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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Good morning.
Welcome back at 706.
Nice to have you here up north on this Wednesday, August 13th.
Parker Olson is our producer down in Madison Studio A2 and coming up later this hour.
My friend and former state assembly representative Dana Walks.
He'll be appearing in our 735 segment.
That's usually our homeroom segment where we talk about public schools in Wisconsin.
And so we'll start off by talking about
his efforts years ago in the legislature to help taxpayers understand the true cost of the voucher school program in Wisconsin and how his bill was never taken up by Republicans running the legislature.
So now folks at the local level have taken it upon themselves to increase transparency on your property tax bills, but he'll talk about the fight for that at the statewide level coming up.
We'll also talk to him about worker misclassification.
That's because Governor Evers recently vetoed a bill that supporters said would bring more benefits to gig workers like delivery drivers, but the governor vetoed it and Dana Wax will help us explain why and what needs to happen to truly be more responsible to gig workers who do so much in our modern economy.
So that's coming up a little bit later on.
Brittany Merleau is off.
We'll be listening to your Civic Media station throughout the course of the day for your forecast on the text line from Jim and Brookfield.
Good morning Pat finally a bright and sunny morning in southeast, Wisconsin Flooded low line areas are starting to recede.
Hopefully the area will have a chance to dry out Yes, I'm starting to see that in some of the photos here of how high though the waters were after that flash flooding over the weekend and that they are now starting to recede but Goodness, there's gonna be a lot of clean up ahead.
So I'm glad the weather is a decent today to get that started
Also in the mailbag, let's head over to YouTube.
Good morning from Tigerton, writes Rob.
It's sunny and 58 degrees.
I mowed three yards in Tigerton.
I helped my nephews cut down some trees at my place, then went to Clintonville to get some lawn mower parts.
I've got four lawns to mow in Tigerton today.
At the gas station in Tigerton, they have a pay phone.
And they have I'm sorry, they have a pay phone booth frame without the pay phone.
Yes, that that makes much more sense there.
And he says yesterday going to Clintonville, I noticed at the top of the hill looking down the hazy smoke in the valley.
It was like being in Los Angeles.
And yes, that I completely understand one of our earlier topics in our last hour.
And if you ever miss an hour, head over to civicmedia.us or subscribe to us as a podcast by getting on Spotify and following us there.
we were talking about some of the most anticipated albums of all time, given the way that Taylor Swift has essentially perfected the move with her new album that's going to be coming out the life of a showgirl.
But as we talked about other heavily anticipated albums in history from, you know, Bruce Springsteen, ACDC, the Eagles and all of that, Adam writes on YouTube.
a reminder that Cheryl Crowe guaranteed us a major Milwaukee Bucks ballot if they won the championship in six games back in 2021, still waiting for that one.
And that didn't really ring a bell to me.
And I looked and sure enough, I found one article from WTMJ Radio down in Milwaukee that said, if the Bucks win in six, Cheryl Crowe vows to write a Bucks anthem.
She says, if they win it in six, I'm going to write the biggest, baddest Milwaukee Bucks anthem you've ever heard.
They got to take it in six.
I don't think I can take a game seven.
She was among many celebrities who were in town for game four at the Pfizer Forum that night when the Bucks did indeed win the championship.
And yet, Parker, I see no follow-up.
It's like she made that Adam remembered.
But it sounds like nobody else did, including Cheryl Crowe.
So I'm still waiting on that big, bad bucks anthem that
promised.
Oh, I agree.
I mean, there's something nostalgic about playing back some of the jingles from, you know, olden times and some some songs still hang around.
how many times do you have to hear bear down Chicago Bears, for example, you know,
when they
come to town.
But it would be nice to get some, some modern tunes
as well.
Some contemporary tunes about our favorite sports teams there.
So maybe Cheryl Crow will, will finally get the message and get something written for us in time for the season.
I mentioned that in the daily newsletter that you can sign up for it up North news, w I dot com that a couple of new pups are on duty.
at a hospital in Madison and I hear from Sean Fetaplace with Main Street Alliance and he said you know we were talking about uh let's see where the dog's here there's uh cash and there's Jimmy cash is part golden retriever part poodle this is at American Family Children's Hospital in Madison and Sean Fetaplace writes insane uh hi Pat so cash is our dog my wife is his handler and he's a very good boy
Aw.
So there
good
A little six degrees of separation here on the morning show.
Hearing from our friend Sean about that.
So that was very nice.
Coming up later today across the Civic Media Radio Network, of course, following this fine program, we've got Matt and Air on air coming up and on there.
Just after 9.30, Jane and Greg will be talking to Andrew Watkins, a best-selling author.
just talking about Christian nationalism in the United States and its ongoing growth.
Coming up at 10.05, they will be talking to Robert Pilit, the host of Native Roots Radio.
On the Todd Alba show, coming up at two o'clock, I'll be joining him along with Trig Vilsen, Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project.
Maggie Dawn, coming up at four o'clock, is gonna have Ruth Conniff, the Editor-in-Chief of the Wisconsin Examiner, discussing her latest article on gerrymandering.
She'll also be talking to State Representative Anne Rowe.
And then later on Nightlife with Pete Schwabba, Nightlife beginning at six o'clock there, and it will include Milwaukee Journal sent
entertainment reporter Chris Ferrand.
So a lot of ground to cover today across the Civic Media radio network.
May I suggest just welding your radio dial right there and sticking around throughout the course of the day or take us along on the Civic Media app.
If you need to take a break at all from it, just head over to Up North News and see some of our latest headlines there.
In the headlines, of course, we did have this terrible flash flooding in the Milwaukee area.
And we now also have word from Congressman Scott Fitzgerald, who was the former state Senate Republican leader when I was in the state Senate as well.
So I've known Scott for a long time.
He's now a member of Congress.
And according to this article from Anna Kleiber in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Congressman Fitzgerald is going to ask the Trump administration to make an emergency declaration in response to floods.
In a letter to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Fitzgerald asks for an emergency declaration to be made to ensure Wisconsin communities have access to the recovery resources they need while a full assessment of the damages remains underway.
parts of Milwaukee County, Waukesha, Washington, Ozaki were hit with massive volumes of rain on Saturday and Sunday, more than 10 inches of rain, which is classified as a once in a thousand year flood event.
Governor Tony Evers has already declared a state of emergency following the storms.
Now, this is where it gets a little tricky.
because in the past that would normally lead to presidential emergency declarations so that agencies like FEMA could step in and allocate resources that are needed.
However, FEMA's under new management now and it has already been shown that President Donald Trump is willing to play politics with people's lives when they've been impacted by a disaster.
Recall that hurricane that came up through North Carolina.
They're still waiting on Stormade there.
California, after its wildfires, they're still waiting on federal assistance there.
But after the recent flash flooding in Texas, which was a red state, Trump declared an emergency and freed up federal resources to go there.
So when Congressman Fitzgerald
says he's asking President Trump to declare a disaster, I guess he'll have to include that Wisconsin went for Trump in the election because that's how you predicate disaster relief, apparently, in Donald Trump's eyes.
And I don't doubt for a moment, I don't doubt for a moment that Donald Trump would declare
and emergency and free up resources, but specifically exclude Milwaukee County and make up some lame line about, you know, they don't deserve it.
They have plenty of funds.
They can take care of themselves, which is all just shorthand for those people in those quote unquote urban areas didn't vote for me.
And so I'm not going to provide federal aid there.
So
Put a marker down on this episode right here.
I may be wrong, but if I'm right, you'll be able to track it right here and see that this is who he is.
And this is what all of America has to deal with when it comes to disaster.
The first thing you have to ask yourself.
after your house blows down or whatever the case may be is, huh, do I live in a red state or a blue state?
Because my tax money will only go to people who voted for Trump.
Is that the kind of world that we want to live in?
Well, it must be because, again, just look at some of the recent headlines.
You've got a president who...
fired the person who put out the unemployment numbers and is replacing them with a loyalist who is now casting doubt on the validity of any numbers that come out of the Trump administration.
Then there's this story.
The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian Museum exhibitions, materials, and operations ahead of America's 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with
Trump's interpretation of American history.
So he's already tainting America's 250th celebration that's going to be coming next year.
Oh wait, there's this out of Louisiana.
A lawsuit has now been filed by the family of a four-year-old boy, an American citizen whose stage four cancer treatments were disrupted when ICE kidnapped his mother
along with his seven-year-old sister who is also an American citizen and sent them all to Honduras back in April without a whiff of due process.
Nothing in the courts that would give the family the option of letting the children stay.
But I mean, hey, thank God those terrorists, that mom and those two kids aren't on the streets, right?
And by the way,
forgive the strong language, but if you have no compassion for her, for the mom and say, well, she's an illegal and she shouldn't be here anyway, if you want to mock her status and her struggle and her child who has cancer, I have no idea how to tell you that you might not ever get back to a normal life.
That as dead as some people are on the inside right now, it may never get better.
If that's the way you want to react,
to a mom with a child with cancer?
May I consider asking people to pray for you if that's where your heart is right now?
But that's what we have for a presidency that fires people for putting out true job statistics that is going to rig museum exhibits to comport with their interpretation of history.
And so do I think that this president will play politics with disaster relief for the Milwaukee area?
Oh, heck yeah.
A local update is next for some of you represented with Dana walks joining us in about 15 minutes.
I'm Pac right low.
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Click subscribe in the top banner and that can include our Sunday morning politics newsletter Sunday mornings with Pat Crightlow including our question of the week and this week we're asking about politicians personal social media accounts and whether they're helpful or if they need to be deleted.
Yes, politicians are people too.
I've said that before.
They're real people.
They're allowed to have human emotions and things like that.
And it gives their staff, whether it's their campaign staff or their official staff, it gives them real heartburn when there's no filter for a politician to show off that humanity in some way, shape or form.
And of course, given what a dumpster fire social media has become, it's not like
a lot of people are using their personal social media accounts to spread warm, fluffy feelings, especially somebody like Derek Van Orden.
And after just a long string of embarrassing or insulting posts, it prompts the question of whether politician personal social media accounts should be deleted or if they just help you see the person that they are.
And if
Maybe they're not the kind of person they like to portray in their campaign ads.
So again, that's our question of the week.
Head over to upnorthnewswi.com and subscribe there.
If you missed it earlier, if you're waking up a little late here, the Brewers did win their 11th in a row, a two touchdown, two touchdown shutout of the Pittsburgh Pirates 14 to nothing.
It's the second time in a row at American Family Field that Pittsburgh's ace Paul Skeens was chased out after just four innings.
South Freelick greeted Skeens right out of the gate with another leadoff home run.
So the Brewers become the first team in the National League with multiple winning streaks of at least 11 games since the 1935 Chicago Cubs.
Milwaukee leads the league with 23 home runs so far this month, and I again stress the Brewers are undefeated in the month of August so far.
The series does continue now this afternoon.
Final game of the series against the Pirates.
The pregame begins at 1235 on several civic media stations across the state.
Head over to civicmedia.us to learn more.
Then after this afternoon's game, the Brewers are off.
this Thursday they'll be traveling to Cincinnati for a weekend series but it's not just that they're starting a weekend series it's that they're starting a run of 18 days without a day off and they're going to play 19 games in those 18 days starting with 3 in Cincinnati
and then there's gonna be five at Wrigley Field in Chicago next week.
It was supposed to be a four game series, but they're making up one that was canceled earlier in the season because of rain.
So five games at Wrigley next week.
So for all the anticipation about potentially winning 12 in a row this afternoon and the free burgers from George Webb and everything else, comes the temperate expectations given that you've got five games against a division rival, the Cubs are not having a bad year.
not by any stretch.
The brewers are just, they're on a magic carpet ride right now and we'll just see how long it lasts and hope for all the best here.
If you didn't catch it in the news, I wanted to pass along that Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Call along with attorneys general from the entire country from 50 other jurisdictions have all filed letters of complaint about robo calls.
Now I get junk texts like crazy Parker I don't I don't know what you get for Robo calls or things like that because I just don't answer them if it's and if it's somebody I don't recognize and they leave a message I'll call them back right away, but I don't Clearly it's a problem because Americans receive four and a half billion Robo calls per month.
texts like crazy but again I can filter those out you know the ones that are from my contacts and the ones that are not but 37 different telecom companies received warnings from this group of attorneys general as part of what's called operation robo call roundup
The Attorney's General from 50 states and the District of Columbia demanded that phone providers take steps to mitigate the use of robocalling on their networks, that in an article from Wisconsin Public Radio.
The task force launched in 2022 with the goal to take legal action against the perpetrators of robocalls and providers that don't take steps to remove those bad actors from their system.
Now some of these robocalls, they're actually rather, as the article says, mundane or necessary, that you'll get a call from your dentist office reminding you that you have an appointment tomorrow.
But the overwhelming majority are these kinds of promotions that could be scammers, that could cross the line into being illegal, they could be spoof calls that are designed to trick you and separate you from your money, and
I mean, I have to be honest.
I know that it's complex.
I know that these bad actors are often calling from overseas where, you know, they're outside of legal jurisdictions.
But still, having said that, I'm still surprised that it's grown to this level that there are more than four and a half billion robocalls a month that are being made.
And I can only assume that it has something to do with that one
troublesome vein of American politics and that is to lit corporations self-police in the name of, you know, deregulation and in the name of, you know, not cutting red tape is that we're trusting these companies.
But thankfully, you now have attorneys general, Josh Call and others, who are saying
It really is past time to bring the hammer down.
We're paying these phone bills and we're not paying for this.
So I wish them luck in that crackdown.
I think every one of our telephones would appreciate getting a little breather.
All right, we'll talk to former state representative Dana Wachs coming up right after the Midwest Farm Report.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
All right, I have to tell you story first before we bring on former state assembly rep Dana walks here Dana of course ran for governor in 2017 2018 along with 205 other people and One of the mementos that I have of helping my friend Dana is that you know
It's very common now to have backdrops.
They're very easy to make.
They print them on vinyl.
They put them on a frame back there.
And so somewhere in my garage, I still have that vinyl backdrop.
I thought about getting it out, but I couldn't find it in time with all the logos on there that say Dana walks for governor.
I was going to put it up there and see if Dana wanted to, if it inspired him to make any announcement.
Well, I don't have the backdrop.
But I have the guy.
Dana walks joining us now from Eau Claire.
Dana, any any declarations you'd like to make for me today?
Absolutely positively not.
You know, I got my hands full.
I've got a lot of stuff going on in my case, my caseload.
And it was a wonderful experience.
I enjoyed it very much.
It makes me a better person to have done that.
It also
You know, now I'm in a position where I can stand up in a heartbeat and give a speech to thousands of people and not give any thought to it.
It's a good experience.
It's a good learning experience.
So I recommend that all six million Wisconsinites run for governor.
Really will be 2018 all over again, I tell you.
But it was a lot of fun.
It was a great experience.
You were an amazing candidate and obviously served with a lot of distinction in the assembly and then as a member of the Board of Regents before you got caught up in more Republican political shenanigans there.
But your work as a legislator and as a trial attorney inspired me to ask you to come on to talk about
two different things.
And we're going to talk about gig workers in just a minute here.
But this segment is normally the one each week where we spend a little time talking about public education in Wisconsin.
And we have spoken recently with some folks in Green Bay.
who kind of got the ball rolling on local efforts to increase transparency on property tax bills so that people know when they look at the property tax bill and they see a line there for the Green Bay School District and they see that dollar amount and they think, wow, that's a lot of money going to Green Bay.
Well, it's not.
Some of it's being skimmed off the top and going to the voucher school program.
And that's something that could have been done on property tax bills statewide
a long, long time ago because you had the bill to do that back when you were in the legislature.
Tell folks more about it.
Yeah, well, there was a constituent who brought this to my attention that wouldn't it be a good idea?
It's Chris Humbuck Boyle, actually
Rockstar.
Yes.
Yeah.
She's an education advocate, par excellence.
And she she brought this idea up.
Wouldn't it be nice on your tax forms when you get the bill?
to see how much money is actually going into this private school voucher system.
I think it's only fair that the taxpayers understand what the true cost of this subsidy for the private schools is.
It's not fair to not do this.
So you had the you had the bill that would call for that and You know, I know you you're you're on friendly terms with a lot of folks doesn't matter their party affiliation Was there any traction among any Republican legislators to say, you know, I'm all for the voucher schools But I'm also for transparency and I can see this or were you met with complete silence from the other side of the aisle
Complete silence as far as I can recall.
I don't recall a single Republican
willing to support this.
They've got very strong leadership and it's lockstep only over on that side of the aisle.
And they didn't have permission to support this, although it makes perfect sense.
I think a couple of them kind of privately approached me and said, you know, that's a pretty good idea, but their leadership wouldn't let them do it.
And it's just unbelievable.
It's complete opposite what you'd expect.
Oh, yeah.
And so I know that you and many others, as you would talk to people about this, they'd say, really?
They had no idea about how the system works that, you know, there's this pool of money that goes to schools and then whatever the legislature decides to fund the voucher school program at, that is skimmed off the top first.
And then what's left goes to public schools.
But you'd never know that by looking at property tax bills.
And so finally,
The good folks in Green Bay got the ball rolling between the city council and the school board and the school district.
They're having it done.
We had them on last week to try to encourage other communities to start that same initiative.
So there might be this obstruction in the legislature, but what do you think of the folks in Green Bay bringing some local accountability to this matter?
It's fantastic.
And their mayor, Eric Ingridge, he was one of the sponsors of this bill.
if I remember correctly.
He served in the
legislature with you before he became mayor,
right?
Yeah, I'm confident that he must have been heavily involved in getting that through the city council over there.
It makes perfect sense.
People need to know what the cost of various elements of their government is.
And it's consistent with the morals and goals of our constitutional founders.
We should have transparency in government.
not sneaking around in the middle of the night passing things, which was the MO for some of the Republican folks.
Oh my goodness that the whole program started and was maintained over the years by being rolled into the state budget time after time after time because if it ever had to be a standalone bill if people had to take a vote on it and vote for two parallel school systems that now account for Approaching a billion dollars a year it would never fly so of course there had to be this obfuscation so it's It's good to see that it's starting to happen on the local level and we wanted to let folks know
that you tried to get the ball rolling on this a long time ago.
All right, so let's pivot over to gig workers for a sec here because again, I've seen the headlines and I'm not faulting the headline writers, but you know, all they see is Governor Evers vetoes a bill for portable benefits for delivery drivers.
And then you see something like we talked about yesterday on the program, the DoorDash spent like a million dollars lobbying
for this bill to pass in the Wisconsin legislature, which again, that should be a red flag, which Governor Evers pointed out in his veto message.
His message was that I'm not vetoing this because I don't think gig workers, you know, don't deserve benefits.
I'm vetoing it because it was a completely one sided bill was kind of what I got out of his veto message.
You've had a chance to look at the bill.
What did you think?
Well, I think Governor Evers for doing the right thing and vetoing this.
You know, the thing about this, I've got two Labradors, Artie and Earl.
And if it gets real quiet in the kitchen, I get up and go in the kitchen and see what the heck is going on.
And they're usually into something.
Well, I liken them to WMC because the way they put this bill together, the Wisconsin manufacturers and commerce lobby, I'm sure was behind this.
And while it gets real quiet in the kitchen, when you take a look at the rest of this bill,
a terrible bill for all Wisconsinites.
And here's why.
Number one, these benefits are at the discretion of the employer.
So Uber or whoever would be the employer here,
who
knows.
But it's up to them to decide whether or not to provide these benefits.
But one of the worst things about this bill as far as I see it is that
It adds four more requirements for there to be respondent superior or employee, employer liability.
Now, let me tell you a story.
I've represented a lot of people in the last 41 years and injured folks that had nothing to do with employer-employee relationships.
They're just going down the highway and all of a sudden the car runs into them.
and they try to bring suit to get compensation.
Some of these people are paralyzed and they bring a lawsuit to get compensation from the mega huge corporation that has hired these people and declared them to be independent contractors.
So an independent contractor of mega corporation can
hire people, they get in an accident and mega corporation isn't responsible for it.
I had a case a few years ago where it took us four years and complicated discovery to find out that the independent contractor who was actually killed in this crash, the independent contractor had received a telephone call from the mega corporation that hired him.
Telling them to go to a specific address and sold four years into this case.
I was able to prove that that Person was an entity and that there wasn't 25 million $25,000 of insurance coverage or millions of dollars in insurance coverage, but they were hiding it.
So these these outfits hide behind Independent contractor quote-unquote they hire people and say we're just gonna
You are not an employee of ours.
You're an independent contractor and they're running all over our highways and they're and they're trying to escape liability and and and doing the right thing through this.
So this bill adds four more safeguards for the employer so that they're not.
deemed an employer, but actually the contractor with an independent contractor.
It's a terrible bill.
We're talking to former state assembly representative Dana Walks of Eau Claire, who's a trial attorney and has worked on cases that involve what is commonly referred to as employee misclassification, which predates the gig economy, Dana.
It's the kind of thing where they'll limit hours and still classify you as part time to avoid pain.
but somehow they managed to squeeze full-time work out of you anyway.
And so now you have this bill that was ostensibly supposed to be this positive thing about providing benefits.
But like you said, it grows that divide where a company is able to say, well, we're not actually their employer, when in fact they are, they're doing work for them.
So the governor,
had pointed out saying, hey, I'm all for benefits for gay workers.
Let's let labor come to the table.
Let's let workers come to the table and let's work out something together.
Do you feel putting your former legislator head on that there is a bill that could be written in some way that says that people who do want that sense of independence
but they are still working for, you know, mega corporation that there is a way for them to get benefits like health insurance and things like that.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's an easy bill to write and I think it could be done and should have been done longer ago, but, but the way it is with the lobbying efforts of these outfits, the way it is now, you're not an employee of mega corporation until they call you and specifically tell you to go pick up XYZ.
They're adding these additional requirements to further help themselves with insurance costs in these circumstances.
So it's a terrible bill.
I'm really glad that Tony Evers, as always, Tony does the right thing.
It's very common for him to do the right thing.
And the right thing here was to absolutely get labor to the table and talk this through and great.
to tail.
And folks in the legal world should be involved in the crafting of something like this, because while there may be times that independent contracting is a good thing, it often isn't.
And we've got to have these safeguards to have a society that functions.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's, you know, why we turn to experts like you Dana walks trial attorney, former state assembly representative from the Eau Claire area, and future candidate for something else not next year.
But I mean, Dana, you and I were not done yet.
It might be a candidate for, you know, fishing up at your cabin real soon.
But
There'll be something down the line here.
Dana, thanks so much.
Have a great day.
Thanks for
visiting with us.
You
too.
Thanks, Patrick.
All right.
Great to talk with you.
A local update is coming up next for some of you.
Others will visit with Jimmy Koska and see what he's covering as part of the Civic Media Radio Network.
And then in our next hour, after the eight o'clock news, we'll be talking to Earl Ingram, who has learned all too personally some of the damage that this flash flooding has done in Milwaukee.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Got some matinee baseball for you this afternoon.
The Brewers and Pirates wrap up their three game series.
Pre game begins at 12.35.
on Civic Media stations up in Hayward at WBZH, Park Falls, Racine Kenosha, Oshkosh, Richland Center, and everybody will be watching and listening to see if the brewers get to 12 in a row.
And that's where we bring in Jimmy Koska, Civic Media Sports Director to talk a bit about this.
Jimmy, how are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
Office productivity today this afternoon.
I would expect record high
levels.
Please, if you're in a position to cancel a meeting at your workplace, just cancel it.
Just let it go.
I mean, look, it's not the World Series, but it's a 12-game winning streak on the line here.
And
also on the line, if you're in Southeastern Wisconsin, are the George Webb Burgers.
So there's a lot at stake today.
So again, for folks that are catching us in the Oshkosh area, in the Waukesha area, obviously,
They know what we're talking about.
George Webb is a little regional string of diners there.
For folks that are listening on the western side of the state, you probably hear this every so often to go, what is a George Webb?
And it's a little chain that long ago, one of their advertising promotions, and this chain dates back to 1948.
And back in the 1940s, when Milwaukee only had a minor league team,
George Webb would predict that the local team would win a specific number of games and then that would lead to free burgers.
Well there was nothing like that until 1987 and I remember it well when that team won 13 straight and then it didn't happen again until 2018 when they won 12 games and in each case we're talking hundreds of thousands of free burgers for folks who might
might not otherwise go to a George Webb.
What I would really like to see is some other businesses around Wisconsin jump on this too.
Look how much promotion this one little hamburger chain has gotten for a prediction that was made, you know, 80 years ago for goodness sakes.
Yeah, it'd be great if somebody in Western Wisconsin would jump on it too, because I would love to get in on any kind of brewers related promotion, but it is so cool that we're here again, what, 30?
eight days since the last time they had an 11 game win streak.
The Brewers are doing incredibly well.
And you know, what's funny is when I was talking about this with my Clemens, I just asked them, like, do you think the Brewers are peaking too early?
Maybe because we're looking forward to the postseason.
But, you know, without these win streaks, the Brewers wouldn't be in the position they're in, which, you know, a massive lead in the division where a month ago, a little over a month ago, it were trailing by, you know, several games.
Now they're leading by a whole bunch of games.
It has been a remarkable.
story here in the middle of the season for the Brewers.
A team, by the way, that started out, you know, 0 and 4, the minus 32 run differential.
Now they have the best record of baseball, the best run differential.
It is remarkable what is happening right now with Brewers.
They are still undefeated in the month of August.
They have more home runs than any other team in the month of August.
And it has never been like a single person.
And it's just been this wonderful amalgamation of chemistry,
and coaching and, I don't know, grit, whatever it is that you want to call it.
And it's, you know, I say all the time it's been fun to watch because it is, we don't put everything on, like when they were really coming up in 2018, for example, everything was on Ryan Braun's shoulders, you know, going, oh, this guy is going to carry us and maybe a couple of others.
But here there's like, I mean, we've got Christian Yelich, but we also know, you know, he's a little long in the tooth here and that, again, not all the pressure's on him.
It is definitely a
team-wide thing.
You know, it's amazing.
There's a couple of amazing stats of the team.
Obviously, I think everybody's pointing to the Aaron Savalli trade to get Andrew Vaughn, the Vaughn mower.
He's in and he's just breaking right now.
I had a three-run blast yesterday.
Just ridiculous stuff.
I mean, that is an amazing trade.
And the rumors had a couple of these, right?
But I think the other thing that's really interesting is that when you look back to the beginning of the year, when they had all the issues at the beginning of the year with their pitching staff and giving up all these runs and whatever,
All those pictures are gone.
None of them are with the Brewers anymore.
They have retooled on the fly this year, dealing with things like the trade demand by Savali to get a 27-year-old outfielder from AAA.
And all of a sudden, he is one of the centerpieces to this amazing ride that the Brewers have been on the last couple of months.
I got to tell you, the front office for the Brewers
Literally unmatched right now they the Brewers wanted every single level in baseball yesterday every minor league level and at the MLB level yesterday Right now things things couldn't be better for the Brewers.
I I'm personally just enjoying the ride that we're on with them
Well, especially when you consider
the payrolls that they're going up against from the Dodgers from the Yankees from the Mets and other well almost everybody else it seems but the Brewers I don't know the current Brewers ranking in terms of payroll but it's nothing like theirs and again there's there's a lot to be said for
chemistry.
There's a lot to be said for injuries.
Again, like you said, there were a lot of injuries on the pitching staff earlier in the year.
And again, you know, knock on wood here that, you know, we, again, was it Ryan Braun with the busted kneecap?
Or was that Yellich?
I forget now.
That was Yellich.
You know, there's always the inopportune injury.
And so I think much as I've said in past seasons, I'm not putting on the pressure that you got to like win it all.
We definitely got to get past the first round of the playoffs.
That would be just soul crushing if we lose out in the wild card round again.
But you just got to have fun with it.
I, for one, am having a lot of fun with it.
The Brewers do have some injuries they're dealing with too right now, which is making this even more amazing that.
They've got some big time guys that are sitting on the injured list right now and they're still finding a way to get it done.
You know, I think even like just today, like yesterday with the Pirates, you know, seeing Paul Skeens again.
And for the second time this year rocking him and, you know, blowing out the Pirates last night, I just, I really want to stress that like we, we're in the football season, right?
And normally this time of year, even though it's practice, the Packers are
dominating everybody's thought.
We're just close to college football.
But the Brewers being as relevant as they are and as good as they are, they have completely dominated the sports conversations here in Wisconsin.
And it's extended this love of baseball for at least a little while here.
I know the Packers will probably take that crown here soon enough.
But for now, I personally am just enjoying the fact that we've got relevant, awesome baseball to cheer for.
And the Brewers are doing an incredible job this
season.
Exactly.
Jimmy Koska, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
All right.
From Jim in Brookfield on the text line, George Webb is known for having two large side by side clocks.
And when the when you order chili, the waitress, if you if you order chili, the waitress says, do you want one handful or two?
Now, that's funny.
Earl Angrum is going to be coming up after the eight o'clock news more about the terrible flash flooding in the Milwaukee area.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
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