
anywhere.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
cameras everywhere in TV, right?
Yeah.
You
like that.
Well, those were relatively new, you know, 20 years ago that somebody would actually go up the tower and put up a camera and, you know, you could call it up and we had a little joystick.
This was at channel 13 in Eau Claire.
and you could kind of move it around and show people different shots of the city, and it was all fine and good.
One night, the 10 o'clock newscast ends, and as we're looking out there, we're noticing all these flames shooting up from the roof of a building.
And we're like, well, this is not.
good.
And no, that's okay.
So we called the called the the the dispatch center there and said, you know, hey, guys, we think there's a building on fire over here.
We're looking at it on our on our tower camp.
And we told them roughly where it is because we don't know the exact address.
It's 1030 at night, you know, couldn't really tell.
And a couple minutes later, we hear them say, Oh, you mean over there in the area by the crematory?
like, oh, okay.
So, so grandma was being disposed of at the time and we, we reported it as a building fire.
So who's doing that at 1030 at night?
I don't know.
Maybe that's when they, maybe they were just cleaning it.
I don't know.
I mean, is there ever a right time to run that thing in the middle of a city, you know, and see, and if the flames are coming up, who's that's a chimney sweep situation.
You got to think, you know,
That's right.
I guess
The isthmus is burning.
What the heck?
Either one of you, uh, get hit especially hard by, by, by nature at some point.
I talked earlier about, you know, for years we had basement water issues and we finally took us 20 years to finally deal with it, but we did, but either of you have anything like that.
against the
Yes, I would think so.
But you know, remember way back when, I can't remember what.
what year it was, but we had the major flooding here in Madison.
It was huge.
We were in New Orleans at the time of this major flooding.
And we had like a foot of water in our garage basement room, and it was just awful.
We had a tenant living above us, and he went down there and helped.
mop that up for us on vacation.
Well, and
you know, Civic Media's Earl Ingram,
in his basement,
his was, of course, sewage backup.
of the problem in the larger metropolises like Chicago.
We had backup sewage four, five, six times, and we finally convinced our building, and they didn't take much convincing because there are two units in this six-unit building under subterranean.
But, you know, that's where I slept.
It wasn't a basement, it was my house.
And so we had to put a check valve in, $10,000 check valve, and now the neighbors have the problem.
Eventually they did.
years later, after we got our check valve and the rest of the neighbors are like, well, we need one of those too,
gonna... The city came in and fixed it
Well, according to that chat...
Uh, they do have like three or four feet of, uh, sewage backup in a lot of basements in Milwaukee.
And they're blaming talk radio, right wing talk radio for not allowing the city to dump that water into Lake Michigan, the runoff from these large storms.
So it backs up into people's homes instead.
So just a little message to everybody out there, blame right wing radio for your backup.
I
in the lake.
I
And, you know, the purpose of it is, you know, spot on is these deep tunnels would hold all the rain from a typical rain.
So then just all washed into Lake Michigan and then you could treat it and, you know, as time allowed.
Nothing.
There's no system that prepares for 13 inches of rain in a
couple of hours.
So things, you know, things do back up and it's very unfortunate.
And again, I hope this is where, you know, you really, you really test your insurance companies, most of whom will tell you, well, that's not flood insurance.
We, we actually did.
by the federal flood insurance.
I mean, we're up on a high bank, so it's not like the river's gonna reach us, but we just thought from the rains and everything else, they tell you, even if it's heavy rain, a lot of time, your homeowner's insurance policy won't cover it.
It doesn't cover a flood.
Yep.
And too many people find out about the hard way.
Go ahead, go ahead.
And she was talking about how they got all the, you know, the farmers got wise to this and got everybody out of the state fair, okay, all the animals and every, you know, they, they saw this coming.
And fortunately they got everybody out in time.
But boy, that had to be a process.
I
Yeah.
When I saw the, the posts, people asking about the animals and getting them all out of there.
And thankfully they did.
And you saw the video of it.
You know, first it was ankle deep and then it was knee deep.
And then you're seeing these cars.
I mean, some of these parking lots in West Alice that
are
And every, every one of those cars is, you know,
functionally dead.
I'm sure some could be fixed back up, but they're going to have no resale value whatsoever.
So it's just a terrible thing.
But you were talking to Pam as well, she was recently on a train trip through Canada.
about this.
You've been in this business for a long time and reporting on all this.
Our marketing director, John Scott, said, you guys don't understand.
You have to live in California and understand.
And California, like Canada,
has these remote areas where you just cannot put them out the winds
like they they travel inch by inch
they well that's why when you see these letters from republican legislators and members of congress and i mean it's just so embarrassing you know i'm like oh yeah let's just send a fire truck up there you know near the arctic circle you need some water yeah yeah it's like complaining is going to take care of the problem a letter a
takes
There's a stop and cam loops, which is gorgeous.
And then on to Banff, which is one of my favorite places on earth.
It is just so gorgeous.
But these the train ride that I was on, and it was designed for, you know, tourism.
Okay, this is an Amtrak where you're all squeezed into the cattle car.
the seats, it's like two and two, they're like first class airline seats.
And you're sitting right there, you know, of course, the glass top on on the train.
And they never stop bringing food.
There's just a food cart
with
Hey, maybe you'd like some of this, maybe you'd like some of this.
Now, obviously, you, you pay for that.
But if anybody the difference between a train trip
you know, here in the States versus that train trip through the Canadian Rockies.
If you get the chance, do it.
I got to do it through holiday vacations.
I took trips all over with holiday vacations,
you know,
where I was like, join my lovely wife, Sherry and me as we go on a 10 day tour of, uh, and we did, we did Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii and New England fall colors.
And John and Gordy, all these years on radio.
How many trips have you, have you been sent on for free by some kind of an underwriting sponsor?
Stop riling my host, would you please?
really figured that holiday vacations in this case always sends a professional tour manager and then you're kind of like the celebrity face but we found out where you're most helpful as the celebrity is at the back end you're basically a sheepdog
So as you're back there, you're making conversation, but you're kind of moving them along
as you're doing it.
And the tour
It's like, oh yeah, I'm talking as I'm ushering people toward the bus or the train or the, you know, whatever.
It's fine.
It works out really well.
So I hope you guys get a chance to do that sometime.
So you missed a big trip, man.
Yes, I did.
You know what?
There will be others.
Well, I don't know that.
Once again, stop it.
You can hear their show six to eight AM in Madison, or through the Civic Media app.
And we're going to continue chattering over here, though some of you will take a local update.
And then when we're all back together in about 15 minutes, we're going to be talking to State Representative Jody Emerson from Eau Claire, who just got back from the annual conference for the National Conference of State
legislators and the work that they do and how these groups are not all created equal, some dedicated to service, some just dedicated to partisan politics.
From the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Uh, was it over?
No!
It's never over until they say it's over.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
No!
Right.
Wait a minute.
He's on the roll.
Go with it, yeah.
The Mets did score in each of the first four innings, but Isaac Collins, bottom of the ninth inning, walk-off home run.
Brewers beat the Mets seven to six, extend the winning streak to nine games, three sweeps in a row.
Yeah.
And now it's off to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates at American Family Field, 6-0-5, the pregame on several civic media stations.
Freddie Peralta pitching tonight.
We are now in the territory, John and Gordy, where
even the non-baseball fans are like going to get caught up in this because yeah, this is now just this is the fun part of sports.
It is.
Yeah.
So when all they do is win, you know,
And see now that I care about.
Whereas, as I've said before, I people getting all worked up about the Packers losing their first preseason.
I do not get worked up about preseason.
No, at all.
This is no, this is practice.
What are we talking about practice?
We're talking about practice here.
And it's just
preseason.
Nobody else?
Allen Iverson?
Anybody?
No?
Right.
Well, let's just try and players out.
That's all.
They said half about half of the parking spaces were flooded and they put out this announcement in the mid morning saying, look, we're still going to hold the game.
We understand you probably can't make it, but we, you know, the game's got to go on and we apologize if you have to park farther away.
And we're going to give away all these Jacob Mizorowski t-shirts, I think, and
You know, we'll just, we'll pick another, we'll give them away, but we can also pick another day to give them away.
No, sell out crowd.
Sell out crowd, they all showed up.
Because winning's contagious that way, you
know?
doesn't make sense.
butter.
This is Bill Gates' idea.
Bill Gates is backing up the company that developed this butter.
They used the same elements, the same chemicals used for it, and it's not a list of crazy chemicals you can't pronounce.
They're actual just basic elements of butter.
They put it together and it's a sustainability thing where you don't have to have cows out in the field and manufacturing the butter.
It's just manufactured basically in a lab someplace or in some.
company that makes it now
crazy.
you
know and I know I don't recommend that anybody try it's it's almond juice you know it's it's sweet juice or whatever and I I understand when people like Tammy Baldwin put up these bills saying no you should not be able to call something
you know, milk if it's not dairy.
That's right.
And the same goes for this butter.
It is, it's kind of reminiscent of in the, what is it, the late 40s, 1950s, the butter versus margarine, oleo, you know, and for, for the longest time, margarine was illegal in Wisconsin.
Right.
And like, you know, people would like sneak it into the state and then you'd have that little colored dye packet to make it look yellow instead of white, you know.
So every generation has its own little
Food wars or food mysteries, as the case may be.
Curtain.
And, you know, now we've got a candidate for governor who had been talking about tariffs between states.
There would have been checkpoints once again at state borders to make sure that we're not bringing anything in from another state.
Although I think Bill Bairiness has figured it out and realized that's that's not how tariffs work.
We can't do it between states.
No, no.
What one of the many issues we get to talk about over the coming year plus.
in another campaign for governor that we've got here.
I've been surprised that we've only had a couple of candidates so far.
I thought for sure there'd be like a pack of them at this point, but they're not banging down your door or my door.
I don't think yet.
You know,
Right.
can keep the job.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
Thankfully, we've got somebody that is excited about campaigning next.
State Representative Jody Emerson is standing by and is going to tell us about her duties as a legislator and maybe we can get her to announce a run for governor.
Yeah.
I'd be all over that as I would for either one of you three, John and Gordy and Catherine.
Thanks for joining us from down in A1 in Madison.
It's great to talk to you.
Thank you.
Always appreciate it.
We'll talk to you a little later on.
And when we come back, the aforementioned State Representative Jody Emerson going to talk about the National Conference of State Legislators, about the work that they do that's geared toward, well, think of it as summer school for legislators.
We'll tell you more coming up on these mornings powered by Up North News live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Wisconsin politics, including our question of the week.
And this week, it's all about politicians, social media accounts, you know, thanks to people like Derek Van Orden tweeting pictures of a naked man in a ski mask and thinking that it's funny.
What should the role be of politicians, personal social media accounts?
That's part of our question of the week in our Sunday morning newsletter.
In our daily newsletter today, among the articles in there,
is one entitled I love Wisconsin Dells but not for the reasons you think and that is because I think a lot a lot of folks have forgotten over the years that now it's known as the water park capital of the world but Wisconsin Dells has a just a ton of other attractions a lot of things you can do
without ever setting foot into a water park.
And so we have an article on our website by Christine Hansen who lists seven of her favorite things to do in Wisconsin Dells that have nothing to do with a water park.
And so check that out on our website or find a link at our newsletter up north news wi.com.
State Representative Jody Emerson is with us now from Eau Claire and recently returned from a convention trip to the National Conference of State Legislators that we'll get into.
Representative Emerson, how are you?
Good morning Pat, how you doing?
It's good to see you.
It looked like on social media you and Julian had a really nice break, a really nice getaway for a few days.
You know, it's we went out there for the conference and then took a couple extra days of vacation time on our own dime.
Don't get a tweet about me or anything like that.
But really enjoyed the time out there.
We'd never been to New England.
So I've eaten more lobster rolls than you can imagine.
And he went to a Red Sox game and all kinds of, you know, Boston classics,
Strangely enough, I didn't get Dunkin Donuts until I was in my connecting flight in O'Hare.
Oh my.
I did.
I did.
The, uh, the national conference state legislators, NCSL, uh, group that I was part of way back when in, uh, in the day as well.
And we're going to talk about the difference between a service oriented group like that versus some that are, shall we say a little different, uh, like a group called Alec.
But before we get into that, let's get to NCSL itself.
You know, I, I refer to it as summer school for legislators.
Tell us about some of the things that.
that benefit legislators who attend conferences like these.
Yeah, so it was an event that had, I think, over 9,500 registrants at that.
So you've got legislators from all over the country, all the networking that happens at those events, finding out what our other states are doing, how they've maybe navigated the place that we're in now because they were at it two years ago with a certain topic or five years ago or something like that.
Legislating is a very strange job.
So it's just really nice to be around people who understand this job too, especially in the day and age that we're in, the opening piece for NCSL.
was about Melissa Hortman and her wife and Senator Hoffman and his wife and the horrific events that happened in Minnesota where there was the political assassination of state legislators and attempted assassinations.
And I think that really set the groundwork for talking about
you know, what it is that we do and in the climate that we do it.
So there were some really moving pieces there and talked about how we could tone down the rhetoric, which kind of goes into your piece about, you know, personal Twitter accounts and things like that.
But I think that was really good.
But the other piece that was really talked about a lot in the exhibit hall at the happy hours afterwards, all these things was everything that is going on in Texas right now.
and with the redistricting attempts.
So those were kind of the two big pieces was what happened in Minnesota, what's trying to be happening in Texas.
And then there's policy geeks like me that go to a breakout session on higher education and housing and things like that too.
So in that sense, it is summer school for state legislators.
We're learning from different places, but there's a lot of networks.
and a lot of camaraderie that happens as well.
And so when you do these breakout sessions on all these different policy areas, the thing I liked about it so much is that it is more about
research and background on an issue and best practices and people saying here's what this state tried or here's what my state tried and you can really kick around ideas and frankly if you were going to get you know bipartisan legislation this would be a kind of place where you would get it where you'd kick around all these ideas and say okay well what could work or you could as a democrat like you say
this is the way I want it to work, and this is the way I'm gonna write this bill, but there is just so much that you can learn from those sessions, and like you said, you can pick all kinds of policy areas to look at.
Absolutely, and sometimes you also go to one of those policy areas, and you see another person from your state there, and you go, hey.
Senator so-and-so, Representative so-and-so.
Once we get back home, let's work on this because obviously we both have the same concern and hope for our state where we don't necessarily
do that too much in the state of Wisconsin where we work together so that's another piece of it or you start to collect business cards like you know baseball trading cards because you're sitting next to somebody from California and they say oh yeah we did that policy four years ago give me a call I'll walk you through how
we dealt with the different problems that came up along the way.
So it's been very helpful and I've loved going to these conferences.
I always come away with way more information than I'll ever use.
It's definitely time well spent.
We're talking to representative Jody Emerson from Eau Claire.
And, you know, there are plenty of groups out there, uh, as there are in a lot of industries that, you know, say they're dedicated toward continuing education or whatever the case may be, they're not all created equal.
And that takes us to a group known as Alec, the American legislative exchange council, which, uh, your Republican colleagues, uh, by and large are members of though, democratic legislate.
have gone, basically, to hear what's going on there.
And that would be an example more of, you know, on the Republican side of things, of a think tank going, here are all the principles.
Here's the cookie cutter legislation that you can introduce if you want to make, you know, your base happy on the right side of the political spectrum, right?
Yeah, and as you mentioned, you know, Democrats have done that before too and gone to it sometimes very quietly, sometimes very not so quietly.
in the case of one of my colleagues being kicked out of it, actually even.
But we, Democrats have kind of tried to sit there and watch what's been happening.
I believe Mark Polkhan started that back when he was in the assembly.
So it's really been going on for a while.
And it's good to find out what might be coming down the road.
But MCSL and then there's Council of State Governments, both of them are really just
groups that come together to try to network and help legislators actually get good legislation through as opposed to groups like Alec that tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and here's the language whether you like it or not do it.
There was Alec with, you know, this is, these are the steps that you have to take, you know, for
taking over this particular policy area.
So we get past the trip.
We've finished the state budget.
The legislature will be back in session in the fall for things beyond the state budget.
Are there things that you're working on right now that you're hoping to see passed in the fall session?
Yeah, absolutely.
Our Democratic caucus has really been working hard on setting up legislation in just about every area group that you can think of, whether it's education, higher education, labor rights, environment, criminal justice, about this is what we would do if we had power.
That's something that we're really hoping to look at coming in the fall with or next fall, I should say with the election under the new maps again.
Democrats have a real shot at taking the majority in both the Senate and the Assembly.
And I look at what we could do with a trifecta.
And so let's make sure that we can work out the kinks this year.
Here's the pieces that we're going to pass.
Let's have the arguments.
today.
Let's have the arguments next month.
Let's figure out what we want to do so that we've got a roadmap to governing.
I think that's really important for us to work on.
What?
There's
governor race coming up next year?
I missed
You know, it's one of those races that when you have several friends and true friends, not just people that I've worked with before, but true friends in this race, and my district is just so close.
I don't anticipate endorsing in this race.
I think my...
biggest hope is that we have a really good quality candidate that comes out of the primary and that the party can fully get behind and go for because keeping that office in Democratic hands is so important.
I've never served.
under a Republican governor and I'm going to work really, really hard to make sure that I don't in the coming sessions because having Governor Evers veto pen has been so incredibly important.
I can't imagine what it would be like without that office.
No, there's a few things going on.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I'd love to have you come back with the hat on of the work that you've done against human trafficking.
Absolutely.
We've talked in the past about legislation you're working on, and at some point, because we don't have time for it here, but hearing Donald Trump.
the president of the United States talking about him and Jeffrey Epstein and the young women that he stole to come here or to work there.
And I don't know that I've ever heard few, if any, people mentioning the words human trafficking, but it sure struck me as something in that vein.
And I'd love to have you come back on and talk a bit about how, you know, when people think of human trafficking, they think of like one particular kind, but it describes a whole range of things.
And I hope you'll put that hat back on and talk to us about that real soon.
I would love to.
I mean, that is my area of passion in policy that got me into this job and would love to talk your ear off about it.
But speaking of talking your ear off, I did want to talk a little bit if we have time about what's going on in Texas with the redistricting because that was really the talk of the town.
Let's come through the break.
We'll talk to Jody Emerson more about what's happening in Texas.
And then Greg Bach will join us to talk about what's coming up on Matt and Air on Air.
And then tomorrow here on the program, we'll have Dan Schaefer, Hans Brighton, Moser, Chad Holmes, and Jeff Renneke from Way Up North.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
All right, the Milwaukee Brewer is coming off sweeping the Mets and sweeping Atlanta and sweeping the Nationals.
bringing their brooms back to American Family Field, hoping to do the same with the Pittsburgh Pirates, a nine game winning streak on the line.
Taking on Pittsburgh pregame begins at 6 0 5 on several civic media radio stations across the state.
couple of final minutes here with State Representative Jody Emerson and then Greg Bach is standing by to tell us what's coming up on Matt and Aaron Ayer.
But Jody, we were getting into the legislators in Texas, the Democratic ones, leaving the state to deny a quorum so that the Republicans could not put corrupt maps into place and steal more seats in Congress.
Obviously a big discussion point there at the National Conference of State Legislators.
Yeah, it really was.
I mean, that was the talk.
There wasn't any sessions on it, but that was kind of the talk of everybody in the exhibit hall and the happy hours and things like that.
Doing just some.
talking with people in a little bit of back of the napkin math.
It's ironic that the very strongly held democratic states for the most part have already implemented nonpartisan redistricting commissions.
And so for more states to do what Texas is attempting to do to offset.
What is going to happen is it's going to be a Herculean task for everybody to do.
I think Illinois is our only big dem state that doesn't have independent redistricting.
And so there's a lot of conversations about that.
But I just want your listeners.
to understand what is on the line in Texas here.
I don't know how much this has been talked about in Wisconsin.
So many of us have fought so hard for nonpartisan redistricting in Wisconsin for so long.
And what's happening is Trump called Governor Abbott of Texas and said, hey, I need to.
to shore up my my seats here and my congress so can you readjust the maps down there get rid of crack it because I don't like her as a person and make sure to give me five more seats so even if.
the sales of the election go in the Democratic favor next year.
I'm still going to have a Republican Congress to deal with.
And so that was a lot of what these Texas legislators are doing.
They're flying to California and New York and Illinois, Massachusetts and things like that to see if there's other seats that what we can do as state legislators.
And this is.
This is our democracy on the line.
This is our republic on the line.
If we allow this to happen, we're never going to have fair maps anywhere ever again if a state legislature can redistrict mid-session, mid-decade, mid-sensis to shore up the power of an executive in DC.
It breaks my heart, especially in the context of being there in Boston, seeing what we've gone through as a country to start our country, and the revolution, and no kings, and speaking out what's happening in Texas and across the country.
This is our democracy on the line.
Take care.
Thanks, Pat.
Thanks, Jody.
Let's bring in Greg Bach now from Radio Park, who's going to be part of, whoops, do that.
There you go, Madison.
I am.
There, Matt and Aaron.
Hi.
Hi there.
It's Monday.
I'm pushing.
I'm just grabbing any buttons and pushing them over here.
So yeah, several folks down down your way dealing with, you know, flooded basements and flooded cars
and
and I saw
everybody knew, you know, there was rain in the forecast, but the opening up of the skies like that was, and what I saw in, say, in Wauwatosa, you know, I'm familiar with that area, and to watch these otherwise, you know, placid little rivers and creeks, you know, just become these giant raging torrents was...
I mean, downright frightening for the folks who were in that area.
So I'm sure you will be talking about that as part of Matt Nair on air today.
What else you got going on?
At 935, we got Shaly Pittman, who is Civic Media's news director on the show to talk about the flooding, also to discuss the bills that Governor Evers has both vetoed as well as signed, and to talk about what's going forward with the budget.
And we're going to also discuss
the fact that because of the Trump cuts coming out of Washington, what it's going to do to affect our libraries possibly, as well as if you're interested in getting solar panels because funding for that will be or grants for that will most likely be cut and that will have definite effects.
But don't worry, Governor Evers is on the case.
He wants to keep those grants for Wisconsin to make sure we can get lower and better efficient, better efficiency with lower prices.
There are things that he can propose and wants to sign.
There are other ideas that have to get vetoed.
We spoke earlier about one of his vetoes was a bill that would essentially affect delivery drivers in the gig economy.
And it's being billed as something that would provide benefits to these workers.
But it was only, it was a very one-sided bill.
It was what the industry wants to give to the workers.
And the governor said, yeah, benefits are important, but how about if we have input from the workers as well?
So he vetoed the bill and said, let's, let's try this again.
We're going to talk to former state representative.
Dana walks about that on Wednesday.
So.
You have a busy day ahead of
out there as well.
Thank
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