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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.
And good morning.
It is 706.
It's a Tuesday morning.
Feels like a Monday, but it's Tuesday.
Feels like October, but it's September.
It's September 2nd, 2025, and it's nice to have you back here up North.
Parker Olson is producing us down in Madison Studio A2, and meteorologist Brittany Merlot will be along in just a sec.
first wanted to let you know that at 735, we will be talking to Kam Stevenson, Courier Newsroom's brand new Capitol Hill correspondent and author of the Below the Beltway newsletter.
Congress is back in session today.
You thought we forgot about Jeffrey Epstein.
You know, the reason Congress skedaddled out of town as quickly as they did.
We'll also talk about Labor Day.
And how the big headline out of Washington fall out of many was for Labor Day So many workers no longer have their labor rights because President Trump stripped them away So we've got that coming up as well.
And then let me just set this up for the Brewers They finished that slog of 19 games over 18 days without a day off They finished that 19 game stretch nine wins ten losses, but still a wins a win
And when you are on top of the division, as the Brewers are in the National League Central Division, every win and every cup's loss reduces that magic number.
So what's the Brewers magic number down to?
We'll tell you all about that coming up a little bit here before the break, but we can't keep Brittany Merleau waiting because we had just the most gorgeous weather weekend.
I mean, Brittany no wildfire smoke.
So it was always either raining or smoky or
hot, humid and disgusting.
And we so earned, we so deserved a picture perfect weather weekend on a holiday weekend like this.
And it was glorious.
I know I didn't want it to end.
Oh, yesterday driving home with the sun just so bright and beautiful and the temperatures perfect.
I knew it was around the corner.
And I knew what I had to tell you guys this morning.
Well, we'll get to that in a sec.
What'd you end up doing for the holiday weekend?
I went up towards Lake Superior area.
I did a little bit of hiking, saw a few waterfalls, but my highlight was kayaking the Brule River.
I did an intermediate section with some rapids and cool stuff, splishy splashy water with rocks in there.
It was awesome.
No, you can't say, you can't say, you know, intermediate rocks and then a splishy splashy.
Yeah.
Splishy splashy is, you know, the bunny hill in terms of kayaking.
This sounds like you're taking your life in your own hands here.
Yeah, there was a few spots.
You definitely have to be careful, but be
careful.
Oh my goodness.
I mean, that ranks right up there with jumping out of an airplane of things that
you will
not find me doing.
But again, if that is your thing, you could not have picked better conditions for this.
So that part is just wonderful.
Well, good.
I'm glad you had fun.
We were teaching you last week that you were in a hoodie pretty much every day because we had a little cool spell.
Well,
guess what's coming back.
So I'm guessing the hoodies will will will not stay in the closet for very long.
I know I almost grabbed one this morning and I said no way this is our last mild summery like day before that fall feel really sinks in at least for a little while.
So we've got going on right now clear skies and areas of dense fog this morning, especially in the cross Medford over into the Fox Valley Green Bay Fond du Lac.
You're still dealing with that this morning temperatures are 43 degrees in Tomahawk.
up to 61 degrees right now at Madeline Island.
Everybody else is in between.
Today's highs will reach the mid 70s statewide.
We are looking at more clouds already northwest.
We've already got showers and storms pushing into superior right now, and those are going to continue to roll through the northern half of the state today.
Little not too much in the morning.
It starts to really ramp up and become more numerous this evening after five o'clock up north.
And then Fox Valley area south, you'll start to see the rain head your way after midnight tonight.
I think Madison, Milwaukee, early tomorrow morning, you'll see that showers and storms, probably a widespread quarter of an inch to a half an inch.
No severe weather is expected, but we could see some heavy rain continuing to hit the Northwest areas where we could get an inch or so.
Otherwise, behind this cold front, it's going to get cold well below average.
I'm talking your record breaking.
Some people, especially up north, are going to hit record cold highs as we go into tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday.
We are looking at frost conditions.
Frost advisories are going to be out.
Temperatures are going to be dropping to the low 30s by Wednesday night and into Thursday morning.
That can happen again as we go into Thursday night and Friday morning.
And we are looking at staying in those cold temperatures, like I said, upper 40s far north.
on thursday to low sixties far south and we're going to hang on to those fifties for thursday friday and then we start to slowly warm up saturday 10 year 60 and then we'll be into the upper sixties on sunday before we feel normal next week so there is normal temperatures coming back because we should be in the mid seventies we'll get back to that next week but this week is a cool one we could see our first flakes snow flakes sorry
say
the s word
We could see a few of them.
Way up north by the U.K.
on the border in Vilas County.
That would be Thursday morning, and I might go chase
them.
I love that.
When she's not chasing tornadoes or whitewater rapids, she's chasing the first snowflakes
of
the season.
I'm so excited.
Too early, but I'm excited regardless.
I do want...
people to notice.
And I absolutely want credit for the lack of whining about this forecast compared to last week, when the calendar said August.
Okay, I know it's only a matter of a few days, but the calendar now says
timber.
And I'm good with that.
Still not crazy about the snowflake thing you mentioned in there, but the cool temperatures, you know, we just had to get to Labor Day.
And that works.
Rob and Tigerton saying Brittany came through with this beautiful weather.
Again, not entirely her doing, but if you're going to blame her, you got a creditor to good morning from Tigerton where Rob says it's partly cloudy and 48 degrees.
It was a nice Labor Day weekend being outside.
I spent time with my cousins from Minnesota as they came up.
Yesterday I had mowing jobs in the Wittenberg area and a huge yard near Galloway at the Chano Marathon County line.
So I did work on Labor Day.
And then he says, last night I saw the Northern Lights and took pictures of them.
I'd heard that Monday night was supposed to be an amazing potential for Northern Lights.
I, of course, don't stay up late enough for that, but
same.
So
I'll be yeah, I'll be looking around social media today because I'm sure some people got some gorgeous pictures of those.
What a way to end the Labor Day weekend too with the Northern Lights.
It's like the cherry on top.
Yes.
Oh, it was it was just wonderful.
Hey, let me ask while we were talking about breakfasts earlier and this is better breakfast month and
worker's definitely not in the breakfast category, which is fine.
It's it's not, you know, I'm not finding fault.
It's just not not his not his thing.
What about you?
Do you have a favorite breakfast either to eat or to make?
I would say I'm always on those like Mexican scrambled omelette kind of vibe.
I like the chorizo and the salsa and the sour cream and the I don't know.
I love that for breakfast.
You love a good little
spicy breakfast, a little skillet breakfast.
I will make on Sunday mornings, I will make either biscuits and gravy or I'll make a skillet breakfast.
You know, you start with the hash browns and some tomatoes and, you know, some, some kind of meat sausage or bacon, cheese, scrambled
eggs,
maybe a little onion in there.
Now
I'm hungry.
Now get a
wrap
this thing up because yeah, second breakfast is still an hour and a half away here.
That
you have fruit rollups or fruit snack.
What do
you have snacks?
That's
my breakfast.
Yeah, I mean, bar to start the day.
Yes, that's probably
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
Rob saying that he loves a good Western omelet.
So that's good too.
All right.
So there you go, folks.
We're just giving you ideas for better breakfast.
We're all about the public service.
Thank you, Brittany.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right, we'll talk to you again next hour.
And a reminder, as always here, we'd love to have you as a subscriber to our newsletters, including the one that I put together on Sunday mornings, the one this past weekend had a question of the week about dreamers.
Dreamers, that's the nickname for
people who came to this country as young children and their parents were undocumented migrants coming in and in many cases were being they're either being deported or at the very least they're being demonized and yet for these kids the United States is the only country they've ever known they went they go to school here some of them have already graduated from college or grad school they are important members of the community
And yet a president who said he was going to go after, you know, the criminal element is looking at deporting people who have made a real difference in their community.
So are dreamers fair game or do they deserve a path to citizenship?
Again, to see our question of the week first, before anybody else, head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com, click subscribe in the top banner and subscribe to our newsletters there.
Along those same lines, I noticed a new article this morning in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from Rick Barrett about Abbotsford, just down the road from us here on Highway 29 at the Clark Marathon County line.
And the headline is, Abbotsford's immigrants have been welcomed for decades, but now some are afraid.
I've got to think it's more than some because look in in Abbotsford, which has been a haven for immigrants for Generations basically it's it's well known that there are between farms and Processing plants of all kinds like Abbie land foods a meat processor That this is where undocumented immigrants come to work
and to send money home for their children and their families that they may not see for years at a time.
And yet, even though they are here and not breaking the laws, playing by the rules, doing a far better job than some citizens are doing who currently languish in our jails and prisons, these are folks that we like to have keep around.
And yet, as written in this article by Rick Barrett, he starts by saying, there's a quiet tension, even fear, among some Latino immigrants in this central Wisconsin city, where they've been ingrained in the community for years.
And the article gets into how the Abbotsford area has by and large been a welcoming place, knowing full well that the rural economy
in Wisconsin and elsewhere is going to come to a crushing halt if you were to have the mass deportations that people like Donald Trump and his supporters want.
These are folks who do not grasp the concept of what migrant laborers do.
They believe in this fairy tale that if you just get rid of a big chunk of the middle class that they will take these menial
low wage jobs that are currently taken by migrants.
And I would defy you to ask any meat processor or any dairy farmer if that's what they want.
Would they trade away their hardworking migrant labor for some people who shall we say didn't grow up on the farm and are a little resentful that they're no longer a part of the middle class?
What do you think is going to happen to productivity in this country then?
We're trying to turn this economy on a dime, taking it from the best recovery in the world post COVID and bring it crashing to the ground for, let's just say for personal purposes, shall we say, in rounding up people.
And even those who have done nothing wrong feel the racial profiling that's going on and are being told that they should self-deport.
And some of them are.
But again, at what price to our economy, rather than actually addressing the problem, say a bipartisan solution to immigration reform, maybe that would help.
It would help a lot actually.
But we know who killed that.
The Brewer's Loss yesterday to the Phillies, nine to eight, but they are still on top of the National League Central and their magic number is now 19.
In our next half hour, we'll be talking to Cam Stevenson from the Below the Beltway newsletter in Washington, DC.
I'm Pac Rightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
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Welcome back.
It is 722 right now.
52 degrees in the Chippewa Valley.
LaCrosse, you're at 55.
55 Oshkosh at 55.
It is 48 degrees up in Rhinelander, the home of News Watch 12 where we check in with Dan Hagen from WJFWTV.
Mr. Hagen, how are you?
I'm doing well.
It feels like fall this morning and I have construction crews trying to finish their stuff before winter comes.
Oh, yes.
We're getting into the racing phase now of construction season because you just never know when the weather will stop cooperating.
Did you get to do some fun stuff for the holiday weekend?
Yes, I went camping with some friends.
I went fishing.
I caught a single fish, a small mouth, so pretty proud of that.
And spent some time with family.
But yeah, I've been really into pickleball this summer and I'm currently sitting myself out because of a shoulder problem.
So I've been dealing with that.
I've been kind of shaking this morning, just itching to get back on the court, but I'll be
fine.
I have, you know, I thought it was like maybe a rotator cuff problem or something.
And it's been diagnosed as something called frozen shoulder.
And it can it can be relieved with some, you know, what's the word physical therapy exercises, you know, and it'll give relief for a little while.
But it just feels like it's never going to be what it was, even though it's not a rotator cuff, that's not arthritis.
So
I'm just saying that I hope that yours is something that again, let's just overuse rest it up You know ice or heat whichever works better for you ice heat, you know Miller Highlife, whatever it
is.
I'd stick a beer right there.
Yeah
Yeah, and
yeah, I think it should be fine.
I have a tournament mid-september of the clash of the paddles so
I
have to take on the septuagenarian somehow so
You are so between beating your dad at the Berkebeiner and now this on pickleball.
I feel like you're representing your generation in that particular lane of must smash the will of the older people and show that the new generation has arrived now.
My mountain grandpa get down.
I was such a mediocre sports person as a child.
So I think this is just my way of compensating, you know.
If it works, it works.
So I'm guessing most places are either back to school already, or today is the first day of school.
And if I know anything about local TV news stations, and I know a thing or two about local TV news stations, you've been getting the kids ready for back to school and getting the parents ready with all kinds of good advice.
Yeah, that's right.
So Wausau schools are starting today up here in Rhinelander.
They're going to be starting
next Monday, so about a week away.
Yeah, there's some big changes at Rhinelander High School and Middle School.
They have a lot of tech ed improvements because of referendums that have passed.
One thing they are dealing with, though, is the school bus company that they contract with is in desperate need of school bus drivers.
This has been an issue ever since the pandemic.
I think a lot of older people who were school bus drivers have retired.
And then it's just kind of harder, you know,
fewer people want to be bus drivers.
So something that they're dealing with right now, they might have to condense routes if they don't get another driver.
Oh, so you know, and that's, I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat that the hour long bus rides, and especially when it gets into that winter part of the year.
I mean, the sun's not going to be coming up for a couple of hours yet, it feels like when you're getting on the bus.
And
that's rough.
That's something you really want to try to avoid.
But again, in rural districts, consolidation of bus routes, you're left with very little choice, it seems.
Yeah, no, it's a big problem.
And like you said, it gets dark so early and late or yeah, you know what I'm saying.
And then it's just it's very difficult for them to find to find drivers.
So hopefully someone steps up to keep raising the pay.
So hopefully someone steps up.
Yeah, hopefully so.
Let's see, so we've got back to school, but this also has got to be, we've got to be close to Cranberry Harvest.
Yeah, that's
right.
Yeah, so 60% of the nation's cranberries comes from Wisconsin.
There's a lot of bogs up here, like Lake Nakomas Cranberries and their Eagle River.
We went to James Lake Cranberries yesterday in three lakes.
They have two bogs and they are an organic producer.
So pretty cool.
But they'll probably wait until the end of September to start harvesting.
You know, once the berries are ripe, they are able to floats, then they'll flood the bogs and the berries will rise to the surface.
And then two million pounds of cranberries will come out of James Lake and then 10 million will come out of Lake Nekomas.
Holy cow.
That's a
lot.
That is really something.
I have no.
green thumb whatsoever with flowers or gardens or anything like that.
So when you talk about the, you know, flooding the bogs, and then that basically causes the berries to let loose and rise to the top because they're that, they're that ripe, they're ready to go.
And I mentioned, you know, we planted some plum trees five years ago and kept seeing little ones year by year, but this year we saw like real plums.
And I was like, I don't know if these are ready to go yet.
And I just basically touched one.
and it fell off into my hand.
Oh, like, okay.
So I took a wash it took a bite out of it.
And it was everything I'd hoped for five years ago.
So
I'm going to
put around just touching them and as they fell off into our hands, we put them away and I've got the last of them here to to gobble up.
And I'm just so thankful to get them before any squirrels or you know, birds clip them and rabbits chewed them up.
So I'm no old McDonald.
But I got a little bit of success.
I'm no cranberry farmer.
Don't get me wrong.
I'll take a dozen plums as well as I'll take, you know, millions of gallons of cranberries.
Yeah, I'm just, you know, I have to say raw cranberries.
They're tough to eat.
You know, they're incredibly tart.
It's kind of like in a masochistic way.
It's fun to eat, but you can only have a handful at max per season.
Yeah.
And the last thing I want to mention before we go is there was an annual wave party in Hazelhurst, which is the Minakwa area.
Just
just saying goodbye to the tourists.
They've been doing it at this bar for 51 years and it's just a really fun tradition up here and summer is over and there won't be lines at the grocery store anymore.
So I'm kind of thankful
for that.
There is that.
You know, you love to see him come but it's also time for them to go.
And get back, get back to a quieter time.
Thank you, Dan Hagen.
Appreciate
it.
Of course.
Thank you, Pat.
Catch them on NewsWatch 12 up there in Rhinelander.
Coming up next, Superior Mayor Jim Payne and then an 805 correction there.
Cam Stevenson from Washington, DC and Dan Schaefer at 835.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Hey just a reminder you can follow us on social media We are now on blue sky as an alternative to the dumpster fire once known as Twitter You can also follow up north news at Facebook Instagram tiktok YouTube just search for up north news WI Make sure that you get the right up north news on your social media feed Let's do our weekly way up north segment where we talk to folks up in the superior Ashland Bayfield areas and and
some of the adjoining neighborhood communities there.
And we'll start up in Superior today and visit with the mayor there, Jim Payne.
Mayor Jim, how are you?
Very good.
Good morning.
How are you, Pat?
Very good.
Do you have a good holiday weekend?
Yeah, I did.
Very busy, but it was a lot of fun.
Weather was gorgeous up here.
Oh gosh, it was just amazing.
We've got Tony who's up in Ashland was listening to the forecast here and was telling us about some of the the leaves are changing colors already.
And that, you know, you, you have to look forward to it, you know, there's there's no
There's no two ways about it.
He says I'm ready for fall saw some leaves turning this weekend up in Washburn and it's it's going to be gorgeous.
It really is.
I can't wait to start doing some fall road trips.
Yeah, it's going to be great.
Well, let's talk about, you said it was a busy weekend here, and I know one of the events that was going on up in the Superior and Duluth areas was a Festival of Pride, and a lot of people associate that with Pride Month in June, but I kind of like to learn more about the celebration there in the Twin Ports area about this time of year and some of the things that were going on.
Yeah, our Pride weekend is Labor Day weekend in the Twin Ports.
And there's a very special reason that we don't celebrate Pride in June.
We celebrate it here in the fall.
And that's because we have one of the oldest Pride festivals in the country.
We've been doing this for 39 years.
So a lot of folks know that Pride is celebrated in June around the country because it is the commemoration of the Stonewall riots.
Well,
just because the Stonewall riots happened in the late 70s doesn't mean people were kicking off pride festivals the next year.
There were a few rogue cities that had some protests and action to follow that up in the years that followed, but the vast majority of communities for decades did nothing, nothing at all to recognize as community.
But Superior Wisconsin has been celebrating pride for longer than any other community in Wisconsin and longer than almost any other community in the country.
Now, I also heard that there's college students are there at one time a year versus another time a year and that you have the community there as well.
So it just sounds like, I mean, this isn't just something that you all slap together.
This is a very real community event.
It really is, and we call it Twin Ports Pride now, and we're very happy to have many other communities in the area joining us.
But because Sapir is the founder and the host, I am a little shameless in describing the fact that most of those other communities started joining us 20 years after we began this festival.
So yet the whole community turns out it really is an exciting event and it gets bigger every year.
We're talking to Jim Payne, mayor of Superior here on these mornings powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
One of the news stories that people have associated with Superior deals with lead water service lines.
And a lot of people think, oh, that's a Milwaukee thing.
It is most definitely not.
It gets a lot of the attention, Wisconsin's biggest city and all of that.
But there are issues all over the state, including in Superior and Superior.
has a very unique setup with the water utility, which has made it an additional challenge.
You're looking at potentially changing how the water utility is operated in Superior.
Can you give folks some background on it?
Yeah, that's right.
Superior is the only privately owned water utility in the state of Wisconsin.
In fact, privately owned water utilities have become very rare throughout the United States.
We are the only citizens of Wisconsin that do not own and control our own water.
This is the only place on Lake Superior that can and does sell Lake Superior water at a profit.
And every other community in Wisconsin, the people own their water
And we also have the most expensive water rates in the entire state.
That is not a coincidence.
Those two things are directly connected because unlike other citizens of Wisconsin, a big chunk of our bill is not going to operating the water utility.
You pat everything you pay for a water bill.
If you have one, you might be on a well.
I don't know.
Any other person in Wisconsin paying a water bill is only paying for the cost of operating the water utility.
We pay that and a profit to shareholders of Minnesota Power.
That is amazing and it's been that way for 135 years to see one one new story about it.
So what is it that you might end up doing?
We might
end up reclaiming it.
The water belongs to the people.
That part of the law is very clear.
Now, because they've been operating it as a franchise for a long time, there's a certain amount of reimbursement that would have to happen.
But that really doesn't intimidate me.
If we inherit the water, we inherit the current rates, which is far more revenue than we would ever need to operate the water utility because we don't have shareholders to pay.
We have executives.
I'm one of them, but I make not even a fifth of what the current operator of the water utility makes.
So all of our costs are considerably lower.
And we know this because we already operate a wastewater utility, which should be much more expensive than a water utility, pretty hard to turn toilet water back into Lake Superior water.
But the fact is that utility
is operated much more affordably than the water utility.
So costs should come down in the long term, but affording it shouldn't be a huge problem.
But ultimately, we need the people or the city council to decide.
I guess coming at this from an outside perspective, I'm surprised that it has, I guess, taken this long that people would look at this issue and go, why are we paying so much more?
And why is it that we're paying shareholders rather than controlling our own water supply?
Was a lot of this recent talk driven by replacing the lead service lines?
No, it's been something we've talked about for a couple years.
It got quite a bit more serious around the time of the lead lines because that was just the latest symptom of the problem.
when a private company owns it, they will only ever pursue shareholder profits.
I'm not even criticizing them for that.
That's what they're supposed to do.
And so when we had a very serious public health crisis, obviously, you can't trust a private company to put public health first, they have to put private shareholder profit first.
And so a lot of this, we learned challenging a different monopoly.
Last time I was on here, we talked about challenging the internet monopoly.
That took us
six years to put together.
So this is a long conversation.
It's been going on for a while, but it's time to start bringing it more into the public square.
But it appeared to be a case of even if there was financial aid available from the federal government or the state government, that money would go to the private entity with not necessarily any guarantee that they would put 100% of that money toward the lead water line replacement.
Does that sound about right?
Yeah, that's pretty
close.
The fact is they do have an interest in driving up costs because they get to add automatically around a 10% profit to everything they do.
And it's a guarantee.
It's a monopoly.
The state allows this.
So imagine any other business, any other investment where you had a guaranteed 10% return on your investment.
It means they have every incentive of driving up costs because
10% of 200 is more than 10% of 100.
So it's just, it would have been more affordably done under public management and we see that across the state.
There was a story that Wisconsin Public Radio did much earlier this year back in March that said that the previous fall, the Public Service Commission approved a roughly 11% increase in water rates.
The average resident among the utilities, 10,000 customers pays nearly $59 a month.
Second highest next to the Waukesha Water Utility.
And Waukesha has had its share of water debates because they're not right on the lake, but obviously,
they need the lake, so they incur some costs.
So it's not like you're saying, the water isn't free, you still have to operate the utility.
But why are you adding these extra costs if you don't have to?
Well, and I noticed that you said it was an 11% rate increase.
That is true.
And it's always a double-digit rate increase every single time.
But they didn't ask for an 11% increase, Pat.
They asked for an 18% increase.
We had to fight them to the mat at the PSC to show that these were wildly inflated costs.
And the PSC, which historically has given them whatever they wanted, did finally have to recognize, after overwhelming public opposition, that 18% was just too much.
This battle's not over.
they can ask for another rate increase this spring.
So yes, this is something that will not go away.
They will only ever try and increase the cost.
So what then, and I know we've spoken about this previously with State Representative Angela Stroud, but what was it that the legislature was on the verge of doing, which had people like Representative Stroud very unhappy?
And then what ended up happening in the end that was
from what I understand much more of a partnership involving the state, the local governments, the water utility.
But what was the original intent of the legislature in this last session?
It was always supposed to be a partnership.
The fact is, Wisconsin does have some antitrust laws and does have laws on the books to protect the public from private monopolies.
And so there was a law that prohibited
private companies from receiving federal water grants, like we were talking about, to replace the lead lines.
They were prohibited because they were a private company.
They wanted to change that law.
We said, sure, we want access to that money, too.
Since we're the city, you should have us administering that grant.
The money should come to us.
We should run the program.
That is how every other state grant to a private company works.
And we have tons of experience with this.
In fact, we do receive these grants on the wastewater side.
They were cool with that.
And then all of a sudden they weren't.
They wanted the money to come directly to them, to just be eligible.
The same way municipalities are eligible, Angela Stroud and I objected to that.
And in the end, we created a contract between the company and the city that said we would do what we initially asked for.
We will run the lead line replacement program.
We will put out the bids.
We will oversee the program to ensure that costs are as low as possible for customers.
We're talking to Mayor Jim Payne of Superior and just one last thing I wanted to bounce off you and earlier this hour I was talking about a new article in this morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from in Abbotsford in Clark County and Obviously very reliant on migrant labor on the farms and the meat processing plants and elsewhere and the nervousness that's up there
The Twin Ports area, I'm sure, has to have had these discussions as well.
Your concerns with the current administration and what happens with the workforce cracking down not on the violent criminals they kept talking about, but basically just anybody that they feel like profiling and taking into custody.
Well, I have two feelings about this, Pat.
First, Superior and the Twin Ports has always been an immigrant community.
It was always a place where people came from around the world to find work and opportunity.
It is still that today.
We regularly have a large population of non-English speakers from around the world because this is an international port.
So we are used to immigrants in this community.
It's how we built this community.
Now,
In terms of migrant labor there's really two kinds documented and undocumented and when folks are undocumented if that's a crime the person committing the crime is the person that hired them often trucked them up here engaging in very real human trafficking and pays them unfair wages are downright exploits them.
Both of those things need to be addressed and we often look at this very strangely when we see.
Vulnerable people that don't speaking those that were put in the back of a truck to come up and work for Sometimes criminally low wages Those are the people to get arrested but the people that did that to them are allowed to keep doing that That the administration has its priorities backwards, but ultimately yes We do need labor up here.
We are in a workforce shortage.
We have been for years We have to build a billion dollar bridge here in just a couple of years We need workers to do that.
We haven't been able to supply workers to grow our economy
Where are they supposed to come from?
Superior Mayor Jim Payne has always wonderful background on these very important issues.
And Jim, I'm glad you had a good holiday weekend, and we'll talk to you again real soon.
Thank you very much.
All right, thank you.
Again, our newest reporter for Curio News or Mountain Washington DC, Camp Stevenson is coming up next hour, along with Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation Area.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
We are now at that time of year when I talk about sports.
We got to talk about baseball and football.
Let's start with the Milwaukee Brewers who are off today.
It's their first off day after an 18 day stretch with 19 games.
They won 9, they lost 10 after losing a heartbreaker yesterday to the Phillies.
10 to 8.
Their magic number though is 19 so that number keeps dropping.
The Brewers had been up 4-0 in the second inning but Jacob Mizorowski again left early 4-3 innings.
giving up three runs on six hits, four strikeouts.
It necessitated six relief pitchers.
Shelby Miller went out when something popped in his elbow.
The team needed this day off.
And then they're back in action continuing the series against the Phillies tomorrow evening And then thursday afternoon tomorrow evening's game pregame coverage begins at 605 on civic media stations in richland center Oshkosh Racine Kenosha park falls in hayward and one last footnote to the brewer's loss It was parker olson's fault Parker being at the game yesterday.
When we're together I I have to take mine a step further My my college buddy Kevin we we go to one brewery game a year and we're doing one later this month here in September And it's become a running joke that well first off as an older man
I sometimes can't wait to go, you know, so I try to beat the rush to use the facilities there at American Family Field.
that.
That's possible.
And the first time that I really had to excuse myself and heard the roar of the crowd as somebody for the Brewers hit a home run, it was embarrassing.
Yeah.
When it happened a second
a year later, it became a thing to the point where
The Brewers, of course, were up for nothing early, and as the Phillies chipped away, Ty then pulled ahead.
My buddy Kevin sends me a text, says, drink a big glass of water.
Get to the bathroom now.
Get to the bathroom now.
And I tried, but it doesn't work that way, apparently.
So it was you losing at a couple of games with your friend.
Don't worry, you're not alone on that.
Let's get to football here.
The
Badgers, they won their season opener last week, and this week they take on Middle Tennessee on Saturday.
Pregame coverage begins at one o'clock on stations in Richland Center, Amory, Wisconsin Rapids, and Ripon.
And then there's the Green Bay Packers, whose season begins this coming Sunday afternoon, 325 against Detroit at Lambeau Field.
And we'll do so now with Micah Parsons.
who I'm going to acknowledge.
I knew the name, but just, you know, because I haven't done fantasy football in a while here tonight.
So I was wondering what all of the hullabaloo was.
Hullabaloo.
Look it up in the dictionary kids.
What was the kerfuffle?
What was the hubbub all about?
Come to realize this guy is really good.
Oh, yeah.
That Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was just doing Jerry Jones things.
and saying, I don't like the way you guys are talking to me.
So I'm going to get rid of one of my best players.
It was okay.
we'll take it.
We had to send away defensive tackle Kenny Clark and two first round picks, but we now have the highest paid non quarterback in league history, one of the league's best pass rushing tandems in Rashawn Gary and now Micah Parsons.
And so like, like Rashawn Gary was saying, teams have to pick their poison now.
You know, which one are you going to double up?
Cause you can't double up both of
Parsons is
Oh yeah.
And it's one of those where we're so used to just, uh, you know, casual football fans really only pay attention on offense, you know, what Jordan love going to do.
And I always like, because I remember this in the Reggie white era, where now you're really paying attention to both sides of the ball when the defense is on, you're, you're studying that almost as much as you're studying how the offense is going.
It is but it gets so frustrating in the secondary when you see a cornerback or a safety, you know miss an opportunity.
Oh, yeah, and so
Sometimes it can it can you know, it's like a receiver dropping a pass.
So it'll it'll be fun to pay attention to that's for sure.
Let's see before we let Labor Day we can get away.
I couldn't help but notice that Donald Trump put out a statement for Labor Day saying the American worker is who we fight for.
Really?
After stripping collective bargaining rights for American workers at NASA.
the US Patent Office, the National Weather Service, jobs that touch on national defense, border security, foreign relations, energy security, pandemic preparedness, cyber security.
All of these groups have had their worksite union protections taken away by President Donald Trump.
Oh, by the way, who's notably exempted from these?
Well, just as Scott Walker tried to hide behind badges and shields in 2011, Trump is exempting law enforcement from allowing federal employees to join unions and collectively bargain, something they've been able to do since the 1960s.
Now, unlike in the private sector, government employees cannot negotiate wages or go on strike.
But collective bargaining helps as National Public Radio put it, helps shape disciplinary procedures, parental leave policies, how overtime is managed, all the things that make for a more collegial, smoother running work site.
But Trump has ended collective bargaining rights for more than one million federal workers across 20 different federal agencies.
And so it's just this reminder.
And Jim Payne was kind of talking about the same thing in our last segment.
Don't buy into the fairy tale of the benevolent employer.
Leadership changes, but contracts will last longer if you fight for them.
And you always have to fight for the work rights that you have on the site because there is always somebody who's willing to try to take them away.
Camp Stevenson and Dan Schaefer coming up in the eight o'clock hour of these mornings with Pat Crite low powered by UpNorth News on the Civic Media Radio Network on this Tuesday morning.
Back after the news.
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