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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.
It is 806 on this Tuesday morning, August 26.
Nice to have you back here up north.
Barker Olson is producing this program down in Madison at Studio A2.
Chad Holmes is standing by from Wausau to chat with us about stories he's following for among the many local reports that you are heard throughout the day or throughout the morning on our show from 6 to 9 a.m.
Meteorologist Brittany Merlot standing by as well.
We were recently talking with State Representative Angela
of Stroud and on the text line Jim in Brookfield says the interview with Representative Stroud was awesome a passionate intelligence state representative who hits the nail on the head regarding the issues we face we need more representatives like her.
Jim I appreciate that thanks for sending that text in and let's see from
Alicia on YouTube, she said that she was at a listening session with her state senator, Republican Eric Wimberger, last night on veterans housing and recovery programs.
And it was standing room only, she says, a full room of veterans in the Howard Swamicle area worried about the Green Bay location shutting down.
Same as here in Chippewa Falls, because again, it either
Got forgotten or dropped or for whatever reason when it was brought to the attention of Republicans in the legislature They refused to put the funding back into the state budget and so these programs that aim to address homelessness among our veterans a couple of these sites are looking at
potentially closing unless the legislature does something right away when it comes back into session.
So we'll follow that story as well.
You can always use our text line here through the Civic Media app, or you can leave comments on Facebook or YouTube, and you are able to watch us live, not just listen to us across the terrestrial radio here.
Let's bring in Brittany Merleau and Chad Holmes as well.
Brittany is going to start with a forecast.
It is a beautiful morning.
Cooler than we're used to, but still.
beautiful nonetheless.
It wakes you up a little bit, right?
There's a little joke in the morning.
Well, yeah, because it's very bright, unlike Sunday up here was really overcast, really
dark and
cold.
So here it's cooler.
But at least it looks really nice out there.
It sure does.
And it's going to stay that way pretty much all week long.
The only thing that I am tracking is the fact that we have another cold front pushing through the state.
And that's going to arrive tomorrow in the evening and then through the overnight and into our Thursday morning, bringing a little bit of rain, maybe some rumbles of thunder, but nothing strong, nothing severe, nothing too major either.
It really looks just like a tenth of an inch of rain to about a quarter inch, maybe a half an inch as possible into places in the Northwoods.
as this passes through, but it is gonna keep us down into those low seventies to mid sixties as we go through the week.
So that's what we're looking at today, mid to upper sixties, a few seventies, much calmer winds out there this afternoon.
We'll see those clouds increasing overnight tonight and then a chance for some spotty sprinkles far northeast tomorrow.
Otherwise, a lot of those clouds hold off until the evening.
Like I said, they'll move in with that front, a little bit of rain,
at night overnight and then we go back to those mid 60s about 70 degrees on Thursday and then the weekend Labor Day weekend upper 60s to mid 70s warming things up Sunday and Monday as we get a little bit warmer there.
So a little bit cooler maybe than some of us want but it is going to be a dry bright and beautiful Labor Day weekend.
All the rain chances stay away from us.
That's OK.
And Robin Tigerton reminds us it was two years ago, Labor Day weekend, very hot temperatures were pushing near 100 degrees.
But this weekend, Chano County Fair begins along some of the other fairs, county fairs around the state.
He says, but as for now, perfect mowing weather still got to stay hydrated.
We've got Rob trained really well and staying
hydrated.
So
good on him.
And that Shadow County Fair is so much fun.
I got to tell you a little story.
So I used to be on TV and I used to, you know, do the early morning shows.
Well, I really wanted to do the races that they do, the dirt track races.
So I called up some race car drivers, you know, the tractor pole drivers.
I didn't think how early it was.
I think I woke up the entire town having them race around for me for TV.
It was hysterical, but
oh no.
So you had them racing for your TV report about
this.
Yeah, five, six, seven a.m.
It was great.
You're
the one that
you're the one that mows the lawn at 7 a.m.
On the weekend.
It's you.
Thank you very much.
Have a great day.
You too.
Yeah, we mentioned the county fairs that are coming up.
Sean begins tomorrow as does the Walworth County Fair on Thursday.
The Iowa County Fair and the Sheboygan County Fair get going.
Then on Friday, Calumet County and Portage County have their local fairs going on.
So just a whole lot of things that you can get done.
In and out of things like you know high school football, which is what Chad Holmes is spending 80 90 120 percent of his time working on these days But you got you got week one in the books.
How'd it go Chad?
Went well it really did it went it went Stephanie was and we had three games between Thursday and Friday night and all three of the teams that we covered won so we're three and oh and everybody's happy and we had
Lots of listeners and it was really, really good.
It was nice to get back on that horse.
The thing that folks might not know if you're not a regular listener to the station in Warsaw is that on the Civic Media app.
Usually, for most stations, you can listen maybe to the news talk station.
Maybe there's a music station in the community that you can listen to.
Chats are busy.
There's actually multiple sub channels for covering all the high school sports that they do.
And I still don't know how you keep it all straight, where how listeners can hear everything that you guys are bumping out.
Well, I'm not that bright myself.
And I have some very good people, of course, with civic media that
set things up.
We have this little room in the back of our building here that has a couple of extra computers that are set up where we can connect with them and then they somehow magically get the audio to our website and to the app under the sports two stream or the sports three stream.
And then if you hit a right button, it magically appears on your computer or on your app.
I have to admit that technologically, I am not the brightest bulb out there, but we're very fortunate to have some very smart people help
us as well to get us where we need to be.
I like that you've thrown magically in there a couple of different times to make the case.
I mean, look, Robin Tigerton says Chad is a legend covering high school sports in central Wisconsin, but even legends need magicians.
behind
the scenes.
We need that that good person to really help sell the magic.
Yes, exactly.
And that then that's exactly what happens week in and week out.
We heard it from Jimmy Koska yesterday as well and all the folks who make local coverage happen, local sports and local news as well.
As you've been doing some of the local news reports on WXCO.
What are some of the things that you and the listeners have been talking about?
Well, just in the last local segment, just before the top of the hour, I was talking about last night, there was another hearing with the Wausau Ethics Board, this never-ending saga that is known as the Doug Dinney Dropbox controversy.
And there was a motion made by the mayor to have the Ethics Committee charges tossed.
There were three different
aspects to the investigation from, again, the ethics committee, but one of the aspects of the complaint was dismissed, but two others were kept.
Not really sure why the one was tossed, because the folks that are in the ethics board chairman and another member of the board did not respond to requests for clarification on why the specific statute was removed.
are still two different pieces of the complaint that are still out there.
And also next week, in fact, on Friday of next week is scheduled a hearing, truly a hearing to really get to the meat and potatoes of this case.
However, I'm guessing that hearing will not occur because the city clerk here in Wausau, the city attorney,
have not yet provided depositions requested by the mayor's legal team and according to folks around the clerk and the attorney they say that they cannot do it right now because number one that there is no legal there's no funding for legal assistance right now for for them and also that they've been asked because of this Department of Justice investigation and again that's just
word that is out there from them.
And frankly, this is one aspect of this case where the mayor's legal team is going to be asking again for this hearing next Friday to be postponed because they have not got these depositions from these two witnesses.
And I have to agree that in this case, the mayor and his legal team have a point.
And this never ending saga will be continuing.
It's like I was saying about the fake electors case yesterday.
that these things they just drag on and on.
This was September of last year when Mayor Doug Denney moved a locked absentee ballot drop box from the steps of City Hall into his office and I'm looking at the coverage of this from the Wausau pilot and review.
And they're mentioning that the federal statute that is no longer referenced is the one dealing with failure or refusal to permit casting or tabulation of a vote.
So refusing to permit the casting of a vote.
I guess I could see that that might be on shaky ground because the Dropbox was not yet open for accepting ballots.
But again, once you
If that helps clarify that, I'm fine with that.
If it gets us to the main point, and that is moving the box itself, when you don't have the authority to move the box, it just should not be taking this long to get that point made.
Well, frankly, something else about this case that I am finding very frustrating here now is that we have these two members of the Wasa City government.
We have already, we've heard about
other subpoenaed witnesses, including the Wassa Police Chief, Matt Barnes, and the Public Works Director, Eric Lindman, whose previous response is, according to the pilot, the board deemed vague.
And they both said, well, the questions are too vague.
If you get more specific, then I can.
give you a better response.
My response is, if you're a public official, you should be providing the information that is needed in this case, not trying to tiptoe or dance around the questions.
And it feels like there's a lot of folks who are not willing to get in front and say, here's what I know.
Here is what the mayor told me.
Here's what we discussed.
There's a lot of people trying to hide some information.
And these are public officials.
And I think there's a higher bar for these folks.
Yeah, unfortunately, and I also feel like and again, I am going to state flat out that I do not work in the court systems and I understand it's clogged.
I understand, you know, that that some of these things have to move slowly to provide due process.
But I think that that amount of wiggle room for due process has become, you know, insane.
Again, the fake electors case, this is it's been for.
four and a half years since, you know, that happened.
And another presidential election has been held since that time.
So your point is extremely valid, especially when it comes to public officials and their role, a deposition or otherwise in this.
In my mind, this is the kind of thing that should be triaged.
and said, you know what, this one's going to the top of the list because this is about the integrity of elections and the ethics of our city officials.
So
I hope it does.
By the way, real quickly, I think maybe on your program that was mentioned, and I thought it was a very good point, who ultimately named Eric Tony, the special prosecutor?
I still don't know.
And I don't know.
I mean, that's a really good question.
Yeah, no idea.
And one
of their aspects of this case that is, again, a little bit frustrating.
Yes.
And in all this, waiting to see if Josh Call is going to run for another term as State Attorney General.
And if he decides to run for governor, who else will step up as candidates?
And what will they be saying about how maybe more aggressive they might be in pursuing cases like this?
So much still to follow.
Chad Holmes, follow him on 98.9 WXCO in Warsaw and through the Civic Media app.
Chad, thank you very much.
Up Chad throws up and I hope I'm not I'm hoping that it's Okay,
That was that was good timing That was just the face.
He was making like I'm done with you Crichtlow.
So he's got things to do We'll be back.
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Why yes, I'd be very happy to tell you what else is coming up here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Nice of you to ask.
Coming up, Matt Nair on air from 9 to 11, following this program as always, Monday through Friday.
Greg, Greg Backel be flying solo today.
I'll be joining him for a little bit at 9.30.
But then after the 10 o'clock news.
Tune in to hear from Secretary of State Sarah Godluschi, who is now a candidate for Lieutenant Governor.
Again, just after 10 o'clock as part of Matt and Air on Air.
And then on the Maggie Dawn Show, coming up later this afternoon, after 5 o'clock, Sarah Anderson from the Institute for Policy Studies will be talking about a new study on the pay gap between CEOs and workers.
And if it's anything like what I suspect, it's one of those things that I think does not get shared often enough as to people who, people just assume that the gap has always been this wide and that it's perfectly fine and there's nothing you can do about it and nothing could be further from the truth.
I have a note here from the Chippewa Falls School District and want to salute Alicia Neinfeld.
a teacher at Chippewa Falls Middle School who's been named the 2025 Wisconsin History Teacher of the Year.
It's an award that is given out by the Gilder-Lariman Institute.
the nation's leading non-profit for K-12 American History Education, celebrating one teacher from each state and territory for their dedication, their creativity, their effective use of primary sources.
Nominees are recommended by colleagues, school leaders, and students.
They're selected then by a state committee of historians and educators, and Alicia Neinfeld won that for Chippewa Falls Middle School.
It's her 15th year in education, her fourth year at Chippewa Middle.
She teaches eighth grade social studies.
She's a board certified teacher.
She's originally from Wisconsin Rapids.
And according to Superintendent Jeff Holmes, he says that the district is very proud of a volitious selection.
It reflects her exceptional dedication to American history, to the life of our eighth grade students.
And as a former social studies teacher myself, Jeff Holmes writes, I deeply appreciate the efforts to teach good lessons and Ali exemplifies excellence in that area.
She's gonna receive a $1,000 honorarium.
Also a curated collection of American history books and educational material from the Gilder Lehman Institute.
And she'll join the other 50 some honorees as a finalist for the National History Teacher of the Year Award to be announced this fall at a special ceremony in New York City.
Now of all that, what I got out of that the most Parker is not, I mean, the recognition is nice.
The $1,000 honorarium is nice.
But she's also getting a curated collection of American history books.
If somebody showed up at my door and said, this is a curated collection of American history books for you.
I mean, it's not the Powerball, but I would, I would be one happy camper.
I would.
Oh, my God.
Look at this bookshelf behind me.
This is this is just a sample of everything that's down in the basement and
I would just eat that up.
I go to bookstores now, and first, I'm a little overwhelmed.
I'm not exactly sure which, you know, there's so many things to choose from, and you don't want to choose wrong.
But also, the other thing about bookstores nowadays, they're kind of depressing, and they don't mean to be.
I'm just saying, when you go to the current event shelves, the social sciences shelves or whatever, I always talk about both sidesism.
And the both sidesism of seeing some books that are an honest portrayal of American history.
And then you'll see other books talking about, you know, how the Clinton mafia destroyed America or, you know, how Obama is really not from here.
And it's on the bookshelf the same as any other book.
And here's the thing, I'm sure that, you know, the people that run these bookstores are very good people.
They do not want to cause trouble.
They do not want the attention that would come by having a separate shelf that says, you know, we looked at the sourcing on this stuff, and maybe not so much.
Again, there's a difference between opinions that you disagree with, and misinformation.
I'm very clear on that.
But there is a line.
And that to me is just the troubling part is to see, you know, you see these on the bookshelf and you go, they're people who they think this is it.
You know, this is the one true way forward because Rush Limbaugh says it is, you know, as the author of this particular book.
That actually happened to me once in Idaho.
I was dropping off one of the grandkids at school.
I had a chance to look at the school library, little tiny library, you know, little tiny town in Idaho.
And I go over to the history slash social studies section.
And the only books that were there were written by Bill O'Reilly from when he was on Fox News at the time.
And it's like, I can see why Idaho is a red state,
you
know, if this is, if this is what they're going to allow.
for what passes as books.
So this is all to say that we need good history teachers, like Alicia Neinfeld at Chippewa Falls Middle School, that much more.
And I know nothing about her political affiliations.
That's not the important part.
The important part is that you're teaching fact-based information to your eighth graders so that they get out there into the world.
And when they're reading other things, they can go, you know, this doesn't quite
Jive with what history's taught us for example, you know, trump thinking that he can solve everything through jacking up tariffs History will tell you that failed miserably just about a hundred years ago and made the great depression so much worse And it failed miserably about a hundred years before that And caused a depression in the american economy in the 19th century But as i'm sure uh miss neinfeld would be the first to remind you
Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
When we come back, we'll be talking to Dan Schaffer, Civic Media's political editor and founder of the Reconpopulation Area about some political news and notes and cell phone bans in classrooms as we continue rolling on on this Tuesday morning here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Err's baseball resumes tonight against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Coverage begins at 6.05 on several civic media radio stations across the state.
Head to the website, civicmedia.us to learn more.
Meanwhile, over on the Up North News website, UpNorthNewsWI.com, there is a story there about a strike at a Wisconsin cheese making plant, W&W in Monroe.
There are 43 employees that went on strike after it was acquired.
by the Dairy Farmers of America Cooperative, in part because of the cooperative saying that they are going to be more aggressive on checking employee immigration status.
And that has led to some workers who've been there for an extremely long time as valuable employees now facing the prospect that they would be jobless without any kind of a severance.
So read more about that at our website, up on newswi.com.
Civic Media's political editor is Dan Schaefer, also founder of the Reconbobulation Area.
Find it at the Reconbobulation Area dot news, right?
Yes, there it is, dot news.
Dan, how are you?
I'm doing well,
Pat.
Always wonderful to join you here on mornings with Pat Critello.
It's so nice to have you here as well.
When you and I were chatting about things to bring up today and you talked about, you know, back to school theme and the ongoing moves to ban cell phones and classrooms, I ended up spending the first half hour of the show letting people know just how ridiculously old I am, including the notion that that these cell phone bans were necessary because I had thought all along that
cell phones would be a no-no in classrooms.
They'd have to stay in lockers or be put on a shelf or something like that.
That is clearly not the case if we're talking about putting bands in place now, which only leads to me to ask the question, what took everybody so long?
It does seem like kind of a no-brainer thing, but I think after COVID, and so many people having to attend class remotely and whatnot, I think it kind of slipped away.
And I think this became an issue that really actually needed to be addressed by whether it's your school board or maybe even the state legislature.
And so, yeah, I think we've seen some
some local school districts, there was a story in Civic Media about some action being taken in Richland Center, but I expect this to be an issue going forward.
And part of it is what you just talked about, just kind of the common sense of not wanting to have cell phones in school, but there's actually polling on this now.
Marquette Poll brought this up in their most recent poll earlier this summer about banning cell phones.
They asked about banning phones during the entire school day,
or banning phones just during class.
And it both had overwhelming majority support.
Banning phones during the entire school day, 72% said yes to that, 28% said no.
And banning phones during class, you're not gonna get a whole lot of issues with this much support.
89% said yes to banning phones during class with just 11% saying no.
So again, that is from the Markhine University Law School poll from
this June.
Again, how is this a thing?
But then listeners started putting comments in about the way that now devices are being incorporated into learning through various apps and QR codes and things like that.
And while I certainly understand that,
I would have rather we were at a point where the devices were more in the control of the school, of the teacher, so that, you know, look, it would cost a lot to put 25 or 30 iPads or something in every classroom.
But if you're going to use a device as a teaching tool, then that really should be the thing that you're using, because not every kid is going to have a cell phone that they can bring in.
So I mean, you're talking about the democratization, small D, of devices, of digital divides.
And I just don't want our schools to be a place where digital divides are exacerbated.
Yeah, that's right.
I think that's an interesting point.
And it probably makes sense to have
you know, the some sort of technology capability that it's not like kids bringing their own phones to use this because that's just going to create their own set of distractions and things like that too.
One of the things that I actually found interesting in that poll Marquette breaks out the differences by age group.
for different questions that they asked throughout the poll.
And so there was a big difference between the 18 to 29 year old age group on that question on a full day ban.
So there's still majority support for banning phones during class in that age group, more than 70% support.
But if you ask about the full day ban among those 18 to 29, only 43% say yes to 56% saying no.
So I guess here you want some of the people
in that age group, at least want to use their phones at their lockers during class.
I guess that's the
idea there.
I guess it'd be one thing if you need to make a call or a text message, but...
You know, I'm late to class because I was, you know, putting up a post on Instagram because I'm an influencer now.
You know, that's that's the kind of thing I kind of worry about.
We are talking to Dan Schaefer here from the Reconbobulation area.
And getting back more into the political swing of things.
Yesterday we had on both Representative Francesca Hong of Madison, and also John Shelton, who is the president of AFT, and he
pen to column called the candidate we need and deserve for governor in 2026.
And he and state Senator Chris Larson were making the point that, you know, the next Democratic nominee better be unabashedly, you know, pro labor, pro union, not just, you know, pro worker.
A lot of talk about being a more aggressive candidate, Representative Hong also banging that drum that, you know, milk toast candidates need not apply.
But we got a ways to go yet here, Dan.
I mean, the journal Sentinel, I think yesterday.
was calling this an unusual race for how few people have gotten in already.
I think it might be a little early to pass judgment yet on the race, but there's still clearly a lot of interest in finding, you know, the perfect candidate, he says with finger quotes.
Yeah, that's right.
And well, and I wrote a piece last week at the recon population area, and I even called it the two early breakdown of the race for governor in 2026.
And, you know, whether it's, you know, folks talking about, you know, wanting certain policies,
or whatever.
There's going to be obviously a lot of talk about what people want next for a Democratic governor, for these candidates who are going to be running.
I would caution a little bit about what you mentioned with Professor Shelton putting out, because I just don't think there needs to be litmus tests put on.
And it can happen from both
wings of the democratic big tent, whether it's the progressives or the moderates.
And I think we shouldn't be placing these types of things, you have to be this way, you have to be that way at this stage of the campaign in the very, very early stages.
I think one of the problems that the Democratic Party has had is narrowing the tent and talking about like, oh, you have to bring a certain level of these
exact geo-targeted, pole-tested types of policies to your platform, or otherwise it's not going to work.
I think Democrats have to get back to building that bigger tent and recognize that there are going to be some competing and sometimes conflicting views within that tent, but that that's okay, and that people can still be kind of, you know, rowing in the same general direction, even if people might have different individual views on things.
And I think this issue that Democrats can often
get bogged down in and saying oh you have the party has to go this direction the party has to go that direction well party has to bring everybody together that's what it ultimately has to be it can't be like oh you have to be the most progressive pro-union you know go through the list but you you have to bring all corners of the party together and go forward
Well this takes me to a conversation I had yesterday with a friend in political circles and something I know we talked about last week and I'm not going to bang the strum every week but talking about the third congressional district and the Democratic primary there with three Democratic candidates so far and there there may be more before all is said and done even though one of those candidates is the nominee from last year Becca Cook but Becca Cook is not
everyone's cup of tea in some democratic circles.
And I talked to somebody yesterday who very squarely fits into that category.
And she says, I want to make this clear.
I don't like some of, you know, something about her might be an issue, might be personality, whatever the heck it is.
But I'm like, but she was like, but I'm going to knock doors for her, because she's the one that almost beat Derek Van Orden.
And she's the one that can win.
And the other
you know protest candidates or whatever you want to call them you know from the from the left or the moderate or whatever they're they're good people but she's like I'm not gonna let perfect be the enemy of the good we do this far too often in democratic circles she said and I'm betting some republican folks would say that about their party as well
yeah and she's
You know, she is a candidate that is reflecting kind of exactly what I'm talking about with building a bigger tent.
She's having events with, she was endorsed by the Blue Dogs.
She's going to these centrist events in New York.
She just had Bernie Sanders campaign with her over the weekend.
You know, and I just think that it is, that is the approach that we need right now.
And say, you don't have to agree with me 100% on every issue.
But we can all be in this together.
All corners of the Democratic Party can be in this together.
I really like the approach that she's taking in her campaign so far.
We're talking to Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation Area.
You can read his column, sign up for it over at therecombobulationarea.news.
And by the way, we don't say enough.
You can get the column there, but Dan's also in the subscription business.
And so can you talk a little bit about the Recombobulation Area itself for people that aren't maybe on the substack all the time and, you know, why some things are...
you would subscribe to them and other things that you can just get on demand because that's something that I think is growing in popularity out there.
Yeah, well, we launched the Recon Population Area in 2019, became part of Civic Media almost exactly one year ago, coming up on the one year anniversary tomorrow of when we launched
Reconbibulation area within civic media.
And so, yeah, you can subscribe to get all of my work at the Reconbibulation area.
I put out a recap each week of all of my radio appearances.
So if you don't catch me on mornings with Pat Crite low, you might hear me on the Todd Alba show or the Maggie Dawn show or I'm always on Fridays at 10 a.m.
on mat and air on air.
And then you can also find some of work from many of our great guest columnists and contributors.
I had a piece last week from Emily Cephos who wrote about how Democrats can rebuild trust.
We have a number of other contributors, Angela Lange, I know is a regular across the network here as well.
But you subscribe, you can support the work that we do and help us do even more recombobulating in Milwaukee and across the state.
You
get these all-star guest writers.
I mean, Angela Lange is already an award-winning guest writer.
That's right.
And I made this mental note yesterday to reach out to Emily.
We tried to get her a couple months back, but she was camping.
She was in a remote place.
And we got to get her back on and forgive the old guy trying to sound like a young person.
Hello, fellow youths.
But that Emily Seffos column was a banger.
It was absolutely what needed to be said.
I want to get her on the show, but let's go ahead and steal her thunder.
Talk a bit more about what it is that she wrote about so that people go up and read
it.
Yeah, she wrote a terrific piece.
She is the chair of the out of gamey county Democrats.
And she talked about how Democrats have a real trust problem.
And I think that is something that
people on the left first need to acknowledge that the Democratic brand is in trouble, that they have a real trust problem.
And she talked about how addressing that is just it's within the toolbox that we already have.
And I think it is about showing up over and over and over again.
She mentioned one example about in the Freedom Area School District where they held a fundraiser to pay off school lunch debt.
And people are asking like, well, why are you why are you doing this?
And they said explicitly that we're doing this because
Republicans have underfunded public schools for a generation.
And now we have things like school lunch debt that needs to be dealt with.
And so that's just one of many examples that she shared throughout the piece.
And again, I encourage you to go read that at the Reconbibulation area.
Dan Schaffer is here talking about that.
We'll continue the conversation.
Some final news and notes from Lake Wissota coming up next.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
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.
Welcome back on this Tuesday morning talking to Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area.
Dan, it's time to play Choose Your Adventure.
We can talk about hypocrisy about the First Amendment, hypocrisy about the Second Amendment, or hypocrisy about capitalism versus socialism.
Would you like to start in any place in particular or spin the wheel?
We'll start with the last of those three as our government, the party of
Free markets and limited government is out there seizing the means of production, I guess, or something.
Yes.
But honestly, though, for people that are still new to this issue and saying, why is the Trump administration bragging about the government?
basically taking over 10% of Intel and wondering, well, is this different than what happened at the start of the Great Recession?
There was nobody clamoring for this particular deal to happen with Intel, was there?
No, and I think this is, it's almost because there was a failure of a deal that happened with Intel in the first Trump administration when they tried to build a big plant in Ohio and much like Foxconn here in Wisconsin, it didn't really materialize.
I'm shocked.
Yeah, and now the President Trump strategy now, I guess, is to take a 10% stake in Intel.
from the 10% stake for the U.S.
government and Intel, and the New York Times characterizes this as, quote, the most notable intervention in private business since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Yeah, I would say so.
I would say so.
I would say this goes maybe orders of magnitude beyond that in a certain way, since many of those steps were contingent on certain things or were loans to private businesses or had certain specific issues that needed
be dealt with because Republicans tanked the economy in 2008.
And now we have, you know, one of the things that I've just been absolutely astonished by during the Trump administration, we have all this action on tariffs, all of these.
And now we have this on Intel.
And we have all of these different institutes and organizations throughout the state.
We have the McIver Institute or the Badger Institute or the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
And they all talk about these free market principles and all of these different things.
And they haven't said
a bumbling word about any of these actions by the Trump administration, which couldn't be further from the principles of what this party purported to be on free markets and capitalism and letting the market decide and keeping government out of private business.
Now we have the US government taking a 10% stake in a large multinational corporation.
It is absolutely ridiculous.
The free market conservatives have
appeared.
And it's almost like they never actually believed in any of these principles to begin with.
And it is only and only has ever been a pathway to power.
Don't you think, Pat Crichtlow?
I can only imagine how many of these folks were members of the House Freedom Caucus, who said they would never vote for a bill that raised the national debt by a dollar.
But apparently $4 trillion is okay.
So the Freedom Caucus.
Not
our senior senator, Ron Johnson, who has made this his issue for 15 years in the Senate and has never done anything on it and has voted for two gigantic bills that have ballooned the deficit.
Yes.
Exactly.
So yeah, the Bloomberg headline from one columnist, Trump seems pretty socialist these days.
Imagine if a Democratic president demanded a stake in a computer chipmaker in exchange for favorable treatment.
Eric Erickson spoke out about it, Rand Paul spoke out about it, but virtually no other.
known Republicans, certainly not any any public officials, things like that.
Yeah, the brain trust in Wisconsin, three institutes in a trench coat haven't said a darn thing about it.
So
exactly.
All right, Second Amendment hypocrisy.
Where's the Second Amendment crowd saying, you know, we need all these guns, because otherwise, one of these days, the government is just going to put troops in the streets and we got to be ready for them.
Again, crickets.
Yeah, gotta be ready for that tyranny that is apparently a different version of tyranny than what I Don't know.
It's just so ridiculous.
It's just like there's so much hypocrisy up and down the open down the party It's be
well that takes us to number three first amendment hypocrisy and a Trump executive order Directing the Department of Justice to aggressively go after people that burn the flag which once upon a time
back in you know the the 80s especially was a pretty well stated republican talking point but again now the whole free market conservative approach uh understands that this has been protected by the first amendment nobody likes it i mean nobody's advocating for flag burning but in terms of where you're gonna put the resources of the department of justice to go against something protected by the first amendment
Again, I would expect a little bit more of a hue and cry about that as well.
Again, it's almost like these principles didn't mean anything.
Almost like it, exactly.
And I've seen some of the certain types of writers who were very much scolding of Democrats over the past few years for their policing of speech and whatever it is, which is a totally overblown issue, I think, to begin with.
And now that Trump is taking actual steps against the First Amendment, against freedom of speech, against the freedom of the press, things like that.
Crickets, once again, crickets from the supposed free speech warriors on the right who are supposed to be having principles, I guess, on these types of issues.
And those have just disappeared and they're just cheerleading, owning the libs.
That's really their only guiding principle anymore.
And less than a minute for a final topic, because you were at the Bob Buecher tribute at American Family Field.
So I just wanted your quick impressions on that.
Yeah, it was I mean to really switch gears here.
It was a remarkable, remarkable experience.
It was a bummer they lost the game, but it was a great day at the ballpark.
You know, me and some friends jumped on tickets for the Euker celebration early.
We got to our seats early, settled in to celebrate.
Really, it just feels like Bob Euker is a family member in Milwaukee in so many ways.
You know, he's just been around for so long and he was just such a part of our lives here in the city and being in Milwaukee.
and you know, some of the stuff that they shouted out about his growing up in Milwaukee.
He first played catcher at Wickfield, which is now the neighborhood park where I take my kids on the west side of town.
So it's just it was a really remarkable experience and I would encourage anybody who hasn't seen it to go check out the program online.
Truly part of the family.
Dan Schaefer, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
And the rest of you have a wonderful Tuesday as well.
We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, bright and early 6 a.m.
here up north on the Civic Media radio network.
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