Wisconsin from Civic Media.
This is Up North News Radio.
Now, live from our late Minnesota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Breidler.
Welcome back to the second hour of Up North News Radio, unabashedly Wisconsin brought to you by Courier Newsroom and Carried by our friends here on the Civic Media Radio Network at 7 0 6 on this Wednesday morning, February 19th.
Prevent plagiarism day.
a day to promote originality in writing, first established in 2007 by the International Center for Academic Integrity with the goal of educating individuals about the importance of citing sources and avoiding plagiarism.
And yet I just read that word for word from someplace else and didn't write any of that myself.
Sorry.
Let's see, Brittany Merlot has our forecast for this Wednesday and then we'll be talking to State Representative Deb Andraka and hopefully State Senator Latanya Johnson, both members of the Joint Finance Committee, about Governor Evers' budget address from last night, the things that he's advocating here in the year of the kid.
And we'll also be talking in our second half hour.
To Robert Craig from Citizen Action, David Liners from Wisdom, and Heather Dubois, born on from the Wisconsin Public Education Network, not just about the governor's budget address, but where do you go from here?
How do you turn that into action and let your legislators know what your priorities are and what their priorities should be when it comes to the next state budget?
But Brittany Merleau is here right now on a morning where it is still.
double digits below zero in many parts of Wisconsin.
But again, this is the world's longest tease.
It's common.
There's something warm coming, but we got to get a few more days of this under our belts.
Yeah, Brittany, right?
and we sure do, but we're on the slow climb as of this morning and into the afternoon.
We'll be climbing out of the cold slowly, but surely today highs will reach the teens into a good chunk of the state.
Some single digits still lingering as high temperatures into.
far northwest of Wisconsin, but it is cold this morning, still 24 below zero actual temperature at McCoy.
It is 17 below into Wisconsin Rapids.
We're also looking at wind chills of 27 below zero into Camp Douglas, Marshfield.
You're feeling the same thing.
And so is Waukesha as well at a 20 below zero wind chill.
So frigid this morning, still we still have cold weather advisories blanketing the state, extreme cold mornings far northwest as well.
But like I said, we will
start to warm up a little bit more than we have been the past few days as soon as this afternoon and it gets even better as we go into tomorrow.
We'll hit the teens to low 20s throughout the state.
A ton of sunshine.
We'll get a few degrees warmer from Friday and then Saturday.
We're looking at mid to upper 20s and by Sunday some low 30s mixing in and Monday.
40s, and that continues to be the case into Tuesday and Wednesday.
But I will say when we're getting these 40 degree temperatures, you know that we're going to get some sort of wintery mix, a little bit of Fleury's North, maybe even some icing possible into some places.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
It will be a warmer next week, and we are looking at this probably being the last cold snap of the season.
So we're almost out of it.
We've got this.
I hope so.
And I happen to, I have it on good word that there's a divine reason for this.
Greg, it looked like he wanted to inject something for my divine reason for the warm weather.
I just would like to say that it was for the past few days, but oh, we're getting the forties.
We're going to come into forties.
And then all of a sudden she throws in a wintry mix into that.
Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
There's always another shoe to
drop.
Allow me to vent for four seconds.
OK.
I didn't I was expecting sunshine and melting snow.
Now you got to tell me I'm going to wait for rainy snow cold mixes.
Well, here's the thing when you're getting melting snow You're not gonna see the sunshine anyways because you're gonna get that fog at least blocking the sunshine So no matter what I don't think there's gonna be much Sun
Merleau, you
are just so mean.
From Rob and Tiger 10.
Good morning.
It's clear in six below.
The wind chill is 21 below.
Yesterday I did vote at the town of Germania town hall, went and took pictures with my new phone camera.
I have a playlist on my phone.
I have Lou Christie's.
I'm going to make you mine from 1969 on there.
Also, Manfred Mann is blinded by the light, is on there too.
He's got a doctor's appointment in Chano today.
Reminds us that the only soda he'll drink is Diet Sundrop.
Chano County's official soft drink.
Coming from Twig's beverage in Chano.
Is he getting a cut from this?
I just gotta
know.
I'm
getting
nothing from this advertisement.
And he's noting that there is light at the end of the tunnel for warmer weather.
And then related to our talk about chocolate and mint, Mary writes on YouTube, love chunks of chocolate.
meant especially she writes grasshoppers and that her sister serves grasshoppers every Christmas and that they're very very delicious so there is a way to have chocolate and mint together Greg in a way that even you might like
well yeah I mean of course who doesn't love booze I mean geez
I live in
Wisconsin okay
Brittany thank you so much appreciate it
You're welcome.
All right, have a great day.
Again, and today's Up North News daily newsletter, sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com, talk about cancer screening, especially in today's
Today's newsletter, we talk about pancreatic cancer, which is very tough to screen for and detect.
So how to look for the warning signs of that, sign up again and up NorthNewsWI.com.
712 the time now and we are pleased to be joined by State Representative Deb Andraka, who's going to be talking more about Governor Tony Evers budget address last night and the state budget process going forward.
Representative Andraka, good morning.
Thank you for being here.
Morning Pat, good to be here.
Yeah, it's, you know, I don't know how far back goes the budget address tradition, because everybody knows about the state of the state.
And then it's followed, you know, about four weeks later or so by this budget address.
So the one is kind of a general overview, and then the other gets a bit more specific.
And I say this in jest, but I was watching again last night.
And, you know, if your party is the one that has the governor up there,
you kind of feel like you need ice packs for your knees afterwards or all the standing and sitting, standing and sitting for for the ovations.
But in the case of last night, those looked rather heartfelt given what the governor was proposing to do in the state of Wisconsin.
Well, not only did we get our exercise in, but we got a lot of good news.
The governor dropped his budget in the budget address.
And what we heard a lot about was the year of the kid.
And as a parent and as someone who spent a lot of time talking to constituents and families who are trying to make ends meet and make sure that their kids are entering a good world, there's a lot of uncertainty out there.
I think the budget address is going to be very well received by
the public so I'm looking forward to getting out there and talking to more people all about all the different nuggets now I should say it's a very lengthy document we haven't had a chance to go through all of the details but what we heard last night was well received and yeah those of us who don't do squats regularly are probably a little sore today.
Well but there again he gave you a lot to work with and not just about kids directly things like education for example but there's you know
clean water and safe conditions and mental health care.
I couldn't possibly ask anybody to list their top three or four because, like you said, a state budget is a massive document.
So I'm going to go back to basics.
And I talked about this last hour about how state budgets and state legislatures, for that matter, are kind of overlooked in the grand scheme of things.
People understand their city council, their school board.
They certainly understand Congress, but it always feels like state government doesn't get its fair due.
And so can you just talk a bit about the importance
of a state budget because it could either do some really good things or not so good things.
It really has an impact on everybody's daily life in some way.
Absolutely.
A lot of people get caught up in what's going on in Washington and it's easy to do because there's just so much, I guess we'll just call it drama happening.
But your state government and what happens in Madison really affects your day to day life.
Probably, I would argue even more, but I'm biased.
I'm in the state legislature.
Your schools, your roads, your snow plows, all of those things are, is a lot of that funding is coming from Madison.
And the biggest chunk of that is schools.
So I think it's really important.
that we're talking about the year of the kid.
As a former elementary school teacher before I was elected, we have seen the investment in public education go down, and I hear that from a lot of parents.
So it's one of our big responsibilities is public education, and that's coming from state government.
We're hearing about maybe eliminating the Department of Education on the national front.
That's gonna have huge implications, but your everyday teacher, schools,
where your kids go down the street from you, that's state government.
And so that's something that we all need to pay a whole lot of attention to.
Again, it's going to be a big bill when you see it written out.
And so we may not know the full answer to this, but I did note that the governor said he's proposing $80 million for school districts to hire literacy coaches, provide tutoring, and find other ways to improve reading scores statewide.
I'm assuming it's $80 million
because it includes the 50 million that was budgeted in the last budget that Republicans never released turning this literacy program essentially into an unfunded mandate.
So this is the governor saying let's restart this but let's also make up for lost time.
Yeah, that's been one of the most frustrating things for me over the past session is that we finally come to a bipartisan agreement on investing in literacy.
And this is near and dear to my heart because I was in third grade classroom and that's where you're really teaching kids, you know, you're reading fundamentals and making sure that they third grade sort of the tipping point where you go from learning to read to reading to learn.
And so this is really important to me.
And we had an agreement for $50 million
for literacy coaches to make sure we're getting back to basics, teaching phonics, making sure kids have all the tools available to them to learn how to read.
And we never got it out the door.
The Republicans kept 49.5 out of the 50 million in the joint finance committee.
That does nobody any good.
And it didn't reach the schools.
It was an unfunded mandate.
So what the governor is doing in this budget is saying, okay, we're going to get that 50 million dollars out the door.
Let's just get it to where kids
and teachers can actually use it.
And then we're going to add another $30 million on top of that for additional training and literacy coaches.
We're hearing a lot about test scores, particularly at some of the larger districts like MPS.
They're not where we want them to be.
In order to get them where we want them to be, to make sure that every kid can learn to read and then read to learn, we need to make some strategic investment.
And just having that money sitting in Madison is not helping a single child in the state of Wisconsin.
No, absolutely not.
And just to provide the civics lesson background here, you've got Republicans saying that they were unhappy with the way that Governor Evers used his line item veto on the funding.
They didn't like the line item vetoes that he made to how the money for literacy would be spent.
And so they're holding on to the money.
But here's the thing.
If you don't like a line item veto,
hold an override vote.
If you can override the veto, great.
If you can't, you can't.
You know, the governor has the right to veto these things, and he did, so stop being a sore loser and do what's right for the kids.
We're talking to state representative Deban Draca about things that are going into the state budget, at least the proposal from the governor and what might come out on the other side.
We'll continue that conversation in two minutes here.
This is Up North News Radio, live from Chippewa Falls on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Go!
It's Toky Robinson turns 85 years old today.
You can get that much more in today's history lesson every morning at 6.50 here on Up North News Radio.
We're talking to State Representative Deb Andraka now about the state budget.
Governor Evers made his budget proposal.
Let's pick up with where the process goes from here.
The governor makes his proposal.
Then the members of the Joint Finance Committee, including Representative Andraka here will, well, I guess go on the road, have a little road show here from folks all around the state.
and then mull over what should go in the legislature's version of it and send that off to the governor.
That's a very simplified version of where we go from here.
Very simplified.
Very simplified, but you've seen now what the governor is proposing.
Now we, I guess we wait to see what the Republican majority will propose for their version, right?
Yeah, so the governor has submitted his proposal and then the joint finance committee will hold hearings in different parts of the state Traditionally, we have not seen in the past couple of years a hearing in either Madison or Milwaukee But hopefully fingers crossed maybe we'll go to where majority of the people in the state live so the the committee will do the road shows I encourage everybody Who is interested in how the state spends money which honestly should be?
everyone to pay attention to those.
And if there's something that you're passionate about, attend some of those hearings that they're near you.
Reach out to your state representatives too.
So I will be working with a lot of my Democratic colleagues to make sure that we're holding budget listening sessions in our district.
And every single representative and senator should be doing that so that we
have
an opportunity to hear directly from our constituents.
Here's what's in the budget that we like.
carries what we don't like so that we're casting a vote for what our constituents really want.
So we'll be going on a statewide tour.
Make sure that if there is something in the budget that you want to see your state tax dollars spent on, you're making sure that your state reps are hearing from you.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we'll talk more about that in our next half hour here with three guests from various groups that will be advocating for the state budget as well.
Now, a lot of the focus has been on the spending side of things where that money would go.
Let's talk about how the money comes in on the on the tax side, because the governor did come up with a couple of novel proposals for tax relief.
that would include floating the idea of encouraging a freeze on local property taxes and the state would provide some level of reimbursement.
He talked about eliminating the income tax on tips and eliminating the sales tax on over-the-counter medications, along with some middle-class income tax cuts.
So, Representative Andraca, we just...
wanted to let people know that there's actually changes being proposed on both sides of the ledger, including the tax burden in Wisconsin.
Yeah, when you're doing something as as massive as the state budget you really it's a balancing act and so what gets attention are all the shiny new things and Places where the state is going to spend money particularly new programs But what I hear from constituents as well is that we really need to keep a lid on our tax burden because for many years we have had Just so many different communities all across the state
property tax increases largely driven by schools because of the lack of state funding.
So when you have the state underfund schools and they need more revenue to keep their programs going, you only have one choice and that's to raise property taxes.
So trying to keep a lid on both of those things is extremely important.
So the budget does contain a number of new initiatives to try to make sure that we're keeping property taxes low, not having tax on tips,
taking your first $1,200 of income taxes and making sure that there's no taxes on there, keeping our schools fully funded to make sure that we're not constantly going to referenda.
Those are all ways that we're trying to keep the balance.
So this proposal from Governor Evers is Democrats attempts to make sure that we are keeping more money.
in the pockets of everyday families.
So we're trying to control costs wherever we can on health care costs, schools, kids, making sure that we're keeping things balanced while also making sure that our tax burden is staying low.
There's a recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum saying that the overall tax burden is pretty low, but you don't really feel that when prices are high.
So this budget is trying to get out a lot, but I think the governor's doing a really good job of it.
And in addition to all of that, he says that there will be a crackdown on price gouging and also capping insulin co-pays at $35 a month.
And I would be remiss if I didn't add as well the governor again, trying to emphasize the need for your Republican colleagues to take seriously the crisis of a shortage of quality childcare.
And there did seem to be
a large degree of, shall we say, denial in the last session, I do wonder now with much, much smaller majorities if there are Republican members of the legislature that are going to be more amenable to actually addressing this crisis that affects families in every district.
Well, Wisconsin businesses need workers, and one of the best ways to make sure that you can get workers is to make sure that people who want to work are able to do so.
And when we have a massive shortage of childcare all across the state, and this affects urban areas and rural areas alike, you're not getting the Wisconsinites back into the job market.
It's as simple as that.
And so we really need to do a little bit of both.
We're po-
Public and proposal on childcare was a lot about tax credits and helping centers reduce costs.
But we also need to look at making sure that we have people working in childcare to make sure that those workers can make a fair wage so they can make a living wage to support their own children.
I mean, the entry level salary for early childcare is abysmally low.
So we have to do a little bit of both.
And we've already seen the reception to the governor's budget from
Speaker Voss, I think it's as cold as the weather is outside right now.
That's not going to get the state anywhere.
What I would like to see is lots of meat in the middle.
Let's make sure that we are working on Wisconsinized priorities.
And what we're hearing is making sure that costs stay low.
We're keeping a lid on property taxes and that we are investing in kids because they're the feature of Wisconsin.
And I think every single parent across the state will be really, really happy to hear that the governor is doing just that.
And Speaker Robin Boss is not going to cave into pressure from Tony Evers or from Democratic legislators, but hearing from another other people, Republicans included, that there are just some basic things that need to get done in this next state budget.
Representative Deb Mandrake, thank you very, very much.
I know how busy you're going to be over the next few months, and we appreciate you taking some time with us this morning.
Thanks, Pat.
It's always good to be
here.
All right.
Have a great day.
When we come back, we will talk to folks from Citizen Action, the Group Wisdom and the Wisconsin Public Education Network about how they're going to advocate for what should be in the next state budget.
This is Upground News Radio.
I'm Pat Krightlo.
This
is from this week in 1994.
Remember MTV Unplugged?
Remember when MTV had a really good show called Unplugged?
Remember when they played music?
Wasn't that a great time?
Anyway, it was on this week in 1994.
that 10,000 maniacs had this acoustic cover of because the night and it peaked at number 11.
And that was pretty much it for the group.
Natalie Merchant had already left the group six months earlier to pursue a solo career.
And that performance on MTV was one of her last with the group.
Again, something you can hear in our history lesson every morning at six 50.
Now we've been talking a lot about two big things that happened yesterday.
One was the primary election.
in which State Superintendent Jill Underly and Charter Schools Advocate Brittany Kinzer advanced to the April 1st general election.
So there will be a very clear choice for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction Race just as there is for the State Supreme Court Race between Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge and Republican former Attorney General Brad Schimmel.
Clear choice is on April 1st.
But also, along with the elections, will be the ongoing state budget process.
Governor Evers gave his budget address last night.
We just talked to state representative Deb Andraca about how the process is going to unfold.
But the process can involve you.
It can either involve you as an individual or with various groups.
And we have three members of some of those groups joining us this morning.
They include our friend, Heather Dubois, born on from the Wisconsin Public Education Network.
Robert Craig from Citizen Action and David Liners from Wisdom.
Thank you all for being here this morning.
Thank you.
Nice to have you here.
David, you're the newest to the show here.
So I want to start by having you describe the group Wisdom and it's a part of a network of groups around Wisconsin.
Can you tell us more about that?
Sure.
So, Wisdom is a network of mostly congregation-based, faith-based groups, so not exclusively.
We have about 12 chapters around the state in Eau Claire, Milwaukee, Green Bay, etc., etc.
We also include the organization Free, which is comprised primarily of formerly incarcerated women.
And we have a group on the Menominee Reservation and more.
So we work on a variety of social justice issues.
One of the things we've worked on the most over the years is criminal legal system reform, which is why we're kind of excited about this budget.
What do you mean by excited about the budget?
What did you hear that you'd love to see get implemented?
Well
for the
first time we have a governor who's willing to propose closing one of our antiquated prisons We have a couple of prisons in Wisconsin that are just horrendous human beings shouldn't live in them And he's proposing closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution, but especially he is not proposing to build a new prison in its place The primary mechanism for being able to close the prison is to take some common set
common sense steps to reduce the prison population, especially getting folks whose main problem is mental health or addiction into alternative programming to kind of deal with some of the excesses.
We have far too many people.
in our prisons way more than we need to.
And this budget actually calls for the, again, the common sense, safe programs that can reduce the population so we can actually start closing some of these antiquated places.
Robert Craig, what kinds of things did you hear from the governor last night that would encourage you if they could be passed into law?
Well, health care, both access and cost, Pat, is a huge unmet need in this state and country.
People just, even with insurance, can't afford their health care, can't deal with the insurance industry.
We were not surprised to see the governor again emphasize bad care expansion.
Wisconsin's one of only 10 states have not taken that additional money from the federal government to expand.
their state Medicaid program and also he had a prescription drug price board which he ran on in his first run for governor in 2018 and we worked with him on and started to create a badger public option so that we could buy into a great public badger care program that has lower prices and doesn't have claims denials.
What we were surprised by Pat
was that he added some real accountability for insurance company abuses like claims denials, pre-authorization, really not covering things that ought to be covered as necessary medical care.
And so we've been working on that.
So we're thrilled the governor has jumped in on that.
And as
a dynamite issue, I mean, Republicans are going to be really wary of being against holding insurance companies accountable for using their own constituents.
Well, especially given that, I mean, to them, the quote unquote audits that Elon Musk and others are doing right now certainly seem to be music to their ears.
And so why wouldn't they want
audits to be done on companies that seem to make it a habit to deny health insurance claims.
It seems like they'd be put in a rather interesting box to oppose what Governor Evers is asking.
Oh, I agree.
I think that it's something where it's a powerful public issue already.
Democrats haven't used it well enough and been clear on what side they're on and what they will do.
And so I really want to praise the governor's team for
putting that into the con because I think healthca know this pat in rural are is an extent and the cost crisis.
Fewer people have them good insurance.
And so on rural communities all over th think they're representi Republican are going to
Heather, I don't mean to give you a short shrift here rather than ask you your favorite parts of the budget because we talk about public education almost every Wednesday morning in this time period.
So let's take it to that next step because first off, your favorite thing is probably that a state superintendent is now the governor.
So as somebody who declared this year to be the year of the kid, but where do you go from there in terms of advocacy to get some of these things into the budget?
What is the Wisconsin Public Education Network?
and others who support education doing to make their voices heard throughout the state capital.
Yeah thanks for that Pat.
There's absolutely no question that the governor put forward proposals yesterday that would be absolutely transformative for our public schools and I mean I do want to celebrate those things increasing the
the special education reimbursement to restore some critical and much needed aids to every district in the state is absolutely essential in the next budget.
And I think everybody at the State House knows it.
And also restoring those common sense increases to revenue limits to at least adjust them to inflation is literally the least that can do.
So to act like this is a reckless bit of spending that simply restores some basics or gets us back to what we sometimes call the old broken.
I think is a good baseline at the minimum.
But people need to fight for this.
I mean, Republicans have already signaled that this budget is, quote, dead on arrival.
our kids just can't afford to do with less than what the governor has proposed.
So we've got to come together and really make sure that the members of that powerful joint finance committee hear us and know what's at stake for local kids across all of our issues.
And if we really want to take up the governor's call to make this the year of the kid, we need to show up for kids every time we can.
We invite people to join us next week because it's public schools week, February 24 to 28.
If you visit our website, wisconsinnetwork.org, you can see our whole
tool kit of stuff to do all week long but come join us at the Capitol next Friday.
We are having an in-person day of action on the 28th from noon to one.
We are going to be in the Rotunda and we are going to raise our collective voice to call on lawmakers to take up these important provisions that the governor has put forward and make sure the folks in your community and your lawmakers know what's really at stake for kids if we don't.
This is a critical moment for us and our silence
with everything else that we have going on at the state and federal fronts just to attack our schools.
It's never been more important to stand up and raise our voices together.
David, from the standpoint of wisdom, talk about advocacy and outreach because there are groups that do a better job of holding meetings or events than necessarily taking action.
I've been part of debates about this group or that group is more of a social circle than one that is out there on the streets or knocking on doors or what have you.
Can you talk from a wisdom standpoint of what you're encouraging members and people in the public to do?
Sure, we've got a
bunch of stuff coming up.
We're doing some state budget trainings in the next couple of weeks to help our members understand what's at stake and what they can do.
But then we really want to have a network-wide campaign of people contacting their legislators, not just sending an email, but going to their offices, making phone calls, keeping up with them.
We certainly want to turn out a lot of people for these state budget hearings.
Those tend to be a lot more noise than substance, but still it's a chance to be sure that the lawmakers understand that there are a lot of people who care about the kinds of issues we're talking about this morning.
And then finally, we have a Madison Action Day on April 10th.
We're hoping to have a thousand people in Madison and we're hoping to have constituent visits to almost everybody in the legislature.
So this is really a time that we want to put as much pressure as we can be sure that they understand this isn't just a few people.
this is actually most folks in Wisconsin want these things.
Robert, is there a right or wrong answer from the standpoint of citizen action where you do all kinds of grassroots canvassing?
Is there a right answer to the notion of either you want people who are
loud advocates, it's this way or the highway versus what's called the relational canvassing where you're just, you're listening to people and trying to find that common ground and maybe find that one little nugget that they would support.
I would imagine you need folks of all stripes to be effective advocates for a state budget.
Yeah, and our approach is deep canvassing that is relational.
because we need to we need to get beyond our current circle of activists, which is robust and but it isn't been enough, right?
We need to get more people, more people who are currently not engaged.
And what you find this have people can be cross pressured like they have.
They've heard things about immigration, you know, what they've seen their social media feeds, but it doesn't mean that they don't want access to health care.
They want their insurance claims to died or they want to be afraid to go to the doctor because they don't know how much will cost them.
And so you need to find those connections and then make the connection to who is doing what and who is really on your side.
And so that you have to do that.
Ultimately, we have to as far as engaging legislators, Pat.
We need both.
We need the people who are willing to go to joint finance committee and testify and be out front.
But we also need the quieter people who live in Republican districts who can help bring home to those Republican legislators what their constituents actually want and what they actually need.
And people who they do not have not identified already as that small group of progressive activists they know already exists in their districts.
Exactly, because again, with smaller majorities, there are a better opportunity to get some things done that hadn't been done before.
To me, the most obvious example is extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for new moms, given that only Wisconsin and Arkansas are the last two states with Republican holdouts, which is amazing, but maybe that's one of the little victories that move forward.
David.
it's not just that advocates can either be forceful or more conciliatory, you know, in their language, you would like to see from the governor himself, you know, there's a time to be forceful versus a time to be thinking compromise.
Absolutely.
We need the
governor to really put his foot down this year and say he is not going to sign a budget that doesn't include some of these things that are popular.
And if it creates a showdown with the legislature, so be it.
I think the people of Wisconsin would very much rally.
uh, to the side of the go things like public scho like health care and for th criminal justice reform.
So to actually fight for h he put out a great budge him now to kind of vow it until the end that
Okay, this will be what I hope is the first of several conversations with these folks throughout the state budget process to learn more about what's in the budget, what you can advocate for.
I know that my own article about the governor's budget proposal will be on our website later this morning.
It includes a note from Mike Brown from a Better Wisconsin Together that gives out the phone number for the legislative hotline that you can call and put your two cents in as well.
But Heather, one last note for you is
I'm looking at the Facebook comments here.
It says, I had asked earlier about people who could potentially be guest hosts for me when I'm gone, because I had just gotten back from vacation.
From Ardith here, I'll vote for Heather to sub for you when you take breaks in the future.
Another is the woman suggesting books to read.
I can't remember her name, but it would be interesting.
That would, of course, be author Laura Bird.
And
so between Laura Bird and Heather Dubois-Bornan, we now have two people in the running for our next guest host, if
you're
willing, Heather.
Tag me and Pat anytime.
I'd love to chat with anyone who wants to talk more about what we can do.
do to be everyday ambassadors for our schools and also to connect with us across our issues like we've done today.
Perfect.
Thanks for the opportunity.
You bet.
Thanks Heather, Robert, David.
We'll be back with more after this.
You're up north.
Thank you.
He's so fine.
He's so fine.
Now, I'm not hearing the chiffons in here at all.
I'm not.
But it was on this day in 1981 that the owner of the publishing rights to the chiffons hit He's So Fine was awarded $587,000 from former Beatle George Harrison, who was found guilty of subconsciously plagiarizing the song.
When he wrote that song, My Sweet Lord.
Do you happen to have He's So Fine?
Here you go.
My sweet lord, let's
let's do something.
That's truly evil right now.
Okay?
Yeah, he can afford it.
Oh He can afford it.
Okay, so that's where we're gonna make up the subconsciously plagiarizing of song material.
I
think that's
well.
I mean nothing is
Nothing beats song copyright trials better than when John Fogarty was sued for sounding too much like John Fogarty.
He had to
play the
song in court because his former record label said, your solo song sounds too much like your band song.
So we're going to sue you for sounding like you.
Oh boy.
All right, well.
You know, gotta keep those courts busy doing something, right?
There's no backlogs, right?
Just to come back to our guests for a moment again next week to celebrate Public Schools Week.
There will be a day of action next Friday at the State Capitol.
You can learn more by going to the Wisconsin Public Education Network website, which is simply WisconsinNetwork.org.
And as far as the folks from Wisdom and Citizen Action, you can learn more at WisdomWisconsin.org.
and citizenactionwi.org.
And I didn't get a chance to ask David from Wisdom about this, but it's worth noting that a lot of these groups, these faith-based and congregation groups, are getting more involved in issues like this.
There are, for example, two
faith-based groups in Pennsylvania that have signed on to a national lawsuit challenging Donald Trump's efforts to allow ICE officers to arrest undocumented immigrants in places of worship.
You'll recall one of the first things the Trump administration did was change the guidance for Immigrations and Custom Enforcement to allow them to go into sensitive areas like schools, churches, hospitals, and make people afraid.
to seek medical treatment, make people afraid to get an education for their children.
And so faith-based groups are becoming more involved.
Wisdom is one of them.
And you can learn more over at the website there.
Got a question on the tip line from Tiffany in River Falls.
Can you explain how members of the legislature get chosen to be on the Joint Finance Committee?
Why are there so many Republicans on the committee?
Well,
there's an interesting question.
There's an old conversation starter.
Yeah, because...
the what is what is the current ratio right now 12 to 4 something like that on the joint finance committee well
that's a good question because the Wisconsin GOP the state legislature leaders are throwing Democrats off of key committees to
retain their power.
So let's just take a look real quick.
Yeah, it's a 16 members on there.
And so yeah, I believe 12 of them.
Yes, 12 are Republicans for our Democrats.
With a three to one ratio, you would think there must be three times as many Republicans in the Assembly and Senate as Democrats, right?
No.
No, the Republicans have a paper thin majority and yet somehow have that many more seats on joint finance, which is again, a bit of a holdover from the gerrymandered map days.
There clearly needs to be a change in the rules that reflect how committee makeup should be this many members of the majority party and this many members of the minority party.
so that it can't be changed by, say, a tyrannical majority.
I was
going to call them petty, but okay.
Tyrannical is better because then you can envision Robin Boss as a T-Rex with little tiny arms, you know, trying to sign the document that sets up the committee name.
That's Robin somewhere in Madison.
That's him making the committee assignments right now.
Yes, exactly.
Todd Alba would normally join us in this slot.
I'm saying that because maybe he's listening to the show right now and going, Oh, is it Wednesday?
Okay.
And maybe we'll hear from him in just a little bit.
Maybe he's still in line voting.
Maybe it was so busy at the polling place yesterday.
Very true.
It wasn't, it wasn't in mind when, when Sherry and I went into the Eagle Point Town Hall about a six 15 last evening, there's like four ladies sitting at the table and we were cheered like, yay, people.
I walked in and there were two ladies, one wearing an American flag hat.
They were questioning one of the poll workers and I'm like, I gotta get out of here.
I was number 99 and that was at 145 yesterday.
And they both looked at me and I'm like, I wanna be like, can I help you?
But I'm like, nope, just walk out, just walk out.
Cause I don't wanna talk to them or anybody right now.
I voted, I'm done, I'm leaving.
So they wanted to make some trouble with the poll work.
I have no idea what they were doing, but I don't, but, but, but seeing someone and I'm not kidding you a bedazzled American flag hat.
I just did not feel cool.
I did not feel good.
So I was like, all right, get in here, tick the box, tick the box, tick the box.
But the thing he got my sticker and got out because I didn't want to find out.
Yeah.
No, but I got, I got my sticker too.
Democracy kids and democracy politely.
Please.
My thanks today to Representative Deb Mandrake, as well as David Liners, Heather Dubois-Bornan and Robert Craig for joining us today.
Tomorrow on the program, State Senator Dora Drake will join us to talk about the legislative Black Caucus and celebrating Black History Month.
We'll also talk to Selena Heller on Wisconsin Farmers who are finding out they are losing money because of the cuts being made by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
And then on Friday, we'll talk to Courier Newsrooms, Kia Vakil.
and Casey Harrison of Courier's Outlet, the Nevadon, coincidentally in Nevada.
Up North News is the Wisconsin Outlet for Courier, a pro-democracy news network, building a more informed, engaged, and more representative.
