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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crichtlow.
Good morning, welcome back.
706.
Nice to have you here broadcasting today and tomorrow from Civic Media HQ in Madison along with Parker Olson and right here in Madison Studio A2.
Here's visual proof for folks watching on social media.
This room really is big enough for the two of us.
Not by much.
But not by much at all.
In fact, we could not possibly fit meteorologist Brittany Merleau in here, which is fine because she is in Oshkosh.
She is roughing it in the elements.
Brittany, I've looked at the radar long enough to know the elements are headed your way.
How are you?
Yes, they are.
Good morning, everyone.
I am fantastic so far.
I woke up to a text alert here at Oshkosh EAA Air Avenger saying, hey, listen up, we've got rain headed here.
It's going to be starting around 7 AM, lasting for about three hours or so.
So that's what we've got here.
We're still under the heat advisory as well, but a good chunk of the state from Eau Claire to Green Bay and everyone South is under that heat advisory today.
We are climbing to the mid 80s to mid.
90s and it's going to be feeling like 100 to 105 degrees today.
So we've got a lot of things going on.
We've already got the warm front moving in rain rolling through a good chunk of the southern half of the state.
Nothing severe, but a few power outages caused from it.
I'm not seeing any high wind reports just yet, but a lot of lightning strikes with this rain that rolls through and it's kind of got a cool front.
As it moves in, it's like that shelf cloud that spaceship look as it comes into the area.
So that's what I woke up to this morning.
Little bit of light drizzle and now it's just cloudy and starting to get a little bit humid.
So we've got chances of rain this morning, a little break in the afternoon, but I do think these strong to severe storms are going to start to spark up around two o'clock far northwest Wisconsin.
Um,
Some of those, of course, could be strong too severe.
And then the line builds around 6 p.m.
and works its way through the northern part of the state.
It kind of fizzles out as it moves south.
So the tornado threat is going to be just north of Wausau and to Hayward, O'Plair, Rhinelander area this afternoon.
And I win threat kind of stretches a little bit further south and towards La Crosse and just north of Green Bay.
But of course areas throughout the entire state down in Milwaukee and Madison, you could still see some high winds and some heavy downpours with this system moving in.
It's going to be a pretty big line later on this evening.
So round one isn't too bad, but round two is going to get much worse.
Well, and round one, I mean, it's nothing to shake a stick at watching
it
go through the Madison area.
I.
I was not aware that it was coming when it was getting ready in my spacious palatial hotel room in the Madison suburbs today.
And then just as I opened up the curtains to get set to walk out for the day, I see it's just starting to pour and thinking if only I had looked at Brittany's notes a little earlier, I would have known to get out of the hotel earlier.
But anyway, I stole this towel from the hotel room.
I'm good.
I'm
covered.
I got to remember to bring that back and you take care out there as well.
You got all kinds of people.
You got gear.
You got weather coming your way.
So, and then by the way, you're, you're going to be, uh, taking tomorrow and Friday, just as, as personal days to continue to enjoy all that, aren't you?
Yes, I am.
I know it's going to be pretty crazy weather.
So I'm going to have to be staying dry myself and I want to get in there and have some fun.
So I will be back on Monday.
Oh, no, that is just fine.
Robin Tigerton asks, did you do any flying at the EAA yet?
Not yet.
See, this is why I needed some PTO.
I'm going to get out there and social media.
That's where I'll have all those videos for you guys.
Oh, that's fabulous.
He says, uh, good morning from Tigerton, partly cloudy and 70 degrees.
Yesterday mowed five yards on Tigerton, no mowing today because he has a doctor's appointment.
Uh, he said, when I was a kid, I remember some of the hottest days of the year.
We'd be bailing hay or in high school at the beginning of football practice.
We played Alice and Krause in our last segment and said his favorite song is when you say nothing at all.
And of course notes the.
heat advisories, basically the highway 29 quarter and south.
I mean, it is a big old chunk of the state that's going to be both hot and stormy today.
So we can no longer say you haven't been warned.
Brittany was here
to tell
you, right?
Yeah.
All right.
You guys stay cool, stay hydrated and stay safe tonight.
Exactly.
You as well.
We'll talk to you a little later.
Thanks, Brittany.
Thank you.
All right.
As always, we'd love to have you as a subscriber to our Up North News daily newsletter.
Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com and we have a Sunday morning newsletter that focuses more on the political news of the day, including a question of the week about early advertising.
And if you see early advertising from somebody trying to build their name ID, does that
make you respect their initiative or does it turn you off to have such early political ads running this far in advance of a campaign?
Again, you can only send us a note radio at upnorthnewswi.com to send an email.
You can also, of course, text us through the Civic Media app or you can send us a voice note.
Just use that voice note feature when you call up one of the stations on the Civic Media app, put a little recording on there and we may play it here on air.
Well, the Brewers 11 game win streak came to an end.
It did not go to 12 games.
There will not be free hamburgers unless you head over to Parker's place.
He likes to grill.
He'll make you up a little something as you, you know, cry in your beer about the Brewers not being able to reach that 12 game plateau.
They lost one to nothing to the Seattle Mariners on a Cal Raleigh home run.
It was
It ended not with a bang, but a whimper, I guess you could say.
The 11 game winning streak.
Yeah, not as bad of a whimper as the Phillies won the other day.
Did you see this?
They won on a catcher's interference.
That is the saddest win I think I've ever seen.
It is,
but I mean...
It is what it is.
I mean, catchers can't, can't put your mitt there where they can swing the bat.
So don't do it with the bases loaded.
It'll, it'll, it'll bite you as it did, but the Brewers lose, but they will wrap up that series in Seattle this afternoon.
Pregame starts at two o'clock on several civic media stations, 205 to be specific for that game.
And then the Brewers are off tomorrow and then they started three game series Friday at home against the Marlins and then the Cubs come to town next Monday.
So when I mentioned Bill Barion, the candidate for governor running ads early, it's because he's got to build up his name ID.
He's not an elected official.
Other elected officials don't have to worry about that.
They don't have to spend money yet.
In fact, they can raise more money right now as a result.
And that takes us to Tom Tiffany and headlines, including one in the Milwaukee Journal.
that read Congressman Tom Tiffany teases a run for Wisconsin governor but says he hasn't made up his mind.
Okay, that's fine, but he, he put signs out there when we talk about teasing, like he recently tweeted out a photo of himself, you know, holding a crappie and saying that all future Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates must prove they know how to hold a fish.
And he of course says,
purchase the website domain name Tom Tiffany for governor.com, which leads directly to his congressional campaign site.
The homepage labels Tiffany, quote, a proven conservative for Wisconsin, you know, not Northern Wisconsin.
He's, he's got the whole state lumped in there.
And when asked by the journal Sentinel, Tiffany told the newspaper he'd make his decision, quote, after July.
Now, of course, he's not the only candidate who might yet run still.
There is state Senate president, Mary Falskowski.
There's former Senate candidate, Eric Hovde.
There's former Senate candidate.
Uh, I'm sorry, governor candidate, Tim Michaels and Tiffany as well.
In putting those signs out there, what is it that we're supposed to read into this?
Well, as somebody who's been involved in, in this little game, let me explain the game.
Fundraising is no fun.
There's nobody that puts the fun in fundraising, despite the old joke.
It is a long hard slog of asking people to support your campaign because you're the candidate that best reflects their values and who wants to get things done.
And so you sit there hour after hour after hour, either making phone calls or attending fundraisers or planning fundraisers because this is the system that we have right now.
to raise funds to be a viable candidate.
So how could you gin up that fundraising?
What could juice up the donors a little bit?
Well, one of those ways would be to get people excited that you are looking at bigger and better things coming up ahead.
And as much as I love to tell people that you should not lump both parties together, you know, the both sides do it.
Both parties do it about a lot of things.
This ain't one of them.
This is one of our both parties very much look for anything that provides a fundraising edge.
And if that includes teasing a potential run that you're probably not going to make, but it gets some people excited, well, chances are you're going to put that out there.
And I have seen people from both parties do this over the years and I would not call it wrong.
I would not call it even unethical.
I would call it an unfortunate part of the fundraising landscape that's out there.
We have had members of Congress from both parties who have multiple times teased a potential run for governor or a potential run for U.S.
Senate and or they just don't deny the rumors that are out there that they're thinking about running.
And then when you look at their next campaign finance report, well, gosh, do they ever get a nice boost from people who thought, you know,
that person might make a nice governor or that person might make a nice senator.
And it's just one of, you know, many tactics that are out there that Tony on YouTube best describes with the words money, money, money, money.
Yes, that's exactly what it is.
It's not easy.
It's, uh, uh, something where you're looking for whatever will give you just that little bit of extra bounce.
And in Tom Tiffany's case, it's that now.
He may actually want to run for governor.
He may be serious about it.
All I'm saying is that he has absolutely no reason right now to tell you, no, I don't want to be governor.
I'm perfectly happy where I am right now.
He's in a district that he can get elected in over and over again.
He can, he can lob all the spitballs and verbal grenades that he wants at Democrats knowing that he is safe.
But if he had to run for governor, well, then he would have to defend some of the things about his record as a member of Congress, as a member of the state Senate.
He would have to face questions beyond Northern Wisconsin about why he wants to, you know, dig up or bulldoze Northern Wisconsin.
This is the person who led the charge to get rid of the mining moratorium.
The rules that said, if you want to open a mine in Wisconsin, here's what you have to do.
You have to prove that you have operated a mine somewhere else and closed it.
And for years afterwards, you did not pollute the groundwater.
If you've done those things, then you are welcome to apply to open a mine in northern Wisconsin.
But if you can't do that, all evidence shows you're likely to pollute and harm the environment in northern Wisconsin.
So no, thank you.
But that law is not on the books anymore because of, as he's nicknamed up there, toxic Tom Tiffany.
And.
He has consistently been on the side of development and extraction and anything that would make the Northwoods a little bit less than what it is.
Mary Felskowski, if she runs for governor, will be in that same vein of trying to tell people, you know, why it is that they want to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
But until that happens...
Senate President Falskowski, Congressman Tiffany and others can continue to let their voters know that they're intrigued by the idea.
They're exploring the idea of running for governor.
Then once they announce, well, the fundraising starts all over again and they will have lost, you know, the edge that they're building right now while they're continuing to let the rumor mill do its thing.
And it is really doing its thing right now until Governor Tony Evers makes an announcement one way or another.
A local update is coming up next for some of you.
And then when we're all back together in about 15 minutes, we are going to talk about declining enrollment and the reduction in state funding live here on the civic media radio network.
I'm Pac right
now.
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Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
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started.
Producer Parker Olson joining me here.
Well, actually I'm joining him.
This is
his room.
Welcome to my world.
Welcome to your,
I'm just taking a look around here at, what do you think that this used to be once upon a time?
This is an office building in downtown Madison that I'm sure has been several different things over the years.
And you just wonder what kind of decisions were made in this room by whatever business was in here.
Perhaps weighty decisions like, do we, do we get legal pads that are narrow lined or legal lined?
I've always been a big fan of the college rule papers.
College rule might
be the way to go.
Yes.
So it's just where, you know, it's where we, where we make radio happen.
It's not Madison studio A1.
Let me explain
the
difference
here.
Okay.
Madison studio A1 where like.
Todd Alba will broadcast from there.
Looks out over State Street.
State Street is this wonderful area with very limited traffic, buses only and pedestrians that connects the state capital to the UW Madison campus.
And it's a it's a it's a wonderful place to be.
And we're right here at the top of State Street, just one block off of the Capitol Square.
So you can see the Capitol clearly when you walk out the door.
If you're at the studio, you get to see all the people and the traffic coming by.
And it's it's wonderful.
And here, a little deeper inside the office, we've got a view of.
Well, cubicles, yeah, lots and lots of cubicles.
Yeah, we do have a window, though.
That's true.
A window that looks out into the main office area.
Yeah.
Whenever Dom needs to print something for John and Gordy, I know.
Because that printer's right there.
It's just, it kind of has the, you know, from the office, kind
of
has a Michael Scott vibe to
it.
Yeah.
And you're
looking out there.
Yeah, kinda.
And I'm sure a lot of magic happens out there, but.
I'm
sure.
Here it's just us creating, you know, using the theater of the mind on radio here.
Tony puts on YouTube, very kind of the handsome and capable Luke to let you into his closet.
You know, if I'd have been thinking, I would have brought a nice big photo of Luke for you to hang on the wall right there behind you.
I think I might have lost it.
I think I don't think I'd make it through the
show with this.
Oh, I think it would be great.
And we love Luke.
He's
always
watching.
We did speak earlier with Melissa Kaye in our history segment about the passing of Ozzy Osbourne.
And I'm going to read off a lot of the obituary material from the Associated Press, mainly because I was, I was not in Ozzie's wheelhouse, shall we say?
I was not, I was not the target audience having been raised on, you know, Glenn Campbell, Captain Antoneal, Neil Diamond.
Other people did.
And for them, you know, Ozzie was, was kind of the antidote.
John Michael Osborn.
Nicknamed Ozzie, the gloomy demon invoking lead singer of the pioneering band Black Sabbath, who became the throaty, growling voice and drug and alcohol ravaged id of heavy metal, died Tuesday just weeks after his farewell show.
He was 76.
If you haven't heard me say this before, if there's one group of writers I admire so much, it's music writers.
They have just a way with words to describe music and musicians.
It's wonderful.
Black Sabbath's 1969 self-titled debut LP has been likened to the big bang of heavy metal, the AP writes.
It came during the height of the Vietnam War and crashed the hippie party, dripping menace and foreboding.
Osborne, a five-time Grammy winner, I'm surprised to say, was
twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once with Sabbath in 2006, and again in 2024 as a solo artist having been booted from Black Sabbath back in 1979.
The Guardian newspaper wrote in 2009 that the band, quote, introduced working class anger, stoner sludge grooves, and witchy horror rock to flower power.
Black Sabbath confronted the empty platitudes of the 1960s and helped kill off the hippie counterculture.
I love that writing.
Later, he would reveal himself to be a doddering but sweet father on the reality TV show, The Osborns.
The original Black Sabbath lineup reunited for the first time in July for the first time in 20 years for what Osborne said would be his final concert.
Let the madness begin.
He told 42,000 fans in Birmingham.
And again, as somebody who was not, you know,
I obviously knew who he was.
He's a big cultural figure.
I don't think you can't.
Uh, you, yeah, you really can't at, at some point.
Uh, and for me, it dates way back to when he, you know, bit the head off a bat that somebody had thrown up on stage.
And I
made sure not to mention that to Melissa.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We weren't going to do that.
Uh, cause for all we know, it could have been a pigeon.
And he, he says he thought it was just like a, you know, a rubber play thing that he grabbed and I'm sure he got a nasty surprise.
And he went right for rabies shots after that, but.
it helped instill an image.
And look, in show business, image is everything.
And he found that image, he cultivated it.
Even if it was, you know, all quite genuine in its darkness and its angst in the early days, you have to know how to maintain that.
You have to know how to make it your own.
And that is something that Black Sabbath did and that Ozzy Osbourne did.
And, you know, it appealed to so many people.
that people who weren't fans could not help but notice, especially when you then take it to the next level.
And that's being able to have a little fun with yourself.
And famously there was this diet Pepsi commercial.
where he thinks he's talking to, you know, two of his kids and, you know, they unzip the diet Pepsi can.
Oh, it's not regular Pepsi.
It's diet Pepsi.
And those aren't his kids.
Those are Donnie and Marie and upcoming Donnie and Marie and Ozzy Osbourne and Ozzy wakes up cause it's a nightmare that his kids are Donnie and Marie, but instead of Sharon Osbourne consoling him in bed, it's Florence Henderson, Mrs. Brady from the Brady Bunch.
I mean, that's just, that's great.
That's a great commercial right there on all accounts to be able to spoof yourself and still maintain your credibility, your connection to the music and the image that puts you where you are.
Ozzy Osbourne managed to do all those things.
I'm not going to tell you he was a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a true showman and deserved all the accolades that he received this summer before his passing.
We'll have this week's homeroom segment coming up in just a bit.
You're up north.
Must have done something right there in that the last seven twenty puts up on YouTube I might have to listen to more black Sabbath from that description.
Well, that wasn't me.
That was the Associated Press, but
You put it so eloquently.
I
read it in a convincing fashion.
Like a true radio man.
You know how to read.
That's right.
Left to right, top to bottom.
I've got this all figured out.
In today's homeroom segment, let's start with a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan think tank and their newest addition, their newest study, says Wisconsin education spending falls further behind the national average, noting that Wisconsin spent
just shy of $15,000 per pupil on public elementary and secondary education in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.
The most recent year for which the US Census Bureau data is available, that was about 10% less than the national average of $16,500.
When adjusted for inflation, Wisconsin pre-K to 12 education spending per pupil has increased very slightly since 2002, just 2.5%.
In 2002, Wisconsin spent about 14,000 per pupil in inflation adjusted numbers, whereas the national average has gone up a little bit more than 2.5% since 2002.
It's gone up 21% since then.
as other states recognize the importance of educating our children rather than declaring war on education in our state.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum report goes on to say, this continues a long running decline in our state's rank for per pupil education spending, which back in 2002 was 11th in the nation.
Wisconsin ranked seventh out of 12 states in the Midwest in 2023 compared to first
among Midwestern Spates back in 2002.
When statewide education spending is measured as a share of all residents combined personal incomes, Wisconsin also has been on a long-term decline in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Wisconsin spent a significantly larger share of personal income on education compared to the national average.
This share declined to roughly match the nation for a period prior to the pandemic in 2023.
However, that share increased nationally, but continued to decline in Wisconsin.
and the intro ends with saying, these figures are the latest example of a decades-long shift in our state's investment in public education and state and local tax burden relative to its peers.
Observing them is particularly timely as state policymakers recently enacted the state's next two-year budget, of which K-12 education is the largest spending priority for the state.
And that's as it should be.
K-12 spending should be a high priority for the state.
It still takes up a significant chunk of the budget, but much less so compared to the part of investment that was being made by other states.
And when you get to the part about education spending as a percentage of combined personal income, that's what's called the tax burden.
And the tax burden has gone down.
and down and down and in the beginning when it first started to decline you could clearly hear politicians saying that that was a good thing in their book and it has continued to fall to the point where if I were to say to you that funding education is no longer a significant tax burden
People, of course, would rightly say, well, that's crazy.
Of course, it's a tax burden.
It's still the biggest part of the state budget.
But in terms of it being a percentage of the taxes that you pay and as a percentage of the income that you get, the tax burden for our schools has gone down and down and down.
And it has come with a price with declining enrollment.
as students move into other schools and in the loss of our best and brightest as our young people leave the state and go to raise their kids elsewhere and as some of our educators leave the state in the wake of Act 10 in order to again pursue their career elsewhere.
So the Wisconsin Policy Forum takes a very dispassionate look at the numbers and shows
the degree to which since Republicans took control of the legislature, we have made the education of our children less and less of a priority.
That is eating your seed corn in a state like Wisconsin.
And our original hope this segment was to talk to a business manager and a school board member about the impact of declining enrollment on state aid.
And that's because
It's very tempting to think, well, if enrollment goes down, well, then yeah, state aid should go down as well, right?
I mean, that only makes sense.
It would seem on its face.
But there are all kinds of fixed costs that stay fixed, even if there's a decline in enrollment.
If you've got 30 kids in the classroom and then it drops to 20 kids in the classroom, the electric bill for the lights in that classroom are still gonna be the same.
If the buses still have to take the same bus route, even if they're stopping at fewer houses along the way, the cost of gas to fill up that tank is going to stay the same.
And so declining enrollment should not be accompanied by a one to one decline in state aid.
And there are ways in the state budget where there are other little pools of money besides general state aid that helps school districts with that, but none of this.
in total has kept up with inflation for 16 years.
And it's why you see this parade of referendums around Wisconsin and why you're going to see them even after this new state budget.
Because although it makes a significant increase in state aid to special education, which did take up a big chunk of all local school districts budgets, but the zero
increase in general aids means that in terms of inflation school districts are going to continue to fall behind and are going to continue to have to go to referendum.
Jimmy Koska is familiar with this particular phenomena being a school board member himself and knows a thing or two about how many school districts have passed referendum over the past four years.
Jimmy, good morning.
How are you?
Good morning.
I, you know,
I know that I come on and I usually come here to talk sports, but yes, I do.
I'm in my fourth year as a school board member in my district in southwestern Wisconsin.
So spent a lot of time, you know, looking at referendums.
Our district passed one two years ago, which is actually just wrapping up work this summer.
So we're one of 245 districts in the state out of the 421 that have passed a referendum in the past four years.
And since they put in the revenue limits, you know, three decades ago,
over 90% of districts in Wisconsin have gone to referendum, have passed a referendum.
And you think about that, and that's, you know, nine out of every 10, there's a lot of districts in Wisconsin, 421 of them, of course.
And then you think about schools that go to operational referendum, which are literally there to help pay the bills, pay expenses, keep the lights on, as you were talking about, the fixed costs, the things you can't, they can't go away.
And when schools pass those, what they're saying is we have a perpetual hole in our budget.
that we can't fill with what we can bring in right now in our tax levies.
So there are a lot of school districts that are working off of an operational referendum, which is, again, a perpetual hole in the budget.
You know, really do in part just to the fact that the funding system in Wisconsin for education has gotten so weird.
So it is a very large number of districts in Wisconsin that have done referendum.
I like weird.
Weird seems to be a good way to describe it.
Could you describe as a, when you were a new school board member, what it was like having to learn the way that education is paid for in this state, that it's not just a matter of, well, here, here go the property tax bills and here's how much we're going to get and that it's, it's a little bit more than that.
You know, it felt kind of like sitting in like, you know, you ever see the, you know, any crime show where they have the big board and they got,
you
know, the suspects all tacked up on the board and you got lines and yarn drawn from one point.
That's what it felt like for me anyway.
There's a lot.
I spent time myself diving into it with Wasby, which is the Wisconsin Association of School Boards and then going to the state education convention to really take a deep dive into it and learn as much as I could about it, especially knowing that we were going to referendum.
I wanted to understand it.
Like why?
Why is this a need?
Why is this happening even where I live?
And it's really complicated.
There's a lot of things that go into it.
I think one thing that you started talking about here in this segment, Pat, you were talking about kind of the tax burden, right?
The tax burden in the Wisconsin policy form analysis has dropped.
One thing that has also dropped and that has changed is just in general, Wisconsin public support for...
you know, whether they would fund education or would they rather see tax breaks?
That flipped about three years ago in the Marquette University Law School pool.
So there's also a public perception that people feel like they're being taxed too much, you know, property taxes, and it's not just schools.
I mean, there's municipal, there's county, there's all the extra fees and things associated.
So in a vacuum, yes, school funding, a lower tax burden, but, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things going on beyond that.
And we've seen our state legislature try to address
not only education, but also municipal funding in the last state budget two years ago.
There's so many moving parts to it.
And then you have to figure out how it all comes out on your tax bill.
And that's what we sit in a school board meeting and try to determine every year at an annual meeting.
What is our impact on our local tax base?
What's the mill rate?
What happens if we do this?
What if the referendum passes?
What's the impact?
How much of the referendum?
is part of what we're levying from local taxpayers.
There's so many moving pieces.
I can't even say I figured it out in four years, but I learned a lot about it and what actually goes all into it.
And that's really helped me understand kind of why we're at and why I've also had a lot of these shows talked about it as, hey, there's a lot of work that needs to be done in regards to how we fund education at Wisconsin.
And the thing is,
This is something that has been discussed for, again, for, for decades, quite literally, and that some years back, I forget exactly how many years now, but during the Walker administration, there was a blue ribbon commission that was formed, a bipartisan group to come up with, you know, a better mousetrap.
And
The Blue Ribbon Commission made up of Democrats and Republicans, you know, did their best, put forward some proposals, and if you really want to see educators who work on this issue get steamed, it's that there's this notion that after all was said and done with this Blue Ribbon Commission, so very little of it has been put into place.
And the other thing that happened, and this is what I think has really been the greatest impact to education funding in Wisconsin, is
It also, in that span, decoupling the rise in per-people aid from inflation has really made a big impact.
If you look at any school referendum graphic, the invariably will show you just the gap, the widening gap of what, you know, if we hadn't decoupled from inflation, what school funding would be now?
compared to you know how it is because it was decoupled from that so now you know state aid might not go up for it for a couple of years like it won't now like there's the general aid doesn't change right so there's there's a graph that shows just the widening gap of of of where school funding would have been had you know the old system stayed in place during the walker administration right so now
That's the gap schools are trying to make up.
And that's also kind of the gap you're seeing where in Wisconsin where you see that the per pupil funding had it stayed on the old system coupled with, you know.
to inflationary measure where we would still be where we were in the rankings, you know 15 years ago With that what it said because it's been decoupled now that per pupil education funding is has really dropped off
And by the way that decoupling was done when Democrats were in control I was one of those people that voted for it and there was a reason why
The Great Recession had just started and we were facing a $3 billion hole and said, you know, the money just isn't there to keep up with inflation this year.
So let's take a pause this cycle.
Republicans took control of the next year.
and never hooked the train back up and we have been falling behind inflation ever since.
A local update is next for some of you, others will stick around and Jimmy and I will continue our conversation here and then we'll have much more in our eight o'clock hour live from Madison today.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is 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.
Alright, well let's keep things rolling here with Jimmy Koska, although coming back to our school discussion,
And, you know, the education funding indexing to inflation that was ended back in 2009, Tony puts up on YouTube.
So I'm hearing the problems with education funding are all Pat's fault then.
Sure.
In much the same way, the Brewer's 11 game win streak has come to an end and it's Jimmy's fault for being so involved and devoted as a Brewer's fan.
Tony, it's, it's that kind of a connection.
I knew I should be posted about my kid taken into his first game seven years to the day, trying to manifest positive energy for the George Webb burgers.
I knew it.
It's all my fault.
It is.
It's totally that, uh, people saying that, oh, the, the George Webb folks must be, you know, breathing a sigh of relief.
I don't think they mind.
I think they got pretty good publicity.
either way.
And, you know, I don't know that it would have led to that much more in sales.
People just were going to come get their free burger basically.
Yeah, and I think now more people are aware of what George Webb is.
I guess it's in at least outside of the Milwaukee area, of course, because you know, for people that didn't grow up in the Milwaukee area, George Webb is a relative unknown.
When you'd hear the commercials on the radio broadcasts, it's like, well, it sounds cool, cool burger joint, but there's like, there were not an Eau Claire, you know, so.
No, no.
Do you have any
context for it?
No, you really don't.
And the thing is, I mean, look, everybody's got like a local burger joint or something like that.
But then there are these places.
Like I think chips was one of them in central, Wisconsin that you know, again, there's multiple locations, but only in a certain area, you know, like a George Webb or maybe a white castle or something like that.
And for those folks, it's, it's, you know, they're devoted.
Think about the first couple of culvers, for example, they're like, Oh, that's a cute little place.
I mean, now they're a national behemoth, but at the time, you know, it was, it was, it was more innocent when that first quick trip had opened in Eau Claire and wasn't any place else yet.
It's the sub sandwich wars in Wisconsin.
You got Herbert Gerberts and Eau Claire
in Western
Wisconsin.
He got cousin subs in southern and eastern Wisconsin.
I mean, it's like anything.
I mean, there's definitely some regional local favorites for things.
And I think again, just for just for the sake of fun, it was just fun to talk.
It's like when they have the free throw shooter, and if they make the free throw or they miss three or all they get like free tacos or whatever, it's
just
fun.
It's fun.
It really is.
We'll get we'll get back to the burrs in a second here, but with the the high heat that we're expecting today, the stormy weather.
I would imagine that whether it's football or other activities either have to use a lot of extra caution or maybe just not even be held today depending on the location.
Yeah, so here in Western Wisconsin, there's a lot of cooling centers open, obviously.
Wisconsin's, you know, utility commission has already said that, you know, there's ways to reconnect during these heat waves and things like that.
And we've got these heat advisories and heat warnings and things that are going on.
I know activity wise this week, you know, it's the middle of July, you sort of have it in the back of your mind that in Wisconsin, things can get pretty warm pretty quickly.
So yeah, a lot, I've seen a lot of activity like our community, our community calendars that we have on our civic media website.
We've seen a lot of people post like, hey, by the way, this event is moving to next week or hey, this event that was outdoors is now indoors.
Just me speaking as a football coach, we moved all of our practices this week to five in the morning.
We don't want to deal with the heat.
And today, because of the rain, we actually had to do it inside.
So there's a lot of things with heat.
As always, stay hydrated.
Follow all your safety tips.
Find shade if you need to.
Today is going to be, I think, I think Brittany said it earlier, it's going to be the warmest day that we've got in this heat wave.
Yeah.
adding insult to injury is having to do all this and again, not get our George Webb burgers because the burgers lost in Seattle yesterday.
One to nothing.
Logan Gilbert, the pitcher for the Mariners went six and a third shutout innings, including bringing a perfect game into the fifth inning.
before giving up just a couple of singles.
And yet there was Jacob Mizorovsky, who also, you know, was, was wonderful, struck out seven and three and two thirds innings.
And yet, you know, the, the Brewer's hitters just could not provide any run support for him.
And so we wasted that pitching opportunity and we waste a win streak.
Yeah, and you know the Brewers started slow the night before too.
They didn't get a hit until the sixth inning the night before so it's just baseball You mean you have streaks like this the win streak was great Actually, you know probably the little bit of pressure that you have on having a streak like that is off You're right now with that though.
You're you're writing contention at the top of the division Where you were trailing by multiple games even just a month ago now you're right in the thick of things So it came at a really good time and with the Brewers going into now the trade deadline and into August
I mean, this is where it really cranks.
Excuse me, I have the hiccups for a second.
With the Cubs series coming up, I think that's going to be a playoff atmosphere.
You've got so many chances here down the stretch where you look at some of these series and you're just like, wow, this is a great baseball coming up for the Brewers.
So I look at this one, yeah, they're going to lose eventually.
Can't win them all at baseball.
But it was nice while it lasted.
But the trade deadline, I think, is next Thursday, the 31st,
if I'm not
mistaken.
And so for the next week, we get to go through the very
Yanis-like discussions of whether the brewers should be making moves at the trade deadline.
And, you know, one of them that I saw lately that I lump in as ridiculous, maybe you think it makes sense, is that the brewers should trade Freddie Peralta for one more big bat.
And they were, you know, putting names around of who are some of the big hitters that the brewers need to add to their lineup.
To
which I
can only say, no, no, no, no.
No,
yeah, you don't want to get rid of fastball Friday.
Come on No, but you see the brewers tied to a lot of bats.
I mean, I think just yesterday I think there was some report about a you hanging Oswaras So like there's there's all these big anybody who's available as a free agent bat is being tied to the brewers Just be just for that sake, but you look at their payroll you look at what they've done historically They've built this, you know with the third of the payroll the Dodgers I don't I don't know that you shift from that model the brewers have developed Well, I know that there's this big
urgency as fans.
We got to go and span, go buy it back, go trade for whatever.
But I don't know, you're shaking up the core of a team then right now that is just rolling.
And in the minor leagues, you see some of the pitching guys that are coming up there too.
I mean, my goodness, brewers are in really good shape.
It's just good to see top to bottom the organization doing so well.
I got two words.
Josh, hater.
when he, when he was, you know, traded away to San Diego and people said, well, it's very strategic.
It's very, no, it took all the wind out of people's sails.
It
was a
surprise and it, it did.
It, it rocked something there that, uh, just in the end, maybe the trade all worked out in the end in terms of X's and O's, but it was a gut punch that I don't want to experience next week.
There's not a CC Sabathia out there for the brewers.
That's going to carry them over the top.
They're just isn't
exactly.
Jimmy Koska.
Thank you so much as always.
Appreciate it.
Take care.
Civic media sports director and school board member.
He helps us.
He's like a jack of all trades for us over here.
Coming up in the next hour, we're going to be talking to Earl Ingram about the latest episode of his new podcast, what's going on plus Melissa Baldoff and James Kelly.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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