You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime,
anywhere.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Well, hey there, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
It is 6.06.
It's a Wednesday morning, June 18th, 2025.
It's another beautiful morning, a little foggy, but beautiful to have you here up north.
live from Lake Wissota from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the Civic Media radio network or listening or watching us on all of our different platforms.
Thanks for starting your day right here.
That might include the up-to-date news Facebook page where here's my first question for you.
What's your life like if you're so grouchy that at six o'clock in the morning you're going to put a comment up
on somebody's Facebook going, it has to hurt to be such a leftist hack.
No sane person wants the left anywhere near power.
And yet you want to be near us.
That's adorable.
Thank you for that comment.
I mean, it's gone already, but you took the time to have some coffee and put up that little thing.
Maybe coffee isn't such a great thing after all Parker Olson standing by in Madison A2.
I
don't
know.
I
don't
know.
I'd like to think coffee would help that person, whoever that is, but
you know.
I like to think that person just needs to have a little reality check.
That's what I think.
I don't think it's the coffee patch.
It was a last minute replacement to my original question.
Doesn't it seem wrong that a Florida hockey team has won the Stanley Cup again over a team from Canada?
Yes.
I mean,
I'd be saying that even if I hadn't spent the weekend in Canada with friends, I've been saying this for a long time.
And again, it all started with some guy dragging the Minnesota North Stars down to Texas.
Okay.
I'm never going to root for a hockey team in Texas, but then you put one in Florida.
Now there's two in Florida.
And they've both won championships fairly
frequently for the last
couple of years.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
And in Canada, uh, not so much.
So it's, it just feels a little off.
But I mean, if you really want things to feel off in the world of sports, the brewer's lost to the Cubs, which again, that's just wrong.
But
the Cubs are in first place.
That's,
that's the way, that's the way things are going right now.
That's kind of the annoying thing is that the Cubs are actually very good.
Yeah.
It's a shame.
That's what we're just going.
It's annoying.
It's annoying.
You look over at Craig Council and he's just smirking over there in the dugout.
You're like, yeah, well, you know,
Hey, good on Craig.
You didn't get ejected last night.
I'm proud of him for that.
You got ejected two games in a row like last week.
Little victories.
Little victories for Craigers there.
Coming up on the program today, the Republican-led legislature fell all over itself after the 2018 election to undermine Tony Evers and Josh Kahl even before they took office.
They met in a lame duck session to strip away powers from the incoming governor and attorney general, and it has taken six and a half years.
But on Tuesday, a unanimous
Wisconsin Supreme Court started taking steps to let lawmakers know that there are still three co-equal branches of government.
We'll have more to say about that.
We are, of course, tracking the progress of the next state budget bill through the Joint Finance Committee and the legislature, including some recent talk of punishing cuts to the University of Wisconsin system and recent moves about the gap between how Republicans support special education.
in voucher schools versus public schools.
We'll talk to a school district finance director about the strain that that gap puts on all property taxpayers in the state.
The president's big bloated boondoggle of a budget bill working its way through the Senate not only has massive cuts to Medicaid and other vital programs, it also tries to kill the tax credits that could create a new generation of clean energy jobs.
Republicans are suddenly having second thoughts.
Not about protecting health care or any of that stuff, but at least protecting the tax credits that benefit their corporate friends who could create those new energy jobs in their states.
We'll talk to Melissa Baldoff about that.
We'll talk to Earl Ingram with a preview of tomorrow's Juneteenth celebration in Milwaukee and elsewhere.
James Kelly will talk to us about stories he's covering across Western and Northern Wisconsin.
And it's Wednesday, so it wouldn't be Wednesday without a visit from Melissa Kay in our Wisconsin Rapid Station because, I mean, we put big money into the production of this jingle, so we are gonna fly this pigeon right into the ground.
It will be time for...
Pigeon Quest!
When will the day come that she just doesn't show up on Wednesday mornings?
Or, Wednesday day where she shows up and there is a pigeon on her shoulder.
That's my question, because I think we're getting very close to her having a pigeon.
To one or the other.
Just on her finger.
She's going to pop into the call and have a pigeon just sitting on her finger there.
And we're going to go, wow, she actually managed to get a pigeon and not get robbed.
she got
a pigeon and look she's training it so well it's already doing tricks it's it's holding up a little pigeon middle finger at me for making all the kfc jokes so and it's wearing pants and it's wearing pigeon pants i still don't know if she's being on the up and up with us because because honestly i haven't cared enough about pigeon pants to google them and see if they're a thing but
oh i did
melissa will give oh wait you
did oh yeah i did there so pigeon pigeon pants are real
Pigeon pants are real and they're spectacular.
You can text or comment on pigeon pants or any of the weighty topics of the day, eight, five, five, seven, five, civic eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two.
Use that civic media app as well or put a comment on Facebook or YouTube.
You know, maybe, maybe have your coffee first before you unleash any venom, though I will say.
Well, first I'll say our email address is radio at upnorthnewswi.com.
You can send a comment that way.
I will say that I got a little personal in one of my posts yesterday because, you know, we've got a question of the week from our Sunday newsletter.
And that is, you know, should Governor Evers run for a third term?
And I took, I took the time to put into this post saying, hey, it's Pat here.
answer the question, keep your venom to yourself.
You know, don't we don't need the insults.
We don't need the the memes.
You should see the memes that people work on, political memes, that they think are so funny.
But I mean, they're funny to Beavis and Butthead and not too many other people.
Like just just don't.
And
when I looked at Facebook last night and I could see that that post was already approaching 200 comments.
It's like, as I put in the post, I said, the nice thing about our delete button is it's never off duty.
We've got no problem weeding the garden over here.
And so I thought, well, okay, here we go.
And actually, it wasn't too bad.
And that includes all the people that don't want Tony Evers to run.
That includes the people that don't like Tony Evers.
And they buy in large.
you know, avoided the personal insults.
I mean, they would say things like, you know, you know, the state's gone to hell or something like that.
But I mean, you're not going to get deleted for that.
You know, it was the really personal stuff that some people just feel like this is their outlet for it is, you know, the comment sections.
And I was just like, I don't want to play that game with this because a question like that invites all the all the invectives and everything.
But folks by and large, even if they weren't Tony Evers fans, they just stuck
They played by the rules, said what they want to say, and we will have the answers later on in the week about what people are saying about whether Governor Tony Evers should run for a third term.
We talked to Dan Schaefer about that yesterday in our 8.30 half hour.
So if you missed that, we'll play a little bit of it back here coming up at 6.30 as he covered the State Democratic Convention.
And let me remind you that our Sunday morning newsletter, Sunday mornings with Pat Crichtlow is now available at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Click subscribe in the top
banner on our website and you can get our Monday through Friday newsletter as well and Christina Laurie's new sports themed newsletter on Saturdays.
I'll tell you more about what's in the newsletter today right after I tell you Brittney Merlot's state forecast for today.
She says showers and storms are spreading into the state as low pressure swirls by to the south of us with some rounds of rain expected to remain the rest of this week and then
a hot and humid weekend sits on the horizon.
So for today, rain, especially over the southeastern half of Wisconsin, substantial in spots, she says, some spotty showers and thunderstorms everywhere else by midday highs today in the mid seventies, a northeast wind at five to 10 miles an hour.
Rain ending early partial clearing overnight lows in the low fifties up north near 60 in the south and north wind at five to 10 miles an hour.
All right in the daily newsletter that Christina Laurie puts together of course her June dairy month story is about the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research Did you ever wonder how microbes affect the safety the quality the texture and the flavor of cheese?
Of course not, but other people do.
How about how bacteria can affect different types of cheese?
How do you extend a cheese's shelf life?
This is what the cheese nerds do at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, and we are far healthier and better for their work, and you can read more about it.
She's got an article on Colby Cheese.
I've been through Colby many a time.
I've been in the Colby Parade when it was in my state senate district.
None of it's gonna get me to really like Colby cheese, but it was invented there and a lot of people do like it and there's even tips on how to serve it and get the most out of Colby cheese.
and also an article on Door County Fish Boils, and we're to find some of the really good ones.
So again, all of that is in our newsletter.
Sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
I forgot to mention to you, Parker, that when I was in Regina over the weekend, looking at the flatness of the Saskatchewan Prairie, there actually was a natural feature that they went out of their way to show me.
All kinds of mounds about 10, 12 feet high.
okay
taking up an entire city block uh and and our hosts our friends said you know guess what those are and my first thought was they look like big piles of wood chips you said no i said how about compost no no wasn't that either you know was it sand you know for plowing the street so like no you're close those are all the snow piles
that
are
still melting up there.
I mean, like I said, an entire city block of mounds, you know, 10, 12 feet high.
And of course, all the schmutz from the roads, all the
dirt
stuff is is on top of the snow.
And so it's kind of keeping it insulated.
So that's why it's melting slower.
It is slowly melting.
But yeah, there's still snow piles
up.
I wonder how long that's going to take
to go away completely.
Just in time for the first flakes, if I know anything about weather in Canada, that's it.
The other
thing
I will say about being up there with these folks, friendliest people, again, Canadians, when our flight was canceled on Sunday, do you know, unlike in any other American airport, your flight is canceled.
It's the only way out of town that day.
We had to wait 24 hours, not one person.
lost their minds and blew up at the, uh, at the ticket agent or the gate agents there.
Everybody was just very like, Oh, you know, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
You had to cancel my flight.
It must have been my fault.
Yeah.
Just the nicest.
It was such a change of pace.
It was just really nice to see.
So it's, it's, it's good to know that again, unlike our first commenter online this morning, we can be friendly all the time.
If we choose to be, we just, we just have to choose.
Maybe it just needed to be eating more maple syrup.
and more poutine and then you're nice poutine maybe that's it that's it
that's it poutine i'm i'm happy to add that to my diet
Yeah, much more often.
And then Derek Van Horten can make more fat jokes, which is fine.
As I mentioned, the Cubs beat the Brewers five to three.
The Cubs have up their division lead to six and a half games over the second place Brewers who've won the NL Central each of the past two years.
Isaac Collins hit a two run homer for Milwaukee coming up tonight.
Jacob Mizorovsky will make his second major league pitching start tonight for the Brewers.
And you can catch the pregame starting at 630 on several Civic Media stations.
head over to CivicMedia.us to learn much more.
Boy, we have got a lot coming up for you today, all from the heart of America's up north, live from Lake Wissota.
So thank you for making this the place to spend a part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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.
Let's take a couple of minutes here and talk about what's called the power of the purse in government, your tax dollars and how they're allocated.
I don't know if you paid attention to rallies this past weekend, but in America, we don't have Kings.
We give the power of the purse to our elected officials in Congress and in our legislature to write up budgets a president or a governor can sign or veto them in certain ways.
And then once that.
budget is signed, it is up to the president or governor in the executive branch to dole out those funds.
In some cases without meddling from the other branch of government, as long as the executive branch doesn't meddle in what the legislative branch is doing.
And I've got two examples to tell you about at the state and federal level that illustrate what's going on in our state and in our country today.
You know how divided the Wisconsin Supreme Court is right now with its four progressives and its three conservative justices.
Hard to imagine they'd agree on much, but there was a unanimous ruling yesterday.
Seven nothing.
Striking down some of what Republican legislators did in 2018.
To take you back then,
Tony Evers had just beaten Scott Walker, who was running for a third term as governor.
And Josh Call had won the race for attorney general, J.B.
Van Hollen, if memory serves, it's been a while now.
Anyway, but so they'd won their elections, Call and Evers, in November.
They weren't going to take the oath of office, of course, until what, January 3rd?
So in the weeks afterwards, the legislature met.
the Republicans called themselves in.
When that happens after an election, but before they're all done with the term, that's called a lame duck session because, you know, again, they're supposed to have all the power of a lame duck, but actually they still can set laws if the outgoing executive, in this case, Governor Scott Walker, is willing to sign them.
And so the legislators stripped away some powers from the governor and from the attorney general, and Scott Walker
could have stood up for the dignity of the office that he was leaving.
He could have said, no, no, no, this may be passed by my Republican friends in the legislature, but I have to stand here for the integrity of the governor's office.
Oh, no, come on.
We're talking about Scott Walker.
He signed those in a heartbeat and out the door he went, taking powers away from Tony Evers and Josh Call.
We won't dwell on the governor part of it.
We still have
Republicans controlling the legislature and they're still holding up well more than a hundred nominations from Governor Evers and have all these other restrictions.
But this Supreme Court ruling yesterday was about the Attorney General's office and the court ruling unanimously that the legislature through its Joint Finance Committee
does not have the authority to approve settlement agreements made by the State Department of Justice in certain types of cases.
So sometimes when there are lawsuits involving state government, the Attorney General represents the state, and sometimes there are settlements in those cases.
The Joint Finance Committee, the Republicans, were saying, well, the Attorney General can't
do any of those things, reach a settlement without our say so because you know we have the power of the purse and in an initial challenge back when the state supreme court had a conservative majority the conservative justices agreed with that republican point of view saying yep the legislature has the power of the purse and so they they should have some uh some say so when the executive branch through the attorney general is settling cases but even back then
They said that's how it is overall, but we're not saying there wouldn't be instances where that wouldn't be appropriate and finally came some some ways in which that would apply.
For example, there could be settlements that involve civil enforcement or actions that other state agencies in the executive branch ask the Department of Justice to pursue.
And in those cases, you really do have an executive branch that is no longer dependent on the power of the purse.
They're funded, you know, and they're gonna go do their thing on behalf of the people of Wisconsin.
And...
In this latest case, this is where the state Supreme Court said that these types of enforcement, like for environmental cases, consumer protection cases, lawsuits over a breach of contract, financial regulation, all of these things outlined in the Wisconsin Examiner article by Henry Redmond, all of these things are at the core of executive branch power.
And you know who wrote that?
It wasn't one of the progressive justices.
It was one of the conservatives, Justice Brian Hagridorn.
And the other conservative justices agreed that in those cases, the legislature can't put guardrails, they can't intervene in the settlement process.
Now, this isn't the world's biggest deal, of course, but it's a sign that no matter how much some politicians try to grab power, at some point,
Balance is going to be restored.
You're going to have Supreme Court justices in this case who will point out where there has been an overreach.
But it didn't come for six years and it didn't come for several elections until you, the voters got involved and handed the Supreme Court back to a progressive majority that would hear those arguments and convince the conservative justices to come along.
Meanwhile, on the national side of things, you have President Trump.
Again, saying he's going to extend the lifetime of TikTok and not face a ban.
But the thing is that ban was passed by Congress.
It's the thing that he's supposed to be enforcing and he's saying, no, I just won't enforce it.
And Congress just lets him, you know, as happens in dictatorships.
You've got a president who's willing to drag the U.S.
into a Middle East war now with Iran, ignoring the War Powers Act.
Congress just lets him.
That's what happens in dictatorships.
And now Trump is trying to use something called pocket rescission to once again cut spending that has been approved by Congress.
But he is ignoring the law and not letting Congress have the power of the purse.
And Congress just lets him.
the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships.
We'll have an update on the Trump big bloated budget bill and what's being said about that as well throughout the course of the morning.
First we're going to have the Midwest Farm Report and then we're going to hear from Dan Schaefer on these mornings powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Kraitla.
It's a Wednesday morning.
It is June 18, 2025.
Welcome back to mornings powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
Nice to have you along.
And again, since we expanded the show to three hours, and we know not everybody can sit around and catch, you know, all 12 segments.
Yeah, 12 segments that we do throughout the course of the day.
You might miss one or two here or there.
So occasionally, we'll play some of the 831s back in the 630 half hour.
And why wouldn't you do that with Dan Schaefer, political director at Civic Media and founder of the Recombobulation Area?
And he covered the State Democratic Convention.
He also had that column about whether Governor Tony Evers should run for a third term.
In fact, I just wrote an article over it up north news wi.com about that same topic.
It does not unlike Dan who takes a position on the question.
I don't.
I reference his article and some of the other reactions to it and then, you know, ask what do you think?
Do you think the governor should run for a third term?
Anyway, so we talked about that with Dan, but he mentioned having an upcoming column on convention observations.
And so I started yesterday's conversation by asking him to share a couple of those
observations with us.
I had an opportunity to interview the keynote speaker for the event, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock.
So go check that one out at the recombobulation area.
And then I wrote a story about the chair vote on Sunday with Devin Remacher coming out ahead over Joseph Hecke and William Garcia.
It did go to a second round of ranked in the ranked choice vote there, which I thought was pretty interesting.
But so you can read read that there.
And I'm also writing
kind of longer what Reconpopulation Air readers will be accustomed to reading after big events that I cover, you know, 10 takeaways is typically what I will do there.
And I'm finishing that up now.
And, you know, it was my number one takeaway on the list as I'm going through it here is it was really the Ben Wickler show.
It was, you know, Ben Wickler celebrating his
the end of his run in his six years as chair of the State Democratic Party.
He took the stage, I lost count of how many different times that he took the stage over the course of the week, obviously some ceremonial duties bringing it in and out, but he also delivered.
a 17 minute speech of his own really powerful one.
He also joined Senator Tammy Baldwin during her prime time address to kind of have a conversation between the two of them instead of just hearing the Senator speak.
And so much of what was talked about was just the last six years of his leadership.
and what that has meant to transform the party.
And I think in so many ways, if we look from 2010 to 2018 in Wisconsin politics, we can characterize that as the Walker era, perhaps 2019 to 2025 could be characterized as the Wichler era.
Oh, I think that's entirely fair.
And that is not a knock on Tammy Baldwin or Mark Buchan or Gwen Moore or anybody else.
But I mean, it is a pace that he set.
It is, you know, a fundraising era of productivity that will probably be unmatched in state Democratic Party history.
And look, I know at a convention, folks are naturally
upbeat, even Democrats.
Sometimes they do form circular firing squads and things like that, which is why I asked this question.
Yes, they celebrated Ben Wickler.
Did you feel like the delegates were in a healthy place going forward?
Or did you get a sense that there was a lot of, you know, woe is me, Ben Wickler is going, the party is going to lose momentum and things like that?
Yeah, I think there's still a lot of optimism, I think, you know, just from throughout the weekend.
I think, you know, even though there was a lot of competition between, especially between the top two candidates, Remaker and Zipecki in the race, I think most people like both of the candidates and just had to decide which of the two candidates they'd like more.
But I also think, you know, it's just, yes, it's, they're...
Wicklers are big shoes to fill and as I grabbed a quote from the Wisdoms treasurer I don't know how many other people other people were taking note of this that particular speech In the convention, but treasurer Randy Udell who is also a state representative He said that the party operated at an unprecedented scale in 2024 Raising nearly 70 million dollars saying this performance exceeded that of any state party across the country so that is
quite the legacy to leave with the party and some big shoes to fill.
But I think overall, the mood, I think the spring election results have absolutely reinvigorated the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
I do wonder what this convention would have been like had that election not happened.
Had it been, you know, just
coming off of the loss against Donald Trump last fall.
If that was the main topic that people were thinking about, but I think with the spring election, any mention of Susan Crawford, any mention of defeating Elon Musk got just raucous applause in the building.
So I think that those results from April certainly had an impact nationally, but obviously had a clear impact on the state of mind from Wisconsin Democrats.
that's that's for sure.
We're talking to Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area and Civic Media's political editor from Tony up in national on YouTube.
I think the next era could be Representative Mark Bocan really liking what he's doing recently.
Bernie Sanders even mentioned him as someone to watch.
That wouldn't surprise me and I think part of part of that.
uh I'm not I'm not giving Derek Van Orden credit here but could be the Van Orden effect where where Mark Buchan felt like well somebody's gotta stand up to this guy or he's just gonna bully his way through and and truly be Wisconsin's next Joseph McCarthy so but it's not just Van Orden.
Mark Buchan has been increasingly vocal about what the progressive caucus among House Democrats should be should want and what they stand for.
Yeah, he's been, you know, I think his profile is certainly rising in a number of ways.
He's had some high profile moments questioning members of the Trump administration.
And yes, he was there at the convention this weekend.
He delivered a speech to he talked about, you know, Derek dealing with Derek van Orden and how he Mark Pocan of the second district has held more town halls in the third district than Derek van Orden has this year.
So he's he's really making an effort there to, you know, really put
But put Mr. Van Orden on notice, and boy, doesn't he need it.
You and I know that well.
Oh, do we ever?
So you wrote this column last week, asking if Governor Tony Evers should run for a third term.
At any point, were any food products thrown at you during the convention, or people just coming up to you just to boo?
Anything
like
that?
How were you received in
the Delfts this weekend?
There was a lot of feedback about that column.
I will say that a lot of a lot of the conversations that I had Were off the record, so I'm not gonna share any of the details with that But I do think there there were a lot of people who I would say are more receptive to it than what you might see publicly right now I'll just say that But you know didn't didn't have any any problems with the food and the drinks and that didn't wake up with any arrows in my back You know or anything like that, you know, it's it's one thing
to write a column like this, calling for a very well-liked Democrat to step aside and not seek another term right before the convention.
But people can disagree without being disagreeable.
I think there are a lot of issues that are fake both sides.
conversation.
I think this is an actual both sides conversation.
I think there, this is one that, you know, I think there can be a case to be made that Evers is the right person to run again.
And obviously I made the case that he'd be better off passing the torch.
And so, you know, Evers did not give any indication on what he's going to do in his roughly, he had a fairly short speech about between 10 and 15 minute speech.
that he delivered at the convention.
Obviously he had a presence there.
He had an ice cream hospitality suite going during the afternoon of the convention, very on brand for the governor.
But there was really no indication of whether or not he would be running, even though the theme of the convention overall was the road to 2026.
So I think clearly it's going to be a big question going forward.
The party had some decisions to make this weekend.
This was kind of a, definitely,
I had people talking, this column did, but any takes on it might be forthcoming in the weeks ahead.
Who knows though?
It's a very earnest question and some very earnest emails have come in.
We made it our question of the week in our Sunday morning newsletter should Governor Evers run for a third term.
Folks can respond to it themselves by sending us an email, radio.
at upnorthnewswi.com.
And I read through some of them yesterday, and I will through the course of the week again.
But I just wanted to second that note that this is something that people feel very genuine about.
I won't say strongly.
It's probably something they weren't thinking much about until recently.
But they have some very genuine feelings about whether he should or should not run for another term.
And for folks saying, well, is this going to have an impact on next year's race?
I would point out that the election is still just under.
a year and a half away.
This convention weekend will be a distant memory by that point.
That's true.
And the governor has said that he's going to make this decision after the budget process is over.
There's some things we could talk about when it comes to the budget process.
Oh, but wait, but wait, there's the budget
process.
We started the program this morning with that social media post from Chris Kappenga from Waukesha County saying, well, you know, if I got a vote for what joint finance my fellow Republicans are giving me, well, maybe I just would rather not have a budget at all.
I think to a degree that's actually
telegraphing what Republicans might want to do.
And I'm giving you all of 30 seconds to tell me if you think it's a real possibility or not that Republicans would just not send the governor a budget.
I think it's interesting.
It's it's we also saw how the Scott Walker boosted that comment from Chris Kappenga on his social media feed as well.
So that's that that's interesting.
You know, we've heard before that
They might need Democratic votes in the state Senate to pass a budget.
Maybe they just don't even pass a budget at all.
That was Dan Schaefer visiting with us yesterday.
You'll hear him Tuesdays at 8.30 here on mornings powered by Up North News.
And I guess, look, I'm not trying to complicate the discussion.
I just thought that it was interesting that people seemed to be going in one direction, which was, well, if a couple of Republicans don't like what joint finance is going to do, they're going to need democratic votes in order to pass something.
Well, that would have been the case in, in Congress, but here they don't have to pass a state budget.
And so that to me might be a head fake about needing democratic support when they might just let this thing go and roll the dice and take their chances.
But on.
on the DC side of things.
The Senate is now taking up Trump's big bloated boondoggle of a budget bill.
And Senate Republicans have been hearing a lot from people unhappy with the degree of cuts in there, especially to Medicaid, but many other things as well.
And Senate Republicans listened and have made the cuts even deeper in their version that came out yesterday.
But they also
undid something the house wanted to cut and that would be the tax credits for creating a whole new generation of clean energy jobs.
Now this is something where somebody like a Tom Tiffany has been saying that the entire Inflation Reduction Act should be repealed so that, you know, big oil can have whatever it wants.
There shouldn't be any solar or wind in Tom Tiffany's view of things.
Fortunately, there are some brighter people in Congress who understand everything from climate to job creation and to tax credits, and they want those preserved.
But in order to do that, it means even deeper cuts for things like Medicaid.
Ron Johnson has taken a look at the first draft of the Senate Republican budget, and he's doing the same thing that he did eight years ago.
He's saying, nope, not gonna be part of this, I don't support it.
Trump and other Republicans had to come to him and say, what do you want to get your support on this bill?
And he says, oh, it just, it puts too much on the deficit.
But if you give me a special carve out for pass through corporations, I'll support it.
And he did.
And it blew a $2 trillion hole in the deficit.
This new bill would blow anywhere from a three to $5 trillion hole in the deficit.
And Ron Johnson currently says he's a no.
Stay tuned to find out what he's going to ask for in return.
We're going to visit with Melissa Kaye coming up as part of today's history lesson, as we always do at this time of the mornings up north and live here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Follow what we do at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Subscribe to those newsletters.
We'll check Melissa Kaye's quest for a pet pigeon after this.
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.
Speaking of cranberry juice, Melissa Kay is here and we're going to talk about the Cranberry Blossom Festival in Wisconsin Rapids, among other things.
Right after I tell you that that song Fleetwood Max Dreams was the number one song this week in 1977.
One more history note before we get to Melissa here on this day in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100.
That was a lot of money back then, fined $100 for attempting to vote
in the 1872 presidential election.
How dare
those
women dare to vote.
Look, look where we are now.
We've got women who are not only voting, but becoming big time radio stars.
And before we get to the Grandbury Blossom Festival in Wisconsin Rapids, of course it's Wednesday.
Of course it's Melissa.
Of course she's excited because it's time for this week's installment of
Pigeon Quest.
There's no expense.
I showed that off to everybody.
So nice.
And we've we've made you sit here all throughout the commercial break.
You've been just dying to tell us the news because apparently once again, your email machine went off last night.
And
I love that they send it to me on Tuesdays.
We don't we don't know.
So let's let's do it.
What's okay.
Okay, so they are so happy for paint bucket.
Paint buckets the winner.
I'm getting paint bucket.
You're getting paint
bucket And
they they ship them by mail.
So I I'm gonna have to like Go to the post office to pick up paint bucket.
That's gonna be shipped But she said that they have that they have the special relationship with their local place and it's all fine Parker,
I don't know how I feel about this.
Okay, so my my feeling is
What's it gonna be?
You're in danger, girl.
You're in danger.
Well, yeah, that part that part's not great.
My thinking is imagine walking out of the post office, holding a pigeon.
Yes, I know.
In a box.
It will be in a box that has holes.
But yes, but you're not going to contain your.
You're going to open that box in the paint and the
second.
No, I'm not
opening it in the car.
That was the second choice for an SNL skit pigeon in a box.
So.
Paintbucket could be here as soon as they're going to ship it on Monday.
OK.
So
by next Wednesday, I could have a pigeon.
So excited about this.
You know, I know who's not excited.
Do you know what, you know, the saddest creature on this planet right now is little bell pepper, little pep.
who didn't make the cut and isn't going to be living with Melissa.
Not yet anyway.
That's true.
Could be too much like cat ladies, bird ladies, they got to get their start somewhere.
Oh, come on.
Now,
actually, no, that's not true.
Tony asks, have you pigeon-proofed your place yet?
Yes, we've discussed this.
A
little bit,
yes.
I
still need to check my plants because I don't know if any of them are hazardous too.
My newly my newly arrived friend
paint bucket
my my coo worker No
Well if
that wasn't a clue to get back to the history lesson, I don't know what
was
Let's celebrate the birthday of Tommy Hunt who was born this day in 1933 member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the flamingos
I
did not know this but Tommy Hunt from the Flamingos actually passed away back in mid-February that week that
I was
away on vacation.
February 15th he passed away at the age of 91 so I love this version of it though.
I mean our Garfunkel has a really cool version of I Only Have Eyes For You but the Flamingos to me this is the best one.
On this day in 1948 Columbia Records introduced the Long Plane Record Album
and a public demonstration at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.
Also born this day, composer Sammy Kahn was born in 1913, passed away in 1993.
Songs include Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.
A lot of Sinatra tunes, Love and Marriage, Love is the Tender Trap, My Kind of Town Chicago, and one of my favorites here, Sinatra, singing a Sammy Kahn classic with Count Basie and his
orchestra.
Melissa,
I got to send you this album or just have you download it.
Frank Sinatra live at the Sands.
Best album.
It's just the best.
On this day in 1983, Sally Ride became America's first astronaut in space.
Happy birthday to Blake Shelton.
He is 49 years old
today.
I
thought he was older than that.
Yeah, I would think so too, but no, 1976.
So yeah, next year would be his 50th birthday.
He just looks, you know, ridden hard and put away wet is all that it is.
You gotta have that for a country.
Happy birthday to Nathan Morris, a founding member of Boys to Men, who is 54 years old today.
And finally, Sir Paul McCartney.
One of
the Beatles
is 83 years old today.
There's all kinds of Beatles songs I could put up here to market.
But Melissa's here.
We like to have fun.
Paul McCartney has fun.
He likes to write those silly love songs.
So happy birthday 83 years old Paul McCartney today today is international day for countering hate speech So go to Derek van Orden's Twitter feed and say something in response today It's interesting that today is national Cleaner aquarium day, and it's also national fishing day.
I don't think the two are related, but you never know
I don't know.
Melissa K from WFHR 97.5 and of course 105 WIRI and soon to be Pigeon parent of Paint Bucket.
I don't know if
the name's gonna stay, but soon to be.
Okay.
So, no, I'm not gonna say it.
No more KFC jokes.
I don't
know.
My brother said mick bucket and I'm kind of liking that.
Okay.
Thank you, Melissa.
Oh, boy.
Oh, it's
a pleasure, guys.
All right.
Much more head in the next hour of our mornings powered by Up North News here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
