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Good, good morning, good day, good welcome everyone.
Welcome to the mid-morning on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bock.
I am your host, your buddy, your friend.
You can always be part of the conversation.
By doing that, you're going to simply call or text the number is the same.
It's 855-752-484-2855.
75 Civic.
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We live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and the platform that we still call Twitter.
Lots of great show today.
Lots of great things happening this morning.
We got packed, packed two hours for you.
After the 10 o'clock news, the 10-06, we will be speaking to Mark Somerhauser.
He is the communication director and policy researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
We're going to be going over the Policy Forum's top five findings of 2025.
They come out with a lot of information throughout the year.
We're going to talk about what they do at the Policy Forum, and they gather for us their top five findings, and we'll be going over those with Mark.
today and we'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
There are some things in there, you know, one specific point regarding taxes.
I would like to speak with him about and it'll be a great conversation.
So he will be here in the second hour, 1006 after the top of the hour news.
Then 1035 we're gonna go audio sore bass style.
We're gonna lighten it up It's gonna be a show full a lot of information today But we're gonna lighten up a story out of car and driver is saying that VW is gonna be bringing back some of those old-school features to cars and I wanted to know from you What are some old-school features that you miss that we've digitized we've made everything, you know touchscreen and whatnot.
What are some of the things that you miss?
maybe those common conveniences that we have.
revolutionized and, and, and futureized that you're just like, Hey, bring that back.
I'd love to know that from you.
And this is, this is not a back in my day.
My car used to not talk to me.
You know, it's just, you know, those cool little things that you miss.
So let us know.
You can drop it in the live stream.
You can text it in.
You can call us at, uh, in the second hour when we're talking about it, but I'd love to know about that.
And then finally wrapping up the show.
As usual, it is this shouldn't be a thing today.
It is the private menu edition.
So don't go anywhere.
Once again, lots of great stuff for you today.
And we're going to open up the show today with an article on Wisconsin Public Radio.
Hope Kirwan has the headline or the byline and it reads Wisconsin Town Secures Funding for PFAS Free System After Years On Bottled Water.
Now.
If you're a fan of the show, if you know the history of the show, you know that we've talked about this quite a bit.
We've talked about FIFA as we've talked about.
the fact that there are communities in Wisconsin that not only can't drink their water, it is contaminated by PFAs.
Those are forever chemicals.
They come from things such as foam that the firefighters use.
There's cookware that uses certain things that have chemicals in those forever chemicals.
They get into the ground, they seep into the water, and then they make the water undrinkable.
Well, one
town, one community in Western Wisconsin has finally created, or has finally started to create their own system and has received funding from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture to basically tap into a new line of water.
So the funding includes $8.5 million as a grant and $30.8 million in a low interest loan through the USDA Rural Development Program serving state and local governments.
federally recognized tribes and private nonprofits.
So this is essentially to help them, as one person put it, this is the last piece of the puzzle.
This is going to allow them to finally tap into their aquifers and find uncontaminated water and finally be free of bottled waters.
For the last four plus years, this community has been drinking
Bottled water, this is a place called, is the town of Campbell.
And it is up in French Island.
They have been drinking bottled water.
And this bottled water has been state funded.
And I'm not saying we shouldn't have funded their water.
We absolutely should.
And the cleanup, this whole thing has taken way too long.
But I'm telling you this for a couple of reasons.
One, this is a great story.
Very excited for Campbell.
They are located, as I said, of French Island in the Mississippi River area.
And they're just around the cross, but they found out in 2020, late 2020, that their wells were contaminated by these PFAs, and it has taken a long time.
And the PFAs journey in Wisconsin is one that a lot of people know about this time.
something that we talked about a great deal on matinee on air and I've heard other shows on civic media discussing this as well the fact that we have a situation where we need to look at the chemicals that are in our ground that affects our groundwater and
What I'm going to do today is put this, as I always do, put this article into our show notes.
And when you look at this article on WPR, there's also gonna be a bunch of what's called related stories kind of on the right side of the page.
And if you just look down, you are going to see story after story after story about the fact that we as Wisconsinites are dealing with this PFAS contamination in various parts of the state.
There are things that can be done about it.
In Minnesota right now, they had voted to ban forever chemicals, PFAS.
And that doesn't mean there are no options.
There are soy options.
There are different options to make sure that we don't use things that utilize PFAS.
We can still protect the people and businesses won't go out of business and things.
The other part of the discussion, the big one too was the fact that Wisconsin was sitting
on $125 million in PIFO's cleanup money.
We had gotten the funding.
It needed to be approved.
It needed to be released.
But the problem is that leadership, quote unquote, leadership in Madison couldn't come to what a Wisconsin watch called legal and philosophical agreement.
There was debate over
If they release this money, which would do PFAS cleanup, who would be held responsible?
And while the individual, you or I, were being used as the reason why this isn't a good idea to release the money to clean up the PFAS, to take care of the water, to help the communities,
It's really not so much about the people because if it's the people that's fine, I understand if an individual, they don't understand what's going on, it should be mitigated.
I don't think they should go to jail, but there should be some sort of, you know, an agreement on how to take care of it.
Maybe there's a state funded, maybe the $125 million can be diverted to individuals as well, who, you know, a guy in a farm, it doesn't understand what's going on.
But this is really about protecting big companies.
This $125 million sitting in a coffer somewhere,
for is for years now.
And we've been talking about this for years now.
And I just want to utilize the story this morning about Campbell finally being able to get that last piece of the puzzle through US government intervention, which is I'm giving, you know, in all the talks we do nowadays, you know, the USDA, they helped.
Thank you to them for taking care of this community.
Meanwhile, our leadership in Madison.
Still toiling or not even toiling at all Not even talking about this anymore.
This is the 125 million dollars has not been in the headlines for some time since last year Sitting there Nothing being done because they can't come to an agreement on who should pay well I believe that the people who should pay are the ones who poisoned the water and if those are companies that pay for your campaigns hurry
the people, the community are more important than your buddies making a buck.
That's my opinion.
And a lot of those companies can probably afford to pay it.
They'll be just fine.
But I want to keep this, you know, we haven't talked about this in a while because there's always so much going on, but the PFAS discussion is something that really is a part of our state and we need to stay vigilant.
It's something we need to talk to our lawmakers about.
It's something that, you know, we are in 2026 now.
We are officially in an election year.
There are a lot of
points that we can ask our leaders about or our people running for election.
We can ask them, where do you stand on these issues?
This is one of them, especially of course, if you live in one of these communities that is affected by the forever chemicals in your drinking water.
We need to be asking sitting officials and people running for office, where do you stand on the cleanup?
Where do you stand on the funding?
Where do you stand on?
legislation that would outlaw forever chemicals.
So we don't have to go through this anymore.
We do clean up, we move on and we're protected.
That's what, you know, part of that conversation during the election season is all about.
If you have any questions for your elected officials and you don't know how to reach out to them, you don't even maybe know who is your representative, you go to myvote.wi.gov.
You're going to put in your information, and then your leaders from the president down to the dog catcher, if you still vote for them, that will be your list.
Call.
You can write them.
You can visit them.
We always say be responsible and be respectful when you do that.
But talk to them and tell them these are the things you're thinking about if this is on your mind.
Tell them that you want proper legislation
to outlaw these forever chemicals that are contaminating our drinking water.
So people like Campbell, so people in the town of Campbell don't have to get drinking water from a bottle for years that the state has to pay for instead of actually doing something about it in the first place.
My vote.wi.gov.
Also while you're there because it's an election year, make sure you check your voter registration.
You may have moved, you may not have voted in a while.
You wanna go there, check your registration.
If you're not registered, you can register yourself there, but that's a great website, myvote.wi.gov.
And yeah, I mean, in everything I'm discussing this morning, at the heart of it is this really great story about the people of Campbell doing the work, getting an investment from our government, which ultimately that's what it's about, because this will save, you know, once this is all done,
it will save the state money on buying bottled water.
It will save the community on what they needed to do to help mitigate the problem that was their drinking water problem.
So, like, these investments have long-term effects.
They have long-term growth.
And it's important for our lawmakers to look at that and say, oh, we need to take care of this problem.
Because not everybody around the state who's affected by PFAS might be able to receive this funding.
So instead, it's time for our leaders of Madison to step up and say, all right, let's take care of this once and for all.
Let's release the money.
Let's come together on an agreement on if people are culpable in contaminating our water.
What sort of recourse does the state have?
Does the do the communities have?
And, you know, I'm not saying you hold up John Q. Public on his land, who's one guy who doesn't know and it was, you know, this wasn't a thing versus a corporation.
You know, you have different levels.
You work it out.
You come to a room and talk and you come to a compromise and figure out a plan that ultimately protects.
The water protects the people and protects the state.
And just also, if the long run too, makes it a more attractive place to live in because people will say, oh, they take care of their people like Minnesota did.
Let's be a little, you know, I wouldn't mind having, you know, let's have, let's have that kind of law here.
So let's take care of that.
But yeah, again, go to myvote.wi.gov, find out who represents you, tell them the job they are doing.
Be respectful.
Tell them what you look for in a leader.
And for those folks who are running in elections in your municipalities, sit down with them if you can.
Have a cup of coffee.
Ask them a question because they want to run for an office that represents you and you should know what they represent.
When we come back after we're going to grab some water and a snack.
important to stay hydrated.
We're going to be talking about a small follow-up story out of the New York Times regarding child care funding, Washington, DC, and once again, our neighbor to the West Minnesota.
We'll talk more about that on the other side, but right now you are listening.
It's mid mornings on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
Always call text 855-752-4842.
Be part of the conversation.
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Good, good day.
Welcome back to Mid Mornings on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I am your host.
I'm your buddy, your pal.
Coming to you live in...
Radio Park in Racine.
My buddy Calvin here on the ones and twos didn't say properly.
Hello.
Good morning, Calvin.
How are you today?
I'm doing good, Greg.
How are you?
I'm doing peachy keen.
We're really happy to have you here with us today.
If you want to be in part, if you want to be a part of the conversation, you can always call or text 855-752-484-2855.
75 civic leave a comment on that live stream.
If you'd like as well, we are caught.
We are currently live streaming on Facebook, YouTube and the platform that we still call Twitter.
Lots of great show ahead, including a great discussion with the Wisconsin policy forum.
Mark Summerhauser is going to be here.
He is there.
director of communication and policy researcher discussing their top five findings of 2025.
We'll be talking more about that with him in the second hour after the top of the hour news break.
And then at 1035, we have audio survey about a story out of car and driver magazine about bringing back some old school features on a new car.
And we want to know what are the old school features you miss on whatever it may be in your house, in your car, at work, that kind of thing.
You know, what could we, what could we bring back that would just feel a little bit better?
You know, I want to, I want to hear from you.
You can always call, call or text that in.
Love to hear from you.
And then finally, this shouldn't be a thing at 1052.
Today it is the private menu edition.
So don't go anywhere.
Still wonderful, wonderful stuff ahead.
Now I want to do a little follow-up on something we discussed on Monday.
On Monday, we talked about a story again in WPR, Wisconsin Public Radio.
This was from Anya Van Wagendonk about Wisconsin preparing for possible federal freezes to childcare funding that we were awaiting more information from the federal government on whether or not we would be
having our funding frozen.
Well, in the New York Times reported by Minho Kim, this came out yesterday.
This is the headline, Health Department freezes 10 billion in funding to five democratic states.
California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York have had
$10 billion in childcare subsidies, social services and cash support for low income families.
This has all been frozen for those states, which are all led by Democrats.
And they are doing this, the Trump administration is doing this in the face of no evidence of actual widespread fraud.
If you know, if you know, you know already about Minnesota.
You know that there was a massive scandal about childcare, but as we discussed on Monday, while the story hit the headlines nationwide because of a video that came out, this is a story that's been discussed for a long time in local and national papers.
It's also something that's been investigated by Minnesota for many, many years.
Now, that being said, where they go with it, that's their business.
They're gonna take care of how they see fit.
people believe that Tim Walls is no longer running for a third term because of it.
But my point on Monday was this was not a brand new story.
This has been around for a while, but this is being weaponized to once again distract us from other things that we should be talking about, like the big bill for billionaires and the Epstein files.
But this right here.
Five states all happen to be run by Democrats, having $10 billion in funding frozen for their childcare providing.
This will freeze the TAMP funds, which are the temporary assistance for needy families program.
That's $7.3 billion, and then $2.4 billion for childcare and development funds.
That supports...
childcare for working parents, and around $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk.
All of that has been frozen by the Trump White House, with, as we said before, no widespread evidence, I'm sorry, without evidence of widespread fraud.
And in the article we talked about on Monday,
Wisconsin was awaiting more information because Trump said he wanted to freeze it for all 50 states but the problem is there is no procedure at this point on how to prove that you are not committing fraud or that you are more more specifically actually using the funds they want proof they want
As a person from the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services said, they want to find that states are providing them legitimate proof that they are, and that's fine.
And as we said on Monday, Wisconsin actually has mechanisms in place that helps them show what they use the money for because of our own childcare fraud scandal in 2010.
But the point is, is that so far,
with no information coming from Washington on how to prove that legitimacy.
It's just $10 billion that has been frozen to five specific states.
And that is the more concerning part because are we not concerning ourselves with any other states in the union with Minnesota?
This is a problem.
Yes, work to fix it.
But now we're talking about five states that have governors that don't agree with the president or didn't vote for the president.
And really, when it comes to it,
when thumbs down to it, that seems like what this is really about.
You want to freeze the funding?
I disagree with that.
But if you're going to do that, then first say, all right, we're freezing the funding until you can do A, B, and C. But right now, they don't know how to do any of those things because they shot first and ask questions later.
So we're going to keep looking at this story.
And again, this
seems like an amazing distraction away from the things we should be talking about.
And coming up after the 9 30 news, I'm going to talk about here at Wisconsin, some of the bills that are going through the short work year for Madison and how maybe they're not really paying attention to the real true needs.
I mean, we're just right now we're talking about childcare before we're talking about clean drinking water.
And I want to talk to you about how some of these
Bills that are coming down the pike in Madison don't really affect or address either of those.
They really kind of more address agendas and are more about grandstanding and not really taking the work of the people seriously, but that's more coming up after the 9 30 news.
Don't go anywhere.
You're listening to mid mornings on civic media.
My name is Greg Bach.
Always get in touch eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two, eight, five, five, seven, five.
Civic is the number.
Talk to you very soon.
Stick around.
Stay close.
Good, good day and welcome to MidMornings on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I am your host coming to you.
Wow.
Coming to you live from radio park in Racine.
If you want to be part of the conversation, you can always call our texts.
The number is the same 855-752-4842-855-755.
Civic, leave a comment on the live stream and love to have you a part of the conversation in the second hour.
We'll be talking to Mark Sommerhauser, who is the communications director and policy policy researcher for.
Wisconsin Policy Forum, discussing their top five findings for 2025.
You want to be part of that conversation, want to be listening to what they're talking about, because those things really have effects on us as Wisconsinites.
And then of course, 1035, Audio Sorbet.
What are the things that you miss, those things that we have high teched, we have digitized, we have made smooth touch screens.
What do you miss when I hear from you?
I already got a couple of texts coming in.
We'll talk about that more in the second hour.
And then also,
to wrap up the show.
This shouldn't be a thing to date.
It's the private menu edition, so you don't want to go anywhere.
Stick around.
Got lots more show coming your way.
Open the show with two very different stories.
One dealing with PFAS, which are forever chemicals that contaminate our water.
The town of Campbell has worked to create a new water system as well as secure funding from the USDA to mitigate this problem.
This has been going on for
Five years for them.
They've been about on bottled water for over four years and they've done good work and that's great.
It's a concern.
Our drinking water, clean, fresh drinking water.
Another story we're talking about, childcare funding, affordability, trying to afford childcare, something we've been talking about for a long time.
And with the Trump administration freezing childcare funding from the
from Washington to those states, five specific states that are all run by Democrats.
That's another conversation, affordability, childcare, those are things we talked about all the time.
Right now, the Wisconsin legislation, legislators are meeting in Madison to go through their short work year.
They did the budget last year, which means this year they're going to be on a long, I guess they'd say much.
deserve break, but they're going to be working for a few weeks and then they're out of town for the rest of the year.
And when we talk about top issues, we've found through polling that, you know, it's usually affordability, childcare, education, healthcare access, things like that, that, you know, quality of life.
How are we living now?
How are our kids and grandkids going to live?
What are we seeing for our future as a state?
I wanted to go over now some of the bills.
that are going through the legislature, legislatures.
Is that the word I'm looking for, Kelvin?
Sometimes, you know, I've got a lot of coffee in me, but the leaders in Madison, what are they looking at right now?
And there are a lot.
And I'm not going to have time to go over all of them.
And some of them are fine.
Some of them just make total sense.
They're not, you know, they're, I don't want to say they're boring, but they're not something that we're going to create a story out of because, you know, they just make sense for what they're trying to do.
Like there's one that says,
allows us to participate in federal tax credit programs for scholarships.
Okay, cool.
I'm down for that.
I'm not every bill they're trying to pass is either evil or nefarious, but I'm just saying there are some in here that don't seem to, in my opinion, reflect the will of the people.
And I'm gonna start with two really quick.
They're not, they're more for people out there who enjoy the outdoors, just to let you know that fees will be going up.
you know, snowmobiling, trail use, those fees are gonna be going up by about 15 bucks snowmobiling in-state, it's going about 20 bucks to about almost $50 for the registration, snowmobiling in-state, but owned by a person who is both a member of a snow, wow, that's a lot.
Basically, your fees on that for snowmobiling for trail usage is going up, that's gonna be going through if that passes, I should say.
Then the next one dealing with fees is regarding the DNR hunting fishing trapping permits Those are all set to go up by way of this bill.
This is bill 682 by the way the previous one regarding snowballing is Senate bill 700 this is
Assembly Bill 682, this covers things like annual small game license goes up to 20 bucks, five days small game pass goes up 10 bucks.
Those are all, you know, those are the fees.
So if you are a part of that outdoor lifestyle, whether it's snowmobiling, trail use, or you are a hunter and or fisherman, fisher person, person who fishes, person who likes fish, those fees are set to go up if these bills pass.
that I want you to know about just so you're aware because it all affects your pocketbook, you know.
Some of these are 10 bucks, some are 20, some are more, but I wanted you to know about that.
But there are other ones that came across that didn't, in my opinion, reflect what I think is the most important, most pressing issues here in Wisconsin.
And this one that came through, this one that's up for votes,
Uh, this is a Senate bill 120.
This is an act that creates a policy.
This, uh, this is related to school board policies relating to changing a people's legal name and pronouns.
There it is.
That word pronouns, you know, the most hated word that people don't know what the meaning is.
So essentially they're saying in this bill, it was introduced by senators, uh, Jacques and Tom check lots of co-sponsors.
that by July 1 of this year, that the school boards will be required to adopt policies related to conditions under which a school board will change a pupil's legal name or legal name and pronouns in official school records.
It's related to the conditions under which a school board will allow staff to regularly use or refer to a minor pupil's name or other pupil's legal name by their pronouns.
So essentially they're saying,
And this is a basic breakdown.
And I have some of the, and I have some of the hearing documents as well.
They don't want kids changing their pronouns.
That's what basically what it is.
You know, a kid decides that they are, they, them, no longer a he, a he, him, she, her, they want to go by that.
You are not going to have to change it legally for the school to recognize that.
And
I don't know about you, but that is not something I even come close to thinking about when it comes to my daily life.
I know I don't have children, but if you look at the testimonies that came before the...
the various committees, this committee on education from the Senate, from the state Senate.
We're talking about the fact that it's being written as the school and the children are colluding to keep parents out of the decision-making process.
And for me personally, this is all just, this is all forms of using heavy language because they don't want kids deciding that they want to change their pronouns.
But that shouldn't be a conversation between the schools.
and the parents and the kids, that's something for the Wisconsin State Senate to step in and make a law saying that none of this can take place unless there's some sort of legal documentation that the schools cannot recognize them at all unless there's some sort of legal documentation.
Again, we're not talking about childcare affordability.
We're not talking about healthcare here.
We're not talking about...
your basic concerns of living in the state, we're talking about whether or not schools should or should not be able to recognize a child's legal or child's preferred name or pronouns.
That's what's going through the legislature right now.
And those, these bills will be available on the show notes, including, you know, you can also, I really, really ask you to look at the,
the testimonies and the documents that come along with this, because it's really just about trying to justify why you want to make these into law.
And again, these, you know, they're being looked at.
There's, you know, they haven't been passed.
This is all part of, as we call it, the short work year of the Wisconsin legislature.
And they will be working for about eight to 10 weeks, and then they're going to be gone for the rest of the year, fully paid, full benefits.
I'm pretty sure they get the prudium too.
Next one that I want to talk about here is this is assembly bill 674.
This one, Kelvin is really concerning to me for various reasons, but it also just, I don't, I guess maybe I missed the boat on the, the importance of this, but also I feel like it's missing the mark at a certain point.
So assembly bill 674, which was introduced by representatives, Moses, Dalman, O'Connor, Callahan, Kurtz, Gobin.
I can't say his name, PR check.
I got that wrong.
There's a lot of sponsors, Merceau, Canodal, Melotik, Banken and Brill.
This is to make it.
So Kelvin, I don't know if you, if you were aware that there's such a thing called organ tourism, where organs can be taken from country to other country.
And part of the problem is how were these organs obtained?
Were they?
illegally harvested, where they've forced, is there a legal activity that got these organs to where they are in the moment in a hospital?
I understand that.
That's a real concern, I believe.
I'm sure that we could talk to a doctor or a hospital administrator who can speak greatly on this and the fact that, of course, we don't want that.
I can't believe I have to say that, Calvin.
Of course I'm against organ harvesting and organ tourism in that sense.
But what this bill does, they seek to enact that insurance companies cannot cover organs that have been procured by sale or donation originating in the People's Republic of China or another country as designated by
the department of health services.
So again, this is not a bill.
It seeks to, it seeks to define forced organ harvesting as the removal of one or more organs from a living person by coercion, abduction, deception, fraud, or abuse of power over a position of vulnerability or from a person killed for the purpose of removal of one or more organs.
Now, okay.
Yes.
That's terrible.
Shouldn't happen.
This bill doesn't look to try to
mitigate that actual problem.
It's simply just saying, hey, health insurance companies, you can't cover this.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm Dr. adjacent.
And I'm fairly able to operate Google, but I just typed into Google, do health insurance companies cover forced organ harvesting?
Do they cover these?
And it said simply no.
So again,
This isn't a bill I believe represents the concerns of the people of Wisconsin.
And those documents, the testimonial documents will be available for you to read.
Again, the problem is something we should take care of.
And that's something we work in concert with the medical community and the federal government.
But I don't think a bill requiring insurance companies not to pay for these things is something that the people of Wisconsin truly are
Concerned about I don't know about it's never didn't come up at Christmas didn't come up Thanksgiving once that problem insurance Insurance companies covering forced organ harvesting didn't come up once.
I don't know about you Kelvin I know you had a quiet Christmas I don't know if that that hot button issue came up with the Butenhof family, but don't worry
Wisconsin legislators are on the money, on the ball.
They're gonna take care of you and definitely not take care of things like childcare access, healthcare access, education, clean drinking water.
funding and protecting our environment, investing in our future as a state.
We're going to take a quick moment to grab some snacks and some water, and we're going to come on back.
Gene from Eau Claire, I see you on the line.
Don't go anywhere.
We'll take your call when we come back, but I've got some more very important bills coming down the legislature.
that you need to hear about that definitely may or may not impact you at all whatsoever.
But we're going to talk more about that mid mornings on Civic Media.
My name is Greg Bock.
Be part of the conversation 855-752-484-2855-755.
Civic, stay tuned,
stay informed, stay close.
Welcome, welcome back.
Mid mornings on city media.
My name is Greg Bach.
I'm your host coming to you live and alive in Racine at radio park here along with my cohort, my co-conspirator, my partner in crime, Calvin Butenhoff here.
How are you doing, Calvin?
I'm doing fantastic.
That was a pause that was supposed to be like, oh, I guess, yeah, led to fantastic.
That's great.
I was trying to come up with a more
Interesting word, but
hey man, I I can't say the way I can't say the word legislature today.
So you're doing just grand dandy We are here on the civic media radio network.
You can part of the conversation eight five five seven five two four eight four two eight five five seven five civic You can also leave a comment on the live stream.
We are on Facebook YouTube and
platform.
We still call Twitter.
Jim, I see you on the live stream.
I will get to that comment in a moment.
Very, very important question.
Thank you for asking that.
We're talking about this morning.
We're talking about important stores.
We're talking about childcare funding freezes from the U S government down to states that are happened to be run by Democrats.
We're talking about clean drinking water for Wisconsin.
And these are, we believe are things that need to be talked about, things that affect us on a daily basis.
And what
I'm also now discussing our bills that are going through the legislature for passage that seem to have no real basis for their creation and or their passage.
And we're going over some are very basic.
Some are very make a lot of sense.
There are some fees that are going to be raised if you are part of the world of hunting, fishing, gaming, or just love snowmobiling and trail blazing.
That will all be available for you to read, but we're talking about the ones that just don't seem to make a lot of sense.
And Gene has been on the phone very.
patiently.
Gene and Eau Claire, what say you?
What's going on this morning?
How are you doing, my
friend?
Um, to me, because organ transplants are usually filed very, um, closely and in addition to that, I know people have had organ transplants.
They're on a list forever and, uh, this will cause even more delay.
And, um, this is so ridiculous.
I just can't even say, and I just got to say one quick thing about our wonderful neighbors here in the, um, hot seat today.
Yeah.
Um, in front of the Congress and it makes me want to get very sick.
So keep up the great work.
Keep us informed.
Love you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you, Gene.
Thank you so much for calling.
I appreciate you.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing is like, if these are really big problems, then yeah, we need to mitigate them.
What gene is referring to is the fact that it's not, it's not, we're not trying to, we're not trying to address the problem of, of, of organ tourism or organ.
trafficking or illegal obtaining of, of, of organs.
This is, this is a bill that just has to do with telling insurance companies they can't cover the procedures, which they couldn't do anyways.
So this doesn't seem like something they need to address.
Another thing really quick is another bill.
This is coming out of assembly, the assembly 673 introduced by Dalman Moses Callahan and some others.
We got to, we got to move quickly on this one.
This is to say that we cannot use a genetic sequencing for genetic analysis or operational research.
software that come from quote, foreign adversaries.
And I'm, you know, again, I get it.
If there are problems, especially when we're talking about genetic research, there's a lot of information in there.
There's a lot of privacy information in the testimony.
You, you will see testimony from the university of Wisconsin, the universities of Wisconsin saying, well, they
believe in protecting the privacy of folks.
This bill will only seek to make things harder for them because their research relies on certain things, and it relies on technologies coming from various places.
A place may be China, but the other ones that are also named are Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and this is quoted Venezuela under the regime of Nicolas Maduro.
I don't know about you, Calvin, but I haven't gotten any gene sequencing materials, any technology from Iran, North Korea or Venezuela.
So again, this seems like a bill that doesn't seem to have the best, most pressing issues, interests of Wisconsin in mind.
The next one that I wanna talk about here is one that has to do with, this is Senate Bill 371.
Under current law of school board may offer human growth and development instruction.
instructional programs to pupils in kindergarten to grade 12.
If a school board elects to offer the instructional program, current law recommends, but does not require that the school board, that the school board isn't certain, that the school board includes certain topics in the instructional program.
They want to press for abstinence as a preferred alternative.
for children when we're talking about sex, talking about the importance of pregnancy, talking about prenatal development, but also they want them to look at things like a high definition ultrasound video that shows the development of the brain, heart, sex organs, other vital organs and early fetal development, high quality computer generated renderings or animations that show the process of fertilization.
This is just, I mean, this is a furthering of the, of trying to push an abstinence only, keep the baby married, get married.
It just, this is not something we need to be teaching logical, fact-based sex education to children.
And this is also pushing an agenda, in my opinion, and something that could be talked about at a lower level and found to compromise the...
the education of children through trying to push an agenda of making them look at these images.
Jim on the live stream, I'm not against science and I'm not against national security.
And you don't have to talk about these things at Christmas dinner for them to be important.
I just think that when I hear people talking about what concerns them, their kids, their kids' futures concern them.
These aren't things that are as important.
I think as education access to healthcare, things of that nature.
I feel like these bills in a short legislation legislative year, these are not the things that are going to affect the people the most.
These are things based on agenda.
So yeah.
And, but I guess I sort of addressed your question there, Jim.
And I thank you for reaching out to us on the live stream.
There's lots more to talk about.
On the other side of the news, we're going to be speaking to Mark Somerhauser from the Wisconsin policy forum about their top.
five fines of 2025.
Again, all the ones we wanted to cover today will be in the show notes.
I thank you for being a part of this.
Go get some water, get some snacks.
Come on back.
When we come back, we have a great discussion with Wisconsin policy forum and then do an audio survey.
And this shouldn't be a thing.
Lots more show to come mid mornings on civic media.
My name is Greg Bach.
Stay tuned.
Stay close.
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