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 Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
On this Thursday morning, July 31st, 2025.
Good morning, it is 7.06.
It is nice to have you here.
Back up north, we've got Parker Olson producing the show down in Madison Studio A2, and we've got meteorologist Brittany Merleau here as well.
Good morning, Brittany.
Good morning, how are
you?
I'm hostile.
I'm grumpy because my coffee mug, which today's one is the mug that says I am silently correcting your grammar, is empty.
I normally fill it up during the seven o'clock news and we just got to chatting throughout the entire news break about things like the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
Bottom line, don't care.
Don't don't know enough about it and don't care.
But then that got me to say, by the way, in my defense, this is not a rap thing.
There's that other big beef Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively.
Don't care.
Don't know.
Don't know what brought it up.
So celebrities having beef just doesn't move me.
other people that moves them a lot.
You know, I've got Tony up in Ashland was saying that he was all in on the Drake Kendrick Lamar beef.
So many songs so quick and all very high quality.
And noted that he is on Team Kendrick.
When I mentioned Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, he texted in that one I don't care about.
And for the end of lasagna awareness month, Robin Tigerton
He did, in fact, have lasagna.
He had it for dinner.
What was it on Tuesday?
I think, yeah, there it is, Tuesday after work.
But Alicia says, I didn't have any lasagna all month as part of lasagna awareness month.
Although she said, in my defense, lasagna gives me heartburn.
So it's okay.
It's okay.
John says hello from Colorado on Facebook.
Hi, nice to have you along here.
And let's get to what Brittany's here for.
Tony National saying the weather here is
unsafe, cloudy, not not cloudy, just unsafe.
The Canadian wildfire smoke is back and it is back with a vengeance up here.
I don't know how much across the state it it spreads, but it is just a very gray morning here.
And it just, I mean, even if you're young and healthy, it's just the environment is just not, it's suboptimal.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I am getting headaches.
You know, the second you step outside, you can kind of feel it in your chest sometimes, too, at certain points.
All of these different things, burning eyes, watery eyes.
Oh, it's terrible.
I mean, statewide, we're all in the red.
In fact, there are some very unhealthy levels right now into Door County, up into parts of northeastern areas of the Northwoods.
But this thing is widespread statewide throughout Minnesota.
The U.P.
the state of Michigan, all of Michigan on the other side of the lake.
So it is just engulfing us right now and it's pretty brutal.
It does start to lift north as we go through this afternoon and evening.
Now I don't know exactly how fast that's going to happen.
The alert and advisory expires at noon.
I'd say it might linger here a little bit, but again today it is still stuck here.
Should be gone by tomorrow.
We are looking at right now still fog two in some places north into Eagle River and Merrill about low 40s far north right now to mid 60s down south in the state and we've got some breezy winds.
That's going to help kick and mix out this wildfire smoke as we go through the afternoon.
They will be gusting around 15 to 30 miles per hour, prompting a beach hazard statement out on Lake Michigan.
So those waves are going to be climbing up to four to six feet.
She's going to be angry out there.
She already is actually dangerous currents.
So stay away from those beaches.
I wouldn't get in there if I were you.
Plus the temperatures are nice and refreshing.
No need to really do that low to mid seventies today statewide.
All of us at the wildfire smoke clears more and more sunshine.
Otherwise it's going to be hazy out there.
And of course, we are looking at comfortable conditions, dry conditions as we close out the rest of this week.
So this high pressure system is doing some good, but it's also the reason why this wildfire smoke is here.
Yeah, without a doubt.
More from Robin Tigerton.
Good morning.
It's partly cloudy and 53.
I mowed three yards in Tigerton yesterday and I've got three yards in rural areas of Tigerton today.
The sky reminded me of the skyline of Los Angeles.
Hazy and you
could
smell the smoke.
It does.
It has a very smog like look to it, which again is smoke and fog, but you know, the kind of smog in LA was also like air pollution related.
This is definitely much more just about the, you know, the smoke instead.
Let's see.
And we Rob did remind us that he had the lasagna the other day.
Oh, here he says the corn is tasseling nicely in the Tigerton area.
So the warm and humid weather we had in most of July has done wonders for the corn crop.
That is very true.
That's good.
That's what we like to hear.
Yeah, and there's also you he said you can you can smell the smoke, especially those of us who have to work outside.
Wisconsin has dangerous health levels from the wildfire smoke and Alicia saying this makes me feel so bad for the folks up in Canada.
It's got to be so bad for them right now because not just the smoke but the flames the fire that you know is you know destroying houses and and you know ruining lives up there.
It's just very unfortunate.
Very
scary stuff.
We can only hope that it doesn't last too much longer that they get the precipitation that they need.
Brittany, we'll get an updated forecast from you in an hour.
Thank you so much.
Talk to you again soon.
Sounds good.
All right.
Hey, reminder, you can sign up for our newsletter up north news wi.com.
And if you include our Sunday morning newsletter, Sunday mornings with Pat Gritlow, it'll include a summary of the week in Wisconsin politics and a question of the week.
This week, it's about cryptocurrency.
Is it the future?
Is it a scam?
Is it a fad?
Is it too soon to tell?
And tomorrow on this fine program, you can get tickets to a future brewers game.
It'll be free ticket Friday.
And we will give you a keyword tomorrow that you will text us using the Civic Media app.
You're going to use the Civic Media app to text it because you're tech savvy that way.
And on your phone, not only can you text us stuff through the Civic Media app, but you can get baseball tickets.
And then you can use those tickets on your phone to get into American Family Field.
If all of that describes you, then be part of Free Ticket Friday tomorrow.
Get that keyword, text it in.
Win the tickets.
It's a statewide drawing.
And I'm telling you a day in advance so you can plan for this.
The tickets we're giving away tomorrow, Friday, or for the next Friday when the Brewers are at home against the New York Mets.
That's a Friday evening game of next week.
So if you are interested in potentially winning those tickets, as was done recently by Jim and Brookfield, well, enter tomorrow.
I don't know what else to tell you here.
We were talking during the break about, you know, Jim and Brookfield.
won this week's tickets, well, last Friday's tickets.
And we just want to know, I mean, we know he listens throughout the day, and we just want to know, did he win it from listening to our show?
Was it the keyword from someplace else?
And Jim Texan, I did send in four different keywords, one for Pat, one for Jane and Greg, one for Todd's show, one for Maggie's show.
And we're very appreciative of that.
But he also wrote in, you know, he brought his family, it was the Cubs, and there was a leadoff home run.
And he said the leadoff home run by the Cubs was an eye opener for my wife who couldn't figure out why more than half the crowd was cheering loudly.
She hadn't been to what some Chicagoans call Wrigley North, but despite the loss, we had a good time.
And that's, that's the bottom line.
That's what we want to see.
I can see the bright side of things.
Well, through the smoke.
Through this basically, yeah, a squint a
Yeah, exactly.
Coming up in our next half hour, we're going to be talking to the leader of a national media group that is putting up billboards in Wisconsin and other parts of the country, doing something that you probably, I don't want to say take for granted, but you already know this detail about the big Trump mega bill, the one that, you know, Derek Van Orden and all the other Republicans in Wisconsin voted for.
That, yeah, it makes these massive cuts to programs.
Some say, well, those are massive cuts on spending.
That's what we got to do is we got to cut our spending.
It does not cut spending.
It does not cut spending.
It takes those cuts that would come to you and to your neighbors and to your family and gives them to millionaires and billionaires in the form of tax cuts.
It's that simple, but a lot of folks still don't know that yet.
And so that's what led to the billboard campaign.
And we will talk to somebody who is leading the group and leading the effort to do that coming up a little later this hour.
A reminder that coming up tomorrow, we're going to be talking to Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez.
She is a candidate for governor and she will be stopping by in our eight o'clock hour tomorrow to talk to us more about her decision to run for governor, what it's been like serving with Governor Evers these past four years, her career as a nurse, and more of what drives her and what drove her to go into public service.
She was not planning to be a state legislator.
and then Lieutenant Governor, and then a candidate for governor.
But she has a good story about what prompted her to make this career turn, and you'll hear all about it tomorrow morning in our eight o'clock hour.
By the way, the billboards that we're talking about in our next half hour, they're not the only communication out there with voters about the votes taken by Van Orden and others.
This from Whist Politics.
The League of Conservation Voters and House Majority PAC, that's a Democratic group, are targeting Congressman Van Orden as part of a new $700,000 digital buy that's been knocking Republicans over their support for the mega bill.
The group says it'll run on digital platforms in 10 other districts besides Wisconsin's third congressional district during the August recess.
They didn't break down how much they plan to spend per district, so we don't know how much of that is being spent on ads targeting Van Orden.
When we say digital platforms,
It means, you know, right before you watch a video on YouTube or on Facebook or even even your games, I still play words with friends, Sherry and I send words back and forth.
And sometimes you get a little commercial between the games and usually it's for one of those goofy other games like Royal Match or something like that.
But sometimes they're actual commercials and more and more political groups are putting ads on.
every one of these digital platforms to target people who otherwise would not be news consumers.
And so that's what you're seeing here.
And in this particular campaign, the spot targeting Van Orden says that the plan takes Medicaid away from millions of Americans and removes clean energy from the electric grid just to provide a tax cut for the wealthy.
The narrator says everything costs too much already and Congressman Van Orden just voted to make it even worse.
Now, Van Orden, to his credit, is not yet saying, you know, I made a mistake.
I didn't mean to be taking away all these jobs.
I didn't mean to be taking away all these people's health care.
He is instead sticking to his guns of saying that there are no Medicaid cuts in here that go to citizens and people who've earned them.
And it's an amazing level of either delusion or cynicism that prompts that.
There's going to be a lot to be said to voters over these next, you know, however many months, 15 months or so, about what the actual case is with this mega bill.
Also from WisPolitics, the Dane County Republican Party says it has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Congressman Mark Pocan over business that his print shop has received from campaigns, including his own.
But here's the thing, because Derek Van Orden brought this up last week talking to Po Can, accusing him of funneling money from his campaign to buy signs from his company.
But here's the thing, in the WIS Politics Report, it notes, the claims being made by the Dane County Republican Party in the announcement are contradicted by publicly available records from the Federal Election Commission.
In other words, a lot of
A lot of folks are just going to hear the first line of the news story.
The Dane County Republican Party says it has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Congressman Mark Pocan over business as print shop has received from campaigns.
And some people are going to think, oh, oh, that sounds shady.
So hopefully most media outlets as they're sharing this will also make clear that the claims are made up.
and that they are contradicted by Federal Election Commission records that you can go get and you can go look at right now.
Anybody can file a complaint.
Hopefully responsible newsrooms are putting that complaint in perspective because it's fiction.
A local update is next for some of you and then we'll be talking more about that billboard campaign about tax cuts for billionaires coming up at 7.35.
I'm Pat Crichtlow.
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.
Hey, welcome back.
It is just about 7.23 now on this Thursday morning, last day of July.
And again, a little public service reminder here.
If you split your property tax payments in two and you paid half of it in January, the other half is due today.
So I'd like to think that at least one person out there, I've saved them a lot of hassle and went, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, write that check out.
Get it in the mail.
That's what I did yesterday.
I wrote out a paper check.
and I put it in a mailbox and I can just hear other people going, you did, what is this?
What
is this thing
grandpa
that you did?
That's a thing.
You have checks.
I still do have to, in fact, here, let me, let me go get the one here.
Oh boy.
So these are the ones that are, you know, they make carbons and it used to be that, you know, you'd write so many checks a month for all the bills and you'd go through a lot of check, go through a box of checks in no time.
Yeah.
The first one in this one is from November 16th, 2020.
That's how long this checkbook has been around.
Uh, yeah.
Yep.
Times change.
Times do change.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Jiggling the monitor over here.
I was just trying to look at the other one.
Does this, does this say what I think it says?
Oh boy.
It does.
April 20th of 2017 on the other, on the other bank account.
So
Why do we have two banks?
Because direct deposit in two different banks from our different employers.
2017 has taken to write the checks on that one.
I do pay a lot of things electronically.
I almost actually know all of our bills now.
There was for the longest time, there was one place, I'm not going to name where, but it was one of the local places where you would have a monthly bill.
And they'd be calling all the time and saying, hey, you're late with your bill.
And they'd be like, when are you guys going to accept electronic payments?
Every other bill I pay is on autopilot.
I don't have to think about it.
I'd look at it.
It's fine.
It gets paid.
You guys still want the whole horse and buggy thing.
And they finally changed.
Thank goodness.
But I also know that with the electronic payments, you know, comes an extra fee.
And I'm looking at the one from Chippewa County here.
And, you know, additional fees apply 2.39% for credit cards, minimum fee of $2.95, a flat fee of $1.50 for an e-check.
And again, look, I can pay $2.95.
But every so often, you're like, you know what, for this one, I'll write the paper check.
And I do.
Do you even have a paper checkbook?
Kratlow.
There's not ever an occasion where you need to write a bigger check or something.
Everything is just either Venmode or Apple Pay or
Yeah, not that I've run
What will you do if it needs paper checks?
will have to find something.
You have a local bank account, right?
yeah.
Or, well, no, I think that, is it a local bank or is it one of like the national banks, like Capital One or something like that?
No, it's a
Okay.
Tony on YouTube, you absolutely still need checks, Parker.
like something I
At some point and you don't want to have to...
do that, you know,
dad.
All right, see, there's our little public service here.
Once again, taking care of what what generation are you again?
Are you you're not alpha?
happen
Z. Sorry Yeah, Z. Yeah, that would make sense, right?
just
All right.
Well, here, for example, now it says here boomers 1945 to 1963.
Yeah.
I was born in 1964.
And so it was, you know, very early Gen X. That went from 64 to 1979.
It says that Gen Y, that would be the millennials are 1980 to 1995.
And then Gen Z is 1996 to 2010.
And then I think they're called Gen Alpha, Generation Alpha, whatever, Alpha, is from 2011 onwards.
So yeah, that puts you squarely in the Gen Z category.
development.
Now we need the who, you know, talking about my generation to play here for us to, you know, actually, we don't know.
We don't know what generation we're on, so we can't really talk about it.
I wanted to ask as well before we left here, I was looking at tonight's dinner plan and being very happy about last night's dinner plan because we had BLTs.
And apart from grilling, I mean, grilling is the quintessential, you know, summer dinner thing.
Yeah.
But.
Remember when we mentioned in the last hour at the end of lasagna awareness month?
And again, who does lasagna in in the middle of July?
You know, but our BLT is like the best light summer dinner to have.
Yeah.
I mean, we don't we don't typically make I don't think we make them in the winter at all.
And they're just they're they're nice and crisp and meaty.
If you get, you know, just the right
lettuce and tomato.
Although there is the other one that's coming up.
Sweet corn.
Sweet.
Oh, sweet corn.
I
see, I don't know if it's if it's ready here yet.
There's a place just north of Chippewa Falls here called Klingers Klingers Farm.
And you Klingers, you can get it like minutes after it's been picked.
Oh, that's cool.
And then take it home.
And
Oh my gosh, it's just so good.
Oh look, I've got myself all psyched up for this weekend's dinner plan.
I am ready to go.
All right, when we come back after the Midwest Farm Report, we are going to be talking about that billboard campaign in Wisconsin and other states to let people know that the tax cuts are going to billionaires.
That's, you don't want to hear it some folks, but that's where it's going to go.
Not all of it.
but a whole great big chunk of it and you're paying for it.
And we'll talk about that coming up at 735 here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
There's no shortage of ways to describe the ways in which the Trump mega bill is Predominantly geared toward corporations and the very wealthy there is a massive cut
to the corporate income tax rate that is made permanent.
There have been multiple analyses on the bill that show that, for example, the people in the bottom 20% of earners will see a 0.5% increase in their after-tax income compared to about five times that amount for people in the top 20%.
But not everybody knows that.
And so that's what led to a discussion that I held yesterday with a gentleman who runs a group that's putting up billboards all around the country, including here in Wisconsin.
Let's visit now with Faz Shakir.
He's the founder and executive director of the media organization, More Perfect Union.
Faz, thank you for being here by the way.
Let's start with a description of what More Perfect Union is.
Well, Pat, we launched this thing in 2021.
And we're a media organization of buying for working class people to tell the stories of economic justice through their lens.
You know, when I launched in 2021, I had just come off with managing Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
And I felt that there was a challenge of trying to tell the stories of real working class lives in this environment in which we feel like the perspectives of the wealthy.
is really captured in a lot of traditional media outlets.
If you're watching CNBC or reading the Wall Street Journal, they're really often telling you the perspective of the C-suite, the executives, the big shareholders.
My frustration has long been, but what about if you're an Amazon worker who's organizing?
What if you're a national park ranger who's having to go about your job in the struggles of what you're trying to deal with in this modern economy?
So the goal of the organization is just tell.
the stories of working class people try to tie those to solutions.
Well, we were just noting on our show yesterday on Wednesday that is the 60th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid and the number of Amazon workers and McDonald's workers and Walmart workers who are also on Medicaid is astonishing.
And I don't think people are necessarily aware of it.
Similarly, the billboards you're putting up
Tell a story for something that I think some of us take for granted, but many people still don't know about the budget cuts in the Trump mega bill and how they're not necessarily savings.
This is essentially a transfer of wealth.
Is that pretty much the story behind the billboards?
They are takings, right, Pat?
So that's right.
And so the billboards that you're referring to say we make
they take.
And the takings that we're referring to here are Medicaid, people on Medicaid who are working.
I mean, the great mythology as you're referencing is that somehow people on Medicaid, Medicare are not working or haven't earned these benefits.
The real truth of them is if you work 20 hours a dollar general, right?
Who's stopping you from working 40, 45 hours a dollar general?
It's often Dollar General, the bosses are.
A lot of workers are trying to get to a place where they're earning more and having more benefits.
If you're driving Uber 30 hours a week, Uber isn't giving you health care.
They aren't giving you retirement benefits.
So a lot of these major corporations are saddling the federal government with the responsibility of providing health care, providing any degree of retirement to working class people, and they're making billions of dollars.
So in our view, here you got a bill.
that says, well, we're going to give tax breaks to the richest in this country because they are the great creators of our economy.
They need more money.
And what they have been doing with this money is literally taking away health care and retirement.
That is what Amazon kind of created, right?
The modern economy is we're going to have thousands of workers and none of them will have health care.
None of them will have decent retirement benefits.
So they are literally taking now at the stage that the actual little health care that many of these workers had.
Well, it's like I was saying for the Medicaid anniversary, there's 71 million Americans on it.
And a lot of Republicans say, well, see how big that number is.
So many people that say their income is low enough to qualify for Medicaid, which to me begs the question, then why don't we do something if so many Americans make so little that they qualify for Medicaid?
This is as much a wage problem as it is a health care issue.
And an easy solution that's frustrated me for a long time is you want to compel
McDonald's, which has tons of franchisees.
Again, it's a problem with having a major corporation that is largely executed through franchises.
You have Uber.
You have Amazon.
You have Dollar General.
A lot of these make Walmart.
A lot of these companies that are billions of dollars in profits.
And why not compel them?
You have to provide health care to your employees.
you have to provide a retirement benefit to your point that you remember how there's just a few decades ago where that was the assumption.
If you were going to go work at a major corporation, you are going to get a decent benefit that raised the standards of everyone.
And now, of course, you got union busting all over the place.
You got companies trying to exploit workers in every which way possible.
And now they are refusing to provide even the basic minimum.
of what you need to live and now you're right that there's been a transfer right so that federal government's owning more and more of this responsibility now that the public can say well oh it's just growing so much we have to we have to take it away well you could compel the corporations of america provide health care to your to your employees this would solve a major problem
the billboard campaign was announced to be launched across nine states including boards in milwaukee is that still the case or has the campaign changed at all since the initial rollout
No, you got it right, Pat.
We're going to try to be as many places as we can, trying to tell a story that's more than just the anti-Trump perspective.
I think a lot of people got that, right?
That Trump has a certain vision and ideology and he's executed now this twice, right?
First tax bill, now second tax bill, this first term, now second term.
So I think people got that sense.
But what we're trying to do is also make sure that there's a narrative and a story of who is benefiting and not just Donald Trump, right?
It's the beneficiaries are these wealthy people that you see.
And we mentioned, you know, Musk is one of them, Bezos.
is another Zuckerberg.
These are the people who've really thrown in with Trump and are now getting the return of their business model thriving under Donald Trump.
And yeah, those billboards, they do have the different billionaire CEOs.
You mentioned Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos, Peter Thiel from PayPal is on there as well.
Have they essentially
made themselves the public face of this transfer of wealth.
I mean, do you feel, I think Elon Musk is a pretty easy one because of his role with the Trump administration, but between the four of them on there, do you feel like that creates the best narrative for the middle class who would drive by these billboards to understand the way wealth is moving toward those four individuals, among others?
at least three of them.
You'll remember, you know, Elon and Bezos and Zuckerberg were sitting right behind Donald Trump as he was inaugurated.
They volunteered that we, you know, the billionaire class are throwing in with this guy and are so proud of it that we're going to sit right here and feel like we have a degree of ownership over the direction of this country.
And to my mind, you know,
it's trying to pull this a little bit out of the partisan politics.
I would hope that more people see and understand the major problem we have is, you know, Bezos would love to buy the Democratic Party too, right?
It isn't just like he's got the opportunity with the Republican Party because they got the trifecta.
They own the presidency, the Republican Senate and the Republican House.
So that's where he's going to be spending his money, his effort, his energies to try to extract gains for himself.
But if the tides were to turn, he would also love and has in the past given money to try to
purchase, you know, a direction.
of a democratic side or any other side.
And it's the job of people who want to serve in public office to operate with integrity and fight for people beyond themselves.
That is really, to my mind, the meaning of being in public life, that you are willing to use power and authority to fight for other people besides yourself.
And we are in a state, sadly, Pat, where there's a lack of integrity, the corruption of a system, both politically and economically, is at heightened levels.
And I think we're all hunting and searching for the people
who want to be willing to take on powerful actors, know that it's going to be painful, but do it with integrity on behalf of actual working class folks.
We're talking with Fash Shakir.
He's the founder and executive director of the media organization, More Perfect Union, which has launched a billboard campaign in Wisconsin and other states about the Trump mega bill and the tax cuts for billionaires.
Is this is not your first billboard campaign if I'm not mistaken that you've also called out the the doge cuts earlier and Do you already have something in mind for where you're going from here to keep these issues top of mind for Americans as they see these billboards?
Yeah, well, in my view, you know, a lot of these billboards have been put up in places that are, you know, we'll call red or purple at least, you know, places where they are not core democratic voters.
They're trying to speak to people who may have voted a different way.
and the first billboards that you mentioned were about the cuts to national park rangers and national park staff and really unnecessary heinous efforts to attack people who in my mind serve as the best ethos of america and i was talking about integrity with you before pat right that here's national park service staff whose whose job they don't make tons of money off these jobs they they do these to improve your standard of living as you come into a national park national parks are available to all people regardless of income great thing that we want to maintain and yet doge said oh this is this is
place we want to go after.
And I thought when we did the first billboard campaign, there were a lot of Republicans can start to say, Hey, you know, I like Donald Trump.
I like some of the things he's doing.
This is a step way too far for me.
And I'm trying to own that persuasion mindset in this moment.
I can appreciate respect that people will vote for Trump, vote for Republicans for a whole host of reasons.
But I want to want to explain it.
on the issues of class and who fights for working people.
It is, in my view, the issue of our time.
And it is the issue that is often least covered through traditional media, thanks to you and others who are trying to do it through alternative forms of media.
And it requires like having a, you know, trying to get messages through to folks because they aren't ordinarily going to see it.
They are only going to hear about, oh, doge cuts on national park staff.
They're not going to hear about, oh, Jeff Bezos is making out like a robber baron with his tax bill.
I want to make sure as we get through the course of the next few years that class-based conversations are had.
And it's beyond the billboards as well.
I note that on your YouTube channel, it notes that you're an Emmy-winning non-profit newsroom.
You can go to More Perfect Union on YouTube and see all the other multimedia ways that you're trying to get this message out.
That is the principal way we try to get this message out.
I have a staff of 35 people.
And we do journalism every day.
We're all over the country trying to tell stories of, you know, data centers right now, for instance, they're taking over a lot of communities and towns, pilfering the water, pilfering electricity, raising energy costs on working class people.
Also, all just so Elon Musk can create grok or, you know, that we can have some kind of AI chatbot, you know, like really to screw with workers that in that way, we really have a fundamental problem of too few actors.
Have way too much power and you see this particularly in big tech with the with the onset of AI and our job at more perfect use just to tell Make sure we are telling the stories from those who are getting screwed right now and to suggest there could be a different way a better way
Apart from the YouTube channel Is there anything else that you would like to motivate people to do if they see the billboards if they see the videos?
Well, I'd love for them to sign up on our email list.
I mean, if you go to perfectunion.us, you'll see our website there, and you can sign up for our email list there.
And then also all our other channels, we're on TikTok, Instagram, all the major platforms.
And thankfully, we're doing quite well with views and growing very well at this point in time.
But I would love even more support, please.
Fashacur, founder and executive director of More Perfect Union.
Thank you again for your time.
We appreciate it.
You're kind to have me.
Thank you, Pat.
A couple of more notes on, again, the impact of this bill on taxes, because we've talked so much about in generalities.
But here are the numbers as the bill has been studied.
From the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center, nearly 60% of the tax cut benefits go to the top 20% of incomes.
So 60% of the benefits going to people earning $217,000 and above.
you know, millionaires and billionaires.
And then Penn Wharton looked at a budget model with an impact on lifetime income.
Once you figure in the effect of cuts to Medicaid and food assistance households in the bottom 20% will experience a lifetime value of loss of $27,500.
By contrast, in the top 20%, they will gain value of $65,000.
And then what about the folks right in the middle?
Well, you'll get a slight, maybe $500 benefit lifetime from the tax cuts.
But if you need any of those programs that are being cut, you are going to be out of luck.
A local update is next for some of you.
Others, some more news and notes from here on Lake Wissota, across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
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.
Not only our usual week and review panelists of former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel and journalist Jennifer Scholesi and Mark Jacob, Key of the Keel, Courier Newsroom, National Political Editor.
We'll have Dr. Kristen Lierly.
We'll have Craig Bach.
We'll have Mike Clemens with sports.
But we'll also get a visit from Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez coming up in our eight o'clock hour tomorrow.
That's here on the Civic Media Radio Network, where we are joined now by one Todd Alba.
who again has, yeah, that's you.
That's you, buddy.
How are you?
I can't hear a thing you're saying there.
So you, you, you work on plugging that in.
Well, I tell people on your behalf, what a show he's got today.
I mean, theoretically, the note that I have here says this, live from WRCE in Richland Center, focusing on Walk With Grace, a major community fundraiser for those who are fighting cancer.
Let's see, and Phil Knee, the GM from WRCO in Richland Center and host of the station's long involvement with Grace and June Knee, chair of Walk with Grace, coming up at 235.
That's all on the Todd Alba Show, our favorite radio mime performing for us right now on social media as we try to figure, have you considered plugging, unplugging it and plugging it back in?
Turn it off and turn it on again.
or get out and get back in and we'll we'll get you there uh met and air on air is coming up right after this fine program
And that will include former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel who will be joining Jane and Greg just after the nine o'clock news.
And then for a little sports, Packer Training Camp is still going on.
So we don't have to think about the Brewers losing to the Cubs yesterday.
The Brewers did take two out of three, but let's focus on the Packers.
And so Jane and Greg will be talking at 10.35 this morning with Paul Noonan, sportswriter for the Acme Packing Company.
That again coming up on mat and air on air.
Mr. Alba, come in please.
you read me over
Bombay to Rangoon.
Are you there?
Come in.
This is London.
All right.
How are you?
I don't know what happened.
I don't know.
This is why I just digital give me a grease pencil and a razor blade and cut the tape.
I mean, that's the type of radio that I haunted you.
You know, the digital stuff I don't know what's going on.
Do you know, did we did we we talked about this in the little host retreat last week about cutting tape and
There are very, very, very few of us left who actually to edit things for radio on reel to reels and you would have to mark it with a grease pen and then use a razor blade and then use some splicing tape to put things together.
And now granted.
I only used, you know, used it.
I mean, I can count on one hand.
It was very rare because then other things were invented, you know, cart machines and things that were eventually digitized.
But it's one of those lost arts.
And I'm not going to be sad about it because you know what?
Not everybody has to be a barrel maker either.
At some point you move on to new occupations, you know, you change
over time.
But we'll
always
need people who can who can take the events of the day and put it in perspective radio hosts like Todd Alba.
You are
insensible.
I'm not sure about that, but thank you very much as are you.
But no, there's something the tactical part of that era of radio.
And I'm not sorry that I was a part of it.
But I'm not necessarily sorry that that part's passed either.
Because, you know, yeah, it is easier when you get to digital.
But yeah, there was something cool about having the reel to reel for those that don't remember it was, it was just a thin piece of tape on two plastic reels, I guess, occasionally metal reels.
So then you have to go back and forth to cue it up, so to speak.
Look at
Parker's face on
this.
It's like, we may as well be cavemen describing
our
hieroglyphics.
These are not things I'm familiar
heard never
No,
didn't get that plateau education You know what it's worked out well for you so far and that's fine.
I was listening to
I don't remember if it was John and Gordy or maybe it was somebody talking about these old, you know, like who had eight track players in their car
and I raised my
hand because I had a 1973 Plymouth Fury and somebody had installed an eight track deck underneath the dash.
So you could play eight tracks.
So I had one of them, but there's fewer of them all the time, but I'm old enough to remember.
Do you remember Columbia house?
where you
get
like the
records,
the record club where you'd get like 10 cassettes.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Then it got to the point where you could check a box.
Do you want those 10 albums on cassette?
Or do you want them on CD?
I'm old enough to remember when real to real was one of the options.
No,
from Columbia house, you could get an album sent to you on a big old, you know, real.
Do you have any of those yet?
Oh, no, I never got one.
I'm just saying I remember when it was an option.
Yeah.
I mean, they probably worth money now.
They might.
I do have about a half a dozen, 12 inch reels from my early radio days.
Love to hear those.
I would love to get those
out.
I would love to hear them, too.
Is there is there even a reel to reel at Civic Media?
I know RCL has it.
Rachel Cheneyward would
of course RCL
legacy.
I mean, it's got a big trolla
in there for the love
of God.
It's
If you dig those out, here's the deal, Parker.
Keep this on us.
If Pat digs out his real, real radio days, I'll dig out my three-quarter inch tape of my talk show from Union Platteville from 1993.
Oh
boy.
Well, look, if you if you can find a machine that plays your three quarter inch tape, I also have plenty of three quarter inch tape for my early TV days.
It's not there's so much more than just that 1982 tornado warning that
is
on YouTube right now with my big eighties hair.
There's all kinds of embarrassing clips from both of us that we can play if we embrace once again the aging technology.
that is currently in technology's waste bin.
pictures
You know?
I didn't think you could.
I thought, well, you don't have anything old.
You don't have anything that embarrassing.
Sure enough, he did.
He was the most in the challenge.
All right.
Todd will have much more substantive conversations on his program coming up from two to four today on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you, buddy.
Good to see you.
Appreciate it.
Take care.
All right.
Yep.
You bet.
Talk to you a little later in our next hour.
We've got Chad Holmes.
We've got Sean O'Malley about your money in the markets and Joseph Pecky all ahead here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Krightlo.
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.
