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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglo powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglo.
Well, good morning.
It is 7 0 6.
Nice to have you here up north on this Tuesday morning, May 20th.
Nice to be back after a nice stretch off for a little European vacation that will
continue talking about throughout the course of the morning.
Greg Bach joins us from Radio Park.
Dan Hagen from WJFW News Watch 12 and Rhinelander is with us and meteorologist Brittany Merleau as well.
Brittany, what's the old adage?
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailors delight.
I
had to go out and take
a picture this morning of a sunrise that was probably as red as it gets,
which
I take to affirm the forecast that it's not going to be the world's most pleasant day out
across
Wisconsin today.
No, it's definitely not.
It's going to be dark, damp, dreary, windy, wet, soaking wet in some places, in fact.
temperatures right now are still crisp and cool.
Lake Superior, if you're up there, 39 degrees, and then it's about 48 degrees by the shores of Lake Michigan.
Winds are already cranking out of the east at about 20 to 30 mile per hour gusts.
we're going to see them fre about 40 miles per hour this afternoon and we've got system that is sliding down it's just scraping su the state.
But it's big in those strong winds.
We at cloudy skies, heavy ra now it's already into our to move throughout the rest
We are going to see that far up north.
I know we're seeing some sunshine into northeastern parts right now, but we are going to cloud up and we're all going to see that rainfall.
In fact, some storms are expected down far south later on this afternoon.
And in total rainfall just today, we could see a good one to two inches from pretty much a line across to Sheboygan and south.
So some flooding potential there as those rivers start to rise, but that area does need the rain.
The drought about 5% of the state is in a drought and it's right along that state line.
So this is hitting the right spot at the right time.
Otherwise today you're going to probably need a sweatshirt or something like a jacket because with those winds, highs are only going to reach the mid 40s down south.
to the mid fifties far north.
This
is a big system.
I mean, stretches from like Atlanta to Saskatchewan.
When
I first
called up the radar this morning, this is not one of those things.
Oh, poor us little black rain cloud.
Like, nope, this.
Yep.
Everybody's getting
a little something
today.
Yeah, we are in
that East wind.
I was telling Greg an hour ago, you know, we've got one of these places with, you know, the oversized American flag and
to see a flag that large, you know, just stiff in the wind from out of the east is pretty rare.
Yes.
Yes, it is.
It absolutely is.
And that's pretty cool to see.
Oh, get a video of that for me, please.
Okay.
Well, I'd have to want to venture out in this.
You'll notice I'm in a short sleeve shirt.
You know, there's that saying about, you know, dress for the job you want, not the job you've got.
And what you shouldn't do, you should not apply it to dress for the weather you want.
not the weather you've got because I just got done with 10 days in Europe.
There was like, it was picture postcard weather.
Every day was in the upper seventies and sunny.
It looked like, you know, one of those under the Tuscan sun things that you'd see in
Italy or
southern Portugal or Spain.
And I'm not dressed for this.
You were, you were actually
my first,
you were my first tip off, first email that I saw, you know, with the forecast for this morning because I
did not look at the headlines or the forecast or anything.
I just landed him like, oh, it looks kind of icky out here.
I hope it's just passing through.
It's not
just
passing through.
No.
And then we were thinking about you coming back today and we're like, well, we'll see if he makes it, depending on all those crazy winds that are coming with the system.
But I'm glad you're back.
And I'm sorry that the weather is a little bit crummy, but it'll get better for this weekend.
Memorial Day weekend.
Woo.
That's just it.
We've got a holiday weekend coming up.
Other folks will be traveling.
And look, if you're on a regular like a 747 or, you know, one of the DC planes or whatever, we've all hit turbulence from time to time while flying.
When you're in one of those big old 787s going across the ocean and you hit something and you know, from the little map, you're somewhere, but you're somewhere over the ocean, like off the tip of Greenland or something.
And
you
hit a, you hit turbulence and something that size.
I mean, I know planes go through this every single day.
It gets your attention.
Everybody, everybody went righty tighty, right?
On all the bolts and everything that's in here.
This is all nice and sturdy, right?
And it was.
See belts on click.
Oh, yeah, without without there.
Brittany, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you in the next hour as well.
Sounds good.
Dan, you were mentioning as well to as we were getting set to talk to Brittany a bit about severe weather and there was like, there's fundraisers going on because we did have quite a spate of bad weather right before I left as well.
And I know that that's just part of life in Wisconsin, but it's always sad to see.
Yeah, that's right.
It was last Wednesday night at Thursday that a tornado went through Rib Falls, Wisconsin.
Rib Falls is north of Marathon City.
If you don't know where that is, that's okay.
It's in Marathon County and it really didn't touch down for a long, but it just destroyed this couple's.
Farm and house so they're trying to do it go fun.
They and just raise enough money to buy a trailer home So they can live on their land while kind of insurance takes care of the process which is a long and arduous process
Yeah, it is more more so than it should be
in Europe, but I'm going to get on that rant again a little bit later.
First, I
wanted to share from Robin Tigerton.
Welcome back, Pat.
Hope you had an excellent time.
In Tigerton, it's cloudy and 45 with those easterly winds.
It's chilly and wearing a jacket mowing lawns after a week of getting a suntan one week ago.
He said I did my Wittenberg mowing jobs yesterday to beat the rain today.
We're going to be talking to Chad Holmes in a bit about in our next hour about colonoscopies.
And Rob says on his that he had right before my break, they found a few polyps, but not cancerous.
And so I'm very glad that I got this done.
He says, I love the gogos from 1980s.
We talked about Jane Whelan's birthday.
My favorite song is Vacation.
Greg, if I was closer to you, I would mow your lawn with my John Deere.
I bet you would take you four minutes.
And Rob finishes his comments on YouTube by saying, I have to ask Dan if they did the story of a car hitting a moose along Highway 45 near Land O'Lakes.
Well, let me tell you something.
I wanted to know what Dan had been working on.
So I pulled up the WJFW News Watch 12 site.
And of course, the first headline that grabbed my eye.
Driver hits moose early Monday on Highway 45 near Land O'Lakes.
Moose had to be euthanized from injuries.
Not what you typically expect.
No, definitely a vibe killer.
Um, the car hit like the back legs of the moose, unfortunately.
So, uh, the DNR and the vile's kind of sheriff's office arrived there and they just had to euthanize it, which is pretty sad.
We only see, you know, a couple of moose every year, um, in our area.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I recall when they reintroduced, uh, elk in the clam lake area and what a big deal that was and.
One of the things when you've got an eight hour flight like I did yesterday you're looking at the Movies and the shows and everything and I picked up on this documentary about Grizzly bear tracking through the US and Canada from Yellowstone all the way up to Alaska And you learn in all of these areas whether you're talking bears moose elk, whatever
It's not that look we're not saying oh, you know Man should not be settling in any of these places But it's a matter of trying to have some kind of a coexistence and that includes being careful on the roads because you know, it's not it's not just bad for the above mentioned moose But bad for you as well.
There are people that you know, there are traffic fatalities and injuries not to mention the body shops.
I mean I've hit
I've hit two or three deer over the years, Dan.
I don't know if you've ever struck one or not.
Yeah, I've hit probably four or five.
I spent a summer in Montana and that did it for me.
But yeah, a lot of bald eagles are hit.
You know, they're eating carcasses on the side of the road that probably were hit by cars.
And then people just zoom right past these eagles and they get erratic and they're not good.
No.
I forgot all about that, the bald eagles hitting the roadkill and things like that, where again, we're just looking for a little, a little coexistence, a little bit more care.
Before I leave a previous subject, Alicia chimes in on YouTube, crossing the Atlantic in an aircraft carrier makes you notice the waves as well.
Yeah, no thanks, Alicia.
There's just no, I mean, I love going on cruise ships.
They go from one tranquil Caribbean island to another tranquil, across mostly tranquil seas, but
taking a boat across the North Atlantic.
Greg, that's a Titanic kind of mission that I would not sign up for.
Maybe maybe you are braver than me.
I wouldn't even do cruises.
Those things are horrifying.
They're not.
Those are horrifying vessels in the middle in the middle of an unforgiving and vengeful ocean.
OK.
No, thank you.
Hard pass.
I would do a Viking river cruise where I could see both sides of the coast or both sides of the land.
I mean, oh, the boat's going down.
I will simply swim a quarter of a mile to shore.
Yay.
Dan, Cruises.
I have never been on a cruise.
I don't care to go on a cruise.
And Greg and I, we're actually doing a Viking River cruise next week.
We are, yeah.
So looking forward to that,
yeah.
Oh, see, I knew I'd missed out the arrangements on something there.
Well, by all means, enjoy.
So Dan, we've covered the moose.
We've covered the hodag dome as re-inflated.
And what other stories have you been following up there for NewsWatch 12?
Well over the weekend some Rhineliner paper mill workers noticed a goose was trapped in some lures and actually a lure and some fishing line so they were able to capture the goose and
drive it to wild instincts, a local animal rehabilitator.
And they were able to remove the lure, which was in its bill and its foot and then take out some fishing line, give it some antibiotics, give it some painkillers and eventually release it back.
So a lot of animal rehab going on for that's been successful.
No, that's that's that's great, Tony on YouTube.
Did the goose lay the golden egg?
No, Tony, it doesn't work that way.
It had to pay the medical bills.
No, it's funny.
I was spending some time with a friend of mine and there was a goose, a mother goose, just probably eight feet away, like the whole time.
I don't know if I should have been that close, but it just stayed right on its sex.
Didn't it make a sound?
Oh, that's okay.
You don't, I was going to make some joke about being goose.
No, I'm just going to move right on from there.
Memorial Day weekend coming up.
Do you have plans for the long weekend?
Yes, I'll be spending some time with my family up in Arborvita, Wisconsin, which is near Minakwa.
and uh you know be thinking of uh it kind of makes me emotional Memorial Day because you know I have some family members uh my grandma's brother um who you know went to war never came back never was able to have a family so be thinking of him and uh swap it stories
uh that is the most appropriate thing to do and to say and to be thinking about during that time so no it's it's absolutely not
not at all lost should not be lost on any of us the the actual meaning of the weekend and the importance of it and then having said that once we have you know a paid that appropriate level of honor to be able to enjoy a long weekend like that that was made again uh it was provided by the sacrifice of others who came before us so when you do that when you when you take that long weekend with family is it is it recreational or is it more relaxing
Yeah, I mean it's well depending on which of my siblings are there, you know, it could be there.
No, I'm kidding No life is good.
We we get outside we we're at a motorboat family So we get on the canoes and kayaks maybe go fishing maybe go biking Yeah, and just while it's on my mind Gerhard Steinbach was my was the brother of my grandmother He served in World War two.
He did he died on the baton death march.
Oh, so
I'm always thinking of him once a year at
least.
Absolutely.
Attention must be paid and I'm glad that you've brought it up.
Dan, you can catch him over at WJFWTV News Watch 12 in Rhinelander and also here on Tuesday mornings.
We always appreciate it.
Thanks for sticking around.
Help us get back into the swing of things after
a little bit of time off.
Welcome back.
I don't see much color on you, Pat.
You know, did you use too much sunscreen?
I was in, you know, I was in a lot of tour buses and, and sitting in those cafes.
You just covered in a blank at the entire time.
Something like that.
All right, Dan, we'll see you next week.
Have
a great
holiday weekend.
All right.
Sounds good.
Still ahead on the show this morning, Dan Schaefer as well as Chad Holmes from the heart of America's Up North live from Lake Wissota.
Thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Kraitla.
You're listening to Civic Media.
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We've got some brewers baseball tonight across the Civic Media radio network brewers would be playing the Baltimore Orioles after beating them last night coverage starts at 605 on Civic Media stations in Richland Center Oshkosh Racine Kenosha Park Falls and the newest affiliate WBZH up in Hayward and then there is a matinee game tomorrow and that is an I just said I say 11 05 or 11 35 for the start time on there
I will, I will get that in my notes, Greg.
It's 1210.
It's a 1210.
So, so 1135 would be the premium.
Yeah, about
that.
Thank you.
I was I was looking at a different screen because this is normally where I turn to one Greg Bach and say, Hey, what's coming up later on Matt and Aaron air?
And then I'm always surprised when when I see my name listed on there.
Oh yeah, buddy, you're going to be on there on air.
That was a weird surfer Canadian thing I voiced.
I'm never going to do that again.
I'm
never going to do that again.
Yeah, we have you today at 9 30.
And then at 10 o'clock, we're going to have Missy Hughes is the she is the I believe the executive director of the
Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.
She'll be talking about tariffs and what Wisconsin is doing.
And then we're going to have Beth Hindorn from the Racine Zoo.
So it's a very, very packed show today.
And of course, concluding with this shouldn't be a thing where we take a look at funny, weird and sometimes.
stressful news.
No, we just take a look at a story that's circling the world and kind of like, should this be a thing?
Should the people be doing these things?
It's weird.
But yeah, it's all part of our last half hour we call Audio Sorbet where we sort of cleanse the palette, bring in some fun and let the beautiful, relaxing harps just do their thing.
I was gonna
say, yes, yes, the harps are cleansing in and of themselves.
There they are now.
Uh, then followed, followed, following that fine program.
Followed indeed.
We're going to
follow.
Followed indeed.
Followed by, I got to pick one or the other, Todd Alba's show.
We're at uh, two thirty today.
Positive psychology coach Kira Sabin will be on as part of their mental health awareness month series.
Uh, Maggie Dawn has former US attorney Jim Santel coming up this afternoon.
Uh, and uh, Dan Schaefer will have his weekly appearance with Maggie Dawn as he will with us.
up at 8.30 this morning.
The Milwaukee Brewers were winners I mentioned against Baltimore.
It was a four-hit game for William Contreras, including breaking a tie in the eighth inning with a two-out single.
Five to four was the final score and for the Brewers or for the Orioles rather it was their seventh consecutive loss and again the two teams will play again later today and then tomorrow midday before they take off for a little matinee game coming up or I'm sorry taking off for a trip to Pittsburgh Greg on this shouldn't be a thing
working the day after your vacation.
Yay or nay?
No, absolutely not.
In fact, I was surprised when you texted me last night, you said, we're home.
I'm like, weren't you home already?
Like, I, I go, I go to like, I, every January, British and I take a trip somewhere warmish, warm ask, warmer than Wisconsin.
Yes.
And we always come back like either Sunday night or early Monday morning.
So we have a full day of just
getting back to the swing of things.
The fact that you went to a different time zone and a different continent and you came back last night like, all right, here we go.
I'm like, wow.
Here's the math mistake that
I
made in doing that.
Again, because of that whole thing of the earth being around and these time
zones.
Okay, Pat.
Watch as I explain the curvature of the earth now.
Anyway, in Europe right now, it's, you know, the noon hour, and I would be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
So thinking, okay, we're getting back later in the evening, but in the morning, you know, four o'clock in the morning, when I get up, my body will think it's noon.
But then there's that whole flying for like 22 hours, you know, getting through the airport in Lisbon, which that's a story I could take some time to tell, but nobody at the Lisbon airport is listening right now.
So I'll save that for a sternly worded letter at some point.
And then, you know, transferring in Paris and then the flight and everything else that comes over kind of takes a little bit of the wind out of your sails.
If I, if I may be so bold,
I was to
say.
I need to look at a map of map of Europe because something's not computing.
And this is just might be.
OK.
So you had to fly
from Portugal to
Paris
from Lisbon to Paris because it was a direct flight from Paris to the Twin Cities.
Now,
other people
who were going to this wedding flew Chicago to Toronto, Toronto to Dublin, Dublin to Lisbon.
Wow.
And.
I just was, you know, I thought if we can get this, if we, if I can name that tune in two flights,
I'm going to do that
instead.
Yeah.
And here's the thing.
We did complicating things further was we made two different travel arrangements because we realized we had enough credit card points on one of the cards to qualify for a free ticket.
So one of
our
flights was actually free, but to.
to use the American Express points.
It was an offer through Virgin Atlantic.
So Virgin Atlantic has a partnership with Air France and the flight was by Air France.
But in the U.S., the flight was managed by
Delta.
So I tried
trying to get checked in for these flights both ways where you're going to air France and like, oh no, no, I know it's our flight but Delta manager, you know, you got the points through Virgin Atlantic and they're like, oh no, no, and Delta was like, well, you didn't book it directly from us so we can't help you on that.
So for all the wonderful things that I've said for the first half of the show about travel to Europe and again, we are as big a travel fans as ever before.
But sometimes it's the traveling.
That is the thing.
And that would include the guy sitting just across the aisle from us, who on the entire eight hour flight from Paris to the Twin Cities, had this wet, persistent cough the entire flight.
The fact that I am doing this show and not in some kind of a coma right now is a miracle.
And that's been another episode of Pat Talk to the Manager.
Why?
We talk.
This is why.
Pat advocates travel, but there's some issues.
Coming up later, Chad Holmes, Dan Schaefer, another check-in with meteorologist Brittany Merleau.
First, we're going to have Hans Brighton Moser.
Remember, sign up for those newsletters over at UpGrowthNewsWI.com.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network, and I'm Pat Breitlo.
Welcome back.
It is 735.
I'm Pat Critello here on the Civic Media Radio Network live from Lake Wissota on this Tuesday morning, May 20th.
Nice to be back.
It was a wonderful vacation 10 days away in Portugal for a friend's wedding and some sightseeing.
And we have talked about it at length, which is Pat's way of saying
I didn't look at the news very much and the stuff I looked at, I didn't really want to dwell on today.
We'll have plenty of time for that.
In fact, Dan Schaefer is here one hour from right now and then we'll really get back into the spirit of political headlines, Wisconsin nationally and frankly internationally because of some of the election results that happened while I was in Europe over the past couple of days.
So we'll talk to Dan Schaefer about that.
About the flight, though, on Facebook, Artith writes, Pat, I hope you wore a mask on that flight.
What's wrong with some people?
And I was talking about somebody earlier who had a persistent wet cough for the entire eight hour flight.
And I kept shooting nasty looks over there because no mask and was just coughing into his hand the whole time.
And I thought, how many services is this guy touching?
But of course,
uh, telling my mom about it.
The first thing I get back from her is, well, did you wear a mask?
I'm like, no, no, I didn't.
So, uh, lesson learned for that next very long flight here, but I appreciate the concern.
Again, nice to be back.
Good to be catching up with folks like Greg Bakken, Radio Park and Hans Brighton Moser, who joins us from up in Lincoln County, one very busy farmer this time of year.
How is Hans doing today?
the corn planter man as you described him earlier
to which, by the way, if anybody is like looking to scant, like, well, wait a minute, he's the farmer.
It's a different world out there, folks.
And, you know, thanks to the cost of the equipment and the scale at which you can get some of this work done, whether it's the planting or the combining or anything else along the way, there's a lot more of this where the work is divided among many farms that way.
And when it's your, you better be ready when it's your turn.
He has a 12-row John Deere planter and he's all set up to plant corn and so we We just contract that out to him.
But my job is then to make sure that my guys get tillage done in in advance of the corn planter and also
Keep tendering him seed and fertilizer and and you know making sure that he knows where to go and that He's got all the things he needs to keep him going and Keep keep things moving in the shop So every time somebody rolls up with a busted piece of equipment that can cobble it together as I do and get it going again
That's because ultimately it is all up to you.
I mean everybody else is just a part of it But you know, it's it's your name on the bottom line
I
mean obviously I'm the one that's paying the bills and and so I I tend to be the ringleader this time of the year and and don't actually do a lot of tractor driving myself because I spend most of my time keeping all the other equipment moving which is fine I enjoy it very much but yeah it's a it's super busy this is the month of May is not long enough to get everything done that we're we try to get done this time of the year we we put cattle out to pastures which means there's fences to be repaired and animals to move around
Um, and, uh, you know, every time I look at a hayfield, it's, it's gotten a little bit taller.
So we're, you know, we, we need to be thinking about making hay in a couple of weeks as well.
So very busy.
We were before my break, uh, two weeks ago talking about getting all the tillage done and the new stats are in right now from the USDA on Wisconsin progress.
and spring tillage is 86% complete, but it's funny that you mentioned the first cutting of alfalfa hay, that's already at 5% complete.
Oh man, I'm behind again.
I know, 5% done.
Let's see, on the corn planting, it is 73% complete, five days ahead of last year, and three days ahead of the five-year average, corn emergence was 23% complete.
And by the way,
part of the reason for all of this is you know the weather again when I left it was get the fieldwork done it's the weather's gorgeous but you know farmers had just over five days of suitable fieldwork and now of course you've got all this rain that's moving through the area so I mean you're always at the tender mercies of mother nature on these things.
So it's really just a matter of kind of budgeting our time and keeping an eye on that forecast and trying to figure out what things can be put off for the rain days and how many acres we can get done prior to the rain.
And that's basically what our lives have been here so far for the month of May.
We did get a lot of work done last week with the dry conditions.
So we're at about 60% corn planted.
I'd have all my beans planted.
except for we did a little miscalculation and ran out of seeds.
So I gotta, I gotta pound a couple more acres of beans in and our new seedings are pretty much in.
So.
Okay.
Yep.
Soybeans are 66% planted, uh, five days ahead of last year's average.
And let's see the oat planting is 82% complete.
The topsoil moisture thing is, is interesting.
You've got 4% that are at very short and 17% short.
And yet you also have 70% adequate and nearly 10% surplus.
So you definitely have a range here depending on where the rain has fallen.
There were drought concerns and now lately there's a little bit of surplus concern depending on who's getting the heavier rain.
Yeah, well, and I feel like it's such a moving target because you know as I said earlier my corn planter man is only like 25 miles away from me And and they got rain when we didn't we got way more rain than they did the last time and on Friday night when it stormed here I don't know how many how many inches of rain we got but it rained really hard for a very short period of time Which did create a bunch of washouts and so forth.
So that's the thing that I think We're dealing with more than we used to I know we're dealing with more than we used to and we will deal more
or within the future, which is heavy, super strong storms and big rains that really wash things out.
And it makes our jobs a little more difficult because we have to be selective about how we do tillage, when we do tillage and trying to figure out how we can incorporate cover crops and no till to the best of our abilities so that we don't get these washouts.
Because man, I was looking at some fields yesterday that had just been planted and boy, they got tore up pretty bad by the strong rains that we got fried.
night so that's that's a real challenge
yeah and all that work is keeping folks from maybe paying attention to other things like politics you know tuning tuning things out where we're applicable but that would then mean missing out on some of the action like for example the house agriculture committee on Wednesday night last week
moved out a piece of its budget package on a party line vote.
And so again, you had people like Congressman Derek Van Orden who are on the house agriculture committee saying, well, I'm going to fight against these things like big cuts to snap or Medicaid or the VA.
And in the case of the agricultural provisions, you had Derek Van Orden voting right along with all the other Republicans.
Now for the farmers, and this is from a story at aginfo.net.
It says farmers would see better reference prices, a broader band of protection levels under commodity and insurance programs, and see the payment limit for farm programs increased.
However, the bill would also shift food assistance spending to the states to make up for coming federal cuts to those programs like SNAP and others.
And so Hans, I look at that and my first thought is that
Some folks in the farm community are gonna say well I guess as long as my payments or my prices are okay They're gonna do what they're gonna do, but you know big cuts in snap That's that's not gonna be good for farmers not to mention all the families that rely upon it
For public policy comes out of Washington You're gonna have more rural areas struggling And some of the people who are the beneficiaries of snap and so forth are do live in rural areas So this affects our friends and neighbors and you know historically the the farm bill was this marriage between urban and rural You know consumer and producer and that's how the legislation got done and and you know I'm not suggesting that it wasn't cumbersome and tedious and messy sometimes but
it got done.
And now we've got politicians that can't manage to even, you know, produce anything for a couple of years past time when it's supposed to be produced.
So again, I just keep coming back to, you know, Washington is only as good as its participants.
And we've got some real dandy smoke there these days.
That's definitely one way to put it.
And again, far from a done deal, because you had in the house version, you're looking at some
$290 billion in snap cuts.
But over on the Senate side, Republicans there, their initial plan cuts only $1 billion from the snap program.
Now again, a billion is still, you know, a big number, but a billion in cuts versus $290 billion in cuts.
There's still a lot of room there for disagreement.
So all of this is far from a done deal.
But I bring it up.
People say, well, then why are we talking about this?
The notion that we have people in Congress right now that think that we're not going to notice cutting $290 billion from food assistance and that that's not money going into any American's pocket unless you're a billionaire.
This isn't like some kind of savings.
This is all to pay for tax cuts for the very rich.
Unless Hans, and we've seen this before, if you can give just enough of a temporary tax cut to farmers and others in the middle class to make them feel like, oh, I guess I'm a winner out of this.
When it's not, it's all about paying for tax cuts for billionaires.
And that's the problem.
And, you know, we've had this conversation before.
I think a lot of farmers and small business owners
sort of put themselves in the same bucket as the billionaires that are getting these tax cuts and so forth.
And we're just not.
I mean, we're just not.
We have way more in common with the people who we employ and our neighbors in our own community than we do with the billionaires who are actually benefiting from this.
And you talk about 290 billion, I mean, some of these numbers are so far beyond a normal person's ability to comprehend, but isn't it interesting that that number is,
in the same neighborhood as the net worth of the richest man in the world who also has influence on our politics these days.
I mean, if that doesn't scream, this system is broken and needs to have some change and have different people in these offices to call this BS out, then I don't know what does.
here's the thing, the ranking member on the committee is Angie Craig from Minnesota.
And she notes that set aside the $90 billion and everything about oh, we've got to we've got to make all these cuts because people are milking the system.
The average snap benefit is $6 a day.
And for $6 a day, you're talking about rolling back
the largest anti-hunger program in national history, something that has worked, but to again say, well, some people are cheating on it.
Again, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say that a few people that are cheating on the program means you throw out this thing that has
done more to alleviate hunger in this country while also helping the producers of food, the farmers, than anything else out there.
Angie Craig said, you don't build a life on snap.
You build a bridge to the next paycheck, the next opportunity, the next moment of stability.
That's what this is supposed to be about.
And that spirit of that has completely been lost in Washington these days, Hans.
And what's troubling to me is that, you know, when the right comes out with this nonsense about all this waste and fraud, waste and fraud, waste and fraud, then the mainstream media picks up on it and everybody picks up on it as if it's the truth.
And so, and it's once again, it's the big lie.
Let's create a problem that doesn't exist and then go after and attack it.
And it's just nonsense when all it comes down to is providing another tax break to people who just don't need them.
And it's going
to have an impact on rural you change programs like t have an impact, especi that some of the people wh their jobs over with th and so forth.
They're, the newly poor that are on some of these benefits.
I what problem are we trying to fraud while there might be
It's a great mystery.
Coming up on early o'clock hour, Chad Holmes and Dan Schaefer here 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
In the Up North News Daily newsletter today from Christina Laurie, why the Trump administration wants to cut Big Bird or everybody else that used to be on PBS and public radio, and what does it really get us to make these kinds of cuts?
It's related to the discussion we're having right now here with Hans Breitenmoser about cuts to nutrition assistance programs, or even Hans to the VA.
And one of the stories they came back to was noting that, again, talking about Western Wisconsin Congressman Derek Van Orden, again, asked at a U.S.
House committee hearing last Thursday, so when are we going to cut the VA?
And again, this is a former Navy SEAL and he
is trying to make the case that the VA has become top-heavy with bureaucrats outnumbering doctors.
And he also blamed the PACT Act, which is something that Senator Tammy Baldwin championed for veterans who were exposed to toxic substances
during the course of their service.
And so Van Orden says, so when are we gonna cut the VA and I hope you do, sir?
Because again, it's this whole notion of whether it's SNAP or the VA or anything else.
They like to claim they're targeting all this waste, fraud and abuse when we know better.
Yeah, I mean, I think the VA, and obviously I'm not a veteran, so I should probably just stay in my wheelhouse.
But it's all that same rhetoric.
We're going to find waste, and we're going to get rid of it.
Or more close to the point, what they're saying is, there's all this waste, and we need to get rid of it.
any organization who isn't introspective and tries to figure out how they can be more efficient and so forth, these are government agencies they deserve scrutiny, absolutely.
But we've been sold the bill of goods.
We've been sold that these things are only wasteful, always wasteful.
And it's the same stereotype of bureaucrats who don't do anything and so forth that we've been hearing from the right for years and years and years without any actual basis, in fact.
You're always going to find anecdotal evidence of anything that you look for.
But again,
All of this comes down to trying to come up with tax breaks for uber wealthy folks.
And all of it is just an absolute disregard for how the economy actually works, which is to say, when you plant seeds in the ground, you get money close to the ground, those dollars grow exponentially.
That's what makes rural economies work, and urban economies are very similar in that regard.
All right, let's turn away from the politics here.
Let me let me turn to more of your own personal family history in in agriculture here having just returned from Portugal and seeing these a lot of them are vineyards but other farms as well that have been in families for generations or if they have passed on to others as well and the European roots of American agriculture which is very real in your family.
And I'm really getting to the importance of agriculture, the importance of immigration.
We've talked about it from the standpoint of modern day migrant labor.
But the whole notion of this country is this premise that you can come from anywhere and you can succeed.
And it isn't just starting as a farm hand or something.
You can tell us all about
how the immigration story is real and successful from a farming standpoint overall.
It's truly the story of American success.
I mean, it's the story of my life.
My parents moved here in 1968 from Switzerland.
And the reason why they moved here is because they, well, the...
Practical reason why they moved here is because they they were unable to afford land in Switzerland Even back in those days they were selling land by the square meter because it's a small country and land was too high priced and they never be able to own it and the other thing over there was that Because my dad didn't have the education that the banks wanted him to have they wouldn't loan him any money So so it was just a little tough
You know wrote a hole there, but my dad was also the very stereotypical immigrant in terms of he really understood that America is an idea and That that this was a place where he was gonna have a chance to do something so So yeah, they they came over here.
They were able to buy a farm in short order.
They were able to you know
Borrow money got got credit because they paid their bills.
He immediately got a job at a local feed mill alongside the farming as well and and so he learned English at the local feed mill and at the local tavern adjacent to the local feed mill and my mom learned English watching Sesame Street with my sister and myself and and that's many many years ago and and
you know, the rest is history, I guess.
No, but again, the conditions were still such that we were much more welcoming towards, you know, migrants who wanted to come here and build something, you know, in rural America.
Right, right.
And
understood, I think that at a cultural level and at the federal government level, there was an understanding that immigrants bring something to the party because they do.
I mean, it was, it's fact.
And so my parents felt very welcomed here.
public policy understood that these are people who are coming here because they understand that they have something to contribute and can do well for themselves and so forth.
And in doing so, lift a lot of other people up.
They will be assets to the team.
Everybody, public policy at that point, understood that and said, by all means, you know, we're flattered that you want to come here.
Come on in and let's let's go to work.
And when I think about the economic impact that my parents had and that I've had since them, you know, you know, because they moved here and so many other immigrants
it's it's staggering and why why we're so anti that now just is puzzling to
me.
It is and remains so because we we so need immigration reform more than ever and we need to reinvigorate the story more than ever.
Hans Brighton Moser, thanks for helping me get caught up after vacation.
Always good to chat with you.
Have a good week.
Good luck out there in the fields.
You bet.
Tomorrow on the program, Christian Phelps, State Representative from Eau Claire will be here.
Devon Remaker, candidate for State Democratic Party Chair will join us, along with Melissa Baldoff, James Kelly, Melissa Kay, Sharita Booker, and Greg Bach.
Greg Buck is back one hour from now for Matt and air on air.
So stick around for that.
In our next hour, we will have Dan Schaefer and Chad Holmes and an updated forecast from meteorologist Brittany Merleau.
Remember, follow what we do at up north news wi.com and hear mornings on the civic media radio network.
I'm Pac right now.
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