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Wisconsin wakes up here.
Back to Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
I'm Brian Noonan.
Jamie, it is time.
It is time.
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That is a great prize.
Jamie, everybody's on the edge of their
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So, there you go, you know that, but what other do you need to know?
It's a wake-up call in more ways than one.
Time for some shit you need to know.
Well, this is a nice way to start Pride Month, isn't it?
An Appleton man was arrested yesterday, first day after allegedly removing a Pride flag outside the Ottegami County downtown campus and pouring gasoline on it.
According to the County Sheriff's Office, the man took down the flag, placed it on the ground in a parking lot, and began covering it with gasoline.
Deputies intervened and arrested the man before he was able to set the flag on fire.
Suspect was taken into custody and booked into the Atigami County Courthouse, County Jail, rather.
Authorities say the investigation remains ongoing.
seems pretty cut and dry.
But county officials quickly replaced the flag and emphasized that the incident does not reflect the values of the community.
Out of Game A county leaders said they remain committed to supporting the LGBTQ plus community and promoting inclusion, respect and belonging for all residents.
I mentioned this at the beginning of the show when we were talking about Pride Month.
I can't understand why there are still such closed minded
people out there who feel the need to do this.
There's no justification.
We'll get, well, the Bible, no, no, no, no.
That's not it, because Jesus said love everybody.
So let's cut out the Bible stuff and just realize that there's some narrow-minded, really, pardon me, really ignorant people out there.
Because why else do you do this?
What is it?
It doesn't affect you.
Who cares?
If you don't listen if you don't like gay people lesbian people anybody in that community then don't be one don't don't then but
They're not bothering you just by existing they're not bothering you
why
It's just easy just treat everybody the same because when you leave the house No questions asked you go about your business They go about their business and everybody just copacetically mingles among the world life is hard enough
In other headlines from stuff you need to know, it turns out that beef prices have now reached record highs with the average price of a pound of beef hitting $9.64 nationwide.
Steak prices are up about 16% from a year ago, while ground beef prices have risen more than 14%.
Experts say years of drought have reduced cattle herds across the country.
Higher feed costs and other expenses have made it difficult for farmers to expand production.
Despite these higher prices,
demand for beef remains strong.
In fact, Americans continue to buy large amounts of beef and demand is at its highest level in at least 25 years.
Wisconsin has nearly 13,000 farms involved in beef production, but most are small operations with fewer than 20 cattle.
An aging farm population is also creating challenges.
Many producers are nearing retirement age and the high cost of buying cattle makes it difficult for younger farmers to enter the industry.
Experts expect beef prices
to remain elevated for at least the next couple of years because ranchers are rebuilding the herds, which takes time before more cattle actually reach the
That's right.
More as you need to know, Destination Door County awards $318,000 in grants to five projects to advance accessibility, history and culture in Door County.
Those groups are receiving a total of $318,852 in the latest round of Community Investment Fund grants from Destination Door County, the Peninsula's Visitor Marketing Bureau.
The five new awards mean the program...
that the program has contributed more than 3.7 million to 71 projects across Door County since it began these quarterly grants in May of 2023.
Awards in this cycle, which is the 13th, went to a school district, a local government, two non-profits friends groups, and one non-profit art organization to be eligible for the awards projects need to meet specific requirements because the funds for the program come from room tax collections that overnight visitors to the
County pay at Destination Door County receives as part of its agreement with the Door County Tourism Zone Commission, winning the grants this cycle are Southern Door School District, Gibraltar Historical Association, Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands, Town of Egg Harbor, and Friends of the Door County Park System.
So congratulations to those groups on their
big grants, hopefully they use them well, I'm sure they will.
So it turns out that the Minnesota Republican Party is taking a little heat right now because they had their state
convention last weekend in Duluth.
And after they took a moment of silence, I have to pause and choose my words carefully here this morning.
They took a approved moment of silence for Derek Chauvin.
If you remember that name, he was the former Minneapolis police officer convicted in the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Now, this tribute Brian took place during the party's convention.
And there are reports that a delegate proposed this moment of silence from the convention floor, and it was approved by attendees through an informal vote.
And leaders at the convention, and we're talking about the state Republican leaders, then conducted a brief 10 second moment of silence.
Eric Chauvin.
Yeah.
Wow.
Uh, yeah.
Now, a spokesman for the Minnesota GOP said that in an email that quote, the moment of silent prayer was a spontaneous motion brought forward from the convention floor and was not held at the direction of party leadership, including the, uh, the rep Danny Nadu.
who the reformer newspaper reports had earlier asked the delegate not to bring the motion forward.
So it doesn't matter whether
it
The fact that there are some people who would have the audacity to do this, to look at a man who's been convicted of murder, who we all, again, we all watched him kill.
George Floyd now you can you if you want to argue about what happened afterward or if you have strong feelings on that that's your right but to to look at this and somehow treat a murderer as someone who is do the respect of your political party and then wonder gee how come people don't don't respect the Republican Party anymore
I don't know, maybe this.
He was convicted by a jury of his peers on second degree murder.
third degree martyr and manslaughter.
That was all in state court.
And Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, as you can imagine, he led the prosecution of the Chauvin case.
He has strongly condemned this tribute, as we'll call it.
He says the honoring Chauvin was hurtful to Floyd's family.
It's disrespectful to the law enforcement officers who serve honorably.
And it also ignored that the verdict was reached by a jury and upheld through the appeals process because Chauvin has appealed multiple times where that conviction has been upheld each and every time and he has not been released from prison.
Because the murder became a political volleyball.
It was
you know first it was there's outrage that somebody bit killed then it's victim blaming you know well george floyd's record and george floyd this then it was look at what these protesters are doing this is and so instead of looking at this as what it was police misconduct and murder
It turned into, now it's going to be a political statement.
The only political statement that should have come out of this is police reform.
We must have police reform.
But it turned into us versus them.
Look at what, look at what the Democrats and the Liberals are allowing to happen in our cities.
They're, they're cordoning off areas to protest.
And the, yes, you know why?
Because, and then it, then the Black Lives Matter thing started.
Why don't all lives matter?
I don't, if you, if you make that argument, you deserve a crack in the back of the head.
But that's when it all, that's when it all happened.
That's when things just, well, listen.
We love to get y'all worked up and then say, hey,
Striper Stay's coming up next on Daybreak here on the Civic Media
Taylor posted saying, I've always dreamed of getting to write these characters who I've adored since I was five years old watching the first Toy Story movie.
I fell instantly in love with the movie when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages And I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening of the current movie and don't worry everybody That's Taylor Swift fan.
She's currently selling pre-orders There are three different
just a
OK.
Wow.
Big time.
Wow.
This comes right before the premiere of the show, which happens to be.
Today in her in the peacock cast announcement teaser, she said, I think I'm the full package.
I own a business.
I live alone.
I have a dog.
If you were to ask my friends what my type is, they'd show you the world map.
Oh.
But
Media Network.
We were
Dore
it's
Plus,
That word is free, F-R-E-E, free, like free money that you could win on our Accelerate Your Summer multi-state text to win contest.
C, free, F-R-E-E.
You have until eight o'clock to get that word in, more words throughout the day, so keep listening to the Civic Media Network and your favorite station on that network.
Yes.
And you get to win.
Well, you know, we're not giving back unfortunately is healthcare.
We would love to be able to give out healthcare money for people, but because, well, the costs have gone up everywhere.
We can't.
Healthcare costs in Wisconsin are rising much faster than wages.
You probably know this.
What you might not know is that because coverage is harder to afford for many families, some people
are not going to the doctor.
So a new UW Madison report found healthcare costs in the Midwest have increased about 140% since 2000.
Wisconsin household incomes have only grown about 83%.
I can't do math, but that is a lot of percents
that
And because of that, we've talked about this before, people are dropping their healthcare and not going to the doctor.
So
Things are not looking good as far as researchers who say Wisconsin hospitals charge private insurers some of the highest rates in the country compared to Medicare helping drive up premiums and out of pocket costs.
So people are saying I would rather just roll the dice because I can't afford my premiums.
I can't afford these copays.
I can't.
I can't.
And you go to the doctor and you know you have insurance and yet you still get hit with a giant bill.
Like, I'm not, how did this all go up?
I'm not making any more money.
The thing that always gets to me is everybody touts the fact that we talk about immigration because this is where people want to come.
It's free.
Life is going to be better here.
And I understand that for a lot of people, depending on where you're coming from.
But when you really look at how we take care...
of our own citizens, it's not great when we're
making
them choose these types of situations and we can't even give them an affordable wage so that they can then afford insurance to take care of themselves.
It's a sad state of affairs when you look at it in those terms.
And I hate to be a Debbie doubter about it, but literally, you're dealing with your mom and having to move her.
I deal with my mom on a daily basis and her health.
And the fact that she lives on my dad's social security, because she always took care of businesses, but didn't take pay.
And so she lives on my dad's social security.
She has to make her ends meet between rent, all of her medicines, her Medicare, which has gone up over the last few months.
And the fact that, you know, at some point she probably needs food in there too.
And she has
We see it with our veterans.
We see it with children and their need to eat.
God forbid.
So it's for the land of opportunity and the quote unquote greatest country in the world.
We really don't live up to a lot of those monikers.
No, we we put profit before everything else.
And I am not I'm not anti profit.
I'm not anti business.
I want you know, I think everybody if you
If you can make that money and if you can be a success, good for you.
I really don't harbor any grudges.
I think everybody needs to be going back to our conversation about behavior, treat everybody the same.
If I have to pay taxes, everybody else has to pay taxes.
I'm not saying only the rich should pay taxes, but the rich shouldn't have more, because they have the availability of lawyers and accountants and things.
the system needs to be fixed so that everybody's out there because it's an embarrassment to the rest of the world.
It should be that we have people who have to decide between eating
and having a place to live.
And these are people who are working.
That's what we talk about this all.
These are not, if you go, well, they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job.
They already are.
Well, these are people who have jobs.
And guess what?
Their spouse has a job too.
And they only have two kids, which is not exorbitant.
And even if they had more kids, that's not the point.
The point is they're working full time and they still can't afford to live.
Right.
to make
They might have to have an employer or two to help them at said store or business.
I mean, it is a never ending vicious circle that we go through in this country.
And it's one of those things too is I was
growing up, my family owned a construction company and eventually my grandparents retired and my mom and my dad branched out on their own.
And I used to sit and listen to the conversations because they only had a crew of my dad and two others and they did major projects, right?
Where they did custom homes and they did all of these buildings and they worked with some of the bigger businesses in the town that we were at in South Dakota.
They had my dad and two guys, and the biggest concern that they had, and this was 25, 30 years ago.
We have to be able to pay them an affordable wage and how do we pay their health insurance?
Why my
parents as the owners would choose to go without so that those two guys would show up every day to go out onto that job and do that work with my dad.
Because without them, he couldn't do the work, right?
And these are the decisions that, you know, we're making.
So it's not the people who are just, you know, not working.
That's not what it is.
My parents worked really hard and they had to make those decisions long before this conversation.
And
Of course.
You may complain about your job, but you know you've got to work.
If you're self-employed to your point before, try to get insurance if you're self-employed.
And God forbid you're self-employed and you have a pre-existing condition.
Right.
Through no fault of your own.
That's impossible.
For all the years I was self-employed, thankfully my wife worked at, and she has diabetes.
So she could never be self-employed or she wouldn't have any insurance.
So she has to work at a big enough place that they cover insurance.
When that's your driving decision on how you can live your life, it's a pretty sad state of affairs.
because it's it's
it's upsetting just under one in five Wisconsinites have reported having poor or fair physical health but among the people with the lowest household incomes that rate was closer to one in three because people are not
Going to the doctor the report looks at how factors like income housing and the environment affect health outcomes in the state Just over 10% of adults did not see a doctor when they needed to because they couldn't afford it Let that sink in for a minute now That's it's about the same rate as it was the last time they did this assessment in 2020 94% of
Wisconsinites did have health insurance as of 2023.
That was similar to the rate reported in 2020.
But now 2023, that was three years ago.
And things have changed a lot in these last three years.
Um, she's, she's got a bad heart.
We know this.
We, we know that, uh, you know, there are times she probably needs to be in the hospital and she called me a few weeks ago.
She calls me frequently and she'll say, my heart's really bad today and she'll call me just to let me know.
And I'll say to her, do you need to go to the doctor?
Do you need to go into the ER?
I'm not going to because I can't afford it.
I can't do it.
I have congestive heart failure, but I won't go into the emergency room even though I know my heart is failing today because I literally can't afford it.
I'm just gonna sit down here in my chair and take some deep breaths and take a nap.
That's what she will tell me.
And I will call you later so that you know I'm okay.
That's what
she says
And that's how she is operated because she is so afraid that
If there's not something seriously wrong with her at the end of that visit on Medicare, she is going to end up with thousands and thousands of dollars in medical bills that she literally cannot afford on her fixed income.
I mean, and that's just where we're at.
And I'll be honest, you know, as a stay-at-home mom for many, many years, while we ran our own businesses and I did some part-time gigs out of our home studio, there were times that, you know, I'd be super sick.
My kids were one thing, I always took them in, but if
be
that probably needed an
But there are people who are making this choice with serious health issues.
And literally, when we're talking about that, for some people, it comes down to survival.
It's literally life and death for some people if they're having to make this decision because they can't afford to go in.
There's no words
No, and then you multiply your mom's case by...
how many hundreds of thousands across the country.
And the fact that those like using your example, well, then not only are you affected because your health gets bad, then your employer's affected because you can't come in and then somebody else might get the whole it's it's a house of cards that we've all been told we have to play.
And yet it's it there's only one winner and it's the insurance
Yeah.
hear it on Daybreak on The Civic Media.
Blake Superior to Lake Michigan.
This is Wisconsin's Morning Conversation.
Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
Accelerate your summer.
Text to win multi-state contest.
Oh my goodness.
Every day for the next week and a half, we're giving you a chance to win $100 and a Wisconsin Dells prize package.
And then every time you enter, you are put into our grand prize drawing for $250 in gas and another $250 in groceries.
So that is a fantastic prize.
But you have to be listening and you have to text in the word, which is
F-R-E-E
Free, that is the word you need to text us before eight o'clock so that you can qualify this hour using your Civic Media app.
Don't worry though, we'd love to have you text in as many opportunities as you possibly can.
You have another chance at nine o'clock this morning and then multiple chances throughout the day, but right now until eight o'clock, free is your word to text in, F-R-E-E.
So get that in because you can enter multiple times for all of those really great prizes.
Very exciting stuff.
Yes.
in a way, but free is the word.
This is, it's sad new.
It's an end of an era on Apostle Islands, an end of an era.
Now, I am, listen, I am well known with my struggle for Wisconsin names, and I will probably butcher this one too.
The National Park Service is going to dismantle and remove the historic Shaquacaman
Point light tower.
Yes.
Pretty close.
Officials say
But this lighthouse has some historical significance because it was first illuminated back in 1897.
And it helped guide ships carrying iron ore and other cargo into the Ashland area during the height of the region's mining industry.
And it featured, we're going to get really deep into the history
featured a powerful Fresnel lens that could be seen up to 16 miles away and was equipped with a 1,200 pound fog bell that helps ships navigate during poor visibility.
Now, of course, over the decades, there's been a lot of attempts to save this particular structure, including shoreline stabilization projects, stone barriers.
And then there was a 1987, basically 100 years after this lighthouse was built.
This attempt was...
100 years later by the Coast Guard to move the tower further from the water, and that actually damaged the tower and
only
This lighthouse was automated in 1964, which ended the era of having keepers at site, and today only the nearby La Pointe light remains active.
Now, my husband is a huge history buff.
He loves lakes, and so have you ever been?
Obviously, this is not one you're going into, but have you ever had the opportunity to go into one of those old lighthouses to see the way they worked and how the keepers lived?
were a lighthousekeeper.
Yes.
It
really
Mr. Plowking over on our YouTube chat says, I hope they saved the lens.
Those things are cool.
Yes, they are really cool.
We were recently at a lighthouse not too long ago.
And it was a very, as you said, very isolated, but it had been a family of a husband and a wife and their six boys in this
And it was crazy.
because they still had their original beds.
Now, they didn't even sleep on mattresses.
They slept basically on, it looked like a weaving of like leather is what it looked like in these beds.
And their double bed was basically the size of a twin bed for the husband and wife, which might be how they got six kids.
Who knows?
Yeah.
So I,
I always love that historical aspect of them, but in a couple of years ago, this particular lighthouse on the Apostle Islands had some state and federal officials do an inspection, and they officially agreed that the tower had reached the point where they couldn't preserve it anymore, and they had to remove it for public safety, which is why now it's an end of an era in that particular
We hope.
All right, listen, if you're on WMDX, we must say goodbye.
You're going to be listening to Stephanie Miller next, or you could just follow us over on the Civic Media app and jump in there.
Don't forget, you can always get our podcast on Spotify.
So follow us there and on Facebook and Instagram at Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
I am the Brian.
She is the Jamie.
This is Daybreak on the Civic Media Network.
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