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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by UpMorth News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of UpMorth News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
It's 8.06.
Nice to have you back here in Madison on this Thursday, July 24th.
One more day here in Madison Studio A2 along with producer Parker Olson.
And then tomorrow we'll take the show on the road up to Oshkosh and find out what
What exactly is this air venture thing that's going on with the EAA?
Um, but, uh, Brittany Merleau is there.
So she is off today.
She's enjoying all the adventure that comes with air venture.
So Chad Holmes is here from 98 nine WXCO.
But first to solve the mystery of coffee from the last hour here, where, uh, Chad, good morning.
How are you?
Great.
Okay.
Um,
So I finished my gas station coffee and I saw that there was a coffee pot there and I assumed one of these fine early morning producers, you know, put together a pot, maybe Park Park doesn't drink coffee, but I figured maybe he makes a pot for everybody.
I don't know.
Maybe, maybe Dominic does.
I don't
have
that.
I poured the coffee and it was incredibly cold and I had no idea if it was yesterday's coffee.
Does the coffee maker get cool that fast?
So I went to go.
put it into a mug and warm it up in the microwave.
And I find this, I have to spin this whole thing 360 degrees.
This coffee mug says up north news.
And then a little logo right there in the middle.
This is not something we made at up north news.
I have no idea where this came from.
I can, I can only, I can only assume
Luke Mathers was dabbling in merchandise and that this, this Frankenstein of a coffee mug was one of the early drafts, but it was hidden in the back of a cupboard here in Madison.
I like it.
Chad is not impressed with this.
No, he's not.
I'm thinking, I'm thinking the only thing missing on that little circle instead of a Wisconsin, they should have a picture of you on there.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Who
wouldn't want my mug?
on a coffee mug.
Speaking of which, I know you're in Madison today.
Yes.
You see all the great signage I have in my studio.
Boy, it looks like you're in a closet
there.
Well, there's a reason for that.
And if you saw all the office supplies and things on that rack over there, you'd understand that's exactly where we are.
Tell
those folks to get
some signage in there.
Well, it's working.
Parker did get the civic media banner behind him.
There you go.
I did my part.
He's sitting right in front of me, but behind me, uh, bupkus, but, you know, and the thing is, I mean, there's, there's flat screen monitors everywhere around here.
I mean, you can get these things for, you know, buck and change nowadays.
So I'm hoping next time we have one of these here and we have some nice, some nice views of Madison.
By the way, you say you're going to Oshkosh.
When are you coming to Warsaw?
That's, that's the question.
That is a.
good question.
The Crite Law Wisconsin tour.
I think you need to come to Owasa sometime because I know you're beloved.
I just had Nancy Stencil on from the
Democratic Party.
Well, that's just where I was going to go on that is his friends that he's there.
She loves packed Brite Law.
Well, we love Nancy Stencil and I was going to bring her up because if you aren't on Facebook following Chad Holmes, you ought to be at WXCO and
He made note that this morning he had Nancy Stensilon and let's see yesterday there was Mary, is it Clues or Clues of the Wausau?
Very Clues.
Of the Wausau Sustainability, Energy and Environment Committee.
There was also Rob Hughes, a teacher in the Wausau district sharing his concerns about modern education because he is a Herb Cole Teacher Fellowship winner talking about his 25-year journey about community support for students.
So, I mean, you're not just reading sports scores over there when you're doing these local breaks during our morning
show.
And it's always great to talk to interesting people.
And speaking of Rob Hughes, not only has he been a teacher in the Wausau district for 25 years, and he was very nice.
I think they may have taken away his Herb Cole Fellowship Award because he invited me to speak to his class last week.
I think they're probably saying what what what's that all about?
But no, he also has an organization called a wasa area food for hope and everything's giving that basically Especially no kids that are in the area schools that may be struggling a little bit who have families who are struggling financially They raise money and they provide turkeys and ham and and really make a Thanksgiving that is much better than it otherwise would be and we talked about that and people can donate to that so again, there's a lot of
folks out there doing really good things for this community.
That's awesome.
And so let's go back to Nancy Stencil and the discussion there.
Well, she one reason that I I have her on every other Thursday number one, but today I wanted to talk a little bit about Something that you know, I think a positive where where folks can come together whether you're Republican or Democrat here, but she is issuing a challenge to the Republican Party here in Marathon County to basically in the month of September the first full month of school to have
to help our kids not be hungry in our public schools.
And of course, I think there's disagreement from time to time on tax dollars and public money going to anything when it comes to the schools.
But in this case, it's almost a put up time because there are school lunch debts.
And I said to Nancy, I said, if there's anything more depressing as a statement than school lunch debt where kids and their families
To avoid being hungry are in debt for their school lunch.
Yeah, but the challenge is That in the month of September
for republicans and democrats alike to make a donation to one of the area public schools here in marathon county whether the wasa school district or dc everest and other smaller schools as well to make a donation to pay off school lunch debt and then to report that donation to your political party if you're a republican reported to your the county public republican party if you're a democrat reported to nancy and the democratic party and then at the end of the month we'll have a scoreboard and see
who was able to tally up more in terms of paid off school lunch debt.
So for the kids and their families here in Central Wisconsin.
That's awesome.
And she got a response from the Republican Party?
Just starting it up.
Okay.
Okay.
And I had a raised eyebrow there and I'm thinking, oh, let's hope that there's no, there's no looking for excuses not to do
it.
Well, yes, I mean, look, I can see them saying, oh, you're just trying to point out, you know,
something something yeah fine you can make the political points you want but you can also you know put up or shut up on this matter.
And really quickly
it kind of brings up a point that I actually had a very interesting discussion on Saturday concerning you know again government and the idea is both Republicans
This person who I think is more conservative said that the people should be taking care of each other that that local organization should be taking care of each other and Okay, fine.
Okay, I disagreed and I had this discussion, but this is a case where We're doing it the way that they want to do it.
We're gonna try to raise money through Individual contributions.
I don't think that's the permanent way of making sure that a problem is solved, but at the same time
here's an opportunity for you to show us that it works.
Yes, because there was something that I heard, I believe yesterday, from the acting director of FEMA.
And it's an acting director because, you know, Trump fired the last one for daring to say that FEMA shouldn't be disbanded.
And by the way, since that time, Trump has changed his mind and no longer wants to span FEMA.
Needless to say, this interim director was very proud.
He was crowing about the response to the Texas floods and said something along the lines of locally led
but federally supported, you know, that we had this great response to the Texas floods.
No, they didn't.
No, they didn't.
I mean, FEMA especially, because Kristi Noem, you know, now requires her signature on anything that costs $100,000 or more, and it caused a 24-hour delay in FEMA's response.
Do you know how many lives could have been saved in the first 24 hours?
And
Again, it always comes back to saving a buck versus a life with these folks and saying, well, you know, people ought to take care of themselves.
I pay my taxes for that.
I pay my taxes so that, you know, whether it's wildfires in California or a tornado in Chippewa Falls or a hurricane in Florida that, you know, in all these places.
There aren't enough resources locally.
Nationally, we pull it together and we can help the niches of the country that have an issue.
And I don't understand why there is an entire political class that has such a problem with that, unless it's for the more nefarious purposes of, you know, we got enough means to take care of our own, and that's what we're going to do, screw the rest of you.
Well, and it's been proven.
It's been proven over and over again that for every dollar that you invest,
In these programs you get so much more back
three
four times the amount back so the idea that hey Like Tom Tiffany said in his op-ed to the pilot last week Well the biggest tax cut in in American history and and lower and middle-class people are going to get back this amount of money well The amount of money that you get back is nothing compared to the amount of Benefits that could help save a life or or keep your family out of poverty or or any other
aspect.
Again, in terms of, yeah, maybe at the end of the day, you'll get $5 more on your paycheck every two weeks.
But in the end, it's going to cost you a whole lot more.
I mean, he did not bring up the fact that I've read and I hope it's not totally accurate, but I have no reason not to believe it that folks who are on the Affordable Care Act on the marketplace, they're going to see their health care costs go up 75% because of this bill.
No, great.
I'm getting a small tax cut, but my premiums are going to go up 75% if I want to have healthcare coverage.
But they only want to focus on the one.
Yep, they only want to focus on the one.
And when you mentioned, by the way, Congressman Tiffany's letter in the Wasaw Pilot and Review justifying the mega bill, I mentioned earlier, and I'm going to say again, I would commend to people go back to the Wasaw Pilot and Review and read the response that was put up by somebody named Brandon Lutke from Wasaw.
just a very good point-by-point takedown of what it is Tiffany wants you to hear versus what is actually in the bill.
It was wonderfully done too because it was very I would call it professorial.
Yeah.
It was not an emotional response.
And sometimes
you're just the same
thing.
Yeah, that we get overly emotional because there is a reason to be emotional when you feel like people's lives are being affected in a negative way.
But at the same time, I think it's a much more effective way of going about it than say, Hey, yes, he appreciated the fact that Tom Tiffany actually responded because sometimes we don't hear all the time from people like Tom Tiffany after a vote like this.
But at the same time,
there was things that were left out of the congressman's response.
And again, I agree 100% with you that anybody that would like to get a little bit more information generally about what was put into law with this so-called big, beautiful bill would be, I think, advice to read that letter to the editor and other articles that truly try to get to the word that maybe operative is big when there's so much to it.
We're continuing to find out more and more and more about what's in this bill.
Oh, yeah.
And that's by design, the same people that criticized the Affordable Care Act and all the other things for being too big, created something truly big and bloated and a true boondoggle.
Just a couple of seconds left and I have to follow up on your trip to Vegas.
The third party company that screwed up your ability to access your funds in your bank, has this resulted in any heads on sticks yet?
Or at least an apology from somebody?
I
mean the thing is I kind of understand in a sense they're trying to protect us but the bottom line is I think in this era
Doggone it, we should be able to talk to a human being.
Thank you.
That's the bottom line on it.
I mean,
I can understand almost everything else, but the idea that I could not get a human being on the line in order to help me out, that was the thing that was infuriating.
Yeah, and especially somebody, you know, close to home, not overseas who has no vested interest in getting things done on your behalf quickly.
Chad Holmes catches local updates on 989 WXCO in the Wausau area or on the Civic Media app.
Thank you, Chad.
We'll talk
you later on.
Thank you, Pat.
All right, coming up, we're going to have a local update and talk to Sean O'Malley about your money in the markets and Joe Specky as well.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
You're up north.
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The Milwaukee Brewers are off today after taking two out of three in Seattle.
I think what was yesterday's final?
Ten to two, something very embarrassing.
Should have been their 13th win in a row.
Instead, it's, what, 12 of their past 13 games that
they won.
Aw, shucks.
Not quite enough for a free burger.
The Brewers are off today, back in action at home tomorrow.
against the Miami Marlins.
Coverage begins at 2.35 tomorrow afternoon.
That's right, it's an afternoon Friday game at American Family Field on several Civic Media stations.
So again, Miami here Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
And then the Cubs come into town Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
And that takes us to Free Ticket Friday, that is tomorrow, where you will use your Civic Media app to give us a keyword that I will give you tomorrow.
And that will put you in the running in a statewide drawing for four tickets.
tickets to next Wednesday afternoon's Brewer's Cubs game.
It'll be the finale of that three game series and Again, I mean those are those are in-demand tickets and we're giving away four tickets great club level seats But to enter into that statewide drawing you've got to have the keyword and text us on the civic media app tomorrow for free ticket Friday Sean O'Malley joins us now to talk about your money in the markets And I usually introduce him as somebody who's had a good run on Wall Street a good career and then he's back home in Wisconsin But he's not back home in Wisconsin.
He's he's back on Wall Street
working on a special undisclosed project, but they've locked him away in a cubicle with Wall Street right over his right shoulder there to join us for a few minutes to talk about your money in the markets.
How are things in lower Manhattan these days, Sean?
I was gonna say you put a lot of years in there.
Yeah Let's start by talking about the different ways to measure the economy because again, there's there's people that can
spin almost anything one way or another.
And it takes somebody with a little bit of knowledge to cut through all of this.
So let's start with the leading, uh, leading economic indicators.
You know, what that is, what we've learned about how the market or I'm sorry, how the economy is working, not just for the people, you know, over there within a stone's throw of you, but for Mr. and Ms.
Middle America.
Yeah, that's so the leading economic indicators is a collection of data points that is designed to sort of give some sort of sense because these are typically economic indicators as the label implies that lead a lot of the actions that we later see in the economy.
So it's designed to be a bit of a forecasting tool and it's a collection of data points.
one of which is the stock market performance itself, which certainly is doing just fine.
That's been going along pretty well.
It's really the one major positive point in the leading economic indicators.
However, we have several that are not nearly so positive.
Consumer confidence is extremely low.
We also have a slowdown in manufacturing orders.
So that means that's going to impact manufacturing production.
And we also have a steady increase in initial claims for unemployment.
So what we're really seeing is a recipe coming up that, OK, the stock market's going fine.
So everybody with enough money to plan the stock market is doing well.
But you're seeing consumer confidence, which is in consumer spending, of course, is the major driver for the US economy.
And that's going to continue to soften, not a good indicator.
We're seeing that, again, the manufacturing supply ordering is tapering off, which means manufacturing production is going to be going down in the future because they're not ordering supplies because they don't have the orders to fill from a manufacturing perspective.
And with the initial jobless claims continuing to trend up, that means we're going to see unemployment going up.
Now, you couple all of that.
with what we saw with respect to inflation last month, going up from 2.4 to 2.7%.
So a pretty significant jump.
We are increasingly flirting with the possibility of stagnation, rearing its ugly
head.
that sounds like fun.
And that on top of all of that would be the financial impact on tariffs.
Now, I know that there's another headline in the news today saying that, you know, Trump is quickly pursuing, you know, some other trade deal.
But it's still, it's still a far cry from the 90 deals in 90 days.
So we're stuck with the the
impact of the tariffs that he is either imposed or the uncertainty about tariffs that he wants to impose and where we add on all that?
Yeah,
so so far we've, I mean, we have obviously no treaties, no treaty agreements, no trade treaties because nothing has been ratified by Congress.
We do have signed agreements with four countries, the most recent of which is Japan.
which has resulted in kind of an interesting interpretation from a lot of trade experts.
Before the assumption was that the sort of the floor, the minimum tariff rate would be about 10%, but now based on these experts looking at what's coming out of this new trade agreement with Japan, they're saying the floor may be rising up to 15%.
Now, that's interesting for a couple of reasons in that
That means we could see tariff impacts start to increase a bit.
And some of the measures that have already been reported with respect to basically how much money has gone from U.S.
consumers to the U.S.
government based on the tariff taxes I'm calling them, that's basically what they are.
Year to date is over $100 million.
The projection prior to this trade agreement was for $300 million by year end.
With this trade agreement in this new 15% tariff floor, the number could be substantially higher than the $300 billion.
So the $300 billion in tariffs, those are taxes paid by consumers.
Taxes
the folks in the in the Trump administration can can say it till they're blue in the face that foreign governments are paying these They are not it's coming from the consumers.
We're talking to Sean O'Malley out on Wall Street about your money in the markets We're gonna pause here and then talk just a little bit about crypto because we discussed it in our last hour with two state legislators who want to ensure that
Yeah, as crypto you spreads, if you go to one of those little ATM machines that you're not getting scammed there.
We're also going to talk to Joseph Peckie, including a discussion about a Democratic state senator who's got something kind of similar to the contract with America, but for progressives, a good idea or does it paint politicians into a corner?
That's all coming up next year live from Madison on the Civic Media Radio Network.
to hear from Joseph Pecky in just a bit.
First, we're going to wrap up our conversation with Sean O'Malley about your money in the markets at the opening bell, where the markets have opened mixed as hopes for a trade deal between the U.S.
and the European Union are keeping some fresh records in sight, but Wall Street's also looking at earnings from tech giants like Alphabet and the parent company of Google and Tesla.
Sean, as we look ahead,
at what's happening on Wall Street there.
We've gotten into the leading economic indicators, the impact on the tariffs, but I want to go just take a step back to a conversation we had last hour about cryptocurrency to legislators that
want
to make sure that those ATMs that are going up all over the place that claim to let you invest in somewhere or buy or purchase cryptocurrency are somehow on the up and up.
And I'm casting no aspersions on state legislators or members of Congress, but this is such new stuff I I just wonder if if you're Would you be as cautious and counseling people to approach those crypto ATMs as I would be?
Crypto, I checked the figures while we were on break and the FBI reported just last year, $5.6 billion of fraud in crypto, up 45% from the year prior.
So yes, crypto is gaining in popularity and impact, but it is still a very wild, wild West type marketplace.
The number of fines and regulatory actions in this space are non-trivial.
Unfortunately, what we're seeing is a real lack of enforcement.
In other words, really almost complicit action by the federal government and the Trump administration.
They're looking at possibly allowing 401ks to start investing in crypto.
My strong advice is don't do it unless you can lose it because it's basically go to the racetrack instead.
You'll have more fun.
And your odds of winning are
Probably about
saying and you've got a president who has made more than a billion dollars off of again allegedly three billion three billion off of some
So don't, don't look for him to be a big proponent of strong protections.
Uh, and that gets me to the final point on that because Wisconsin congressman Brian style was leading the charge for, you know, quote unquote crypto week last week in Congress, which
they
claimed was going to put the first good regulatory framework in place to protect.
consumers, banks, the economy, small businesses, everybody on crypto.
I'm going to say from a completely uninformed perspective, I've seen the coverage of it and I don't know if you know or have any opinion on the crypto bills that did pass and go to the president last week.
Anytime you have an idea that is being
pushed forward by very wealthy people who already have a lot of money as a way for other people to make money, I would be very skeptical.
It's probably a great way for them to make money, not necessarily for you, you know, on Main Street America to benefit yourself.
You know, stay with us, try it and true.
Don't get out over your skis and don't bet on something that is literally backed by the full faith and credit of nothing.
Sound advice from about your money in the markets from Sean O'Malley.
Sean, nice of you to join us from Lower Manhattan there.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you later.
All right.
Let's bring in Joseph Peckie and kind of continue that conversation in terms of, you know, again, whether Congressman Stiles is looking out for the constituents of his district.
or the folks on Wall Street, uh, and contrast that to Representative Ryan Spouty and State Senator Kelder Roy's last hour talking about looking out for Wisconsin consumers on cryptocurrency.
Joe, I think I know where you and I would, would put our, our money if we had to bet on one or the other of those groups of public servants looking out for us.
it turns out that there's more.
Oh, it's not much more, but yeah.
This is crazy and the insistence by Republicans that they get to write the rules and though their choices to date which include one of the craziest parts which is there's a lot of crazy parts of the Trump economic plan they passed via reconciliation are new rules for meme coins and How you can't do a corruption
with your own meme coin, unless you were President Donald J. Trump.
They carved out a loophole for their boy.
I mean, it's just insanity.
And of course we need rules of the road and regulation.
And I wish Democrats fortitude in the fights to come and to just say, you know what?
Regulations and rules of the road are required, and they're a good thing.
We have let Republicans and conservatives define every bit of regulation as bad for business, and that's BS.
You know, Ryan Stile was, you know, a staffer for Paul Ryan before running for Congress himself in that same seat, and it just strikes me as, again, trying to give the appearance of being a wonk on something, in this case crypto.
And hoping that, much like with Paul Ryan, you know, the appearances outweigh the actual heft of any legislation that Paul Ryan or Brian Stile would work on.
Yeah, it's one of the curses of the Trump era, which is Republicans now believe that they can get everybody to just listen to what they say and not to actually watch what they do.
They think talking a good game is enough and that the policy doesn't matter That's not how the world works and they're gonna find that out at the ballot box sooner than you think
Well, that just takes us to another Wisconsin congressman Derek van Orden who again lacking any substance is really good at throwing out the rhetoric and in this case the Russia friendly rhetoric
As he's now calling for the imprisonment of former President Barack Obama, essentially parroting what Russian Ron Johnson had to say, which was parroting what Tulsi Gabbard, another Russian asset, had to say about this whole 2016 Russia, Russia, Russia thing.
Why are we talking about it right now again, Joe?
He said rhetorically.
is that he doesn't want to be talking about Jeffrey Epstein, which we'll get to, I'm sure, in a moment.
I think there's two ways we need to talk about this particular piece of it.
One is how, like, just stupid it is, and then the other is the more serious take.
So let's start with the stupid ones.
First of all, Derek Van Orden recently protested, perhaps a bit too much, that he's his own boy, and he doesn't work for Donald Trump.
Do you remember that?
That was just a couple of weeks ago.
I do.
No, he had a colorful word that
he
used, that he is not one of those people for Donald Trump, not one of his little, let's say, puppets.
And that lasted an hour.
And he's not doing a very good job of asserting any independence or doing anything other than just following the orders and saluting, you know,
President Trump and saying yes, sir.
How high sir no matter how absurd and so now let's talk about the absurdity of this Obama conspiracy that Trump is blathering on about like They are claiming they have Obama dead to rights on a secret meeting that took place in early December of 2016 about Russia Russia Russia
That is a meeting that I have read about in multiple books, including books from people in the meeting like former national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.
And after that meeting, Obama went out into the press room and gave a national press conference saying that Russia did not
hack the voting systems and impact the actual votes of the 2016 election.
And you have now National Security Advisor, former Secretary or sorry, former Senator Marco Rubio, who led a three year investigation.
via the Intelligence Committee that concluded Russia used active measures to try and influence the 2016 election.
So that's the absurdity.
Is there claiming a conspiracy that everyone from Barack Obama to Marco Rubio has come out publicly and said Russia tried to influence it?
They didn't actually change vote totals.
So what the hell are we doing here?
But here's the very serious
part.
it
take it
It is deeply deeply troubling to have a president of the United States from the Oval Office Falsely accused a past president of treason You know, we worry about red lines.
We talk about approaching or crossing red lines.
This is incredibly dangerous and incredibly harrowing
and shame on every Republican who knows better, which frankly should include Derek Van Orden.
Whatever you think of the guy, he's not an idiot, right?
He might be out over his skis a little bit.
He might not be the brightest member of Congress, but he's not a dumb dumb.
He knows better.
And all of these Republicans should know better.
And the fact that they are
willing to go, well, that's just the cost of doing business in the Trump era to have that level of accusation levied by a sitting president is deeply, deeply troubling and underscores the need for voters to excise all of this rot.
from our politics.
Well, and there is something dangerous and harrowing, as you said, about, you know, Trump making these claims, these false claims against former President Obama, going so far as to post AI video of Obama being arrested and put into prison.
But there is this reason why Trump had to use manipulated video showing Obama being, you know, reigned and charged with crimes.
And the reason is because we have
actual video of Donald Trump being arraigned and going to court and being convicted of 34 felonies and when you are a convicted criminal in the Oval Office and you want to make sure things don't get a little bit worse by your name showing up in some way, shape or form.
We don't know exactly the degree in the Epstein files.
Boy, you're going to go nuclear, and that's where they're going.
Is there going nuclear on Russia and Obama?
Because, again, when you've got a convicted criminal, you've got no place else to go except desperate.
Yeah.
Is a schoolyard taunt.
Right.
Not a way to govern this country or to conduct yourself if you are the person responsible for the decision whether or not to launch nuclear weapons.
I don't know how else to put it.
The presidency of the United States is a serious job for serious people.
And many of us have known for more than 10 years how deeply unserious Donald Trump was.
I am glad to see more voters, particularly on the right, recognize that and say that before, unfortunately, Republican members of Congress are doing so.
Joe Specky giving us the update on...
what has truly become silly season in a terribly serious way.
A local update is next for some of you.
Other some final news and notes here.
We'll also check in with James Kelly from our Civic Media Newsroom in Chippewa Falls.
Tomorrow I'll be in Oshkosh.
We'll be talking to UWO Provost Ed Martini, also State Representative Lee Snodgrass and Winnebago County Executive Gordon Hintz.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Hey, James, how are you?
Good morning.
How you doing?
Good.
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.
We're
going to check in
with Civic
Media's
James Kelly.
That was me.
In case you heard.
Did you hear two of me there?
I heard two of you and I was absolutely.
I
made it to the final segment of the show without accidentally hitting that mute button.
That's all right.
I
should just
go home.
Just do
the show
from home, Pat.
Stop, stop.
floating
around.
Get out of here.
James Kelly will be checking in from our Chippewa Falls Newsroom in just a bit.
Let's wrap up things with Joseph Pecky here, something I've been meaning to ask about.
One of the Democratic state senators, Chris Larson, has publicly put out a petition.
It's got some legislators' names.
It's got some local government officials' names.
I see it looks like labor leaders on here as well.
And it is essentially a nine point plan that he thinks any Democratic candidate for governor should sign on to.
any Democratic nominee.
Could be Tony Evers, could be somebody else.
It includes the guarantee of child care for every Wisconsin family, safely closing the Green Bay prison, doubling the income threshold for badger care, a $20 an hour minimum wage.
And Joe, I don't know if there's a right answer or wrong answer.
I'm going to present it this way though.
Is this the kind of thing that voters will like because it shows Democrats not being squeamish?
And here's exactly what they stand for.
or much like Read My Lips, No New Taxes, are these candidates painting themselves into a corner that they're gonna regret doing later on?
Or maybe it turns them off with moderate voters.
What was your initial take on Senator Larson's nine point plan?
And I respect the hell out of anybody who is doing the work of winning support for a legislative agenda.
In January of 2027, for the first time in a very long time, it is entirely possible that Democrats will have control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature.
And the job of Democrats in order to win that opportunity is to say, here's the things that we are going to work on and we are going to try to do.
And for Chris Larson or Diane Hesselebein or Greta Neubauer or any of the candidates for any of these races,
or any of the candidates for governor.
This is exactly the type of work that should start now.
And so I tip my cap to him, I might quibble with why those nine things and not these nine things.
And that's the work of the next, what do we got until January of 2027?
I'm doing math on the radio again.
Oh no, don't do that.
17 months, 18, 19 months.
This is what we need to be doing.
And so I appreciate Senator Larson putting it out there.
He's an important leader in our party and in our movement.
I don't think this is the be all end all and the final word on the matter.
I think there will be other legislative proposals and platforms put out by candidates, whether that's, you know, folks like Vining or Jacobson running for the state Senate, but.
Good on Chris for saying, here's what I believe, here's what I'm willing to go to the mat for and doing the work of winning support for that with people who are willing to put their name to it.
That's what we have to be doing right now.
And whether it's a pledge or an ironclad promise, whatever it is, when you can get it down to nine points, when it's something you can put on a piece of lit that you're handing to a voter, that means something.
People want to see that.
So good on them for steering the conversation that way.
Joe, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Have a good start to the weekend here.
Exactly.
Before
Yes.
Even if it didn't happen.
Yesterday was only number one of the of the next 12.
That's coming up.
All right.
That's right.
Thank you.
Talk to you later.
James.
Yep.
Let's check in with James Kelly.
Day late.
That's my fault.
But James is here now from Chippewa Falls to tell us the stories he's covering up in Northwest Wisconsin for Civic Media.
James, how are you?
I'm good.
I see you make it to Madison, the headquarters of state capital.
You forget about the little guy.
I
see.
I was just going to say immediately I went Madison and I'm like, oh, he forgot his roots.
And yet here we are a day late, but we're here.
Let's start with a Turtle Lake company turning food waste into energy.
Yeah, so this company called Veresco AD, they've been operating up in Barron County since 2017.
They just did a 25,000 square foot expansion to add a deep packaging machine.
So essentially food, you know, from the grocery store that doesn't get sold, this expiration date goes to this center, the food becomes energy, anything that can be recycled is automatically put into recycling, and anything that can't be recycled is automatically put into the incinerator to make even more energy.
So they say they can power 2,300 homes currently, they sell out to excel energy.
Interesting, okay.
Down to Durand now, the library there is looking to digitize their old newspapers.
And I like this because in the past, people tried to save old newspapers by like turning them into microfilm or microfissure, whatever.
But that too can degrade, whereas once it's digital, you know, it truly has a better chance of lasting forever.
Tell us about that project.
Yeah, definitely interesting because I think this is really one of the only ways where you can look at history through the eyes of the people who are actually living it at the time.
You know, we get the hindsight 2020 when we read history textbooks, but if you read a newspaper article from 1865, which is as far as they go back, you get to see what people were really thinking about that day.
So that's a fundraiser that's going through next Friday, July 31st until 6pm.
There's a creative contest fundraiser and a silent auction.
All right.
And there's a bait shop controversy going on up in Washburn County that you're following as well.
Yeah, this one got a lot of headlines over the last week or so There was this 15 year old up in up in Washburn County near the Spooner Lake area who is running kind of a roadside bait shop kind of like a lemonade stand, which will come back into play Somebody reported the stand for zoning violations because it's an agricultural zoning area So the the zoning committee initially shut it down And then people in the community got pretty upset because they liked the teenagers gumption.
They liked his entrepreneurial spirit
So they allowed him to reopen the shop this week by using the 2019 lemonade stand law, which allows miners to operate these temporary shops without restrictions.
So many
different ways that you can use the levers of government for good or for evil, as the case
may
be.
James Kelly, thank you for the update.
Appreciate it so much.
Have a great day up there.
Have a good one.
All right.
Thanks to all of you for being here as well.
Tomorrow, busy day from Oshkosh.
We'll be talking to Winnebago County Executive Gordon Hintz.
We'll be talking to State Representative Lee Stodgrass of the Appleton area.
We'll be talking to UW Oshkosh Chancellor Ed Martini.
We'll talk a little bit about that event that's happening in Oshkosh as well, the EAA Air Venture Fly-In.
I'm Pat Krightle.
You can follow what we do at UpNorth News, UpNorthNewsWI.com, part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy
news network.
Have a great day.
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