You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime,
anywhere.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
It is 706.
Nice to have you back here up north on this Tuesday morning, August 26th.
Parker Olson is our producer down in Madison at Studio A2 of the World Headquarters of Civic Media at the top of State Street, just a block away from the state capital and meteorologist Brittney Merleau joins us as well.
Still, is that a hoodie
you got going there?
Um, I don't know.
It's like a t-shirt hoodie, so
just mon
sleeves.
Yeah.
Okay, that's all right.
Well, I was mentioning that I've got a daughter and grandkids who came up from Texas yesterday.
And it had been so long, you know, they moved there from Idaho.
And in Idaho, you just wore hoodies year round, basically,
you know.
And the older grandson, who yesterday was his 19th birthday, and he makes his comment like he didn't pack any hoodies because in Texas, they haven't had to wear one for the longest time, gets up here and it's in the 40s.
And we had to lend them a hoodie.
Oh, how funny.
He's like, wait, it's been a minute since I've had this many hoodies.
Right?
Right.
But I was all fine.
And again, you know, when they're used to temperatures in the 90s, every stinking day, you know, this, this was, I was gonna say it was part refreshing.
They are actually cold.
They were cold for a while when they were first here.
Oh,
absolutely.
They'll go
from that to this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They'll act.
I think
I
think they'll do fine.
How are we doing on it for today?
How are we looking?
Ooh, pretty chilly up north.
Kings hit 34 degrees just a couple of minutes ago.
It's about 36 right now in Eagle River and Manitwish Waters.
37 degrees all the way into Hayward, Solon Springs, Merrill, Tomahawk, Antigo.
Yeah, a lot more places got cooler this evening or overnight than yesterday.
So what we're doing right now, mid 40s to mid 50s for most of the state is what it is outside.
We've got patchy fog far northeast.
but mostly sunny skies and it's going to stay bright and beautiful all day.
Calm or winds are expected and highs today slightly warmer, mid to upper sixties with a few seventies out there.
Overnight tonight, we'll start to see more clouds moving in.
We've got another system pushing through tomorrow.
A cold front arrives.
I know we're already chilly, so we don't need another cold front.
It's just going to reinforce the fact that we're going to stay a little below average as we go into the weekend, unfortunately.
So the cold front will spark a few scattered showers, maybe some rumbles of thunder tomorrow afternoon far northeast.
Then it'll start working its way through the rest of the state at night and overnight.
We're all going to see a little bit of that.
None are going to be severe.
Probably just a quarter inch of rain with those mid seventies tomorrow.
So it is going to bring a little bit warmer temperatures, but behind it Thursday, we fall to the mid sixties to about 70 degrees again and then into the weekend.
We're looking at upper sixties, mid seventies, and that holds steady all weekend long.
Monday, we get a little bit warmer and even warmer as we go into next week.
But staying on the cooler side below average for Labor Day weekend, it looks like dry though.
Oh, OK, we'll take try.
That's that's a big part of it.
I mean, again, we can we can wear we can wear hoodies, you know, for Labor Day weekend, but better than ponchos, you know,
I would much rather be dry
or parkas, you know, so this is all okay.
Okay, I got to tell you
in Wisconsin Rapids, I heard there was a man walking yesterday morning in a full parka, but shorts.
a full parka, but shorts.
That's that's very Midwestern.
You know, we're doing it.
You know, any college campus, you'll see somebody with a shirt out, but still in shorts.
It just seems to be seems to be our thing.
The 11 year old was going through TSA security in the Dallas airport yesterday, and it was had to go back through again, because he did have a hoodie on, but it's oversized.
And the TSA person was like, Do you have hands?
Yeah.
Walk back through again to make sure we can see your hands and not anything you might literally have up your sleeve.
Those
kids in their fashions, I tell you.
They have the sleeves and they just whack them around.
Oh,
they get.
Yes, they do.
Of course.
You know, he he he's also been being an 11 year old boy.
First thing he did was he started chasing rat.
We have rabbit, you know, bunny rabbits running out out of the woods out in the backyard and he's chasing them down.
I'm like, if he catches one, I'm not firing up the grill.
He's got to let it go.
You know, just kind of a wild child.
Thank you, Brittany.
We'll talk to you next hour.
So
good.
All right.
Remember, you can sign up for our daily newsletter.
Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Rob says, good morning from Tigerton Sunny and 47 degrees.
Yesterday, I had my doctor's appointment with Dr. Elizabeth.
It went well.
Yesterday afternoon, had a mowing job.
I have mowing jobs today in Wittenberg.
He said, yesterday I mowed lawn.
I had my sweatshirt and it truly felt like autumn.
I had to get my jacket and coat in the truck and get them washed for fall.
And he says, remember two years ago,
It was very hot on Labor Day weekend near 100 degrees, whereas Tigerton was down to 46 for an overnight low last night, which, yes, is definitely chilly, but not the 30s that Brittany was just telling us about in certain communities here.
Also from the mailbag, let's see, from Jonathan talking about the Trump bill.
The Trump mega bill is actually pretty popular.
So many Wisconsinites are proud and excited for this bill.
I am one of them.
Woke is dead.
The Democrat Party is dead.
The money flow from laundering is done.
The globalists are finished.
America is being restored.
And I am proud to be part of it.
So there's that from the from the mailbag today.
Let's go to sports the Milwaukee Brewers have a series going on right now against the Arizona Diamondbacks at American Family Field The game featured two different five-run rallies the first one was by the Brewers in the third inning scoring five runs and Then they added one more and Arizona was down six nothing before they had their own five-run rally in the sixth inning
But then Caleb Durbin homered for the second straight game.
There was also a home run by Andrew Monasterio to help the Brewers beat the Diamondbacks 7-5 last night.
Monasterio and Christian Yelich and William Contreras each had two hits as Milwaukee continues to lead the National League Central Division.
Jacob Mizorowski is on the mound tonight for game two, and the pregame for that begins at 6.05 this evening on several stations across the Civic Media radio network.
And then Parker, what was I saying before in terms of roster cut downs for the Packers today from 90 to 53?
Yeah.
I believe is what I said last hour.
Yep.
So
we should be looking for those notes today.
And again, I don't know well enough.
I mean, I know there's a practice squad.
I assume some of them become part of this practice squad.
I don't know how big that is.
I believe I think it's seven.
And then what?
I mean, for all of the others, do they just go back to, you know, driving truck or whatever they were doing?
Yeah, that is kind of the
Because
I always think
about Kurt Kurt Warner.
I guess there's
a
movie coming about him how he went from like begging groceries one year and to Super Bowl MVP the next year when he
came on both
the Rams to help them win the Super Bowl.
Yeah,
I don't know if it is, but it should
be.
It was it was a very unique Cinderella story.
Yes.
Without a doubt.
So again, we'll look for the Packer roster moves and
Let's see, Mike Lemons is covering training camp in Green Bay, and we'll tell us more.
If not later today, then tomorrow, what to look for for cut downs from the Packers.
We've been following a story that came up earlier this morning about Vice President JD Vance is apparently coming to La Crosse.
The early reports said Tuesday, but I've also seen a report that said Thursday, so I'm still waiting to see any final details here.
But we will be eventually seeing the vice president somewhere in the lacrosse area at a steel fabricating facility that was not yet named in the early reports here to talk up the big bloated boondoggle.
The thing that one of our commenters said was actually pretty popular when there's actually no polling that says that it's popular and is going to try to prop up the idea of giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy and you pay for it.
And so do our grandkids by jacking up the deficit to record amounts.
So along with having to prop that up, he's having to prop up the Congressman for this area, Derek Van Orden from the Third Congressional District.
And again, we've got a Congressman who is saying things like, there are no cuts to Medicaid in this bill.
Nobody who deserves their Medicaid benefits will have their Medicaid benefits cut and other
fantasies.
And so whenever JD Vance and Derek Van Orden do this, and I assume Derek Van Orden will be there, it'd be news if the congressman is not there when the vice president comes to your district.
But regardless, just come back here the next day and expect some, you know, aggressive fact checking on it.
Because again, the tax relief that was promised in there,
is very temporary to the middle class.
I mean, what gets me is that we've been to this rodeo before, where it sold as tax breaks for the middle class, but they expire after a couple of years.
But the corporate breaks and the breaks for the highest brackets, they don't expire.
Or if they do, it's at a period where, again, they don't get dinged for blowing up the deficit.
because they call for those things to expire, you know, 10 years down the road when some other Congress has to deal with it.
Well, here we are all those years later, eight years later from the original Trump tax bill.
Again, those tax breaks were going to expire.
But because Trump got back in office, we get to continue them again.
And this time, we're going to jack up the deficit another $4 trillion and see
just massive cuts all around to Medicaid, which is also going to impact Medicare, Social Security.
That's on top of the trade war, which has got farmers and manufacturers concerned.
So yes, so well, when the vice president comes to town, we're going to be very careful in taking down exactly what he says, and then telling you exactly how it's going to be turning out instead.
There is, you know, rightfully a lot of concern out there right now with some of what, you know, Trump is putting out, for example, taking over, you know, 10% of intel.
That's not going over well with some conservatives who can't seem to figure out why Trump is embracing socialism.
That's the headline in Futurism magazine.
Trump embraces socialism is nationalizing a failing chip maker in talking about taking a $9 billion share of Intel's stock in exchange for, you know, escaping tariff or trade war concerns.
And it is Intel's basically getting
It's lunch money taken from NVIDIA.
Intel is basically yesterday's news.
But the government taking over part of an American company is not sitting well with some people whose conservative credentials are
a little longer lasting than Donald Trump's.
There's conservative radio host Eric Erickson who says, so many of you were opposed to Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, wanting to seize the means of production in New York City, but you're totally fine with the U.S.
government becoming the largest shareholder of Intel.
This is socialism with an R next to its name.
And Republican Senator Rand Paul expressed similar concerns when he said, today it's Intel, tomorrow it could be any industry, a future Commerce Secretary decides to control.
If conservatives endorse this now, they hand Democrats a blueprint to expand government ownership over the private sector later.
Socialism is literally government control of the means of production.
So if these...
Long-standing Republicans get it.
Will we hear more from, I don't know, the Ron Johnson's, the Derrick Van Ordens and the Tom Tiffany's out there?
Or is this just not your grandfather's brand of conservatism, but conservative socialism?
I'm Pat Crightlow.
You're listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Back now with Dan Hagen from News Watch 12, WJFW TV in Rhinelander on this Tuesday morning where it is 48 degrees here on Lake Wissota.
It is 51 in New Richmond in front of Busy Bean Coffee and closer to Dan at the Briar House Coffee Shop in Rhinelander on Keenan Street there.
It's a cool 42 degrees in Rhinelander right now.
Mr. Hagen, how are you?
It's great.
It feels like fall.
I should get some apple cider.
Maybe go apple pick picking get some pumpkin pie.
Oh, you got you got all the bases covered here.
We were talking coffee during the break here and you said something that I had not heard from anybody before but then last hour I didn't know much about cell phones and classrooms.
So we're just I'm learning all kinds of things today.
I'm learning that Dan Hagen puts a little touch of maple syrup in his coffee.
That's right.
So I got some coffee right here.
That
doesn't look like coffee.
It looks like chocolate milk.
Well, I put some whole milk in there.
Okay.
And I put some maple syrup and I do that with my coffee every morning and it's great.
And I just, I can't stand the coffees at, there's a lot of fine local establishments here that
Lot of people enjoy but they're just it's usually too sweet for me.
So I just
putting maple syrup
It's just like it's like a it's like a teaspoon
Okay, okay just enough for flavor and not to make it if
you get a mocha like at a normal place Like it's gonna be like a freaking sugar bomb.
I can't I can't handle
it Yes, and when I so when I do get a mocha at a place, that's exactly what I'm looking for is something like that but you know again it
I'm not going to do that every day because I mean, I don't even know what they go for now six, seven, eight bucks for for, you know, a beverage that is what's the old saying the business model for coffee shop beans, water.
Profit it
right.
It seems it's I'm so frugal as a person.
So yeah, I just I get by with the coffee that I make and I like it And you know probably saving some money down the line
I suppose I suppose as we look at stories that you're following up there in the north woods I noticed and I did get a note from Kirk Bankstead yesterday that the criminal definition
criminal defamation charge against him has been dropped for this long-running feud that he has with Greg Walker, the publisher of The Lakeland Times.
There's still a lot to be said about Kirk Bankstead and either his legal woes or his legal harassment, depending on how you want to look at this.
But the criminal defamation thing, that's something that was really rare in Wisconsin.
So I guess I'm not entirely surprised to see that it was dropped.
Yeah, it's a very seldom used, you know, charge.
Civil defamation is something that things that has been found liable in after he
Said that he publisher of the newspaper and by the way if you've been to the Monaco burn company in Monaco Across the street is the Lakeland Times the newspaper that he's had a feud with and He's been found liable of civil defamation for saying that the general manager or rather the publisher Excuse me of the Lakeland Times basically let his brother die Just a completely made-up story.
So he was basically found liable and had to pay the largest defamation
payout in wisconsin history although insurance covered a lot of that but anyway back to the task at hand this week so these criminal defamation charges have just been dropped basically um i read the court document and it comes down to just free speech you know he's allowed to say what he wants and he marked that it was parody in um he depicted the general manager and publisher in a lewd uh cartoon
yes he did which again
That's something that you can do under the First Amendment.
The other thing that you mentioned, Bankstead Essence apologized for, again, has made this payment for the defamation thing, did indeed cross a line there.
But I always think that folks hear that, and they think that that undoes a lot of the other harassment, I think is safe to call it, by authorities there who are enforcing what I'd call the broken tail light.
thing where, you know, they'll pull you over for a broken taillight and then they'll charge you with first degree murder, you know, or something along those lines because, you know, they just don't like having somebody that liberal and that brash calling them out for some of the things that they do.
And Kirk sometimes does not help his own case.
But a lot of the times he's not wrong either.
Or regardless, it gives plenty of fodder for
News organizations like yours to cover I would not read the Lakeland Times for coverage of that I've said before I could make a cottage industry out of Simply responding to everything the Lakeland Times gets wrong on their editorial pages every week I've been saying that for over a decade, but they are what they are everybody knows what the the Lakeland Times is and if you if you
If you like it, you like it despite whatever the information is on there.
But I would strongly recommend that people have a broad sense of where they get their news from, including, you know, what you're doing up there in NewsWatch 12.
So what other stories are you looking at or having fun with on what is otherwise I suppose a slow summer week?
Yeah, you know, it's it's slow up here.
There's a community church that insane or that they're trying to get restored and rehabilitated.
So they've been raising money for that.
You know, I actually took the day off yesterday.
I went backpacking this weekend on the North Country Trail.
I don't know if you know about this, Pat, but it's the longest national scenic trail in the country.
And I did a small section with some friends in Iron County.
So that was a good time.
And I'm planning a trip to the Boundary Waters right now as well.
So, you know, my mind is a little more focused on me right now during the dark days of summer.
And why shouldn't it be?
I mean, we're shut-ins for the winter by and large.
You know, a few people will do their winter sports.
For me, what do I always say?
My winter recreation is walking out to the hot tub.
And that's it.
So you got to get out and enjoy the summer while you can.
So, Dan, you've earned it.
Thanks for getting up early with us and enjoy your coffee and maple syrup.
Of course.
And I wore this, you know, fleece for you, Pat.
The
Fred Flintstone fleece is alive and
well.
We love
it.
We love it.
Thank you, Dan.
Talk to you later.
In a moment, we're going to talk to Hans Brighton Moser.
We're going to talk to Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association.
Gene Bond will be joining us as well to talk about event barns and the ways that the Wisconsin legislature could be doing better things for farmers who want to diversify what they do as part of the rural economy.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Milwaukee Brewers are back in action tonight against the Arizona Diamondbacks after winning yesterday 7-5.
Coverage begins this evening with the pregame at 6-05 on several civic media stations around the network.
A reminder as well here at Up North News you can sign up for our Sunday morning newsletter about Wisconsin politics, other political stories, and this week we ask whether Wisconsin should keep or get rid of mail-in voting after President Trump made comments about wanting to get rid of.
mail-in voting because Vladimir Putin told them that, you know, they didn't make for fair elections.
A lot of our respondents so far disagree with that.
Surprise, surprise.
what do you think as well?
To see our question of the week first, sign up for that newsletter at outmortonewswi.com.
Click subscribe up in the top banner.
We're going to be talking in just a sec to Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association and Gene Bond, who has one of the event barns that are impacted by legislation that could affect certain farm businesses around the state.
But as always, we start with our friend Hans Brighton Moser, a dairy farmer from up in Lincoln County near Merrill.
And Hans, good morning.
I was just here
Pam Yankee on the Midwest Farm Report talked about, you know, harvesting already taking place that corn for silage was 2% harvested already, but I also just heard Brittany Merlos say temperatures are in the 30s up in your neck of the woods.
So how are things overall?
So yeah, it's
Yeah.
And we're both without her hoodies because we had we had the youths who needed those instead.
So
yeah,
that's
fine.
Oh, Parker.
I came prepared.
I've got my hoodie.
That's true.
Parker does have a hoodie on there.
But things are things are good up otherwise by you in terms of field work.
As a matter of
fact, we're going to start mowing fourth crop of our regular hay stands today in the second crop of the new seeding today as well.
So we've got this.
This will be likely the last hay crop that we make.
And then, yeah, corn silage harvest for us will probably begin in maybe two weeks, depending on what the weather does.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Third cutting for hay is 89% complete around the state, according to the new ag figures.
And fourth cutting is 31% complete so far.
And not everybody, depending on the season necessarily gets four cuttings throughout the season, do they?
And again, it depends on the weather.
But if we can get started early enough in spring with first crop, which is to say getting that first cutting done in the last week of May or the first week of June, that sort of sets us up for success.
And there are some hay meadows that are questionable whether they really paid to cut or not.
But most of them look...
halfway decent.
We should get a halfway decent crop and it should be decent quality as well.
Sounds good.
And and we've talked about before about, you know, farmers being able to diverse diversify their businesses for things like tourism and events.
And that's where we bring in Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association.
Jean Bond is here as well.
She has Farm View Event Barn in Berlin.
Sheila Jean, good morning to both of you as well.
Morning.
Good morning.
Sheila let's let's pick up where we've we've spoken before about the overhaul in Wisconsin's liquor laws act 73 from a year or two ago and it had a dreadful impact on basically event barns In the way that it restricted the number of events they could do without having to go through all the hoops for a liquor license And there's been this talk of having so-called trailer bills follow-up bills that would address this inequity
But Sheila, is there any progress to report on that so far?
I'd like to report that the citizens and voters.
are really reaching out to their elected officials.
The constituents have sent 698 letters forward to Madison saying, hey, elected official, we want you to correct this injustice of Act 73.
We're moving into Labor Day, and we want to talk about economic liberty and the opportunity to earn a living.
We want to talk about diversification.
for family farms and this x73 really just strangles a working farm.
that is seasonally temporary permitted, that is not interested in having a liquor license.
They are interested in renting space.
So we want to talk about this with our elected officials, not only the impact on the farmer, but the impact on the consumer and what X73, how the impact is on the tax paper.
I
think
a lot of people don't understand that X73 created a whole nother division in office.
at the Department of Revenue that is going to be specifically for alcohol enforcement and it's going to cost the taxpayer additional money.
Well let's let's get Gene's perspective on this.
Gene Bonn, you've got Farm View Event Barn and so you you can talk a bit personally about what the change in the law through Act 73 has done to you and others, right?
Yeah.
Especially now this year, consumers are becoming more aware of this.
So typically by this time of year, I am just about fully booked for the following year.
Weddings, venues are usually the first thing a couple of books because they go quickly.
So right now I just struggled to get my sixth allowed with alcohol consumption.
So I'm booked, but...
That's again, six a year, which is only 30% of what I typically would book.
So that's my revenue gone.
I'm also finding a lot of consumers who even at that are unwilling to be restricted to what they can serve their guests at their own private party because this law prohibits them from serving any spirits.
They can only have beer and wine.
People don't like being controlled like that.
And they're finding too that it's going to cost them a lot more money when they have to go to a place for their private party, but go to a public place that sells alcohol and the additional costs that cost them for that part of their celebration.
It's very much more expensive than if you go legally purchase it yourself
at.
a Costco or something and serve it to your guests.
So it's hurting.
My vendors are just now realizing it's going to hurt them.
The DJs, the caterers, the florists, the bakers, all of them are now realizing if I don't have weddings and the other two venues in my county aren't having one every week, that's going to cut into my bottom line.
Yeah.
As you mentioned, you're limited to six events a year and you have a column that you wrote online that says, a simple change from six to 36 events would benefit Wisconsinites.
This would basically what
cost the state nothing other than bringing in more tax revenue, help farms stay viable, consumers would regain some of these options that they've lost.
And so Sheila, that's where we're looking right now is a bill that would go from taking that limit from six to 36.
Is that what we're hoping to get past here?
Yes, we want reprieve actually we were looking at it would be amazing because that x73 exempted a lot of properties We're kind of really perplexed as to why a working farm Can't be exempt if there is a hotel Motel bed and breakfast are exempt a campground is exempt a vacation rental is exempt property private yards
parking lots, anywhere around a professional stadium is exempt.
So, you know, quite easily, let's just exempt a working farm that offers seasonal temporary permitted private events that helps the farm diversify.
So simple, one sentence, easily done.
No taxpayer cost.
Hans, again, you've talked about allowing farms to diversify in different ways, and I would imagine that this has been a hot topic up in your part of the state as well.
Switch gears and aren't milking cows anymore and so forth And I think the other thing that that is important to remember in this is the historical aspect of it Which is to say a lot of these event barns are old bank barns.
They're old barns that have You know that were built in the late 1800s early 1900s.
There's a lot of history there and
maintaining a barn like that costs money.
And so it has to sort of be reinvented to make sure that there's enough income to keep a roof on that barn so it doesn't fall down and we have more urban blight than we already have.
So I just feel like there's anything that keeps these old barns standing and in good condition is something that would be good for the rural landscape for sure.
Gene, do you want to piggyback on that as far as the cost to upkeep?
Yeah, our barn had set empty after we got rid of our dairy herd for about 10 years and Empty barn just does not hold up.
So absolutely How am I going to maintain that facility?
I have so many other fixed costs that my insurance isn't changing because I'm only having six a year and many other things So it's going to be difficult to come up with the extra cash The volatility of our crops here on our farm
We have a great corn crop too.
I heard you talking earlier, but quite a bit is down flat after the big storm last Saturday.
So are the Saturday before.
So yeah, the money is gone and it's really difficult to think of ways to replace that.
Sheila, what's the the easiest way that folks can show their support for this issue?
Well, really hook on to Pat's website here and.
Click on the link for the quorum to send your voice directly to your representative and senator.
Like I said, there were 698 letters sent so far.
Join us.
Let your voice be heard.
uh reach out to your elected official whether it's your republican senator or your republican uh representative and our democratic senators and representatives um really just reach out and talk to your neighbor um let your consumers know that hey your brides and grooms this is going to cost you
a lot of extra money for future weddings and not only that is it is going to impact the farm on farm.
wedding industry overall.
And you know, Wisconsin has been a leader in agricultural tourism.
We have been having on-farm weddings since before we were a state in 1848.
This business model of private events on working farms has been operational for 41 years with no
absolutely none documented issues or problems.
And so why did this have to be changed?
It didn't other than somebody had an issue or spite.
It's a dangerous precedent.
I mean, they're starting now to control what you can drink based on where you are and who owns that place.
I just look at it from that perspective.
This is
to me quite serious that they feel they should have the power to do
that.
Gene Bond has the Farm View Event Barn in Berlin and Sheila Everhart is with the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association.
Hans Bright and Moser has always joined us from up in Lincoln County and we always get such a good education on all the many topics that can make for a stronger or a weaker real economy depending on which way our lawmakers want to go.
Hans, Sheila, Gene, thank you all very much.
Appreciate your time today.
Thank you.
All right.
Have a great day, everybody.
All right.
Well, we will pause here and in our eight o'clock hour, we will be talking to Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation area.
He's also the political editor for Civic Media.
And along with some of these political topics about what the legislature could be working on, we'll also talk about classroom bans on cell phones as we start a new school year.
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.
Time for us to go way up north as we do each week at this time.
And joining us this week from the Ashland area is State Representative Angela Stroud.
Angela, hello, how are you?
I'm well, thanks.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Nice to see you.
And, you know, we're in that period after the state budget before the fall session really gets kicked off and looking through your Facebook posts, they see a lot of town halls, a lot of opportunities to give a listen to folks.
I hope you're drawing a few attentive crowds out there for your ability to talk about what's happening in Madison.
You know, I always do.
It's amazing to me how many people will show up to have a conversation about
the issues that matter to them.
So I do a lot of town halls.
I think they're super important in a democracy.
But I'm always stunned, you know, this town hall in Washburn that regularly happens, it can be 100 people standing room only.
It's really incredible.
I don't know that it was always that way.
I mean, I've had lots of listening sessions, you know, one or two of them would have a pretty good sized crowd.
But I feel like more people than ever want to come to things like this because they feel
Both motivated and maybe a little, maybe they first felt a little powerless and realized that they could go talk to a legislator like you and learn more about, you know, what exactly is happening in Madison and Washington, or yeah, Madison, Washington, DC.
Yeah, you know, I think that we've kind of lost sight of what's needed in a democracy.
you know we think of it in the last you know I don't know when it started I won't pick a date but it's like you vote and that's pretty much it and that's really not what democracy was ever supposed to be or what it should be or what it needs to be to make it healthy and it's one of those things where sometimes you don't know what you had till you could see that you might lose it and you know I think that's part of why in this moment people are waking up and saying like what would it mean to have an actual thriving responsive democracy and one of the things I get most at these town halls is
Wow, you're so available.
You're always responding.
You're always available to listen to me.
Like, where are our other representatives?
And I always told them that's an excellent question, and you should ask them that.
You noted in a post this summer when talking about the state budget debate that being a faculty member yourself, you took it personally that there was a Republican provision about a workload requirement for UW faculty.
Can you explain a bit about
you know, that kind of level of micromanagement from politicians that should certainly concern all of us.
I appreciate
this question so much.
The state has all kinds of contradictions built into it.
And, you know, and the Republican Party in particular has contradictions.
They say things like, we don't like red tape.
We don't like bureaucracy unless it's about the UW system.
And then we want to create all kinds of red tape and bureaucracy because what we like less than that is higher ed.
And
Also, they're creating this administrative burden that means they're going to have to hire more staff.
So every argument I have heard when I sit in committee for higher ed that they're constantly making on the Republican side, they just undermine that by passing this provision in the budget that would micromanage at the university level, the campus level, the workload of faculty.
And to explain how absurd this is, like, Northland College, where I worked, that closed this year, tiny college.
you know 500 students 47 faculty at that scale we couldn't figure out a standard workload across the entire faculty because every faculty member is different they're doing different forms of service different forms of engagement with students different I mean in my floor speech on this which I was very fired up about um I pointed out the workload of a faculty member isn't just teaching
It's so many other things that help keep a college running or a university running.
And so the idea that the legislature and all its infinite wisdom is going to come in and decide if one size fits all workload requirement is not just absurd, it's insulting, and it's a complete violation of how we should be operating.
Excuse me.
No, that's fine.
Again, you only got two minutes for the floor speech in the assembly, so I'm letting you get out whatever you want to get out now.
It was 120 passionate in 10 seconds, I can tell you.
Um, so we're talking to the state representative, Angela Stroud from Ashland.
And, uh, but before we go, you know, along with the listening sessions, there are those other positive aspects of being a legislator that I remember so well.
You attended, for example, the opening of the bad river health and wellness center to strengthen that community.
And what a contrast to see you doing that, participating with the bad river versus what we're getting from Congressman Tom Tiffany, you know, the Senate president, Mary Felska.
and others who are attacking the lack to flambeau community for trying to protect some degree of sovereignty on their land.
Look, if I were in a position, I'd rather be in your shoes trying to help these communities to grow and flourish.
I mean, not only is that what you would expect from any representative, right?
These are our constituents.
So the idea that you would demonize a segment of them is unethical.
But also the federal government made treaties with the sovereign nations.
And those treaties mean we have a legal and moral obligation to live up to what we said we would do.
That's not.
partisan.
That's just ethical.
And so it is a great honor to represent Bad River and Red Cliff.
And you do that by having relationships and figuring out what each side needs and working together.
And so I see it as one of the great honors of representing this district and the animosity that other representatives seem to have toward tribal nations.
I think is indicative of a real failure of moral leadership.
And people really should call it out more and recognize it for what it is, which is it's racist, it's insulting, and it's extraordinarily problematic.
Glad to hear so glad I don't have to hear myself say this
over and
over again.
I've left us less than a minute here, but you were at a school board meeting last night.
And again, the overview of it was that school districts continue to struggle and that the latest state budget is not that much more helpful.
Yeah, I mean, in our in my district, the biggest problem we have is property values keep going up.
And that's just because property is is increasing, you know, like that's not anything the school boards doing.
But what happens when property values go up?
and state fails to do its part to fund general aid for students, is that now what taxpayers are going to see is that the school district is taking more.
But that's not the school district's fault.
That's the failure of Madison.
And what I fear is that we're in this moment where Republicans have been pretty savvy and they're finding ways to get people to demonize public schools so that it makes it easier to pass things like voucher systems, which otherwise people find really objectionable.
So I think this is part of a larger strategy.
State Representative Angela Straubt joining us from way up north in Ashland.
Representative Straubt, good to see you.
Thank you very much for your time.
Great to see you.
Thanks for having
me.
You bet.
Safe travels.
Thank you very much.
We'll be talking to Chad Holmes and Dan Schaefer and an updated forecast from Brittany Merlot coming up after the eight o'clock news.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
The national news cycle never stops.
but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
