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This is Up North News Radio.
Now, live from our Lake Minnesota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat
Breitler.
Welcome back to Up North News Radio.
On this Friday, March 7th, 2025.
Nice to have you along as we wrap up the work week here.
Get set to head into the weekend and coming up this hour, we will once again have our weekend review panel, including former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel and Chicago journalist Mark Jacob and Chicago radio broadcaster Jonas Pizzino will all be here followed by Dan Schumacher talking about sports.
But before we do any of that on this Friday morning, we've got to bring in Brittany Merleau.
I was looking at the Hayward forecast before Brittany and telling people in the last hour that while it was four degrees there in Hayward, do not worry.
The end is in sight with
Forties, the
end of the night
for the single digits.
Yeah, we're going to put zeros after those things, maybe 40, maybe 50.
It's it's going to be nice next
week.
Oh, it sure is.
Look at it.
She's doing a
little chair dance, you know, just
kind of
popping.
After next week,
locusts.
Enjoy.
Blizzard, you know, anything's possible in Wisconsin, but in the here and now we've got a very pretty start to the day up
here.
We sure do, especially up north.
This is the time to be up north.
We're seeing a ton of sunshine.
It is crisp and cool with temperatures into those single digits, but we will warm up nicely today.
We're looking at mid twenties, far northeast, some upper
into the northwest areas, but we will hit 40 degrees far south in the state.
But there's a reason why.
That's because it's cloudy down there.
Those temperatures are staying much warmer along the southern state line.
And you're also looking at a chance of some light snow and a wintery mix.
This is again, far, far south into the state of Wisconsin.
Otherwise up north, we're going to see a ton of sunshine today.
Just a little on the cooler side of things, trying to melt that snow.
It is keeping us colder with our average highs.
Now, of course, as we go into tomorrow, the state is going to be warming up, especially the west side.
you're going to be hitting anywhere from the low fifties to about the upper forties.
Now, of course, further up north, some low forties are definitely possible.
And then as we go into Sunday, we're looking at
40s east and 50s west.
So getting even warmer and it doesn't stop there.
Monday is the warmest day of this stretch where we are going to look at some 60 degree temperatures far southwest in the state and some 50s northeast.
So that snow is definitely going to be melting.
We're going to be feeling like spring.
And did I mention it's going to be sunny the entire weekend?
We love that.
Love that news.
We were talking fish fries before the break.
Rob says good morning from Tigerton.
Clear and 15 right now.
Great to see the sun shining brightly and the snow melting.
I feel much better.
I had a hot bowl of chicken dumpling soup.
He said, I have my fish fry at Rachel's Roadside Bar and Grill in Wittenberg.
Many of the great bars and restaurants serve fish fries in Western Chano County.
You got to have a perch with French fries, coleslaw, lots of tartar sauce.
And he says, Brittany, isn't too far from Rachel's Roadside near Wittenberg.
And she should try that place.
So there you go.
Yes.
I said before in the last segment, it's like everybody's got a homework assignment now when we talk fish fries a week from now.
I want comments on Facebook or YouTube or texts about where you'd recommend people go get a fish fry.
Who's got the best one?
Well, that's tough.
The whole state is delicious.
I'm willing to
try multiple places to get the right answer.
It's called science, people.
That's right.
We're engaged in research.
I feel so much better this morning compared to how I'm going to feel later today because I really stepped in it last night as as a dad.
We have plans for this weekend and my one daughter is driving out from Michigan with her two littles.
I didn't realize that she was on speakerphone.
Uh, I should have, she was driving, right?
Uh, she was driving through Chicago and say, yep, we're on time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then I, I said, cause I was, I just wasn't thinking.
I said, well, okay, well, uh, you know, we can check in at the three o'clock, but if you come earlier, you, you can go to the water park all day and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then this little five year old voice from the back seat, I can hear.
Did grandpa say water park?
And I could just feel my daughter seething and her eyes were running good.
No, nope, he said library.
Library,
because
otherwise he was gonna ask for the next 12 hours, can we go yet?
Can we go yet?
He's like, no, I heard water park.
I'm like, nobody, library.
I said library.
We're gonna go to the library and get some books.
It sounded like water park.
You're just gaslighting children.
My God.
No.
I tried something else.
I'm like, no, not water park.
It was a otter park.
We were talking about otters from a book at a library.
That's it.
We're taking you to your first bar, buddy.
We're taking you to your first bar.
It's great.
Wisconsin tradition.
She's going to open the door, hand you the kid in a bathing suit, and
go,
have
fun.
Yep, get out.
I've been listening to this kid for 12 hours now.
So wish me well.
Let's see if the day stays at this wonderfully high level it is.
Thanks to you, Brittany.
Have
a wonderful
weekend.
You too.
All
right.
A reminder that you can sign up for our daily newsletter and the weekend one that I put together.
If I get through this weekend anyway, you can sign up for it over at UpNorthNewsWI.com for unabashedly Wisconsin news.
A lot about Wisconsin's firsts in history in today's newsletter.
And then we have our weekend edition of the newsletter as well.
And that one will include a story that I'm going to tell you about right now.
And it is about all of the offices around Wisconsin.
federal government offices that are being closed because Elon Musk and his co-president Donald Trump are canceling the leases.
So once again, you had contracts that were signed by the federal government saying we commit to do this because this was what was approved by Congress in our federal budget.
And you've got a president and his assistant just saying, nope, we're going to cancel these things.
And
These are not simply places with cubicles where minions fill out forms in triplicate.
These are offices that provide customer service so that government offices run more efficiently.
But that's not what's happening here when you've got Trump and Musk claiming to have cut
$105 billion, although the number can't be verified and a number of the figures have had to be corrected.
But the Trump administration said it has removed 443 federal properties, and the Milwaukee Journal sent them to find out which ones were in Wisconsin, and they found at least 16 of them.
And among them,
They include things like an IRS office in La Crosse if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, and it's one that provides, serves as a taxpayer assistance center.
You got questions, you can actually go talk to a human being.
And then there are social security offices that are going to be closing in Green Bay and in Warsaw.
You have a most notably, in my mind, the Food and Drug Administration
has offices in Madison and Wauwatosa and you're thinking, okay, why does the FDA have offices out there?
Well, the FDA has an import office and the FDA is responsible for making sure that products imported into the US are safe and compliant with FDA standards and the office oversees nine ports in Wisconsin.
Lot of folks forget about that when we talk about the border the border we talk about the southern border There's a border here in that there are plenty of places that come into the US through the Great Lakes and Come into any of the ports like the Port of Milwaukee or Green Bay or Superior and Duluth and There are people who work for the federal government Not just looking for people who shouldn't be coming in but products that shouldn't be coming in things that that aren't safe
And that kind of activity is being cut back sharply.
There are offices for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Ashland and Shanno that are being terminated.
The one in Ashland employs 40 people.
And it helps, again, process some of the lease fees and paperwork to make sure that we can account for, you know, land purchases and land transfers.
And if you know anything about what's happening with the Lacked Flambeau and the nearby town, there's definitely disagreements about how to handle ownership of land.
These are things where local offices could have taken care of matters.
And now those offices are going to be closed.
And as if things weren't confusing enough, there's also the office of a U.S.
attorney in Green Bay, except that there have been conflicting emails saying the lease is going to be terminated.
And then that the lease won't be terminated, but the Journal Sentinel rechecked one of the websites to see if the lease was still listed and it is.
So again, much like people's jobs, like you're fired.
No, you're hired.
No, you're fired.
No, I mean,
If this thing is the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, where's the efficiency?
Seriously.
And then one more to tell you about.
There's a USDA Rural Housing Service Office in Stevens Point.
And this office administers the USDA's Rural Development Program.
That's something we talk about a lot on this program.
It's a program that aims to bolster the rural economy in Wisconsin.
by increasing access to affordable housing, providing business loans, helping build new infrastructure for small town water and electric needs.
These are all things that we had talked about with Julie Lassa for years when she was running the Wisconsin office during the Biden administration.
She and a lot of her colleagues, you know,
had turnover with the new administration, but other people working there may be out of a job anyway, because the leases have been terminated.
What does the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, think about something like that?
Well, a USDA spokesperson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, quote, Secretary Rollins fully supports President Trump's directive to eliminate wasteful spending and ensure tax dollars are used effectively.
So...
If she says she supports eliminating wasteful spending, then it is clear once again, the Secretary of Agriculture believes that Wisconsin farmers and the Wisconsin Rural Economy and the need for affordable housing and small business development in rural Wisconsin is a waste.
I've said it before, I'm going to say it again.
There are plenty of people who keep saying they want to cut wasteful spending.
They think there's all kinds of wasteful spending.
But to those folks I would say You are the waste that they're talking about and a lot of people are finding this out the hard way people who are saying well I voted for Donald Trump.
I didn't think he'd cut my job.
My job is essential.
He doesn't think so There's only one thing he thinks is essential and it's not balancing the budget.
He didn't do it last time He tagged on an additional two trillion dollars through the 2017 tax plan
that benefited millionaires and billionaires.
And now he wants to do it all over again.
And it's going to add another $4 trillion to the deficit.
There is no cutting of wasteful spending.
There is the cutting of services and the loss of jobs and using that money to transfer to tax cuts for the very wealthy.
There's not much that can be done until the midterms, but it's important that you know that this is what is happening.
Jim Santel, Mark Jacob, Jonas Pizito next, you're up north.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
I love how Greg says in a nanosecond what would take the rest of us a long time to say which is Pat you can't do math because I still thought there was another 30 seconds left in the break and Greg quickly goes five seconds like oh that's right I can count that's Friday we're ready for a weekend here we're ready for our Friday panel which includes former US Attorney Jim Santel
and Chicago journalist Mark Jacob and Joe Nesposito.
And it's so great to have all of them here.
And let me let me give it the proper introduction here.
Joe Nesposito hosts WCPT's live local and progressive afternoon show in Chicago.
Prior to that, she spent
20 years as an anchor and reporter for WGN Channel 9, ABC 7, NBC 5.
Head over to heartlandsignal.com to look for Joan and catch her show live or as a podcast.
Joan, get that 20 years as an anchor thing out of there.
We should, we should not be dating ourselves like that.
Nobody will
believe it.
How are you?
Shutter.
Yes.
Thank you for being in here again today.
Jennifer Schulze usually is in here as well.
She's off this week.
You can see her newsletter in distinct chatter at substack.com slash at news Jennifer.
Mark Jacob has his newsletter stopped the presses dot news along with his video series with Stephen Beschloss on target.
Mark, how you doing?
people
Yeah, yeah.
That's been a theme throughout the past couple of weeks here is people catch themselves now when they go, how you doing?
You know what?
Don't, don't answer that.
That's fine.
Amicus, a law review can be heard live on Saturday morning, starting at nine on civic media stations around Wisconsin with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel.
Jim, how are you?
Also, please said, even in the midst of the calamity about which Mark and Shone described, we've got a president of the United States from Morocco right after the State of the Union.
walks down to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and says, thank you.
I won't forget.
All is good in America, is it not?
Boy,
I mean, things that are captured on microphone that you know are going to be a moment in history.
And not to make light of somebody's foibles, but I will make an exception in this case.
The fact that speaker, Mike Johnson, Chief of Staff, was arrested for a DUI shortly after the speech just leads to the metaphor that these people are quite literally drunk on power.
That's that's really what we've got to at this point Jim let me start with you because we just talked about before the break all those closings of offices around, Wisconsin Including one Allegedly for the US Attorney's office in Green Bay.
Can you talk more about that office?
Even if we don't really know yet if it's Really it's like Schrodinger's office.
It's both open and closed.
We don't know but tell us more
We can go up there and knock on the door and see if, in fact, somebody opens the door.
It should be open.
It was established many years ago at the time that I and another U.S.
attorney were focused on the uppermost region.
This is still the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Prior U.S.
attorneys and subsequent U.S.
attorneys to me have staffed that office with practicing lawyers and professional staff who support the work of that part of the state.
And it's important because, among other things, there is plainly a lot of white-collar crime.
There's plainly a lot of violent crime.
And significantly, the U.S.
Attorney's Office also provides all of the prosecution for, yes, that's right, the Menominee Indian Tribe, which is about 40 to 50 miles just to the west of that office.
It's in Green Bay.
You practice in front of the federal judges and magistrates there.
It is important for law enforcement throughout our state, throughout our district.
And the fact that you would stop that does not mean that those lawyers and staff will not be doing work, but just the, and it's not just convenience.
So I'm hesitant to use that word, but the access to ensure prompt, speedy, responsive action to crime when it happens, and civil cases as well, that cannot be overstated the closing of it.
is not a good thing.
If in fact, that's happening.
No, for a place that said it was the alleged Department of Government efficiency is making things so much less efficient.
Again, leading right into my saying, those who hate government the most should be trusted the least to run it competently and mark the I mean, the examples are essentially endless of the ways that offices are being closed and that good people are being let go.
So many of them veterans as well.
But it
it leads to this question as you monitor media coverage through all this.
How much of it is essentially normalized?
Like, well, this is just what Trump does.
And is there any kind of creeping sense yet of buyer's remorse from so many of these folks who lost their jobs and maybe supported Trump?
Well, I think there is some, there is some reporting on that, you know, the whole, you know, I voted for the leopards eat my face party, but I didn't think leopards were going to eat my face, you know, that kind of thing.
But there are people who are just shocked, shocked that Trump will do this.
And one thing I'd like to point out is, you know, you keep on hearing, well, that's what they voted for.
Nobody voted for Elon Musk dismantling the federal government.
That was not something that they advertised before the election.
There's a whole lot.
Nobody voted for invading Greenland or the Panama Canal or making Canada the 51st state.
None of that crazy stuff was out there.
So this idea that, you know, that
Well, this is what you're you asked for.
This is what you're getting isn't really true.
It's a it's this is this is just a shocking assault on the government and and yeah, there's should be buyers are worse.
You know, people should be angry.
According to polls, people really opposed the pardons for the January 6th people.
But I mean, the real question, Pat, I think is if people are going to have enough memory if we have another election in two years.
you know if will people have enough memory to be to stay mad and I think people need to be we need to help people stay mad because they have to realize what's being done to them right now.
Uh Joan you take calls throughout the day with your uh two to five show on WCPT uh what can you tell us about the the tone of the callers uh if if you're hearing from people who aren't just kind of you're dyed in the wool you know uh democrats but other people who want to call in and say it's it's a little weirder than even I was expecting.
Well, I haven't gotten any confessions from from Trump trolls but one thing I have noticed is I don't think Mark has to worry at least not right now about people being upset and crazed by what is happening because a lot of my audience are old enough to remember former administrations and they know just how utterly off the rails what's happening now is one thing I have noticed though is
I'm getting a lot of calls from around the country.
Usually my calls have been Indiana, Illinois, the area where our radio signal goes, but I'm getting a lot of calls from California.
I'm getting a lot of calls from everywhere.
I think that people, and I don't think that's because I've changed what I'm doing, I think people are looking
for like-minded folks.
They want to know what's going on.
And from somebody who, you know, isn't going to give them talking points.
They just want to know, I'm not crazy, right?
And we're all in that kind of company.
We will continue our conversation with Jonas, Posito, Mark Jacob, and Jim Santel right after this.
This is Up North News Radio.
I'm Pat Kratlow.
back on a Friday morning, March 7th, 2025, here on Up North News Radio.
Once again, joined by Jonas Pazito of WCPT Radio, Mark Jacob and former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel.
And in our last hour, I talked to two of my courier newsroom colleagues, Cam Stevenson, from...
Arizona and Zach Smith from Iowa.
And if you missed that, go to civicmedia.us and you can listen back to past hours of the show.
I'll go back as many days as you like.
But one of the questions I asked them was whether we're yet seeing any signs of Republicans in some of these states saying, Mr. President, you know, I voted for you.
I support you.
I support wasteful spending, but not in this way.
I would have expected that by now, say, on the Democratic side because, you know,
Joe Manchin, Kirsten Sinema, things like that.
But are we seeing any mavericks?
Are we seeing any spinal fortitude anywhere out there in the world?
Joan, seeing anything out in your neck of the woods?
Not really, no.
But I thought it was interesting when Elon sent those letters out to people saying, you've got to tell me everything you've done, like in the last year or two, so I know whether or not you're worth keeping.
And it was the heads of the departments, the cabinet members, many of whom told their people, oh, you don't have to do that, or you don't have to do it right now.
And then Trump pushed back.
And now, if you've noticed, he's kind of relented.
It's up to the cabinet members to keep the good people.
So that's as close as I've seen.
And that's not much.
No, it is not.
How about, Mark, you look at it from a national perspective, whether it's in Congress or anyplace else, is there anything close to this yet?
The real problem, Pat, is that Trump has very successfully intimidated Republican lawmakers, Republicans in Congress, know that if they get out of line even a little bit, they're going to be punished.
They will be primaried.
And the Republican Party has decided
that it's more important for them to get reelected than to have the US be a global power or to have their children not get measles and polio.
I mean, they've decided that everything is less important than them getting reelected.
And when you get to that point, you're going to make the wrong decision all the time.
I mean, there was a New York Times story that drove me nuts yesterday with Bill Cassidy.
He's a senator from Louisiana.
He's a doctor.
And he voted for RFK Jr.
for HHS Secretary, which everyone looked at him to see what was he going to do because obviously he knows vaccines work.
And he voted for RFK Jr.
And the New York Times wrote a very sympathetic story about how the quote was.
that RFK was creating discomfort for some Republicans.
Well, you know, I don't really care about the discomfort of Republican lawmakers.
I care about whether children are safe from diseases.
You know, that might be more important to your times.
You might think about that.
And so, and Joanie Ernst, the same thing.
And she's, you know, a former veteran and also says she's a
victim of sexual abuse, yet she voted for Pete Hegseth, who's been accused of that and who clearly is not qualified to be defense secretary.
So there were Republicans who should stick up for their own professions and, you know, oppose these ridiculous picks aren't.
So I mean, I'm sorry, I just think that the Republicans in Congress are totally intimidated and bought.
They're just folding.
So Jim, let's take it to a different level instead of elected officials at the federal level or even at the state level during Trump's impeachments and during the campaign.
there was a steady stream of folks who were career attorneys or they served in various departments and they were more than willing to step up and I just wondered that I thought was so encouraging and I wonder if you might start to see a new wave of that of people saying well
I was a U.S.
attorney or whatever the case may be under a Republican president but I have to speak out or is it more like we've probably seen all the people who are going to speak out and everybody else is just going to hunker down.
There is the example of the U.S.
attorney in the Southern District of New York who says
I can't do what the president, the attorney general, have directed me to do in getting rid of that prosecution of Eric Adams.
And she resigns.
The problem, of course, with that, as we've seen in the past, as you just indicated, Pat, and we continue to see it, is if the good people leave.
and the people who remain there do not speak up as you're articulating, then there is not inside government, not a political voice, but the voice of reason about how government should be working.
And I think that is a challenge right now as we go forward.
Right, standing up for norms.
You don't have to be, it shouldn't be partisan to stand up for norms.
But, you know, again, this is this is the environment that we're living in.
So let's go to the other side of the aisle.
Apart from holding up
ping-pong paddles with signs on them during the president's speech.
I'm wondering about leading democratic voices.
And for example, you know, Senator Bernie Sanders will be in Kenosha tonight and up here in the Chippewa Valley tomorrow in Altoona.
Well, we expect him to be speaking out.
There was, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she was new on the scene was kind of a breath of fresh air.
That role is now being played by Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett from Texas, from the Houston area.
Her social media posts are wonderful in calling this stuff out.
It doesn't mean she's gonna stop him single-handedly, but at least people have somebody to look at for some kind of messaging and leadership.
Mark, I'll start with you this time.
Are there any others that you would point to as
at least providing a little sense of, you know, hope in the wilderness.
Chris Murphy, the senator has been good.
Not enough, but there are some.
I mean, no question the Democratic Party nationally needs leadership.
And, you know, Pat, I don't think I'm disappointed about his former presidents.
You know, I mean, yes, you know, frankly, where's Barack Obama right now?
I mean, to me that would be, he still has influence and he ought to be speaking out.
It's his country too, just like mine.
If I'm out, which I was last weekend, picketing in front of the Tesla showroom in downtown Chicago, why isn't he?
So there are bright lights, but the thing about it that I think is that I think the people are going to have to drive the politicians.
I think that public anger is going to be ahead
of the parade of Democratic politicians, and I think most of them will follow.
And they'll follow because the public is angry.
And so every person can make a difference right now.
They need to speak out.
Yeah.
Joan, any signs of Democratic leadership that we haven't talked about that encourage
you?
I agree about Chris Murphy.
Also, Brian Schatz, who I believe is one of the senators from Hawaii.
He's been on fire lately.
And in addition to Jasmine Crockett, I always joke when I play one of her clips on the radio pad, I call it Crockett's Corner.
And I would love to have Crockett's Corner every day.
And I didn't play the He's Putin's Ho clip.
But I've played a lot of them.
Greg Cassar, who's somebody I've never heard of before, he's the Democratic representative from Austin, Texas, has also been really speaking out and saying the things you want your leaders to say.
And in Illinois, our very own Sean Casten has been very, very passionate about addressing what's going on right now.
So those are some extra names.
Good.
And James, same with you, although you're not in political circles necessarily, but what kind of voices do you hear out there that you wish could be amplified more around the country?
And it comes not surprisingly from what may be, aside from people like Chris Murphy and Dan Goldman, others in Congress.
I'm going to say the last bastion, but certainly the guardrail that's out there.
41 different federal judges around the country have said no.
to the things that the president is doing.
Let me highlight just a couple of them just from the past 48 hours.
John McConnell, he's a federal district court judge from Rhode Island.
He blocked the president's freeze of funding to 22 states.
That's the domestic stuff.
Just yesterday, Beryl Howell of Washington, DC, reversed the finding of the president that the chair of the National Labor Relations Board had to be fired.
She goes on to say, an American president is not king.
And what you're doing, Mr. President, was a blatant violation of the law.
And my very favorite, I suspect yours as well, my co-panelist here, is Amy Coney Barrett, who again, two days ago joins the Chief Justice, the Chief Justice who is flaps back and forth as the wind takes him.
But Amy Coney Barrett increasingly distancing himself from the conservatives in many, many ways, including approaches to basic theories.
She sides with the so-called three liberals,
to create a five to four majority that rejects this emergency request of the president to freeze $2 billion.
This is a USAID money.
And basically he says, no, we're going to send this back.
We're not done with that case.
Supreme Court isn't done with this.
But Amy Coney Barrett stands up and she says, no, you can't do this, at least on an emergency basis.
I would recommend candidly.
They're not going to write back to you, but write letters to these people and tell them we appreciate you're upholding the rule of law.
You're never going to hear back from them.
But those things do have an influence.
I worked for a federal judge in Milwaukee many years ago, and from time to time he got letters, the judges read those things.
They're not going to take your phone calls because of where they are.
But those folks also inside the judiciary, 41 of them throughout the United States have already said no.
to the president of the United States of America.
But you know what's interesting, I was just reading this morning about how Amy Coney Barrett is getting so viciously attacked by the right.
Um, just they're saying that she's disloyal that, you know, all the things that you would expect.
her.
I don't see it so much John Roberts, but Amy Coney Barrett is, is getting put through the MAGA ringer right now,
Look, the other day, I repeated a column from Brett Stevens of the New York Times.
I never thought he'd talk sense about anything, but he did about something in particular.
Eric Intosa reminds us on the text line that AOC and others receive death threats on a daily basis.
And that's unfortunate.
This is the commentary where we live in.
Also on the text line, Tim from Wales says, Pat, please remember on
on Trump tax credits.
They'll hurt everyone if not renewed, especially low income and middle class in Milwaukee.
Nobody talks about the low and middle income brackets losing their tax credits, only the high earners.
Well, it gets to this point, and Mark, I'll start with you, the Trump tax package of 2017.
started with, you know, on the cover, people judge the book by its cover, and on the cover was everybody's getting tax cuts, and few people read inside enough to go, well, for the very high earners, it stays super high, but as time goes by, that tax relief for the low and middle brackets that Tim is talking about, gets substantially lower, almost disappears, and it's, nobody's saying that the whole thing,
has that everybody's taxes have to go up.
But there's a right way and a wrong way to rewrite the 2017 law.
And right now, if I'm not mistaken, Mark, all Trump and the Republicans plan is, is to simply rubber stamp that same tax regime and pass it with more cuts to pay for
Yeah, renew it, which means that, you know, I mean, really, if they wanted to help the poor and middle class, they could do that.
That's not what they want.
I mean, there are two really significant steps they're taking in order to pay back the super rich donors who
gave them a bunch of money to win elections.
And one is this extension of the big tax gift for rich people.
And the other one is getting rid of so many IRS agents so the super rich can cheat on their taxes more.
So I mean, this idea that just extending the taxes would be a good thing for poor middle class people is really not looking at what's really happening, in my opinion.
No, and again, it's not about writing a tax policy.
It's about writing a tax break and then doing all this massive transfer to the very rich to to help pay for it.
We didn't have time to get into the story about how some US allies are now talking openly about withholding intelligence from the US because they don't think they can't trust Trump not to pass it on to Putin.
But you know,
that.
I think
I think we'll have stuff to talk about next week and the week after and the week after and we'll just continue to monitor it and, you know, designed to inform as we get started into a weekend.
We're hopefully we can tune it out now and then and relax a little bit.
Uh, Joan, thank you again for coming on in.
Appreciate
it.
From WCPT in Chicago.
You can hear her from a two to five.
One person on the text line said, can we hear you on a smartphone?
I'm sure that through
Heartland signal, you can stream on your phone.
Yup.
You've got Mark Jacobs news.
letter to look up Jim Santel on the radio tomorrow.
Thanks to all of you.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Talk to you again soon.
All right.
All right.
When we come back, Dan Schumacher will be here.
We will talk a little sports and we will wrap things up heading into the weekend on Up North News Radio live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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.
wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Even I know this one.
What?
We found a Grateful Dead song.
I know everybody.
Oh, is that adorable?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes, I will.
I will take that.
Uh, yeah, everybody knows touch of great.
It's a wonderful.
No, no, no.
Uh, Dan Schumacher is here with us now.
Uh, Dan and Greg bring us a little grateful dead tune every Friday morning at this time.
How are things going, Mr. Schumacher?
I have
Plowing a parking
And
wagon almost.
Yeah, blow
into the wagon.
And it works so long as the drivers understand that now you've got less visibility when you approach intersections and things
that.
And I'd love to say that every driver does that.
But not every driver does.
So
please, when you're dealing with these visibility situations, take it easy out there.
I know it was last week.
I was just back from Arizona, so I'd already talked about going to see the Brewers Spring Training Facility.
I was watching a little spring training baseball on TV last night.
And boy, it's just, it makes you, between that and the sunrise or the sun changing.
Ah, it just feels good.
This week's snow is going to be forgotten before you know it.
that's okay.
That's, you know, again, each day is getting a little bit longer here.
Hey, we are coming up on the conference tournaments and all these sports.
And so I'm going to ask you a question about it.
But first, let me set it up by saying that in hockey, the Badger Men's Hockey Big Ten Tournament, they're at Ohio State this evening at six.
The Badger Women's Hockey Team best in the nation is at Minnesota Duluth this afternoon at one in their conference tournament.
Marquette hosts St.
John's tomorrow and then comes their Big East Conference Men's
basketball tournament.
The Badger Men host Penn State on Saturday.
Tomorrow you can catch the action there starting at 11 o'clock on several civic media stations and on the app.
And then they head into the Big Ten conference tournament.
But I wondered about your perspective on conference tournaments, given that you also then have the NCAA tournament and you have all the seedings and all of that in there.
So are the other conference tournaments just a, are they a money?
making, you know, side gig on your way to the NCAAs or are these very, are they serious tuneups?
How are we supposed to see conference tournaments in this day and age?
Well, from a big 10
It's an attraction for tourists.
Usually it's rotating between Indianapolis and Chicago.
I think it's a huge tuneup.
It also gives you the opportunity to improve your possible seed in the NCAA tournament.
I mean, say the Badgers take off and run and win the Big Ten tournament, it's probably going to elevate their seed when it comes to selection Sunday.
Oh, it probably
makes people crazy when they when they come up with the final brackets that here Alright, let's say you're your top three teams in this conference are gonna are gonna go into the tournament, of course But then like the number five teams somehow wins the conference tournament Well, now they get an automatic birth in the NCAA's and I mean and
Yeah,
Yes, and of course, Cinderella, the Cinderella story narrative is very much alive nowadays because when we were growing up for how many decades, you know, a 16 seed never beat a one seed.
I mean, why are we going through all this?
And then,
What was it?
Farley Dickinson, up-seated Purdue in 2023 and University of Maryland Baltimore County, up-set top-seated Virginia in 2018.
Well, they had their moment of glory.
I probably turned into a good fundraising opportunity for the athletic department, but why they chose still to go down, down, drop down to D three.
But that's going to start to happen a lot as, uh, as the next couple of years roll out where I think the NCA is not going to be an NCA anymore.
Um, the division one game will be gone.
They're going to be their own entity, their own set of rules, revenue sharing.
It went from power five to power four, then you'll get down to a power three.
I mean, the whole goal is just the one big conference of 64 teams or something
It feels like.
It's all going to be just going to be a select group that doesn't share the money anymore.
Whereas the TV contract pays the bills for the NCAA.
It pays the bills and gives a budget to Division III and Division II as a whole.
So Division I does pay for the other divisions.
And that's going to go away.
I got a feeling in about another four or five years when the TV contract comes up.
Yeah.
Devante Adams, released by the Jets.
Are we going to see him in a Bears uniform?
Packers?
I don't
Did you see that?
Aaron Rodgers and Devante Adams in Bears uniforms.
Oh my gosh.
going
No, no, no.
Perfect fit for.
is go to
Raiders and get some back
home.
I was going to say the same thing, but also I think Rogers should just retire.
Maybe you can still host Jeopardy.
Maybe that Ken Jennings
gets tired of it.
Dan Schumacher, have a great start to the weekend.
I'll talk to you a little later.
Bach is back for Matt Naranair two short hours from now.
So tune in for that.
And a reminder that next week on Wednesday morning, we will be talking to Brittany Kinzer.
She's a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction.
She will join us live Wednesday morning at 7 30.
We will be back here come Monday morning at six a.m.
Remember up north news is brought to you by courier newsroom.
We are the Wisconsin outlet for courier, a pro democracy news network building a more informed, engaged and representative America.
Have a great weekend.
We'll see you six a.m.
Monday up north.
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