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Good morning, welcome, welcome to Matt and Air on Air.
My name is Greg Bock.
I am your host and you are listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.
We're very, very happy to have you today.
Got a very, very great show for you.
It is Wednesday.
December 17th, 2025.
It is almost Christmas.
It is right around the corner.
Calvin.
Good morning, Calvin.
Calvin Butenhof is on our boards right now.
He's our tech producer.
How are you doing this morning, Calvin?
You know, I'm doing pretty
well, Greg.
Yeah.
We made it to Wednesday.
We did.
It's hump day, as they say.
I don't know.
Okay.
it's middle week.
I like middle week better.
Hump day just always sounds like, and someone's like, it's hump day.
I'm like, no, all right.
Well, I
think it was a Geico commercial with the camel.
I think that kind of ruined the expression.
It was like, it's like, you know, when you say to your friend, what's up?
And then back in the nineties, there was those Budweiser commercials with those guys.
You're like, Oh Lord, I can't do that anymore.
Cause all I hear is that.
And whenever I hear someone say hump day, I just hear a camel walking through the office, being really weird, but
Regardless, it is Wednesday.
We are a few days from Christmas.
We have a great show for you today.
We have two wonderful guests in about a half an hour.
We're going to be talking to Eve Galanter, who is the founder of the Civic Games.
And that is going to be basically, it's a trivia, it's a high school trivia contest.
And we are going to be talking to her about news about it, the origins of it, as well as maybe Kelvin getting our own quiz.
So be prepared.
These are questions for high schoolers, but that doesn't mean that I won't get them wrong.
You
know, I
fancy myself a trivia buff.
I don't
know if that's actually true because I don't play that much trivia.
And I was at my buddy's house on Friday and we played trivia of pursuit.
And there was a lot of obscure questions that I had no clue how I was.
I was even supposed to know the answer.
So
I might not be as good a trivia as I thought.
I have to just not be nervous about it.
Whenever I hear trivia, I start to get scared.
I'm like, Oh no, I'm going to look dumb to everyone in this bar.
But don't worry.
I'm sure they're going to be great questions.
It's going to be great conversation with Eve coming up in about, about a half an hour's time.
And then in the 10 o'clock hour.
We have Amanda Latham, who is a climate outreach specialist for Wisconsin State Climatology Office.
She's going to be giving us an update on some of the work she's been doing through the rural communities, talking to people and educating people on, on weather and what's going on and, and Wisconsin weather and winters and how they have been changing over the years.
I know that it's a bit different actually this year because we have quite a bit of snow on the ground, which we're not totally used to in the past years, but.
That's how back in my day, Calvin, we used to have snow from late September into March.
So, but we'll be talking to Amanda in the second hour.
And then coming up at 10 35, this could be really fun.
We got our, we got our lovely absolute banger of a segment called audio sorbet where, you know, we're going to talk about some fun stuff.
They're the harps.
Oh, it's like a spa.
We're going to be talking about Rolling Stones, 500 greatest songs of all times.
I look through some of it and I absolutely know that some of my uncles.
are going to be very mad at the choices on there, but I don't mind.
I want to know your thoughts.
You can contact us.
You can talk to us anytime you want, eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two, eight, five, five, seven, five, civic.
Leave a comment on the live stream.
We are currently live streaming on Facebook, YouTube and the platform that we still call Twitter, but we'd love to hear from you.
And then of course we're going to close out the show with another edition of this shouldn't be a thing.
penny for your thought edition.
I guess there was an auction and some money was sold and holy cow, we are crazy pants for pennies.
Apparently I didn't, I didn't realize that, but yeah, coming up at the end of the show, that's going to be, this shouldn't be a thing closing it all out as we usually do.
But other than that, we're going to have a great show and can't wait to hear from you.
Want to talk to you about all the topics we are discussing today, including this one right here.
And this question actually goes out.
to folks in Mowatosa, in Madison, and in Beloit as well.
And that is your property taxes.
Are your property taxes, property taxes going up by a lot?
From an article that I read in the Wisconsin Public Radio, it seems like those areas are seeing huge property tax.
hikes going up since 2018, specifically while at Towson, we talked about this with Dan Schaefer about a month, month and a half ago that they were going to see tax hikes going up about 50% maybe.
And we're seeing this happen because of various, of basically a various referendum around the state that's raising the property taxes for schools.
We've talked about this at length as well, Calvin.
We've talked about the fact that we're not getting a lot of relief from the state government up in Madison.
They haven't been funding the general fund for our education.
So it's been in the realm of the people living in the municipalities to actually vote on increases on their levy to fund their school systems, which last year in fall,
a great deal of them that actually did go through.
I know that I know that living in Kenosha, myself, we did vote on a referendum to a school referendum to raise our own property taxes because of shortfalls from for funding, because once again, in this budget, we are getting no.
increase in general funding for the schools.
We are getting increases in various things like special education reimbursement.
We are not getting just that general fund increase.
So it's been put to us in the municipalities to vote on hikes in our property taxes.
And in Kenosha that actually failed, which in last year was kind of the outlier because it actually in 2024,
a great deal of them actually passed, specifically in Madison, where they voted on two of them in 2024 for $607 million.
I'm going to put this article in the show notes.
It's entitled, does your property tax bill seem high?
It is the highest since 2018.
And there's Corinne Hess with the byline.
And it is basically because you are seeing increases on your taxes because of these, these hikes on your, on the school referendums.
But that's not just, so like my point being is that Kenosha voted to not do it.
We voted it.
No, but my property taxes personally have gone out quite a bit because we still have to pay for schooling.
And it says here that the biggest increases by percentage is Beloit is the highest one.
Calvin 190.2%.
Sorry, K 12.
property tax levy increased by percentage for 2025 190.2%.
Are you seeing this on your property tax bill this year?
Have you seen a big hike in your property tax?
I know that mine has gone up.
I was quite shocked and I won't give the exact number, but I'll say that we are reaching a point where we're looking at matching what it looks like to live in Northern Illinois.
One of the reasons why we didn't move to Northern Illinois.
is because of their property taxes.
But now as it's been going on and on, it's been going up.
And if you were seeing a property tax increase, specifically because of school budgets, let us know 855-752-4842-855-75 civic.
And this, this brings up a larger problem because it's something that we have talked about from over a year now, actually, when Jane was on the show, we talked about this a lot.
As I mentioned earlier, this is the direct effect of Madison not putting any money into the general fund for our schooling not not funding our schools at all basically for the past few years the past few budgets and It has an effect on us because the schools have to be paid for at a certain point And it's paid for by the taxpayers and your tax property your property taxes will go up.
I Don't mind paying
I don't mind increasing my property tax.
I voted yes, and I'll say the same thing I said before.
I voted yes for the property tax increase for the school referendum, even though I don't have kids, because I understand that having a community with a good educational system that educates kids well, that prepares them for the next days ahead of them, is something that benefits the entire city, the entire village, the entire town, because
You want to make sure they have a good education so they can move on to the next step, whether that's college, whether that's tech school, whether that's starting their own business.
I don't know what that is, but you give them a good education and they move on to the next level.
And really what it comes down to now is what you municipalities are looking at is how do we attract those young people back to the city if they're moving out town for college?
And they're like, well, I love Madison.
I'm going to live in Madison.
Oh, I love, I've moved to Chicago.
I love Chicago.
Well, how do we get them to come back here?
We do that because we have a good base of investment and that investment starts with the education.
It's not just in local business.
It's not just in, you know, building event centers or data centers or things of that.
It's about investing in our kids.
So that's why I said yes to, to increasing my property taxes.
but it failed in Kenosha.
But my property taxes, two fund schools is still going up.
It's going up at a rate of, if I'm not mistaken here, it says in the article, it gives a overview of all this.
Kenosha is going to go up $13.1 million.
That's how much the property tax levy increase is going to happen because of K5.
We have to fund these schools.
And when they don't, they close schools.
My overarching problem here is with Madison and our lawmakers and I'm, and, and, and honestly, you know, we talked about the budget this year and we thought it was a good budget.
You know, we sat here and talked about it.
And then we found out very quickly how, how much damage there was done in there, whether we're talking about childcare access, whether we're talking about education, because these things need to be paid for.
And because of the lack of funding from the budget, that means that childcare centers closed.
That means that parents are on the hook to find a place for their kids to go.
It's not cheap.
When we're not funding schools, we're not giving them the best education, but yet we're still paying for it because someone has to and we, the taxpayers are yet our Madison leaders are saying, we don't need to do that.
We shouldn't have to.
If you want to raise your own taxes, you can.
And I'm saying that because I want to reference a conversation that was had.
last November between Speaker Voss, Assembly Speaker Voss and Matt Smith on upfront.
And what he said was, when they enacted the previous budget, there was the largest increase in education spending in literally a generation from 2004 to 2005.
We did our job to make sure that we had enough for schools, healthcare, and we had a large increase for nursing homes.
All kinds of good investments are top priorities.
We just had a huge investment in education.
We saw a referendum around the state where people of Wisconsin said that they were, they have, and they have the right to raise their own taxes.
We're not going to do it.
That's what he said.
We're not going to raise those taxes.
We'll do it to ourselves.
Cause I guess that's better.
So I think it's a perfect opportunity.
He goes on to say, for us to say, let's put the money back in the hands of the people and, and who it needs for themselves.
The billions in referendum doesn't show.
This is where Matt Smith says, the billions of referendums does not show that the education needs more money from the state.
And he says, absolutely not.
It's the opposite.
Robin Voss does not want to fund anything.
Madison does not want to fund education.
And that is a problem because it needs to be funded.
And then guess what?
It shows up on your property tax bill because it needs to be done.
And you want to fund your schools because your schools are great, right?
You love your schools and you're willing to put up a little bit more money.
But again, this is about investment.
This is about dual investment.
We have a lot of money in our surplus.
So I ask you this, why are we not asking our Madison representatives, our leaders to step up to, to actually do what we are doing as well, which is paying the bill.
And we are going to talk more about this on the other side of the break.
And Al, I see you on the phone.
I will take you when we come back.
And I want to talk a little bit more about the fact that it's not just education.
It's the fact that municipalities are trying to
fund their basic operations and because of certain because of voting and which is not bad but because of voters saying no to tax increases and and now Madison's trying to make it harder for municipalities to actually implement certain increases it leaves them with shortfalls which means they have to
Fire people, we have to lose services and that makes it harder to live in a good community.
We're going to talk more about that on the other side of the break.
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Good, good morning.
Welcome back to Matt and air on air.
My name is Greg Bach and I am your host and you are listening to us on the civic media radio network.
You can always get in touch with us by calling 855-752-4842-855-75 civic.
You can also leave a comment on the live stream.
We are on Facebook, YouTube and the site that we still call Twitter.
We were talking about the fact that folks around Wisconsin are going to be seeing larger increases in their property taxes this year, and that's due to various things, whether it's school referendums or the fact that we are just needing to fund schools, period, because we are getting no increases in the general fund from our Madison lawmakers once again in this year's biennium budget.
And I want to read something really quick before we take our caller.
And in this article that I will put in the show notes from WPR, Corinne has has the byline, basically speaking to a, a, a Wauwatosa father who opened up his tax bill and saw a nearly 50% hike.
His name is Brad court right.
And he said that, you know, it's very simple.
He said that, you know, the, he has five children and go through the Wauwatosa school district.
He's, they said they've gotten a good education.
But he's he's fearful for this, not because of what he's going through, but for what will come in the future, the increases that are coming after this one, because there will be more increases.
And what this leads to is a conversation about owning housing, buying housing.
If people can't afford to buy houses on top of that, not be able to afford the property taxes, it's going to make it more and more difficult for younger folks to actually get into home buying.
And that is another big problem.
And that affects again,
communities.
It makes communities less attractive for people to live there.
It's hard to get a young family to come to your city or your town if they can't afford to buy a house and they can't afford the property taxes.
And that's right.
They're seeing, in Wauwatosa specifically, a nearly 50% increase.
That's not going to stop.
And it's going to get worse and worse.
If we do not get some sort of investment
partnership with Madison.
If we don't use maybe some of that surplus, $4.2 billion surplus to maybe fund a little bit more schooling, speaker, assembly speaker, Robin voice said they made the largest, uh, they made the largest increase in a generation to education.
Well, as I've said before, and I'll say it again, when you're not giving them anything before $1 more is the largest increase.
We need a sizable and really
useful increase in our education.
So that we as the taxpayers do not have to foot the bill every time.
And by the way, if you don't own a home, you're still affected by this because if you rent, that property tax is being put onto you by the way of your rent.
So again, this affects everybody, whether you own a home or you rent, it's a conversation we need to be having more often.
And we also need to talk about the fact that if we can't pay for our services in our municipalities,
Then we are going to see those services either be cut or suffer and therefore the conveniences again affecting the attractiveness of living in those municipalities.
Look at Brookfield.
This is not just a blue city thing.
Brookfield is having a hard time.
They're trying to, they try to increase their taxes.
They got shut down by 54% margin saying no, they're going to have to cut services and or cut people again, making the municipality less attractive to live in.
Al from Campbell's Port has been very, very patient on the phone line.
Al, good to hear from you again.
What say you, have you seen an increase in your property tax?
Are you dealing with something similar?
Yeah, I'm in Washington County and they went up $400 the last two years for the two parts that we pay.
And I'm wondering about the voucher schools and private schools.
Are they considered religious schools?
Well, I mean, I don't know if they're, I can't speak to that Al.
What I can say, and this is again, another thing we have talked about and I want to continue talking about this, whether they are religious schools or just private schools, if they are part of our voucher program, Al, you pay for them.
You pay for them because a certain section of your property taxes or your taxes is being diverted from our public school system.
to our to our voucher school system so essentially and always remember this you are paying for two separate school systems al and that separate school system that private that voucher school system that does not have oversight there are really not a lot of standards that go into
what it takes to be a voucher school as far as accountability.
They can take in students, they can kick them out, they can keep the money that is on record.
But that's the thing is as our public schools have a great deal of oversight, they are maligned, they are vilified on a regular basis.
The private schools or the ones who enjoy the voucher system here in Wisconsin, they get public money.
that is our money going to them and there is very little to no oversight.
And there has been, there has been a kickback on oversight for those schools.
I would love to say, I know why that's why, but the fact of the matter is Al is that while you are paying your property taxes and I'm sure you want that money to go to a good public school system in Campbell's Port, you are also paying for an
a private voucher school system that has no oversight.
And that, again, is another part of the conversation.
I appreciate you calling out.
I really appreciate your time.
I enjoy you checking in with us.
But that is ultimately the problem is we need to have leaders in Madison who want to invest in our municipalities who, you know, I'll step to the plate and I'll pay my fair share happily, especially for schools.
But if we're the only ones paying,
That is unfair and I know we'll say well life isn't fair yet But when we have four point two billion dollars and leaders who are purposely turning their backs on our kids That is where I have a problem and remember next year is a voting year We have a lot of elections coming up and find out more about who's running by going to my vote dot w i dot gov You can find out more about your representatives call them tell them what you're feeling how you are how you're being affected by these increases
But you need to make your, make your voice heard because we need partnership in Madison.
We need investment in our kids.
And right now we're not getting that partnership.
We are footing the bill, what seems to be as usual.
When we come back, we will be speaking to Eve Galanta, who is the founder of the civic games, talking about the history, talking about what they do and taking a quiz.
Oh boy.
We're going to be taking a quiz.
Stick around.
Don't go anywhere.
You're listening to Matt and air on air and the civic media radio network.
Stay tuned.
Stay close.
Good.
Good morning.
Welcome back to Matt and air on air.
My name is Greg Bach.
I am your host and you are listening to us on the civic media radio network.
You could always call or text.
The number is the same.
It's 855-752-484-2855 75 civic unit.
Also leave a comment on the live stream.
We are on Facebook, YouTube, and the site that we in this house still call Twitter.
Now, before we get to our next guest, I want to remind you after the top of the hour news, we're going to be speaking to Amanda Latham, who is a climate outreach specialist for the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, talking about her work, going through the states, especially in those rural areas, talking about weather, talking about climate.
educating and informing, but also listening to people's concerns that's coming up after the 10 o'clock hour.
And then also 10 35 audio Sorbet.
We're talking the top 500 songs of Rolling Stone.
Now.
Have you seen the whole list?
Have you memorized the whole list?
Do you agree?
Do you disagree?
I don't know, but I can tell you right now that I'm sure I'm gonna hear about it at Christmas, how some of those songs just aren't rock and roll, but that's fine.
My uncles will just have to calm down.
And then finally, this shouldn't be a thing pending for your thoughts edition, but stick around, we're gonna have a great show.
More to come, lots more to come.
Happy you are here, happy about our next guest.
Our next guest is...
I mean, this, this is a look, I gotta get ready to read this whole thing here.
Uh, we were Rick welcoming Eve Galanter to the show.
She is the founder of the Wisconsin civics civics games, but she's not just that.
She's a state.
It's a, uh, she is a former president of the of Galanter public.
to the show.
Thank you so much.
Good morning, Greg.
Thank you.
You're
welcome.
We're welcome.
All right.
Let's kick it off.
Tell us about the civics game.
What what is the civics games?
Well, may I just give you a little background?
It's almost 10 years ago.
Almost 10 years ago.
I opened the Wisconsin State Journal to see a headline that said all three school board candidates unopposed.
I thought, how is that possible?
They must just be doing such a fabulous job.
Nobody.
wants to contest their position at all.
That's right.
That's how it always is Eve.
Isn't that all in any time a politician is unopposed, it means they're stewing so good.
Right.
So no, no challenge and importantly, no community conversation, no things at which the, the, the, the opponents would discuss their position on the issues.
And that was 10 years ago.
And the article continued that for nearly seven years, there had been no opposing candidates.
So I thought about that and I began to worry.
No, worry is a little strong, but I was concerned.
So I went to a couple of folks I knew who were active in
you know, politics in organizations that supported those who were running for office.
And I asked, you know, what could we do?
What about opportunities for civic engagement?
And there were there were ideas that we had people weren't quite ready to dig in.
But finally, I decided I would create something that might grab their attention.
And I thought, perhaps I'm going to give up for now on
on grownups.
I'm going to go to kids.
I'm going to go to the kids fair fair
Eve.
You know, maybe if they have some incentive, maybe there's information for them to grab on to, they might even take it home to their parents.
And what do kids like kids like competition?
Like kids like games?
But my first thought was something like the old college bowl.
I don't know if anybody else here remembers watching that on TV.
So I thought of the Wisconsin Civics Bowl as a competition for high school kids based on their knowledge of federal, state, and local governments.
How does government work?
Why do I care?
What should I do to learn more?
My then, I think, 13, 14 year old granddaughter said, bowl, that doesn't mean anything.
She said, we had to call it games.
And I said, why games?
She said, you know, we just watched the hunger games.
And I said, yes, they were trying to kill each other.
Oh, boy.
But I did learn and I did.
I did change it to the Wisconsin civics games because why not?
And I went to the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the foundation there, and pitched the idea.
I thought that they were the logical, illogical sponsor.
You know, the organization representing newspapers all over the state, providing news about what's going on in Wisconsin and in local government, I hoped.
And I waited for them.
I made my pitch.
They said, I expected them to say, thanks, we'll get back to you.
And instead they said, let's do it.
And that
was in 2018.
And I went home and started writing questions.
I took my legal pad and I wrote for a couple of days and I wrote about 100 questions.
for the students that would, for them to answer and then began working on it.
How would it work?
We'd have teams because kids like competition and a high, you know, I started calling high schools and saying, hi, I'm Eve Galanta with the Wisconsin Civics Games and I'm sure they thought I was trying to sell some.
But what I was trying to sell, in fact, was the hope that they would join in
and help get a team of students up to four students on a team to compete based on their civic knowledge.
Now as you know, civics education is not required currently in Wisconsin.
All you have to do in order to graduate is to pass by about 60 percent or so.
The same tests that immigrants who wish to become citizens must take.
no civics education required.
In Wisconsin, we're one of a very few states that does not have civics education.
Anyway, I went through all that.
I called people.
I wrote and phoned people to please help us support this.
And the very first year, we had applications from all over the state.
And we held the playoffs or the regional games on the campuses of the UW, Platteville, and Green Bay, and up in Eau Claire, all over the state, where students had high schools that were competing.
And then we held the finals at the state capitol.
Greg, you should have the faith of the students when they walked into the room 411 South, if you've
ever been to the Capitol, you know, it's an elegant hearing room and that we were going to be sitting in the seats up front, just in front of the big gold medallion and the Wisconsin and U.S.
flags in the same seats as the legislators normally said.
That's exciting.
That's very exciting.
You know, I mean, hearing all this, it's really, it feels like it was born out of a need.
to educate outside of our outside of our education system and the fact that you know someone just said on the live stream PJ on the live stream said really what happened to social studies in schools and we still have social studies but we don't have a specific requirement if I'm not mistaken correct it's you don't have to answer as you said the same questions that immigrants who want desperately to be a citizen of this country we as natural born citizens we don't we're not required of that we learn about social studies but it's not a thing of
take this test in order to graduate, correct?
Correct.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And what is the, I mean, I have to, I'm so, you know, based on what your granddaughter said, a nice comparison to the Hunger Games, I'll be a more professional and low key event compared to that.
What do you see as far as the excitement from the kids coming through to these events and how they are participating?
I imagine, you know, they're very excited to take part.
They are very excited to take part in and they they came in bus loads, you know all around the state We I used if you may be familiar with the Wi AA
you
know all And I use those originally as the their boundaries for the regions But the high schools that applied that very first year.
I think 27 high schools.
Yeah
applied, they didn't fall neatly into those regional boundaries.
So I did what I have called my own gerrymandering and created new regions that would accommodate where the schools that had enrolled actually came.
But yes, they liked competing and they worked hard to understand the questions.
And then you would see them
after they competed coming off of the podium there and shaking hands with one another.
An example of some of the civic and civil engagement that we don't see a heck of a lot of these days.
And I think that's an important thing to reiterate, to talk about, because I feel like, you know, I'm in my late 40s, and I think people my age and older can
It's it's easy.
It's it's it's easy pick and saying young kids dot dot dot and complaining about younger generations and how they don't do the things that we did or what we think they should do.
But as you're showing Eve, kids are still engaged in the process.
They're excited to be a part of it.
They're learning.
They're preparing and they are still wanting to be a part of our.
Part of our democracy as far as they can't participate by voting, but they certainly can know what their rights are.
They can know our history.
And I think that's also something to share with older folks to say, look, you may think the generations are, quote, lost, but they're not.
We just don't see kids like this in the news.
We see the ones that we want to complain about, but this is great stuff.
And I mean, especially.
Crossing the stage, shaking hands, being civil, civic-minded.
I mean, we are civic media.
That's our goal is to be civic-minded in what we talk about.
I think that is also a fabulous example of what we need our younger generations to do to become the leaders of tomorrow.
And my commitment to public service, you mentioned that I was on the Madison Common Company, that I was the director of a U.S.
Senator's office.
If we were a business public service,
we'd have a succession plan.
Where are the people coming from?
Where are those who are going to compete, who are going to oppose someone who is an
incumbent?
going to help create the community conversation that is so important, Greg.
Yes, and that too.
When you started off with the unopposed politician, all unimposed incumbents running again, I think that, because that's a daunting task for people to pick up the mantle and say, I want to run for this office, especially that school board, city council, county board, where the real work happens that directly affects the community, it's, you know,
I said it yesterday, people have lives and I'm not begrudging that they got kids, they got jobs, they might be in school and it's hard to stay a float on all those things.
And to also say, well, I might run for office.
I think what you're doing is instilling to those kids that to stay engaged is important and will, it will take them through the rest of their lives.
And if I'm mistaken, I believe there are some questions you want to ask me on the other side of the break break Eva.
I'm going to see if you've got the answers.
Oh, okay.
Let's see if I can even run for office or have this job.
When we come back, we're going to be talking to Eve Galanter.
It was the founder of Wisconsin Civics Games.
We will be taking a quiz.
Folks, if you want to participate, you can too.
And it's going to be fun.
I can't wait.
And no matter what, I'm going to shake hands with whomever beats me.
And I'm pretty sure that's going to be Calvin.
But when we, we're going to talk about that, when we come back, you're listening to Matt Naranair on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Stay tuned.
Stay close.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Good morning.
Welcome back to Matt and air on air.
My name is Greg Bach.
I am your host and you are listening to us on the civic media radio network.
If you want to get in touch with us, you can call her text.
The number is the same 8557524842.
You can also leave a comment on the live stream.
We are currently streaming on Facebook, YouTube and the platform that we still call Twitter.
After the 10 o'clock news break, we'll be talking to Amanda Lantham Latham.
Sorry, Atlanta Latham, who is a climate outreach specialist.
for the Wisconsin State Climatology Office.
We'll also be doing some audio sorbet, the top 500 songs as chosen by Rolling Stone.
Do you agree?
Do you not?
Does it matter?
Because we all know what the music we like.
And then this shouldn't be a thing, penny for your thoughts edition.
All that coming up in the next hour.
Don't go anywhere.
You're sticking around.
The coffee's hot and it was free.
I bought it for you.
But we're here talking to Eve Galanter, who is the founder of Wisconsin Civics Games, Wisconsin Civics Games.
That is, it is a statewide competition for high school students.
And you've got some questions for us.
And I'm not nervous at all.
I don't know.
I hear a little tension in your voice.
I do want to give you just one little bit of information that you may or may not be surprised about.
Okay.
So there's an organization, highly esteemed, the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Yes.
In 2023, 34% of Americans could name all three branches.
of governance.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What percentage?
34%.
And the percentage of Americans that cannot name any of the three branches was 16%.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
That is, and those are adults.
These are folks who vote in city, county, town, village, national elections and yet cannot name the branches of government and really then don't have any sense of what it is that's going on and how they should determine.
Who they should vote
yeah, I mean that's a it's So I
get that was part of the the dismay when I when I saw those numbers, you know that confirmed You know that people don't feel comfortable knowing what their role in a democracy really is.
Yeah, absolutely
It includes, you know having the freedom
to say what you wish here on the radio.
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
No
understanding.
Oh, that is a, I mean, Eve, that is probably a three hour conversation in and of itself.
We ought to do it again.
I invite you back happily.
We can have that discussion, especially when we talk about running for local office and what it takes and what you need to feel inside to do it.
But let's get to your questions.
Let's see if me or Calvin or our listeners know our civics.
Okay.
What are the five freedoms described in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution?
There's freedom of speech.
Freedom of public assembly.
Oh boy.
Oh, there's five.
Oh, Calvin.
Okay.
Cause we talk about those two.
I didn't.
And we just talked about one.
Oh, just freedom of religion.
Also
freedom of religion.
Yes.
Yeah.
There's no established.
Yeah.
Freedom of religion.
Sorry.
That was, that was the one in the back of my head.
And, uh, free photos.
Okay.
Eve, go ahead.
Freedom of the press.
Oh my God.
See, okay, here's the thing, folks.
I want to assure you that I'm not dumb.
It's just when I get into a quiz situation, I freeze up.
I promise I know there's freedom of the press.
I'm exercising it right now.
Okay, go on.
And the right to assemble.
The right to assemble, yes.
Okay.
Another question.
In Wisconsin, the governor has the exclusive power to grant pardons.
Name three of the rights that are restored as a result of a gubernatorial part
the right to vote The right to it would be run for office
Is the last one own a firearm,
oh, yeah, oh, yeah shows you how much I think about guns
And the right to vote and the right to hold the professional license, which is one of the things that holds people back when they have served their punishment,
their
term in prison.
They come out and without a pardon, they can't have certain jobs because
they
don't have the right to hold the
license.
another conversation to be had as well as far as the rights of those coming out of prison.
But I think we have time for one more question.
And Jenny Brand, by the way, in the live stream is either trying to help me cheat or killing it.
Either way, she's very knowledgeable and I am feeling very, very blushy.
Okay.
In 2018, a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin constitution failed to pass a statewide vote.
What change would its passage have made?
What was the name of that?
What year was
that?
2018
Oh, I don't know now.
Oh, I feel so Calvin, you know Yeah, the voter ID was it voter ID
No, it was eliminated the office of state treasurer.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Well
you're coming back.
I'm doing some studying Eve Galanter.
Thank you so much for being our guest today.
We really appreciate you.
We're going to put Wisconsin Civics game on our show notes so people can find out more.
And especially if kids want to get involved for the next one.
But thank you so much.
Please come back Eve.
We'd love to have you.
Thank you.
All right.
When we come back, we'll be speaking to Amanda Latham, who is a climate outreach specialist here on Matt and air on air on the civic media radio network.
Stay close.
Stay tuned.
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