The Budget, The Court And A Garden Of Heroes (Hour 1)

Good morning, welcome, welcome to Matt and Air on Air.

Jane Matt and Air, Greg Bach, Calvin Butenoff, coming to you live from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.

You can join us, call her text.

at 855-752-4842.

You can also leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.

We got a busy, busy show for you today.

Jim Santel, our friend and colleague and host of Amicus, a law review Saturdays from 9 to 11 a.m.

Across the Civic Media Network.

Jim Santel is going to be joining us, a former U.S.

attorney, also an acting attorney.

He still does lawyer things.

Does he play one on TV?

No, he doesn't have to because he actually is an attorney.

So

Jim Santel joining us after the 9 30 news next hour after 10 o'clock.

Tricia Peterson is going to be here from weekend.

That is Wisconsin early childhood action needed.

We're going to talk about the Wisconsin budget.

And the compromise that has been reached as far as funding childcare here in Wisconsin, not everybody's happy.

No, and I know that their group is not thrilled about this.

And when we booked Tricia, this was before it was signed.

But even though now it's signed, it got signed at 1.32 a.m.

Yeah, it was an

early deal.

We still need it.

We're still going to have the conversation on what they're looking to achieve and what they need going forward because this...

looks like it's just kind of maybe a band-aid at this point.

Yeah, it's not a fix.

It's not a long-term fix.

Paul Noonan from the Acme Packing Company will be here after 10.30 to talk all things sports.

Lots of buck news, bucks news.

A lot of bucks news.

The brewers are doing are doing real well.

They're doing better than we expected.

Yeah, it's good.

It's it's good time to be a Milwaukee sports fan.

It is.

Absolutely.

So stick around for Paul Noonan.

And then we'll wrap up the show as we always do with this shouldn't be a thing.

Today it's the bull by the horn edition.

Calvin found this one.

It's another good one.

You want to stick around for that?

That will come up around 1051-ish.

Just a reminder, we are all off tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July.

So we are going to have a specially curated best of show for you.

And as part of that, the free ticket Fridays is going to happen.

Yes.

Yes.

Even though it's the 4th of July and we're not going to be live, we are still doing free ticket Fridays tomorrow.

So starting with Pat Critello.

at 6 a.m.

from six until nine and then our show nine to 11.

Tom Hartman 11 to two, Todd Alba two to four and Maggie Dawn four to six.

Each of us will have a word for you to text in via the Civic Media app.

And then you are in the running for a four pack of Milwaukee Brewers tickets, club level seats.

For

the July 11th game next week against the Washington Nationals.

I keep on wanting to call him the generals, generals, which is basketball and the senators, which is like a 1920s team.

Right.

Yeah.

So, uh, yeah.

And so, yeah, if you hear that, if you hear that word, that is a fresh word that is new live, like you can text it in and it's going to be happening all throughout the day.

Get that civic media app on your phone to participate because you can only participate through the app and spelling does.

Yeah.

Spelling counts.

So they're not real complicated words.

You think not.

But, you know, I've seen some interesting

takes.

Well, and I think sometimes people are texting and, you

know,

you make finger mistakes and thumb, thumb errors as a word.

Thumbers.

Oh, no.

I got a thumber.

I had a thumber.

Yeah.

So I think that's sometimes how those misspellings happen.

Speaking of the budget, we're going to spend a little time talking about, as you mentioned, Greg, the Wisconsin state legislature did pass our biannual budget.

Governor Evers signing it late about 1.30 this morning.

Governor Evers, after signing it, included 23 partial vetoes.

including a provision that would have closed the Green Bay Correctional Institute.

This is something that's been talked about for a long time.

Green Bay Correctional Institution should close.

Evers wrote on that much.

The legislature, and I agree, but it's not responsible to require to do so by a deadline absent a plan to actually accomplish that goal.

Long-term planning, folks.

That's what it takes to get

things done.

It's called looking at outcomes.

Yep.

Yeah, you know if we do a what is b and what is c and what is d it's called consequence looking at potential consequences.

Yeah Something I think is important Is anybody surprised by this I mean when we talked about it yesterday it pretty much was like yeah, they're gonna they're gonna do it They're gonna sign it.

Oh, yeah, that

the

really was never in in question

No, and there were there have been plenty of there have been plenty of

vocal Democrats of the assembly and the Senate who were against this Francesca Han, Chris Larson, I assume based on her conversation with Keldor Roy, she was not happy with it, but it did go through.

One of the things that Keld Senator Royce did talk about was budget repair bill, possibly next year, because we asked about the childcare issue that we will talk more about with Trisha.

So

When it was reported though, and I'm gonna keep going back to this it seemed like everyone was pretty happy if you listen Maggie Dawn talked to Latanya Johnson who sits on the joint finance committee, right?

And she very much touted that this was a this this was a Good budget it wasn't perfect.

It wasn't the best it wasn't exactly what they wanted But it was better than what was being proposed the week before better than bad

Better than bad.

I believe her words was it undid harm that was going to be in that budget.

And that's a consequence of bringing the Democrats the table so late in the game.

Had they done it a few weeks or a month earlier, we could have been in a different spot.

But they waited and waited and waited until finally Diane Hesselbein was invited to talk about it.

And they got what they got.

And so, I mean, it's not perfect.

We know that.

But I don't want to think about what a Robin Voss victory budget would look like.

Or Republican governor.

Yeah, exactly.

If we had Eric Hovey sitting in the governor's mansion right now, we would be looking at considerably different things.

And one of the reasons I

seeing this kicked around to this morning is, what's the rush?

Why did we have to get this done?

What's the rush?

Why couldn't they have taken some more time?

This is tied into the federal budget.

Yeah, and I just saw a comment on the live stream.

Right now, we are talking about the state budget, not the national budget, which is a whole other nightmare to talk

about.

Yeah, we'll get to in a minute.

Yeah, we're talking about the Wisconsin state budget.

So if Congress's budget had become law first,

then Wisconsin could have lost out on more than a billion dollar in federal funds to help the state pay for badger care, badger care assistance, and then help hospitals offset losses from treating low-income patients.

This is because of all the changes to Medicaid in the federal bill.

So it's like we have to get this done before the federal, the Fed finished their budget, or we're gonna be cut out of this additional money.

Yeah, because the federal budget is going to hurt.

It's going to be painful.

There is a hospital, I believe it's in Nebraska that announced this morning it is closing.

It's a rural hospital in Nebraska that has announced this morning it's going to be closing because of the cuts coming to Medicaid.

And if a hospital is closing, and we discussed this before when we talked about the two hospitals in Northwestern Wisconsin, it wasn't just hospitals, it was clinics too that closed.

And we're going to see a lot of care being taken away from people, a lot of access to healthcare.

And, you know, folks are going to have to drive.

I mean, some folks in Nebraska, I'm going to guess that that hospital probably was, could be, for some would be 30, 40, 50 minutes away.

Oh, more.

Which means you take that away from them.

The next hospital may be hours away.

Yep.

So.

It's interesting too.

I heard a comment, why I was listening to Pat Kratlow when I was driving in this morning, talking about Mary Falzkowski.

who is a Republican here in Wisconsin, essentially was going off on hospitals.

And from what I gleaned, and again, this was when I was driving in this morning.

She's got to say, you know, hospitals are greedy.

And we can't let hospitals be greedy.

So are lawmakers.

So are insurance companies.

So are insurance companies.

I

mean, isn't there a lot of greed to go around?

So are the billionaires that they want to pass tax cuts for.

I'd like to see, okay, yeah, show me what hospital is greedy.

Well, and if you want to start talking about, I don't know, we never talk about cutting CEO pay.

We don't.

No, no,

we never do.

In fact, if anything, we can give money to corporations and they use that money to like golden parachute, the banking industry.

We bailed them out.

Yeah, it seems like CEO is the one place where you can be a failure.

and still get a golden parachute on the way out.

Well, also, I mean, you feel like you could cut the pay of some of the CEOs in half, and they're still going to be wildly rich.

It's still be really, really rich.

So what did popcorn king have to say about the budget?

Assembly Speaker, Robin Voss, this is from WPR, acknowledged that Congress and Trump are keen on capping Medicaid, quote, look, I would not necessarily have a problem with having reform of the system.

says Robin, but I think as long as it's allowed under federal law, the state of Wisconsin should be no different.

We should take advantage of that by doing this hospital assessment.

Unquote.

Let's do a hospital assessment.

I'd love to do a hospital assessment.

Let's look into our hospitals in Wisconsin and see what they need and see how important they are and see how they may need more hospitals around the area.

But, you know,

That's not what Robin thinks.

And that's not what he means.

He never, he's not about helping.

I mean, we still don't give him new moms medicaid, medicaid after 60 days.

So why would he think that hospitals are necessary?

Yeah, exactly.

The Wisconsin congressional delegation largely focusing on the budget's permanent extension of federal tax cuts that were passed during Trump's first term in 2016.

Brian Stile and Tony weed.

Took a little selfie as they were

heading

back to Washington to a vote on the budget bill for President Trump.

We're going to talk about that in just a minute and exactly.

Apparently what the deciding factor was for some lawmakers who had been a holdout on the federal budget.

Yeah.

Might not be.

Exactly what you expected.

Oh, there.

There's an interesting article in the New York Times this morning.

About the.

Little parade of lawmakers that went and met with the president yesterday and a little parting gifts that they got In order to vote for the budget

They're disgusting They're not whole and that's it

they're working for us Greg

They're working for Brian Stiles my congressman prove that Have you ever called this office?

No, I because I don't want to get mad.

I

just I

It was this close yesterday because we talk about it all the time my vote that wi.gov

and we really should honestly I mean there I was gonna say we should call tomorrow, but they'll be

off.

They'll be off Yeah Well, that's another reason why I think they pushed to get this done so quickly is because they want to go home, but I think we should all call them and ask about that sculpture garden at 40 million dollars we're setting aside for a Sculpture garden garden of heroes.

I've got I found more details about that great

So we'll share that coming up in just a little bit.

Don't forget, Jim Santel is going to be here after the 9 30 news.

Jim Santel, host of amicus, a law review that you can catch on Saturday mornings from nine until 11 across the civic media radio network, talking about budget, the budget in Wisconsin signed overnight.

Governor Tony Evers signing off on the document about 1 30 in the morning.

And now I guess the question is we'll have to wait and see if.

Governor Evers plans to run for a third term.

He said he would wait until the budget was done.

Bill from McConnell Walk is on the line.

Good morning, Bill.

Thanks for joining us.

All right, hey, great show.

I can't emphasize enough about calling these people's offices.

One of two things will happen when you call.

In most cases, you'll get a voice recording, which is just fine.

And I leave a message that I need to talk to you.

It's very important about your job because you work for me.

But given the current state of our politics,

I don't expect you to return this call.

So, um, keep doing that.

Keep ignoring America and see how that works with the voter polls or the voting.

I

appreciate that bill.

Yeah.

Call them.

They work.

They ostensibly work for us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ostensibly.

We pay them.

We do pay them.

My vote.WI.gov to tool.

Yeah.

It's meant to be used.

Exactly.

Stay close.

The Sculpture Garden.

More details coming up.

A good use of $40 million of taxpayer money.

You're listening to Matt Nair on air on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I promised you rose garden.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Welcome to Matt and air on air.

Jane, Matt and air.

Greg Bach doctor slide on the board coming to you live from our studio at radio park in Racine.

You can join us.

Call or text at 855-752-484.

to leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.

Coming up in just a little bit, Jim Santel from Amicus, a law review Saturdays 9 to 11 across the network.

Jim will be joining us.

Going to be talking about a number of things happening with the Trump administration and immigration and citizenship and all of those things.

So stick around for Jim Santel.

He does a great job.

You should listen on Saturdays.

Oh, absolutely.

And this is a great time to talk about civic media.

media.us slash shows.

Go to the show's website.

You can find our episodes, all the shows that we have, but you can find Jim's, the archives of his show.

It is many law school classes every single week.

And

last week, two episodes.

There was two episodes.

There was a Saturday and a Sunday.

There was so much happening.

So yeah, go to

civicmedia.us slash shows.

and download those episodes.

You can play them whenever you like, get them on your device or get a, uh, subscribe to them as a podcast.

All right.

That's my pitch.

I'm done.

Speaking of pitches, uh, if you want a great article about the Wisconsin state budget, Dan Schaefer was up late along with Charlie Pittman, our news director and other people in the civic media news department.

Go to civicmedia.us, click on news.

And there was this terrific, again, article from Dan Schaefer on there and from other folks in our wonderful news department talking about the budget deal.

I'll make sure that that article is also linked in the show notes as well.

So it's easy to find it.

Before we get to the budget in Washington, which they're still, how keen Jefferies has been speaking for like five hours.

But we're going to talk about some details in a minute.

Jean from Eau Claire is on the line.

Good morning, Jean.

Thank you for joining us.

Great.

So I think there's been 151 so far with the great James Santel.

Haven't missed one outstanding recommended to everybody.

Everybody could use a little lesson in the law and government.

And I just was wondering, well, first of all, I want to thank you so much for bringing up that important detail of why Tony Evers had to sign in the middle of the night.

This

happens to be a habit.

of people with R after their name going late in the evening overnight till everybody can't hardly stay awake.

I think that's, you know, I mean, boy, you got to sleep a nap or have a plate bed in your room when you're, you know, where you're working there.

And also, the important detail of losing funding.

I think that's significant.

And I've been, wow.

Between watching that, listening to what's going on, and watching our government, it is so unbelievable to me.

I'm 70.

I've watched for years.

I'll tell you, I got quotes full of notebooks of things that have gone on to get us where we are today, and it started in Wisconsin.

There's hope for us.

But right away, you're going to don't get depressed, because this is something that we're all going to do together.

We have to do it together.

And that is to begin organizing in small groups and getting people to run to get these people out of office because we can do it.

And it all depends on us.

20 people couldn't do it alone, cannot do it alone.

People with a DF of the name cannot do it alone.

They need all of us because really we need to be active and we're important.

We can't just expect everybody to do our business.

We need to help.

Thank you so much.

Keep up the great job and really appreciate

it.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you so much, Gene.

And Gene is a great example again.

She's under 70.

She's very, very active.

Very.

They know her.

She calls.

Which is

good.

Which is great.

And honestly, like, it's hard not to get so angry and frustrated and so just, I mean, because we live in this.

This is what we do for a living.

And I will be honest with everybody.

I'd spend the past few days, weeks, have been hard watching this budget trounced through.

That's why like for me, the Wisconsin state budgets are like, this feels like a win.

And

the Wisconsin state supreme court on the abortion ruling too.

Like it's, those feel good.

I feel like those are, those are movements in the right direction.

Are they perfect?

Nothing's perfect.

But this

This federal bill is something that we need to be very aware of every aspect and when it goes through and and folks who are like they these guys are great We love them when they start losing their benefits when they start their hospitals start closing hospitals closing their taxes go up You got to remember where this came

from But you know what Greg what?

We'll all be able to go to a garden

and forget all our troubles.

Only Jane, if it's a garden full of

heroes.

In the National Garden of American Heroes that we mentioned yesterday, this is in the federal budget bill, $40 million.

$40 million to celebrate the 250th birthday of America next year.

There's a great article in CNN from today about this.

and what this will require in order to make it happen.

There's kind of a problem with a bunch of this stuff.

Again, point A, what happens if we do A, then what is B, and what is C, and what is D?

Yeah, we have one sculptor who says it can take 10 years for a project like this to be done right.

Oh, done right?

They don't

care about right.

There are many ways to go about this.

Doesn't seem like anyone has thought about this.

This is not a well thought out plan.

No, really?

And they haven't even started.

No, they haven't.

And artists who want to do this and sculpt one of these statues, they only have until September.

Yeah.

And this is supposed to be done by next year.

Next July.

40 million dollars.

But we have hospital closing.

We have...

childcare centers closing.

We have all kinds of other, but thank goodness.

Thank goodness we're going to have a garden of heroes.

Hey, to our MAGA listeners, because we know you're out there, you like to tell us what we look like.

Make this one make sense.

How is this a good use of dollars?

Please, I'd love to know.

We got news on the way.

Stay close.

You are listening to Matt Nair on air.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

We'll be right

back.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Welcome to Matt and air on air Jane Matt and air Greg Bach doctor slide on the board Coming to you from our studio at radio Park and Racine where you can join us caller text at 855-752-4842 Leave a comment if you're watching in the live stream on Facebook YouTube and what used to be Twitter next to our at this time Paul Newton will join us from the Acme packing company to talk all things sports

Things looking pretty good for the brewers.

Lots

of things going on with the bucks.

So Paul Noonan will be here to give us an update that is after 10.30 news.

Right now he joins us every week at this time from Amicus, a law review which you can catch Saturday mornings 9 to 11 across the network.

Jim Santel is here.

Good morning my friend.

How are you?

Jane, Greg, always a delight to be with you, especially as we look forward to what the 249th anniversary of our nation is.

that's a good thing right we have much to celebrate even in the midst of our great and profound challenges

right yes profound challenges exactly i i

didn't

want to do this before we went to the news but i didn't get around to it uh we had all these holdouts you know of the budget in washington a lot of house members saying no no i'm not going to vote for this is terrible i will never ever vote and then of course

And their house banned for the Republicans is spineless capitulation.

That's just their band.

Because everybody caved.

But apparently they didn't cave without some parting gifts.

From the New York Times this morning, a click of House Freedom Caucus members walked out of the White House early yesterday afternoon, seemingly adjusting their attitudes.

Representative Tim Burchette from Tennessee posted, quote, the president was wonderful as always.

Informative funny, he told me he liked seeing me on TV, which is kind of cool.

He loves TV.

Byron Donald says, do you know, did you show them what he signed for you?

Oh yeah, he signed a bunch of stuff.

It's so cool.

So they went in to meet with Donald Trump and he gave them some autographed souvenirs and then and they got to take pictures with them to apparently some of them and then sent them on their way and they voted for the bill.

You can get presidential M&Ms and pens and lanyards, all kinds of things, frankly true of every administration.

It's trinkets, it's nice shiny things and

At the risk of, again, overstating the simplicity of this, it is dramatically traumatic that our representatives make decisions based upon getting stuff that they can give their family members and kids from the recent visit I had with the president at the White House.

This is not how it's supposed to

work.

Yeah, no, this shouldn't be a thing.

I

went to the White House

and all I

got was this lousy bill.

Yeah.

There you

go.

Well, let's turn our attention to other things.

Let's focus, start with Jim, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on abortion that came down yesterday.

Right.

And it's a very significant piece of writing from our Supreme Court.

You've got a majority and it's authored by Rebecca Dallett, who is again among majority.

And she is taking up this 1849 legislation that has been the subject of our view ever since Roe versus Wade was overturned in 2022.

It bans anyone who destroys the life of an unborn child, six years in prison, $10,000 fine.

And the argument was, well, again, that's the default legislation.

That's the law in the state of Wisconsin.

A whole bunch of litigation goes on.

Eventually, you've got a lower court that says, no, no, it no longer applies.

And yes, indeed, yesterday, the Supreme Court agrees with it and says this.

Comprehensive legislation enacted over the last 50 years since the time of this initial piece of legislation regulating in detail the who, the what, the where, the when, and the how of abortion so thoroughly covers the entire subject of abortion that it was meant.

as a substitute for the 19th century near total ban on abortion.

The bar is usually high for implied repeals.

That's the litigation.

That's the lawyer word for this, but the majority found the legislature had met that bar by entirely revising the law on abortion.

It is no longer the law of the land.

And again, we can move on.

Plainly the issue is not resolved yet.

This simply, again, gets rid of the 1849 legislation and does permit abortion now to go ahead in Wisconsin.

Will there be?

Do we know about other challenges nationwide, including some focuses on amazing issues?

Like when does life begin?

And that may begin resurfacing at some point if not here in Wisconsin around the nation.

But this is a good decision.

This is a solid decision.

And again, it is premised upon a balanced and thoughtful reasoning by the majority.

I just want to reiterate this maybe with a little less lawyer speak.

So the court decided that the ban from 1849

no longer held because there had been so much legislation after 1849 that amended this measure that the 1849 law was no longer the standard.

Is that accurate?

That's exactly right.

And so, for example, Justice Bradley goes on to say, all the legislation since that time, all the laws since that time have given us great clarity and plainly implicitly and explicitly

they overruled what was done back in 1849.

She says, who may perform in abortions, only doctors, where can they be performed within 30 miles of a hospital, goes on to describe all the things that have happened since 1849.

And she says, every conceivable question about abortion has been answered by the legislature since then, 1849 no longer holds.

The world has moved on.

And again, 2025, we're now here in contemporary Wisconsin, a good

Good news, not without its critics, obviously, but it makes perfect sense not only in terms of the policy, which is all about privacy rights again, right?

It's about bodies and decisions that you can make about your own body, privacy rights.

It's that affirmation once again.

And it also makes sense legally in terms of the way that legislation works and the ways that judges decide on how these things should come out.

The question I have, people said it in a roundabout way in the papers, is the 1849 law just rescinded?

Is it gone?

Or does it still stay in the ether like it always has in the background?

That's the question I have, because I can imagine with this decision, certain individuals in positions of power will want to do...

I don't know, puts things on the ballot for a constitutional amendment, or do other ways of referring back to this law?

Does that law now no longer exist?

The answer is, of course, it's still in our history, unlike our current president who liked to erase a lot of history.

This, too, is a part of our history.

It is still out there.

There are really two answers to the question.

One is, it is no longer legally in effect.

And so it is dead for that purpose.

But Greg, you're a very good question.

In a democracy, what happens is we have legislatures that can indeed resurrect issues and pass new legislation.

We've got judges who can decide things in different ways down the road.

That's the beauty and also some of the challenge of the country in which we live.

But for today, once again, 1849, the restriction, the limitation, the ban on abortion in Wisconsin no longer exists.

And what that means is now doctors and their patients can go ahead.

with the certainty that they will not be the subject of any any criminal prosecution in the state of Wisconsin.

That once again, the privacy right that the Supreme Court is upheld.

Jim Santel is our guest.

He's host of Amicus, a law review Saturday mornings 9 to 11 across the civic media radio network.

I highly encourage you to check it out.

We're talking about the decision this week by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the 1849 abortion ban.

From what I understand, Jim, this.

This decision just goes back now to what the situation was in Wisconsin before Dobbs fell Right, right.

So any

restrictions that were in place at that point will still be in place

Right and again legislators can can tinker with all those kinds of things but

the whole idea behind what Justice Alito did back in June of 2022 was to say, no longer a federal issue, no longer protected by the federal constitution, so states, you figure it out.

And that's why people went back and said, wow, okay, back in Wisconsin.

We've got this 1849 thing.

Here it's banned now, now at the invitation, candidly, of Justice Alito and the other justices back in 2022.

Wisconsin has now answered his question and said, no, here in Wisconsin, the privacy right is still there, cannot criminalize abortion.

It is legal in Wisconsin.

We join that map of many other states out there that have done the same thing, either by a referendum, by a judicial decision, or by some legislative enactment of various kinds.

You can do that all different ways.

Here we have a judicial order finding the 1849 laws no longer in effect.

And we can now once again,

embrace privacy rights here in Wisconsin.

Rebecca Bradley was the conservative justice who wrote the dissent, right?

Boy, she had another meltdown.

Right.

Rebecca, Dallin wrote the majority, and Bradley wrote the dissent, and she has been obviously very, very critical not only of this.

But of new members joining the bench, as we know, coming up on August 1, we've got a new Justice of the Supreme Court.

Once again, you look at those kinds of comments.

Judges, for the most part, when they speak at a university, sometimes they will comment generally upon their work.

But judges speak from their written comments and from their oral comments during oral argument.

these attacks that are personal in nature that suggests that there is something more nefarious going on, they're not judicial, regardless of what side of the political aisle you're on.

And it is unfortunate at best, once again, I'm being very diplomatic.

You are with Justice Bradley, Rebecca Bradley, that is not Anne Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Bradley, those kinds of comments do nothing but

But, frankly, bring more disrepute upon members of the judiciary.

This is what Katanji Brown Jackson's been talking about recently.

When you engage in these ad hominem attacks, whether you're other judges, she's talking about the president in particular.

What do you do?

You send a message to everybody out there that, well,

Maybe I don't have to follow this because one judge or one president or one legislature told me that they're all crazy Yeah, and that is a very dangerous thing to do.

And so what Rebecca Bradley has done here does not help does not help the rule of law in Wisconsin and frankly damages it dramatically,

but it's also on brand I mean her her speech her speech the night that oh that Susan Crawford one was

I mean, look, I don't agree with what she said at all.

But even if I did, I'd be like, hey, you can't

tone it

down.

You can't talk like that.

I

mean, and also I was listening to Maggie show, I think it was sometime this week, they were talking about this.

Justice Dallet was getting was getting plaque for speaking at an organization, I believe, but.

Rebecca Bradley spoke at the RNC, like this thing of like, we're not, I'm all for judges not being partisan at all.

I'm all for judges, if they have to run for office, running as bipartisan as possible, but that's not the world we live in.

But there's also something to be said about the way you comport yourself and the way Justice Bradley does, which is just visceral and mega and just to the hilt.

If you listen once again, as we all did at the time of Susan Crawford's election, and even you pull it up today, I suspect it's very much in the annals of this very broadcast here.

When you listen to what she said that night, it's not simply saying, well, I voted in an opposite direction.

It is way beyond that.

And basically saying, it's going to be very difficult for me to work on the bench, that sort of thing, even in terms of inter-justice collegiality, none whatsoever.

And it is violent language.

that should be condemned.

You're right, Greg.

Let's put on our big justice robes, maybe.

Jim

Santel is here.

We're going to continue our conversation.

Stay close.

You are listening to Matt Nair on air on the Civic Media Radio

Network.

Good morning and welcome.

Welcome to Matt and air on air and getting into our smooth jazz.

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Call her text at 855.

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It's the 4th of July So we will be off and running a specially curated best of show for you, but free ticket Fridays will go on correct So you want to listen starting with Pat Crite low between six and nine hours show nine to eleven Tom Hartman 11 to

Two Todd Alba were going on the road from two to

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It will be interesting to see in the chat, like, because the chats come through with who will be listening.

That's true.

While we're on vacation.

That's true.

Will you be

listening?

Listeners?

No pressure.

No pressure.

Just send you a note afterwards and say, where were you?

We missed you.

Jim Sandel is here.

Our friend and colleague and host of Amicus, a law review across the network Saturday mornings from 9 until 11.

There have been a number of things happening in the court's gym, including giving parents the option to opt out.

They're taking their kids out of classes that contain LGBTQ plus materials

Yes, this is that we've talked about this before and I think all of us looked at this and thought please tell us we're not going to go in this direction Will the Supreme Court?

I decided to do just that this comes out of Maryland It's a group of parents who are insisting on getting the right to opt out to take their youngsters their grade school children out of those segments

of their education in public schools where horror of horrors, we might read a storybook that talks about two dads or two mothers or the notion that everybody, regardless of who they are, is to be loved and cared for.

And the Supreme Court decided, again, based upon religious grounds, not a surprise coming from the Supreme Court, you voice a religious objection.

to your child hearing about stories of LGBT people.

And in America today, you can demand in Maryland and now beyond in other school districts, presumably, you can demand that your child be taken out of that portion of the instruction where that school, that storybook, that school story is read or recited.

It is stunning in its narrow view.

But beyond that, one thinks about this more broadly.

There have to be school boards.

I hope there's school boards and superintendents and parents across the country were thinking about the consequences of this.

Suppose I say, again, this is not true, but about me.

Sure, it's a hypothetical.

Suppose

I say that my

religion tells me, Jane, that you should not be in a professional position like hosting a significant radio show.

You should stay home.

And you should cook and you should clean.

My religion tells me that.

And I don't want my child to be read any story about Jane Matinair going to work and meeting with Greg Bach and being on the air or doing anything that's professional.

My religion tells me that that is wrong.

And now I'm going to go to my school district and say, you know what?

I don't want Jane.

I don't want John to be exposed to that.

According to the Supreme Court, I've got a right.

to have my child opted out, and you can think about many other examples, but opted out of that kind of instruction.

Religion, once again, not surprising.

When you raise religion to this court, you get not a pass, but you get a higher, higher appropriate, higher approval rating, if you will, from the court.

And here you've got a consequence that is far beyond.

It is offensive.

It's offensive to the LGBT, to all of us, to all of us, right?

interestingly, here's the other piece.

If you want to do nothing else this coming 4th of July weekend, and yeah, you probably do have other things to do, pull up the Supreme Court decision in this case, comes out of Maryland, and you'll see that attached to both Sonia Sotomayor's

vicious, virulent, appropriate dissent, and also the majority opinion are color excerpts from these books.

They very seldom do that.

You can see page after page in the appendix to these opinions showing you exactly what these books are all about.

I read them and I think, yes, what's the big deal?

And?

Plainly the majority thinks, see, this is what we're talking about.

Sonia Sotomayor looks at this and says, this is how benign, this is how loving, caring, this is the lesson from

one of the books that she attaches in particular, which is all about making certain that I'm still a part of the family in which my uncle is is a part of my family getting married to his friend now.

Well, and that's obviously we can't have that in schools anymore.

Well, and I'm I

we don't have a whole lot of time left, Jim.

But I'm assuming because people can claim this now on religious grounds.

What if I'm a non religious parent?

Can I go to can I go to school and say,

Based on my non-religion, I am pulling my kid out of this class, which teaches Christian theology.

Right.

Or even more broadly, it just talks about religions of the world generally, right?

That's obviously the next case.

It opens up this terrible door.

And once again, suggests that local teachers and administrators do not have the professional responsibility to make these decisions.

That's what they do.

That's how we pay them.

That's what they're schooled in.

Let them teach, again, not without some limitations, without curriculums.

Let them do their jobs without this nitpicking.

And if, in fact, there is a teacher who goes off in some other area, fine.

You can remedy that.

That is not this case.

That's the problem we're now facing in America as a result of this major Supreme Court decision just last Friday.

School's open again in a few weeks.

We'll see how this plays out.

Jim Santel hosts Amicus, a law review on Saturday mornings 9 to 11 across the Civic Media Radio Network.

Thank you so very much, Jim.

Happy 4th of July.

We will see you next week.

Happy 4th of July.

249 years.

Take care.

Stay close.

You are listening to Matt Nair on air.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Welcome to Matt Nair on air.

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Coming up later on this hour after 1030, the Acme Packing Company's Paul Noonan will be here to talk all things sports, and we will wrap up the show as we always do around 1051.

With this, shouldn't be a thing.

Today it is the Grab the Bull by the Horn Edition.

You want to stick around for that.

Right now, though, we are joined by Tricia Peterson is our guest.

She is with We Can.

And we're going to talk about the Wisconsin budget and childcare in particular.

Tricia, good morning.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Good morning.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

So the Governor Evers, early in the morning, 1.30 this morning, did sign the budget.

There have been

Some concessions to child care, but obviously this is not everything that everyone had hoped for.

Definitely not.

We were definitely disappointed.

That's for sure.

Another Band-Aid, which we expected.

So we'll get 110 million for the next year.

And then in June, it's fight for yourself because no one's coming to save us.

So the ones that are voting will be out as of March of next year until the following year, till January.

So as of June, when the money runs out, we will not have anything left.

So I think you'll continue to see closures and you'll continue to see

prices hiked and parents pulling their kids because they just can't afford it.

So it's going to be, it's not going to be pretty.

We've been kind of struggling with the budget this week just because you have, when it was announced, Governor Evers, the Republicans and some Democrats were like, this is, the Democrats, it's not the best, it's not perfect, but it's better than what the Republicans were going to give us.

And then a lot of Democrats came out and we can came out and said, we are not in favor of this.

We don't like this.

We found out that, you know, as you said, you're going to get one year of funding.

I have a bunch of questions.

The first of all is why would they agree to just one year of funding?

Why wouldn't they fund for two years?

And which is the length of the budget, which is the length of the budget.

It just makes sense.

It seems like they said, the Democrats almost said, all right, we'll give them one year and then we'll just, we'll check back in a little while.

But also the second question is, why do Democrats then?

And I'm not asking you, I guess I don't want to ask you to speak for the Democratic Party, but why do they call this a win if something like this, which is such a big concern, is not being helped in the long run?

As you said, being given a band aid, that was a very

weird question asked, but it just doesn't it doesn't make sense.

It just doesn't make sense.

I think at the end of the day, they wanted us in the budget and to begin with, we had $0

in the

budget.

So I think that was the biggest piece of the compromise.

We'll give you one year, but the money isn't even coming from the budget money.

It's actually coming from the ARPA funds.

It's the interest that they've earned on that.

So it's not even coming from the budget.

So $0 of that $110 million is actually coming from the budget.

So this is money.

This is interest money.

And so I think this is the compromise of putting us in there and giving us to shut us up.

is that I feel the other little pieces though, there is money from the budget that is supposed to help us, like the 4K bill.

I think if we're still here, we can utilize that, but I don't think I'll be here to utilize it.

And then I think the thing that we get really frustrated about is adding more children already into the classrooms

is

not going to help our budgets.

It's actually gonna run teachers out and we won't have the centers because who

you know, comes to work as the teacher.

So I feel like there's there's such a

misunderstanding of what the actual ask should have been.

And we've been saying this for years of wages, wages, wages are our issue.

It's not deregulation.

It's not adding more kids to our centers.

It's not anything else, but wages.

How do we get monies into the teacher's pocket so they stay?

And they feel valued and heard.

I think that at the end of the day, that's it.

I commend them for trying to compromise, but I also feel like they hung all this money in front of us and now they're like, do something that's so illegal and so unethical.

And then I'll give you some money like that.

I just, it doesn't sit well with me.

Tricia Peterson is our guest.

We were talking about the Wisconsin state budget and Tricia, you own a daycare center.

Yes, I own a licensed child care facility group center out in Dodge County.

It's a very rural, rural area.

It's a smaller center.

But the need for childcare, especially in those areas, must be massive.

It is.

And our wait list is just it's long.

And there's, you know, you have to go 25 miles to the next town to get another child care center.

But what we struggle with is quality in this area and are on the state.

So I feel like this budget just pushed us even worse into that category.

So

a question also.

So when we we hear the soap.

We were on the outside of course we as this show we were not a part of these discussions So all I know is what we were told and one of the biggest things they told us was that Diane has state senator by Diane Husslebine Who is the minority leader of this of the Senate was invited to the table to have this discussion?

Besides her was there anybody else in that room?

who had a deep knowledge of what you were looking for, who could have fought for exactly what you were trying to get.

Or at the very least, I'm just going to start with just two years of funding.

I'm going to make it that easy, just two years of funding.

Or was it a matter of the people in the room fighting for your advocating for you just didn't get it right?

I don't know how to feel right now.

I think my

mind is just so

crazy.

But I honestly don't know if anyone else is sitting at that table.

I wish

Corinne was on here too to answer those questions.

I feel no because I feel like some of those Dems would have really voiced their opinions because they're the ones that voted no for this bill.

So I don't feel that.

I truly believe that they feel that they want, they compromised in one by giving us the one year

because we

weren't even in the budget.

So I feel like that is their win, I think, per se.

And I just sit here wondering, so when do I tell my families I have, like, here's my new rights and I know you can't afford it, so what's the best?

Should we close in December or in May?

Like, it's one of those situations, so.

There's, and yeah, there are so many questions I have, Tricia, and.

I

agree.

Yeah, and the thing is, is like, we try to like look at the point of view of the people who say this was a.

I personally feel like had the Democrats been asked the table sooner, like two or three weeks before, there would be a different story to tell right now.

And we may be having a different conversation or you wouldn't need to be here right now because you'd be like, I'm going to keep running my business.

But

yeah, and celebrating like this is a huge like this is such a historic time that they could have really, really.

really done something great for us and the kids of the future.

At the end of the day, it's not about me.

It's about the children of the future and how we can help them and support them to have a great foundation to get them to go to school and to have a great education.

And so the education journey starts with us and now pulling us out of those opportunities for these families to be in the workforce, I think.

You're not gonna see it today or tomorrow, but as the year goes on more centers I know like a couple weeks ago There was like five centers that closed in one week because they just have done fighting.

Yeah, and you just can't do it anymore You just can't do it

anymore.

No, and it's like we're not being heard because at the end of the day I think it was Voss that said we don't want the money to go directly to the center.

Yeah, but unfortunately

the teachers are the ones that need the money, right?

We need to get them $13 and $14 an hour isn't going to pay the bills for them to, I mean, I have some staff that literally can't move out of their house.

They graduated college, they have an associate degree in childcare and they can't move out because they can't live off of $13 to $14 an hour to pay their bills.

Like who would allow their kids to go into this field?

You know, like the future isn't going to be there.

And Trisha, I think it's important to

for folks to recognize that there is a lot more structure to daycare than I think most people who do not have kids realize.

You are teaching them things.

There's a schedule.

It's not like my daycare where I would allow them to run around and throw pancakes at each other.

You actually teach them things and prepare them for school.

We have lesson plans, assessments, portfolios.

We do conferences.

We do everything a school district does and more because we're opened 12 months out

of the year.

So when they're closed, when COVID shut down,

we were the ones... You

were open.

Those kids stay in school and still getting and maintaining their education.

So we are the base foundation.

90% of children's brains are formed before the age of five.

That's us.

We are the

experts.

And now we're pretty much, this is what I said to the group last night is like, I honestly feel that they don't think our profession even exists and that we're even anything except.

the bottom of the line scum.

Like we barely made it through college.

We don't even have an education.

Like we can't support that because 16 year olds can do this.

Why can't you?

Well, no,

baby sitters get paid more than

us.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

If you paid a babysitter, you would be paying them more than 13 bucks an hour and all they're doing are watching your children play.

We are talking about educators who are actually teaching our kids and preparing them for

school and we're saying, we're going to pay you less than a babysitter.

Well, and I think, and this is not, this is not on you to do, Trisha, but I feel like it's also sort of a branding issue because when people hear childcare, they equate it to daycare and childcare just sounds like babysitting.

And that's not what this is.

This should be called school.

This should be called early childhood.

development, education, whatever you want to call it to make people understand, oh, I'm paying for an education, not just to make sure my kid doesn't get beans all over their face and come home gross and dirty.

That's my daycare.

That's Jane's daycare.

It's pancakes galore.

That's what you call mine.

And the other thing too, and we discussed this was Korean is that on a base level of policy and not policy, but of politics.

To go to your constituents and say, regardless of party, I fought for these childcare centers to stay open, to get the money and to make sure they're paid well, so your children have a place to go so you can work and that they don't close down.

That's a win-win, regardless to me of party.

Like, to me, you go back to your district and you celebrate making sure that- Look what I did for you.

A thousand centers don't close, but for some reason, this obstinance, this, as you said, this looking at what you do as less than is the biggest problem.

And

extremely short-sighted.

It's really short-sighted.

Which,

yeah, which we love to

do.

Troy from Mount Horab has been waiting a long time on the phone.

Thank you for your patience, Troy.

Real quickly, what did you want to say?

Oh, that's fine.

Um, I just really hope that the governor got assurances from these Republicans that they're not going to hold up funding and joint finance like they did the last budget because, you know, they can say whatever they want, but then they don't do it.

So.

I just hope that that was handled.

I hear you Troy.

Who would think that we would perhaps be somewhat suspicious of the Republicans and the Joint Finance Committee?

Why

would

that be?

Don't tell me.

I would love to hear of an instance where the Joint Finance Committee said we'll pay for that and then says no they just flat out say no we're not we're not paying for the we're not paying for hospitals or clean water or educate no that's I would almost respect them more.

Well, that's what they do.

They just say no.

They've just gone and

said, yeah, we're not going to fund anything.

We're going to continue our conversation with Tricia Peterson.

We are talking about child care and the Wisconsin state budget that did get signed about 1.30 this morning by Governor Evers.

Stay with us.

You are listening to Matt Nair on air coming to you across the vast statewide, countrywide.

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Good morning and welcome back to Matt Nair on air.

Jane Matt Nair, Greg Bach, Calvitini on the board coming to you live from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.

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Call or text at 855-752-4842.

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Trisha Peterson is here.

She is a dick here.

child care center owner in Wisconsin and we're talking about the Wisconsin state budget.

They did give some crumbs to the child care industry.

That's what we're talking about right now.

We did have a text come in from John listening on WAUK John from the Falls who says the answer why Republicans gave in is pretty easy.

They don't want 18 months of negative press and how they've screwed kids in our state.

when they can provide some funding for a year and hope that the negative consequences ending come so close to the election, it won't get noticed by voters.

Well, I mean, Robin Voss is the man who said they gave the greatest injection of funding into the educational system in a generation, which is easy to say when you give them nothing

for so long.

If you give a big

increase, if I give you five bucks after 20 years of nothing, that's the greatest increase you've gotten from me.

Uh, Trisha, we had Keldor Roy's on the show.

I'm sorry.

State Senator Keldor Roy's on the show this week.

And one thing she mentioned was a budget repair bill.

Are your boots right back on the ground talking about this with her and other leaders as well as other lobbyists to

Look towards next year to try to get a fix in for the rest of this budget period

Absolutely, I don't think we'll stop as much as we say we're upset I don't think it's gonna end I think we'll still try our hardest to continue the fight and Hopefully sit down with them if they're open to it and to have discussions about it.

I think most democratics are

listening to us.

I'm not sure like all of them, there were some that voted for this bill.

So I'm not sure all of them understand the process.

And I think that's, we go back to every time as education and educating them on what we do and why it's so important.

So absolutely we'll try our hardest.

I'm curious what you hear from your parents, Trisha.

I mean, they must, they must understand what a valuable service you provide.

They must be baffled why our lawmakers don't want to fund it.

Oh, absolutely.

The biggest thing of the hurdle is getting them to advocate for us as well, you know, trying to get them to understand that they need to hear your voices

and

not only them and the employers, but they do.

And they understand that because it's coming from their pocketbooks, I can't afford any more.

And I'm currently right now the highest center in Dodge County.

I charge the most.

Quality is expensive.

And we

We try to do our best with what we have, but we're working with peanuts.

I mean, we're only a center licensed for 48 kiddos.

So the only income we have coming in is from the parents.

So it's hard.

And that's,

I think they're struggling and I,

and with

everything else in their lives going up,

right?

Yeah.

Housing, I can't imagine, you know, what some of these people pay in rent and all this stuff.

It, it.

Childcare is literally, you know, up there in one of their biggest components.

Expenses.

Sure.

And I think that's another thing of.

realization and the reality versus the perception of when people hear about childcare going up X amount of dollars, there are individual who will say, well, what is that paying for?

I mean, why do you need that much more?

No, they want to pay their staff a decent wage to, as you said, move out of their parents' house, but also to afford

the educational aspect of what's going on.

This isn't to pay for your second boat, Trisha.

This is to pay for your business and making sure the kids are taken care of.

She's got a Maserati.

She drives around Dodgeville all the time.

That's what all our childcare providers are just wreaking in the dough.

And they think that's what they honestly feel is that when they pay us, they pay it, you know, it goes right to our pockets.

But 86% of my budget is my staff.

And so I can't

pull anything else.

Our overhead costs, food, mortgage, our insurance.

Insurance.

We

are one of our biggest.

And that alone covers probably, I would like to say over 50%, but it's not.

It's like probably 17% of my budget.

So that alone, and then employees.

And so if you can't keep employees, you can't keep your doors open.

And I think that's where we're going to end up having.

Staff can only do so much.

Their mental health is so important and adding more children to our child care

Classrooms is

not the answer.

a safety issue.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that we had talked about what Robin Voss's big idea was, let's pay, let's pay businesses to open childcare centers.

Oh yeah, they're all signing up and lining up to do that because they want to follow the insurance requirements that you have to follow and all the other safety things and all the other regulations involved with that.

Oh yeah, they're all lining up to do that.

That's what we said if it's so easy people would have done it years ago, right?

But it's it's such a different way of looking at things I have one of my parents is an accountant She's like, let me see your budget.

I can do this and it's not that easy like you look at it And it's like where else can you cut stuff

right?

I

can't like we need food on the table We need yes supplies, but at some point the paper runs out the crayons run

out all

that stuff I don't know I honestly don't know like I am dumbfounded on what I'm going to do so it's

Back to the drawing board.

Well, we will continue.

Keep this conversation going.

Tricia Peterson, thank you so very much for your time.

Hang in there.

I'll come in and volunteer for a day.

I don't know that you don't want that.

Probably not.

That's a whole other insurance issue.

Handcakes everywhere.

Republicans should be coming in and volunteering.

That's a great idea.

I love that idea.

Thank you so much.

Stay with us.

You are listening to Matt Nair on air on the Civic Media Radio Network.

We will be right back.

Good morning.

Welcome back to Mattnare on Air.

Jane Mattnare, Greg Bach, resident young person Calvin on the board coming to you live from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.

You can join us, call or text.

The number is the same, 855-752-4842.

You can also leave a comment if you're watching on the livestream, on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.

Coming up in a little bit, about 15 minutes or so, we'll wrap up the show.

As we always do with this, shouldn't be a thing.

Today it is the Grab the Bull by the Horn edition.

You want to stick around for

that.

Thank God there's no video component.

No kidding, not this time.

And just a reminder, if you

are just joining us here, just waking up, or you're just getting going.

We do have a Wisconsin State budget.

Governor Evers signed it about 1.30 in the morning.

Dan Schaefer and Charlie Pittman, our civic media news director, and other folks in our news department have a great article about it.

On our website, go so go to civicmedia.us and click on news and that will get you kind of up to speed on what's going on in Wisconsin.

I also made a part of the show notes

too.

Excellent, you can find it there.

He joins us every other Thursday or sometimes every Thursday at this time.

The Acme Backing Company's Paul Noonan is here to talk all things sports.

Paul, good morning.

Thanks for joining us.

Hey, good morning everybody.

What's the bucks?

Let's start with the bucks.

What's with all the drama with the bucks?

The bucks have been in huge financial, not trouble.