
This is
the easiest game ever.
I like
it when I can
win.
I do too and we both get to win.
This is the soccer of games today.
I mean, are we winning though by listening to this some
more?
No, no.
Fiction.
It's fiction.
Fiction.
We as the governments don't pay for it.
No.
Pure fiction.
I'm sorry guys.
It's
okay.
This is important.
It is a give us the fact behind that fiction.
It was I'm not going to lie.
It was really tough.
But yes, this is fiction tariff payments are made by importers in the US, not foreign countries and those importers often pass on some of their costs to the consumers.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote we find that nearly 90% of the terrorist economic burden fell on US firms and consumers.
Make news.
Radical Democrats
times we have to say that for this to really I
Don't understand how people still don't get it.
I really don't it's not just us It's everybody who has any sort of knowledge of economics at all and I have
very very little Here's a question for you.
Yes,
do do the scopus sense of the world
actually buy the garbage that they spew out of their mouth on the cable news shows and at all of these forums.
Do they actually know how it works or do you think that they buy into whatever he says?
Because either way it's wrong and it's awful because you're lying to the American people about how it really works and placating to a man who obviously has no clue how anything works in this world or are
you
just delusional?
Your question is basically is it better to be stupid or dishonest?
That was your question.
Is it better to be stupid or dishonest?
Part of me wants to say it's better to be stupid, but not when you are leading the the Fed or when you're in a position of authority.
Then
dishonest is real quick last one
rent is lower today than when I took office by a lot by a lot fiction
fiction
Stop it.
Where?
Where?
According to Realtor.com's, the median asking price is down 1.5%, depending on the metro area.
However, my rent is increased greatly, so I don't agree with it, but it's technically a fact.
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It's
822 right now.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We are going to talk more State of the Union, but in a much different way, because the U.S.
men's hockey team made an appearance last night
for the president.
I've been thinking about this since we talked about it yesterday.
There are so many different aspects to this story, and a lot of them you've seen online.
There's a lot of outrage with Cash Patel and the call from the president to the team.
the outrage felt by women.
And I completely understand that, and I think you are right to be outraged at the president's comments.
I think you are right to be outraged if you want to be at the laughter from the men's team.
I don't want to judge the entire team based on the worst moment of some of the players.
especially in the environment they were in now.
Now, when I say that, that is not excusing the behavior.
It's not excusing the laughter.
You have to, in this case, and I do think anytime zero tolerance policies are applied, it's bad.
So everything needs to be looked at in a case-to-case basis.
And again, I don't excuse the president's comments because we know how he feels about women.
We know how the fact that he did not call the women's team when they won the gold medal is an embarrassment too.
But he doesn't have the ability to be embarrassed.
But it was it was completely wrong.
The laughter from some of the men on the on the team was wrong.
They were in the middle of celebrating the fact that they were just they had just won the gold medal.
There's a lot going on.
The the
all of a sudden for some reason the FBI director is in there partying with them and the president's on the phone and it's a whole thing and you laugh I I can and and women I don't expect you to forgive and move on because that's what everybody expects you to do all the time ladies you're just supposed to take it and roll with it because that's how it's always been I that's not what I'm saying I I appreciate your outrage I encourage your outrage and I back your outrage for me that part
was not as disappointing or angering as the fact that 20 of the Olympic team showed up last night.
That to me was a disappointment.
It was that to me proved that a lot of the talk didn't... didn't...
have any backbone.
Well, we talked about this yesterday.
That was one thing I said.
As a female, I'll give them some grace based on the circumstances, right?
Because winning a gold medal, having that sort of adrenaline running through you, that sort of celebratory situation, I would give them some grace.
Seeing them trot out last night from a tunnel was, it was disheartening to see what this team did in those final moments in the Olympics.
And then to hear comments from the Hughes brothers, I felt like that was just trying to pass it off as, oh, this just happened.
I said I would give them some grace until I saw more.
I saw more.
It's
disgusting.
Yesterday was a day.
How did you feel about the U.S.
men's team laughing at the sexist comments and appearing last night at the State of the Union, 855-75-CIVIC-855-7524-842?
Frank, you're a resident casual hockey fan.
allegedly.
And I know we also know you had to watch the State of the Union to do factor fiction.
What did you think when not only did they go to the State of the Union, they spent the whole day parading around with the president who claims to know every one of
them?
It was like Jamie said, it was tough watching them come out.
And I'm trying to for any other presidential regime, right?
We wouldn't have batted an eye on them coming out for the State of the Union address, but obviously with how things have gone with the Trump administration.
I think of all the turmoil that's going, that happened in Minnesota, right?
In Minneapolis.
And you have Quinn Hughes, who plays for the Minnesota Wild.
You have Brock Faber up there, who plays for the Minnesota Wild.
You have Matt Boldy, who plays for the Minnesota Wild up there.
And it's kind of a slap in the face for your hometown fans, right?
That
was my big takeaway from it.
Also the Hughes brothers.
I think Jack Hughes getting on TV and saying, you know, everybody just wants to politicize everything.
Jamie, you wanted to see more.
And what I wanted to see was how do you handle this and how do you address the situation?
from what I saw yesterday, there was zero PR training done with any of these boys and they were not prepped for any of this and to have this important of a conversation and maybe a nuanced conversation.
And then I think Quinn Hughes looked over and said, I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say.
Say what you want to say, my guy.
Yeah.
Well, they also, you
know,
the way that the way that Trump characterized any Olympic athlete who had
dared to speak out.
Not only, and if we remember, the comments made by other Olympians were not directed at him.
They were how athletes were disappointed with how things were going in the country.
And he called them losers and all sorts of things.
And then, you know, yes, the women's team did legit have some scheduling issues, but they could have, if they had wanted to be there, they could have been there.
But
good for them for not only refusing to go on what I'm sure are scheduling and some political reasons but also after they were basically second-classed when most of the medals at the Olympics were won by women or with women on as part of the teams that won and the fact that
The women's team wins a lot more than the men's team, and this is no shade on the U.S.
men's Olympic team.
What they did in that game was phenomenal.
How they comported themselves afterward is what's up for...
Oh, I don't know.
I'll throw some shade on them.
I mean, really honestly, as we
talked... I will, like I said, from the end of the game to now.
As we talked on this show, they probably shouldn't have won that game at all against Canada.
And honestly, after
what
we saw last night, it was a slap in the face to not only the female team, but it was a slap in the face to any woman in their life that they absolutely disrespect.
And as you mentioned to the other athletes, that Trump drugged through the coals on truth social because of things he did not like, that
they
said.
And it doesn't matter that you hung out with them at the cafeteria at 3.30 in the morning talking, or that the first person Jack used thought
of.
This is a frat.
Yeah.
It's not a frat.
It's 829 right now.
You are listening to Daybreak on the Civic Media Network.
the local news, community stories, and the conversations that matter most.
Now, more daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
It's 8.35 right now.
We hope you are having a great morning.
Thank you so much for joining us here on the Civic Media Network.
Yes, and she's Jamie Martinson.
I'm Brian Noonan.
You are you, and we want you to answer.
If you're a small business owner, we would really like to hear from you about the next segment, which is going to.
be about minimum wage and a proposed bill to raise that minimum wage.
If you're a small business, how do you think this is going to affect you?
855-755-CIVIC, 855-755-248-42.
We know how it'll affect you if you work for minimum wage, which is still.
in Wisconsin, $7.25 an hour, and tipped workers earn $2.33 an hour.
When I say those numbers, that's, an hour's work wouldn't even buy you a value meal at McDonald's or Culver's.
It just won't, $7.25.
It's been that way for a long time, 17 years.
Since 2009, yeah.
Yeah, that's...
That's an unbelievable number.
We talk about minimum wage all the time.
This comes up all the time.
And the reason we're talking about it today is because State Rep Amad Rivera Wagner from Green Bay has introduced legislation that would raise that minimum wage, Jamie.
Yes, it would.
Right now, as we said, Wisconsin's minimum wage.
And I'm going to repeat this because I think it bears repeating that we are asking people to live on $7.25 an hour.
And Representative Rivera Wagner calls his proposal a long overdue raise.
Yes, I would definitely agree with that.
Saying that the $7.25 an hour isn't enough to just cover the basic living costs anywhere in the state.
And think about that for a minute.
Think about how much has changed since 2009, right?
Rent, groceries, healthcare, gas, childcare even.
All of those things are considerably more than they were 17 years ago, but here in the state of Wisconsin, the wage hasn't moved at all.
Right.
It's crazy.
And if you're on feed Wisconsin, you add $6 a day more to that.
Right.
So nothing.
Yeah.
So the proposal would actually immediately raise the bill.
In this bill, the minimum wage would immediately raise to $15 an hour for workers and then gradually increase it to $20 an hour by 2030 for large employers.
Now, smaller businesses, those with 50 or fewer employees, would have more time to phase in those increases because that's always been the big argument with raising the minimum wage is how will the small businesses deal with that, which is why, again, as you said, we'd like to hear from small business owners.
1-855-752-4842-185575 Civic.
Let's talk about this.
And how you, as a small business owner, feel like you could handle these types of increases to the wage.
Because small business owners get left out of a lot of the conversations, the tariff conversations, the big corporations are pulling for refunds.
Well, the small business has paid that too.
Small business owners are going to bear the brunt of this.
proposed increase if it were to go through.
So what does that mean in a real life situation?
If you can share that story, please do.
Absolutely.
So in the representative's proposal, it would raise the tipped minimum wage to $7.50 right away with gradual increases after that.
And then starting in 2031, wages would automatically adjust every year for inflation, and the bill would allow local governments to set their own minimum wages if they choose.
Now, of course, the supporters of this say that more than one million Wisconsin workers
make less than $20 an hour, including a lot in essential jobs like childcare, home health care, retail, and even nursing assistance.
Representative Rivera-Wagner says that rising costs to things like, you know, your basic necessities for living, rent, groceries, childcare.
are waiting on lawmakers.
And he actually criticized the legislature for ending this session early.
And it looks like he's going to
pop in
here.
Yeah, it looks like we're going to get the representative in just a moment.
So as soon as he
pops in, we'll get his take on things.
There he is.
There's
the
representative.
This is representative, a mod Riviera Wagner.
He represents the assembly district 90 out of Green Bay.
Can you hear us representative?
Are we still working on some audio issues?
Okay, so we'll keep vamping a little bit and as soon
as we get the representative, yeah.
There's a number of questions.
Do we have you representative?
Can you hear us?
I think so.
Okay, there we are.
Yes, there he is.
Welcome.
We're glad you're here.
We were just talking about the bill that you've proposed and raising the minimum wage and things like that.
Let me ask you this just from a timing standpoint.
I know you did criticize the fact that the assembly adjourned early.
We've all been criticizing that.
It doesn't make make any sense to take a nine, ten month vacation.
Why introduce the legislation after the session ended?
Why not try to get it get it in there before the deadline?
Well, one, I think we were trying to get all this all together pretty fast.
As you know, we were kind of let we were told maybe three or four weeks ago that we were ending the session.
10 months early.
So that does change your entire calendar, whether we like it or not.
You may be aware and your audience may be aware that the majority party gets full control, meaning that they set a calendar at the beginning of the year, which this year was the shortest calendar in modern Wisconsin history.
And then we decided to make it even shorter by two months.
So this is probably one of the shortest, if not the shortest ever legislative sessions that we've had in modern Wisconsin history.
We learned all of that with about three or four weeks notice that we were probably ending February 19th.
So people were working really hard and bringing coalition partners together and thinking that we had some time and then all of a sudden, we not only have four weeks left to the session, we are then figuring out what hundred or 200 bills that we're all going to pass in two weeks.
Right.
And sometimes not knowing whether
uh a bill you've worked on or a partner you've worked with even across the aisle will make it to the last like walla poliza of policy uh uh will happen that week and so frankly things were just in somewhat disarray because we're kind of running from a model that tells that we sometimes get 24 hours notice
of 60 bills that we're voting on and have no idea what they're going to be.
So unfortunately, while I would have loved for us to really have rolled this out much earlier, and that's what would have been my own personal opinion, getting things lined up with so many coalition partners really required us to do as soon as we possibly could.
And unfortunately, the majority party has decided that we're going to end 10 months early.
So while I truly would have wished we would have done it six months earlier than that,
Technically, my job is not over.
I still have 10 months.
I was going to say, you're still working, right?
You're not kicked back until next year.
That's right.
So I still have 10 months of work to do.
So we put it on the agenda.
But you are correct with the understanding that because the assembly has essentially ended, this will have no chance at a hearing or a forevote.
But ironically, what I would tell you is, even if we had introduced it six months ago,
it most likely would have not gotten a hearing or a floor vote.
But it does matter that we actually introduce the legislation that we want to use to cover.
Well, first of all, somebody needs to tell the Republicans that they also have 10 months of work to do, so it's good that the Democrats are carrying
that
on.
But let's talk a little bit about that, because you just said that it probably wouldn't have gotten a floor vote, even if you were still gabbled in.
The minimum wage, as we were talking before you joined, hasn't been raised in this state from $7.25 since 2009.
What has been the hesitancy of this state to actually give people a living wage?
So, you know, I almost wanted to ask this question because to be honest, this is a very popular issue, meaning that when you talk to people in Green Bay, you cannot, there's not a single job that you could work at 725 and cover groceries, rent, or anything in the city of Green Bay.
It's so far away that I was just in a meeting with business leaders who are allegedly opposed to this.
And they told me they already thought the minimum wage was $15 an hour.
because they cannot pay their low-paid employee less than $15 an hour.
These are some of the most notable businesses in the Fox Valley.
And so to me, I'm still learning that the state legislature is where good ideas go to die.
I'm still learning that because frankly, the level of popularity that these bills have, that giving working people a raise is so consistent with the kind of ways in which Wisconsin operates.
that this is this there are Republicans and Democrats I meet that support this rule and urban uh Milwaukee all the way to Eau Claire uh there really just isn't this isn't a divisive issue it's just that our state legislature has refused to pay its bills and whether it's you know funding public schools or giving working people a raise we just haven't done that work and maybe we could attribute that to you know a long time of gerrymandered maps we could attribute that to folks that feel
not inclined to respond to their voters, but to big donors.
There's probably a multitude of reasons why it hasn't come to the floor.
But the truth is, this is a deeply popular issue in this community.
And I'm just not going to let the state legislatures get away without taking these up, even if they keep telling me no.
And even if they gavel out, we think that this is important enough to keep moving forward on.
State Representative Ahmad Rivera Wagner is our guest.
He represents the Assembly District 90 out of Green Bay.
One of the long-standing...
stances against raising the minimum wage as well.
These minimum wage jobs were designed for high school kids.
They're not supposed to be living wage jobs.
They're supposed to be stepping stones to other things.
But as we mentioned, this includes childcare workers.
This includes a lot of people.
And I know you were quoted as saying how many people in Wisconsin work these minimum wage jobs.
They can't all be kids trying to work the fry machine at a fast food place, right?
So how do
we
educate people to tell them?
No, this is not limited to 16-year-old kids getting their first job.
Well, fun, let's just put like the right size, the data.
A million people in Wisconsin will receive a raise under this bill.
A million people, right?
And so these are people that you run into every single day.
I'm a person that believes that when you work hard, you should be able to...
reap the benefits of working hard.
And I believe there's no one harder working than retail workers and people who are working at restaurants.
But this also goes all the way up to teachers, aides, mechanics, any, any job that you can think of that makes Green Bay and Wisconsin, Wisconsin, we are a blue collar community.
The assumption is that everyone has a job.
uses their hearts, their minds, and their hands.
And so they should be able to be helped.
But if this bill were to pass on day one, a million people would get a raise in this.
And remember, it starts at 15 and gradually goes to 20.
And so ultimately, that would even see more people getting a raise than we ever have.
In fact, what we're hearing from the data is that we really need to get beyond $20 a day.
to get to a living wage.
So this is still shorter and less connected to the reality people are facing because we are so far behind by two decades.
17 years has not been increased.
So yes, a million people on day one, but we would see a gradual increase of that for everyday people.
And so I think it is somewhat of a misnomer to think these are like the summer jobs.
Right.
We were talking.
Yeah.
We think quick trip employees also get raises as well as factory workers.
And I know that that seems radical to some people that anyone deserves who is working hard to be able to pay their bills.
I think we are well beyond 16 year olds feeling our every day people whose careers are barista.
Well,
it goes it goes to all the shortages across the state.
We talked a lot about childcare workers a day.
You know, the people that
the people that working people need so that they can keep working are also working but if you're not making any money that's why there's a shortage of that all over the state.
So it's a multi-pronged approach.
Representative, we appreciate your work and thank you for clarifying the timetable and keep fighting for everybody.
Everybody in the assembly to keep working for the next 10 months.
That will be terrific.
Representative Ahmaud Rivera-Wagner represents the District 90 out of Green Bay.
We appreciate your time this morning.
We look forward to talking to you again.
Thanks very much.
Have a good day.
You too.
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It's 8.52 right now.
We hope that your morning is going well, a bright and sunshiny day in most of Wisconsin.
So hopefully you're enjoying some of that.
You are listening to Daybreak on the Civic Media Network.
My name is Jamie Martenson.
And I'm Brian Newner.
We were talking with State Rep Amad Rivera-Wagner about his bill to increase the minimum wage across Wisconsin.
855-75-CIVIC is our number, and that's the number that Danny called from Oshkosh.
He's been hanging on.
He wants to jump in real quick.
Hi, Danny.
Welcome to the show.
Well, I'm glad to be here.
Thank you for inviting me on I I was hearing you know your state representative talk about the minimum wage for Being increased that I'm all for that and I wanted to state though I'm all for it for a different reason.
I'm not a businessman.
I I'm a veteran.
I'm sitting here
Only on social security at 79 years old where I'm making eight dollars and sixty four cents an hour Which
for a veteran for a veteran
is just gross.
Yes
That's
that
is that's unacceptable.
Yeah, it is gross,
you
know now that That's the pent and so that would go through the the US government It would also would it also go through the VA isn't is that what your militia?
Is there a military
pension?
That's just social security.
I haven't navigated pension.
And that's not even enough for me to gain some close to go ahead and find a job.
I'd like to go back.
I'd like to be a return of work person.
But like I said to your
producer, Parker, our producer.
Yeah, it turned out that
I wrote the president and I said, hey, you know what veterans ought to see on their social security statement is at least just to get it started is a statement on their same.
Hey, here's a cost of living increase for you in addition to your social security.
At least veterans would get to do respect they deserve.
That's true.
And Frank, let me ask you
this,
because
Again, that number is unacceptable.
Yes.
When you hear the president then talk about, oh, there's going to be no more tax on social security.
That's not going to make a difference, a big difference to you when you're getting $8.64 an hour.
Yeah, I'm broke after a very short time.
I'm being honest with you, I go to the food pantry to get my food.
twice a month here in Oshkosh living in Oshkosh and you know I'm well the amazing thing I might as well put in there is I'm due for a medal in Washington DC and once the you know once I get around again the paperwork going and here I am still you know eight dollars it doesn't make any difference what what's the frame of mine I'm in eight dollars and sixty
four
cents does
not
go too far
Danny, we appreciate the call and we appreciate your service.
And, you know, that the veterans do a lot of times get short shrift for what you have sacrificed.
And boy, it's sad and unacceptable.
Danny, thank you for the call.
Thank you for the
call.
Does it bother you, though, that the president tries to relay that he's such a military guy after you hear a call like that?
It angers me.
Yeah, it did it disappoints me.
It doesn't surprise me There's nothing genuine about him.
Look who we put in charge of the Department of Defense There's no respect for the mill the reason he says he respects the military as he wants it big and powerful Well, guess what the military was powerful before he became president.
Yes, make our military powerful It's been powerful throughout history.
So he doesn't get
to take credit for that.
The men and women who make up the military get to take credit for that and for us not to give them a living wage after they've served the country and put their lives on the line.
That's not how you treat people who work for you.
And we've seen this time and time again under this president.
There's been stripping away of veterans' rights, of VA facilities, of VA doctors, of these pensions.
They've whittled away.
They've made it harder for them to get medicines and mental health help.
And to hear a story like Danny's, man, our military deserves so much more and so do the families.
And I know people will say, well, what about people who...
Everybody deserves a basic decent life.
Nobody deserves to have to be struggling.
When Danny says it's 79 to think about I want to go back to work because I can't afford to live.
That's not how this country is supposed to be working.
And that's not a communist thinking.
It's not socialist.
It's human.
It's empathetic.
It's looking at people who have not only served this country, but people who've made it to 79 and are tired, and they should be able to with their social security and pension.
to live, not an affluent lifestyle, but they shouldn't be able to afford a place to live and something to eat.
Absolutely, and they shouldn't have to be thinking about going back to find a job at 79 years old because the government-
Well, you're gonna make seven and a quarter an hour.
Right,
because that's what we pay for minimum wage in this state, and the federal government that should be taking care of, especially our veterans who have done more for this country and put their life on the line in a lot of ways, refuses.
to give them the services and the care that they need.
And then to talk about the fact that he hasn't even been able to get his pension.
I mean, come on, come on, what are we doing here?
What
are we
doing?
We're taking care of the people we love, Jamie, if I may.
No, we're taking care of our
billionaires and our big companies.
That's what we're
taking care
of.
That is fact.
That is fact.
Well, we were going to end on a more upbeat note, but some days you don't get that upbeat.
You get Danny who makes us all think about the way things are and the way things should be and hopefully spurs us all to try to do a little better and get out there and make our voices heard, make your voice heard.
However you want to do that.
And we'll try to make our, well, we'll make our voices heard tomorrow.
We'll always make them heard.
We're going to make them heard.
Whether you're not, you're going to listen to us.
Wow.
No, everybody will listen.
And where should they listen?
They should listen right here on the Civic Media Network.
She's Jamie Martenson.
I'm Brian Unan.
This is Daybreak.
We'll be back tomorrow, Jamie.
Have a good
day.
Whether we like it or not.
Have a good day.
Have a
great day.
Thank you for listening.
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