Don’t ‘Both Sides’ PFAS Pollution (Hour 3)

Across Wisconsin, on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow, powered by Up North News.

And now, live from Dallas, where there's one star in their football helmet, because that's their average rating on going to the Super Bowl.

Here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crichtlow.

You weren't even gonna give me a rim

shot for writing out one, were you?

Okay.

Not no.

I'm sorry, no.

Producer Parker Olson welcomes us in to get going.

Good morning, Wisconsin.

It's a 606.

Hopefully another beautiful morning up north.

And from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the civic media radio network or listening or watching us on all the different platforms that are out there, we appreciate starting your day right here.

I got a question for you.

Have you lost hope already?

Or was yesterday just a blip?

You know, you can't

Apparently you can't sweep the Cubs after all we keep forgetting they actually did have a pretty decent season and we have had our moments and Quinn Priester had his moment yesterday.

Yeah,

that one.

Yeah,

I feel I

feel for that kid.

That was bad.

I do too.

We had such a streak of games where where the team did well when he was pitching but his last two starts not so much and

I don't know the degree to which people, you know, miss Bob Euker with the brewers in the postseason, but I felt there was a little bit of Euker yesterday out there with with preester having a really tough time hitting the strike zone.

I could hear you could ball four ball eight ball 12.

Yeah.

And then then giving up a couple of home runs.

And he was done after two thirds of an inning.

How many

It was, it was not a lot of pitches either.

It was, what was it?

39 pitches.

And that's in the top of the first inning, and it just was not working out.

And so that made the difference as the

Brewers fell to the Cubs four to three.

Now look the Brewers, they still lead the best of five series, two games to one.

And so despite missing out on the sweep, they could still take the series tonight at Wrigley Field.

And once again, being down here in Dallas, you can't find that stuff.

There's all kinds of other things that people would rather watch on their TVs while I was out and about.

But I was able to listen to the local radio broadcast through my phone.

And and then I didn't.

Yeah, we're just gonna set this aside and do stuff with the family here, figuring that, you know, again, we we'd have tonight and hopefully I'll actually be home tonight by the time that the game starts because it's a it's a late game.

Tony already had our first comment on YouTube.

Cubs suck.

Well, they

It was it's tough losing to them.

Yes.

And Roger gets on Facebook to say that that rating for the Dallas Cowboys that's one star too high.

Yes, it is.

But you got you got to poke a little fun with them while you can down here in what is still hot hot Dallas and I'm I'm telling you I do remember just a couple of weeks ago how much I was whining that we we were

I'm starting to cool off the chilly weather and summer needs to last a little longer.

Yeah, I could use some

really good 80 degrees stuff.

Yeah, well, it turns out I was just a little premature is all because I have artificially extended my summer and I am ready to be done with it.

So what's a temperature looking like down there?

uh it's it's going to be 90 plus again down here and and of course uh it's just the way the the way the sun hits everything it just feels a lot hotter uh but it's a dry heat right so you only feel like you're you're in an oven

Yeah, I was gonna say, sometimes it feels like a convection oven when the wind blows just right.

But anyway, it's been it's it's been a nice visit.

It will get back and and the brewers will get back to Roger notes here in the comment section.

The crew started to chip their way back.

They had their chances.

And it's true.

They're you know, Jake Bowers

You know, can, can connect on his last at bat.

If Caleb Durbin, you know, actually makes a slide into home, maybe he beats a tag.

So, you know, it was, it was not all on Quinn prester.

It's just, you know, that was, that was the scene center, shall we

say?

It was, I, I went into that game.

I don't know if many Brewer fans would admit this, but I went into that game expecting us to lose because frankly, sweeping the Cubs is just too good to be true.

Yeah.

Um,

yeah.

I, I, I again, was not, you know,

at all, assuming that there was going to be anything like that, you know, these things, these things happen.

And you just go forward again tonight.

Remember the first couple of games, how Sherry had said, they always come behind, they always come from behind.

And so, you know, when

know, we when we scored in the in the top of the first, Sherry is like, Oh, no, no, no, we can't do that.

And then sure enough, in the bottom of the first is when Quinn Priest your, you know, gave up all that he gave up and Sherry was like, See, so apparently, my wife is much more of a sports predictor than any of the rest of us.

So she should get

into betting.

No.

That's not gonna happen.

Tony tells us that it's 34 in Ashland right now.

Roger says it's 36 in Stevens Point.

Tony said he had the fireplace going yesterday and loved it.

And that that is awesome.

And in fact, in a little bit in about 10 minutes or so, we're going to tell you

about some of the places you could go to see some fall colors and do some fun things around Wisconsin.

Sharita Booker is off this week, but we'll go through the list of things that she would normally be talking about otherwise in terms of places that you could go and things that you could do.

I'm looking forward to getting back to seeing if the leaves have already fallen there.

How much am I going to be raking versus, you know, at some point you get the lawn tractor out and you go, yeah, we're just going to crunch all these up.

you know, and then the lawn looks like you you're using Kellogg's corn flakes as a fertilizer.

But what could go wrong with

that?

Yeah, and it but it beats it beats raking.

I would much rather mow it and blow it than have to rake all that stuff

raking and shoveling are probably the top two terrible yard work.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So if I can, if I can avoid that, I'm happy.

I'm always happiest when, and every house is different depending on how, what's that?

When you don't have to do a hard labor?

Well, yeah, there's always that.

But when Mother Nature helps out.

And again, depending on how everybody's house is laid out in our case, if we get a south wind at just the right time of year, that just blows all the leaves onto the bank, you know, or a west wind will put them all in the in the tree line over there.

And that'll be fun.

But then you get other other days, it's just like, you cannot catch a break from the wind.

And it just piles things up in a way where you got to go get it.

But that's, you know, that's home ownership comes with the territory.

In some of the other baseball series, the Yankees, the Yankees lose.

there the first team eliminated in the American League division series with Toronto winning last night five to two the Detroit Tigers forced a deciding fifth game after beating Seattle nine to three so Detroit and the Mariners will face off in Seattle Friday night to see who will take on Toronto in the other National League series the Phillies like the Cubs avoided being eliminated yesterday

beating the Dodgers eight to two.

And so tonight, the Dodgers will have the early game five o'clock central time against Philadelphia.

And then the Brewers will have the late game eight o'clock tonight against the Cubs.

Parker's not happy about this.

It's just so stupid.

Why is

why is the West Coast team the early

getting a day game?

Yeah, I know all season long, we can't catch those games because they started nine o'clock at night.

And now, now in the post season, they decide to have a day game.

And so now we have to start at eight o'clock at night.

I know.

I wonder, I wonder who I should be pointing for that the league or

the networks, TV, just the networks.

It's it's all it's all about the money.

But

It does mean that you can catch the game here on some of the stations of the civic media radio network with the pregame starting at 7 30 tonight on stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh Racine Kenosha Park Falls and in Hayward.

So again, some baseball action.

Just getting getting the weekend going because we got the baseball tonight.

We got high school football.

on several civic media stations coming up, of course, on Friday night.

Then on Saturday, you've got the Badgers against the Iowa Hawkeyes.

The pregame begins at four o'clock Saturday afternoon on some stations across the civic media network.

If, heaven forbid, the Cubs win tonight, then the deciding fifth game of the National League Division Series would be back at American Family Field Saturday night, I want to say.

So again, we'll have details tomorrow, but hopefully what we're telling you tomorrow is that the Brewers win tonight.

And that'll make a Saturday game unnecessary.

And then we get to Sunday.

And that of course has the Packers back in action after the bye week.

They will be taking on the Cincinnati Bengals coverage will begin at one o'clock Sunday afternoon for a 325 kickoff for the Packers getting set to face quarterback Joe Flacco.

Again, no, that's not a mistake.

You're not listening to a rerun from a month ago.

We're not playing Cleveland again.

If you missed it, there was a rare trade inside a division where Cleveland made a trade with Cincinnati.

and sent Joe Flacco to the Cincinnati Bengals because they've got a couple of banged up quarterbacks and they confirmed that Joe Flacco will start against Green Bay on Sunday afternoon.

And recall that the Browns beat the Packers and the Packers since then have only played Dallas to a tie and then had a bye week.

So they're actually seeing Joe Flacco for the second time in three games, but with a different team.

something you almost never ever see in the National Football League.

And still in

the state of Ohio.

And still in the state of Ohio too.

He's getting

passed around the FC North like crazy.

It's really

weird.

I know.

So we'll we'll see him at Lambeau field coming up on Sunday again pregame.

We'll begin at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon.

Tony asks is he bringing miles Garrett to know then he's not worried.

So there you go.

Got that figured out.

Let's see.

So we've we've got all of your we got your sports all up to date.

Right.

Did I hit I hit all the high notes.

believe.

Yes, I did.

Okay.

So tomorrow is Friday will be hopefully be back at the lake was sort of studio at that point.

And we'll talk to Dr. Kristen Lierley, Mike Clemens will tell us more about, you know, the Packer game, and also, you know, whatever happens with the brewers tonight, we'll have our regular week and review panel.

And I'm, I'm, I'm quite confident I will have airline stories as well.

Oh, God, like later today, and getting

I mean, I've now learned that getting to the Dallas airport is just an experience in and of itself.

Oh, and did I mention there's construction there too?

No, I didn't mention it.

I didn't really have to if I mentioned a big, you know, metropolitan airport.

And I say construction, you're gonna say, Well, of course, it's like, it's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, you finish all the construction in all the things.

And then you start all over again, which I also noticed at Twin Cities Airport.

flying out of there.

I mean, that that gold concourse, the G concourse, doesn't feel like it was, you know, remodeled that terribly long ago.

It's all torn up again for another remodeling job.

Well, you know, nothing is ever permanent.

But well, especially at at airports, I'm like, who's who gets the the cushy gig of deciding?

Yes, we're about to spend a lot more money to tear this stuff out.

But I that we recently put in and every one of them is getting more and more mall like

You know, I mean, yeah, you kind of forget your butt.

And I think it's to make you forget that you're about to be put on the cattle car there.

Yeah, you know, with the little teeny tiny seats and the bumpy ride.

And if you're lucky, a tiny bag of pretzels, you know, so prior to that, if they put all these shops in here and in all this ambience, you know, and all the all those food and drink, you'll forget what awaits you, at least temporarily.

Yeah, you know, I don't travel a ton.

I had flown I think, well,

technically twice in my life, one way there, one way back.

I could go without the experience of flying in those people.

Yeah, I mean, I have I have traveled, you know, in, you know, in some ways that were very nice, luxurious.

But those those are rare special occasions.

And again, much like the airports themselves, just seek to to remind you that hey, unless you're paying four digits for your ticket,

You're going to be back there in the cattle car.

Anyway, more ahead here on this Thursday morning.

It's October 9th live from Dallas.

I'm Pat Kratlow and this is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Hey, Sherida Booker is off, but still plenty of weekend events to tell you about, including the celebration of a Wisconsin governor from the late 1800s.

In Fort Atkinson this weekend, a former governor remembered as one of the pioneers of dairy farming in Wisconsin.

Got that coming up in just a sec, but I haven't even gotten around to telling you what's on the program today, and that includes Congressman Mark Pokan, who will be joining us at 7.35 this morning.

Naturally, we'll talk about the government shutdown.

We'll also talk about how the Congressman is fresh off a new round of town halls.

You know, those town halls that allow members of the public to sound off about their dissatisfaction over Republicans shutting down the federal government instead of passing a new federal budget.

What's notable is that the town halls that Mark Pokan has been doing this week weren't held in his congressional district, the second district.

Instead, he was touring the third congressional district since Congressman Derek Van Orden can't be bothered to take questions from the general public.

So we've got Mark Pokan coming up at 7.35.

And then at 8.35, we'll be talking to Joseph Pecky.

In part, we'll talk about some new talks at the state capitol.

and how they're being framed as an effort by both Republicans and Democrats to bridge a long disagreement over who should pay for sites contaminated by those PFAS industrial chemicals.

The thing is, there's not really much of a disagreement to bridge the divide as over whether to protect industrial polluters or not.

Republicans say that state laws should exempt people like farmers who spread industrial sludge that was later found to have harmful PFAs, and Democrats agree.

You can have exemptions for people like farmers.

You just can't word those exemptions in such a broad way that they also lump in the industries.

that created the chemicals in the first place.

So we'll talk to Joe about that and other topics like the 2026 race for governor, which no longer includes State Attorney General Josh Call, but might include former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes.

So we'll have that.

We'll talk to Chad Holmes along the way, James Kelly from our Chip Will Falls newsroom.

Todd Alba would tell us what's coming up on his program a little later this afternoon as well across the Civic Media radio network.

So all that is on the way.

But first, again, let's tell you some of the things that you could be hitting this weekend as you get to traveling around the state.

And I just have to bring Parker into this because I need I need from him to know which one he would go to.

if he could.

So here we go.

We've got in Jamesville, the Enchanted Forest and Hollywood Hayride.

That's happening through Saturday.

Okay.

In Menominee Falls, there is the Old Falls October Fest German beer garden at the Old Falls Village Park.

And to Rivers, there's the 41st annual Apple Fest.

That will be Saturday in Central Park.

In Wapaka, they're having the 715 Harvest Fest on Saturday.

to benefit the Wapaka County Dive and Rescue team.

Salkville has autumn farm days at Pioneer Village on Saturday.

Neilsville has their autumn harvest celebration on Saturday at Town Square.

In Fond du Lac, they've got the Fondie Fault Oberfest and the Wisconsin Great Pumpkin Way off at Saturday at Lakeside Park.

Let's see there and then up in cable, there's the Mount Telemark Enduro.

So that's where you take your mountain bikes, your trail bikes, and they're basically starting at the top of Mount Telemark, and then you're speeding downhill down this mountain on these dirt paths on your bike, which I mean, seems like a perfectly good way to take however many hundreds or thousands of dollars you've spent on your bike and you know, crash it into a tree or just tear it all up on the trails.

And that seems like a good watch.

It seems like a very good watch.

Although I will do it.

I will admit that, again, if you could go back in time and maybe do some things a little bit differently, that's one of those activities I think I might have actually taken up.

Because I never did take up like, you know, mountain biking or motorbikes or anything like that.

I kind of wish I had.

back in the day now.

So that one actually looks fun.

I mean, right up until the moment, like I said, that you hit the tree.

But if you if you can avoid that, it's all real good.

There are all kinds of pumpkin fests and events at wineries and marathons.

And you can see all this at travelwisconsin.com.

Did any one of those stick out for you as as where you would go if you if you I kind of tuned out after the beer garden thing.

Oh, we got you there.

Yeah, that got me good.

That's just fine.

And then there's one more that I wanted to mention, and that is in Fort Atkinson.

And this weekend they mark Governor Horde Day.

Widely considered the father of the Wisconsin dairy industry, William Dempster Horde played a prominent role in the development of the School of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin.

And he began the first national dairy magazine in the country.

And people are still reading Horde's Dairyman to this day.

And I did not know until putting this segment together that the horde and hordes dairymen was William Dumpster Horde, former governor of the state of Wisconsin.

Horde's advocacy of high standards for the dairy industry, his promotion of scientific daring and farmer education were vital to the growth and development of dairy in Wisconsin.

Using his weekly newspaper in Fort Atkinson, Horde persuaded farmers who were losing money due to poor soil and crop yields to switch from crops to dairy.

But then there was controversy.

Hord's time as governor was marked by controversy over the Bennett law, which required public schools and all private schools to teach in English.

And that angered a lot of the German immigrants who had a large parochial school system that was taught in German.

So back then governor's terms were two years long instead of four years long.

And after two years, he lost his bid for reelection in 1891.

He then became an ally of Robert LaFollette Sr.

and was involved in creating the Progressive Faction of the State Republican Party.

So in Fort Atkinson this weekend, there will be an annual event to mark Governor Hordes' birthday as well as mark his Civil War service.

So there you go.

You get a little bit of Wisconsin history in there along with some ideas of things that you could be doing for this weekend.

All right, we will be back in just a bit for today's history lesson.

Stick around for that.

It includes Beethoven hitting number one on the pop charts as a disco tune.

I'm Pat Crichtlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

We

should be celebrating John Lennon's 85th birthday today.

The former Beetle born this day in 1940 and of course lost way too soon.

Way back in 1980, again, John Lennon's birthday today.

On his 35th birthday back in 1975, was born his brother, Sean.

Sean Lennon is 50 years old today, half brother to Julian Lennon.

And on this day in 1965, so that would have been John Lennon's 25th birthday, the Beatles had a number one hit with yesterday.

So a lot of John Lennon connections to this October 9th, starting with his birth on this day in 1940.

Also in today's history lesson, this is the anniversary of the birth of Charles Walgreen, an American pharmacist and businessman.

I think we all know what business he started.

The Walgreen?

Uh, CBS is actually what he founded.

No, no, no, it actually was Walgreens.

Oh, again, he was born this day in 1873.

Charles Walgreen passed away in nineteen.

39 after giving us a place where we could get our medications, get our photos developed, get all kinds of makeup and hair and personal products you didn't even know you needed.

And of course, my favorite part of Walgreens now is the as seen on TV shelf.

Oh boy.

You ever see that all the all the things that you see on the infomercials and they're right there and I always stand there and I look at it and they go

Maybe I really do need one of those little doohickeys.

Really?

I didn't think

that'd be your thoughts.

I think about it, and then I never do.

I never do.

OK,

go.

Yeah.

That's more like them.

On this day in 1936, Hoover Dam began to generate electricity and transmit it to Los Angeles.

So you said you haven't done much traveling, so I'm going to assume Hoover Dam is not on that list.

You have a place as you've been.

No, I have only been to DC, basically.

OK, gotcha.

We saw Hoover Dam in 2000.

It was either 2000 or early 2001.

So it was before the 9-11 attacks because after that they stopped giving.

the tours inside the dam.

So I guess theoretically, I'm one of the one of the last people, you know, to have actually gotten the tour inside of Hoover Dam, the hard hat.

Yeah,

still have the hard hat to prove it.

And I mean, it is as mammoth and impressive as you would expect.

It's one of those things you still you still look at.

And you do that about again, the Golden Gate Bridge or a tall building or whatever.

But you look at the quick go how

How did how did somebody design that and build that and and have it still, you know, doing what it's doing today so well?

It seems like one of those things that you just kind of can't wrap your head around the pure scale of it.

Yeah.

Yes.

But here's the thing, even though I can't wrap my head around it, I don't deny that it exists, which has always been my frustration with like, anything else about science, where people go, Oh, well, that's that's just your opinion that these vaccines work.

No, it's actually people who are smarter than me who look into this stuff, you know, so just think of some of that stuff that you can't see like Hoover Dam that you can see and trust the people that stayed in school a couple of weeks longer than you and me.

That's all I'm asking.

Another musical happy birthday today to Jackson Brown who is 77 years old today.

Jackson Brown, that's his real name.

Well, his middle and last name, his birth name is Clyde.

Clyde.

Clyde Brown.

Clyde Jackson Brown.

And he decided that maybe going with Jackson Brown would be a better way to go.

That's not a bad.

Not a bad.

Oh, no.

For an alternate point of view, Tony puts on Facebook, do your own research, Pat.

Hoover Dam is a lie.

God.

Anyway.

It's all a hoax.

Jackson Brown was born this day in 1948 in Heidelberg, Germany, where his American serviceman father was stationed at the time.

And it reminds me to mention, I hadn't mentioned this yet this week, when I was flying out to Nashville last week before coming to Dallas, I finally downloaded on my phone and started watching the Billy Joel documentary.

Oh, and it is every bit as good as advertised.

I mean, I'm only maybe halfway through the first part.

It's a two part thing.

And so I still got a ways to go, but Jackson Brown features prominently in there as one of the, you know, all those young.

songwriters back then that were a bit of a fraternity and talking about Billy Joel's early life.

And again, I still can't believe it's taking me all these months to finally get around to watching it.

But it's going to be a great show watching on the flight home later today, too.

What's the, I can't think of what it's called.

There's a.

Beatles it's not a documentary really.

It's I thought I think it's like they just had cameras running while they were writing songs.

I can't think of which ones

Yeah, yeah, and the one that came out what a year or so ago probably yeah Yes, yeah, and I have started watching that one and I haven't finished it So it's on my very long to-do list of things.

I got to get around to watching

If you ever hear of the day that I hasten my retirement, it's because my list finally got to a point where I said, that's it.

I got to just do that full time from this point on.

There's not no hours left in the day

to watch

all of these things.

Yes.

A rockumentary, Tony asks on YouTube.

No, I wouldn't call it a rockumentary.

Actually, I really

like that.

I'm kind of on board

for that one, Pat.

OK, good deal.

Let's see.

On this day in 1961, Ray Charles had the number one song in the country.

Wait, you're telling me that Joe Biden didn't come up with hit the road jack?

Let's

see John Antwistle base base player for the who born this day in 1944 passed away in 2002 actor Tony Shalub with his Madison roots.

He is 72 years old today the popular children's show Thomas the Tank Engine

Premiered in the UK on this day in 1984.

Look at you get that smile like you grew up watching a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Oh, yeah, a lot of Thomas the train.

Oh, that's so sweet.

The Fox Broadcasting Company launched as the fourth U.S.

television network this day in 1986.

Nobody thought it was going to last.

You know, everybody was set in their ways.

There was ABC, NBC and CBS.

And that's all there ever was.

And that's all that there ever would be.

And then Fox showed up with, you know, some unusual shows you would normally see on network TV, like the Simpsons, things that were a little more edgy.

Somebody even say a little more raunchy.

They got good ratings.

Then they landed the national football league games for the NFC.

And truly became a fourth network after that.

It enabled them to spin off things like Fox News channel, Fox Business channel.

All the other things that have made TV just the wonderfully informative, educational and good for democracy brand that we've come to expect from Fox.

It's a diverse TV guide.

Yes, put it that way.

All right.

On this day in 1976, the number one song was by Beethoven.

Well, not specifically Beethoven, but Walter Murphy's take on Beethoven's fifth.

So the question becomes, if you could play this for Beethoven, is it the rolling in his grave thing?

Like, what have they done to my song?

Or would he be like, oh, yeah, I totally see why you did it that way in this day and age, meaning 1976.

Yeah, I don't know, man.

Musicians,

composers can be a little picky.

Yeah, yeah, they don't like when you when you take their work and twist it in certain ways But like I said, maybe others have a different view on it Anyway, it was done by Walter Murphy and his big Apple band and if Walter Murphy's name sounds familiar He does still does some TV and film composing work For example, you see his name on the musical credits for Family Guy every week as well

Kurt Newman, the singer-songwriter and guitarist for the Bodines is 64 years old today, born in Milwaukee.

And then Steve from Blues Clues is 52 years old today.

So if you were big into Thomas the Tank Engine, Blues Clues had to be something on the TV, too.

No, I'm not

sure that

I saw any Blues Clues, actually, no.

Oh, OK, well.

Yeah, Steve was, Steve was one of them there.

So there you go.

Steve is, Steve from Blues Clues is 52 years old today.

Let's see, from the standpoint of the national day calendar, what did you find on there for us?

Incredibly light day again on the national day calendar.

But you know what?

I think we've got one of the best international days of all time.

It's international beer and pizza

day.

international beer and pizza day.

Was this thought up at a bowling alley?

I

mean, those those three things go together perfectly.

But yeah, beer and pizza day.

Yeah, I like it.

That actually that works.

It even when we bought our current house 30 years ago.

and we were in debt up to a year and we had lawn furniture in there for like the first year because we couldn't afford furniture but at least we had the house and when we signed the closing papers at the bank we had just enough cash on hand to stop at the corner gas station and get

They had slices of pizza and and a six pack of beer We sat on our back deck of our newly purchased home with beer and pizza and said well, let's see where this goes from here

Man, it turned out all right.

Little did I realize that it would be marked by international beer and pizza day 30 years later.

There you go.

Not that I'm taking all the work for it.

What else do we have on the calendar today?

Yeah, World Site Day.

Pat, as two people with glasses, I think we can appreciate this day.

Oh, so S-I-G-H-T, not S-I-T-E.

Yes, that day, yes.

OK.

I do believe site is important there.

Yes.

So let's let's make mention of that.

By the way, in a follow up, we've talked about the the various cuts to programs, educational programs and things like that, including cuts to a program to help with the education of deafblind children in Wisconsin.

And I just wanted to do a quick follow up that one year's worth of funding has been restored.

It's being sent to this particular program, you know, through like a third party, but at least the program won't be ending at least right away.

Something worth noting on this world site day.

Anything else on the calendar?

National curious events

day.

Tell me more curious events.

I believe it was defined as like a bigfoot sighting.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you had any curious events that are worth noting?

Well, I've seen some interesting things.

I don't know if I'd call them curious events.

Okay.

All right.

From an entertainment news standpoint, or what little non-hard news stories are you following?

LeBron James, I don't know if you saw this.

He had the second decision.

The second decision?

Taking

his talents to South Beach?

That kind of decision?

Well, he teased it one day and the kind of people were going, oh, he might be retiring.

Everyone else was like, oh, it's going to be an ad.

And sure enough, it was an ad for Hennessy.

A fan, though, thought that he was going to be retiring and bought two tickets to what would have been his last game.

And now he's suing LeBron for the price of those tickets.

So LeBron teases, oh, I've made this decision.

Yes, which he didn't tell people was like a tease for a commercial.

He just said I've made this decision.

A fan thinks he's going to retire buys tickets to the game.

What would have been the last game of the season?

He of course doesn't retire.

But because this guy got fooled, he's now suing LeBron for the tickets for $865 and 66 cents.

I hope the judge not only rules in favor of LeBaron James, but tells this guy he's got to pay court costs of $865.10, because that's just a little silly.

I know.

All right, still ahead this morning, of course, we will be talking to Congressman Mark Bocan.

That's coming up at 7.35, where we will talk about the Trump shutdown here and whether Republicans are showing any signs of restoring some of the health care cuts that they've made earlier this year.

I'm Pat Critello.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

There's an old joke from the old original Saturday Night Live with Chevy Chase anchoring weekend update and often started it by saying this just in Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead in much that same vein.

We are happy to report the news today that Dolly Parton is not dead.

And by her by her own admission, she she's given us proof of life, despite some people getting a scare the other day.

years i can tell they're right the parker oh yeah we got her and here she is telling us she ain't dead yet

well today's october the eighth and obviously i'm here doing some commercials for the grand old library which is why i'm dressed kind of like a country western girl but before i got started i wanted to say i know lately uh everybody thinks that i am sicker than i am do i look sick to you

I'm working hard here.

Anyway, I wanted to put everybody's mind at ease, those of you that seem to be real concerned, which I appreciate, and I appreciate your prayers, because I'm a person of faith.

I can always use the prayers for anything and everything, but I want you to know that I'm okay.

I've got some problems, as I mentioned, back when my husband Carl was very sick.

that was for a long time and then when he passed I didn't take care of myself so I let a lot of things go that I should have been taken care of so anyway when I got around to it the doctor said we need to take care of this we need to take care of that nothing major but I did have to cancel some things so I could be closer to home closer to Vanderbilt

you know, where I'm kind of having a few treatments here and there.

But I wanted you to know that I'm not dying.

There you go.

She's not

dying.

I ain't dead yet.

She said they're at Vanderbilt where we were in Nashville last week and our hotel was right right there next door to the Vanderbilt campus.

Did not realize I could have seen Dolly.

while she was getting treated for whatever it is she was getting treated for.

But late last month, she postponed her first Las Vegas residency in 32 years, citing health challenges.

She pushed those shows to September of next year, when she'll be 80 years old.

And here's the thing.

So she she explains that, you know, she had some health stuff, she didn't take good care of herself after her husband passed away and all of that.

And that's all fine and good.

What she's not saying

The story involved here is that sometimes the people who love you most, yeah, can cause the most trouble.

This really all got going because on Tuesday, her sister Frieda Parton put up a Facebook post that escalated concerns about Dolly's health.

She wrote that she had quote been up all night praying for my sister Dolly.

And well, I mean, if you see

the sister of a celebrity saying I've been up all night praying for her health.

Yeah, you're gonna think

something.

Yeah, exactly.

And well, it turns out no, she's she sent a follow up post the sister did saying, I want to clear something up.

I didn't mean to scare anyone or make it sound so serious when asking for prayers for Dolly.

She's been a little under the weather.

And I simply asked for prayers because I believe so strongly in the power of prayer.

And while Dolly Parton is a very sweet person, I can imagine her getting on the phone with her sister and not so sweet voice saying, help me less here.

Do

you know how

many people have been asking me if I'm dead?

All because of you.

But she did end the video with a joke saying, did you see that AI picture of Reba McIntyre and me?

Oh, Lordy.

I mean, they had Reba at my death bed.

And we both like we both looked like we needed to be buried.

So I'm glad that she's got her sense of humor about all this.

Oh,

yeah.

And Dolly is in in better health now.

So

that is a very good thing.

Rob, telling us from Tigerton, I truly believe in the power of prayer.

He said yesterday was a perfect day for being outside.

Let's see.

And what's the temperature like in Tigerton?

He says, Oh, good morning.

It's clear in 31 degrees.

We had 30 degrees that

5am as the low I had to turn on the furnace for the first time this season.

He said I had three lawns to mow in the Wittenberg area for the last time in 2025.

Now that sounds about right.

Says that he had taco soup at Rachel's roadside near Wittenberg.

It is very much a must stop when you're heading east going on Green Bay off of Highway 29 and exit 198.

And again, he said yesterday was just a perfect day to be outside and I love those parts of these fall days.

Yeah, you do get some really nice weather where you can kind of just do whatever you want.

just

a little

crisp in the air.

It's very nice.

Yeah, looking forward to that very much.

And I don't have the Green Bay forecast in front of me for Sunday, but hopefully this all holds and we've got some perfect weather to watch the Packers take on the Cincinnati Bengals.

And again, if you missed it earlier, you might be out of out of the habit because the Packers had that by week.

And then they had that long space between a Thursday game and a game the 12 days later on the on the Sunday.

So you might need to be reminded that you can actually catch the Packers.

on several civic media stations, including in Richland Center and Park Falls and Racine and Watoma, our newest Packers affiliate WAUH.

And again, it's a 325 kickoff.

And so coverage of the pregame on Sunday will begin at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon.

And I'm trying to figure out why Rob is also putting up Kevin Harlan's name up here on the thing.

Maybe we mentioned something about the play by play.

I don't know.

And we did mention the anniversary of the Fox TV network.

And Roger from Steven's point puts up.

Did you know that the Fox network has been affiliated with three different channels in its first 10 years in the Green Bay area.

First it was on channel 32, then 26, and then it moved to 11, where it's been Fox 11 now for the past 30 years.

Yeah, that came with the football contract.

when when Fox got football, a whole lot of TV stations switched their affiliation and that caused a big shuffle in the Green Bay area between channels 11 and 26.

And I think two and five were also caught up in there.

And that happened in a lot of markets where people did not know where they were going to find, you know, this network or that network, things have kind of settled down since then.

Well, for those of you who still watch any network TV, now you just Google it.

Yeah, yeah, well, and hope that they're right because the internet's never wrong about these things.

That's right.

All right, Congressman Mark Boakhan will join us in the next hour of these mornings powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Critewell.

Across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Critello, powered by Up North News.

And now, live from Dallas, a city with so much traffic, you're always an hour away from Dallas, even when you're in Dallas.

Here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Critello.

Thank you, Parker Olson.

It is 7.06.

Nice to have you back here.

Live from Dallas on this Thursday morning, October 9th, a getaway day, I hope.

the the

Oh,

boy.

Well, we've talked about switching up here.

We

have, you know, buddy, Don Rue does it for a time and Parker does it on these trips.

And I tried to get some celebrity guest introduction people as well.

So yeah, we'll work on that.

You know what?

We we we could actually invite the listeners to do that as well, because we have that voice note feature.

Yes, media app.

So here's the thing.

You you you write it down.

You use the voice note feature.

If you don't like it, you start over.

Start a new one.

Maybe throw a little punchline in there as well.

You know, keep it clean, of course, because it's got to go on radio.

But we are very much open to that.

We are very open to crowdsourcing the show intro.

Yes, I would love to hear from Tony every day

in the morning.

Yep.

Yep.

And he says Tony says two birds with one stone just made Parker a celebrity.

Oh,

he was a celebrity long before this.

I mean, around whitewater, he never has to buy himself a drink.

I was whitewater woj, come on.

Whoa,

I forgot

about that.

So you can join us using the Civic Media app.

You can use that voice note feature.

You can send us a text message as well.

Now that we're done with the text to win contest for a little while, that's coming back though.

I mean, these these texts to win contests, they're just getting increasingly popular.

And we wanted to thank I know this week yet I have not officially thanked everybody who sent in texts during our show as part of the contest.

I mean, look, I'm I'm no Todd Alba.

No, I'm no Jane Madden there.

But y'all did pretty respect.

See, I'm falling into the text stuff already.

Y'all did pretty respectable for being willing to text a radio show at six, seven o'clock in the morning and enter a contest.

So thanks to all of you for doing that.

I appreciate it very much.

So you can now text in any old thing that you want.

You can use the voice note feature you can get in the comment sections on YouTube and Facebook.

If you're only hearing us on the radio and you're ever wanting

What what do these goofballs look like?

You just head over either on Facebook or YouTube, either for the up North news pages or the civic media pages.

And you can see what we do there.

And you can put things in the comment sections.

And you can see what other people put in the comment sections.

And say to them, you should get a life.

You should not be writing such mean stuff this early in the morning.

If you don't like the show, turn the dial.

But we've got people that live to put

little, little comments like that in there.

So yeah, I think I think they'll be back a little later on this hour, because we will have Congressman Mark Polkhan joining us to talk about the government shutdown, and also talk about the town hall meetings that he's been holding all across Western Wisconsin.

And you're saying, wait a minute, Mark Polkhan is not the Congressman for Western Wisconsin.

No, he's not.

He's he's the Congressman for Southwestern and parts of South Central Wisconsin.

But Derek van Orden's not doing any.

So somebody's got to come meet the people and take their questions about all the looming cuts to health care programs and things like that.

And so Mark book hands been doing that.

So we'll talk to him about the shutdown and about the ongoing effort by Republicans to feel like, well, if they just say enough times that it's a Democrat shutdown, you know, that people will believe that.

But people understand math.

And the math says that Republicans have the White House, they have the House, they have the Senate, it should be their job to, you know, govern and pass a budget.

And they can't, they can't agree amongst themselves.

And so they need democratic votes.

And Democrats say fine, we'll give you some votes.

How about you put back some of those health care cuts that you put in earlier this year?

And Republicans say no, we don't want to talk with you.

Fine.

then pass your own damn budget.

Go on, do it.

You have the majority.

You have the votes to do this.

If you could just agree among yourselves.

But it's always easier to blame other people when you can't do your own work.

I'm listening to Ron Johnson do it again this week.

And the stuff that he's saying is the absolute garbage about how you know, Democrats hate America, and that's why they don't want there to be a but how about you just work within your own party to get something done.

That's all you can do is just lash out at other people.

And it's not just Ron Johnson, and it's not just Derek Van Orden doing that.

It's Wisconsin's own Sean Duffy, former Congressman from up north, who's now the US Transportation Secretary.

And on social media yesterday, he put up the little applause emoji as he was applauding Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for video from South Beach in Miami that showed

some construction equipment being used to dig up some pavement on a city street.

Not just any pavement on a city street, it was a crosswalk on a city street.

And not just any crosswalk, it was a crosswalk that was painted in rainbow colors.

And that really hurt Sean Duffy's Fifis.

He just could not

Bear the thought of it.

Remember, he's the one who said after becoming transportation secretary that these rainbow crosswalks that let the LGBTQ community know that they do not deserve to be marginalized.

They do not deserve to be threatened.

This is as much their community as anybody else's.

But that hurts people like Ron DeSantis and Sean Duffy.

It hurts their manliness.

And apparently the way to

beef up that manliness is to, you know, show construction equipment, literally digging up, not painting over the crosswalk, not, you know, doing anything else to get rid of the paint job.

But to literally dig it up is how they got their jollies.

And a lot of right wing politicians, you know, move, you know, sharing that video.

And Sean Duffy doing the same thing when

he added the applause emojis.

And, you know, the responses, obviously there have been some predictable responses from the right, but I do like the way that some other folks responded to this video.

For example, one post says, the next time you think art doesn't matter, just think about how scared in 2025 fascists are about sidewalk chalk.

Another says,

I'm a straight man who walked across a rainbow crosswalk.

And somehow I survived without bursting into flames or crying about my masculinity.

Weird, right?

Yeah, I know.

And you know, on it goes about, again, the people who love to invent the word snowflake are themselves the ones who are acting the most snowflake like

and one other post I'm seeing here kind of has the album cover from now that's what I call music and it says instead now that's what I call a distraction from the Epstein files which again I don't know how you can deny that that just seems to be where we are now that we're looking for anything right now of course with the health care part of the government shutdown debate what do we keep hearing

from Republicans, from President Trump and others, that it's all about, you know, illegals, you know, getting health care, which is so off the mark.

And again, I think most people already understand that undocumented immigrants aren't signing up for Medicaid benefits and other things.

They can't.

They're not documented.

They would risk being deported.

the things that are being cut are not cutting healthcare for undocumented immigrants.

It's cutting the healthcare of hardworking American families under the guise of hurting those undocumented immigrants, those illegals.

So you got to go after the LGBTQ, you got to go after the illegals, you got to go after DEI.

But in going after diversity, equity and inclusion, you end up going after a whole bunch of other folks who get

caught up in your, you know, race based politics, like deaf blind children in Wisconsin.

Remember, we talked the other day about how a program for deaf blind children is having its federal funding cut, again, in the name of wokeness that anything that singles out groups for what they consider special treatment is getting cut.

Well, the update on that story now is that that particular program, the Wisconsin Deafblind Technical Assistance Program, has had one year of its funding restored.

At the heart of it is that the grant money that would help these deafblind children in Wisconsin being routed through the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Well, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction does have language in its grant applications that says that where

where it can, it does try to give a percentage of its grant funds to either women owned businesses, minority owned businesses, businesses owned by veterans, or by the disabled.

And apparently all of these groups do not deserve special treatment.

Well, really veterans to and the disabled to that's what happens when you go after you know, the gaze or you go after, you know,

other racial groups that you feel like are getting special treatment is you end up lumping in all kinds of other folks who in your mind probably do deserve some special treatment, but you've managed to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And all of this is to say

Why are we getting so caught up in destroying rainbow crosswalks?

Why are we getting so caught up in cutting funding for groups that you have some kind of a petty grudge with?

When we could instead all be governing together, instead of cutting the enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, which is at the heart of this government shutdown, we could be saying, how do we improve the health care situation?

for Americans.

We hear all the time from the Ron Johnson's of the world about how bad the Affordable Care Act is.

But here's the thing.

They've had 15 years.

Ron Johnson's been around now for 15 years.

He got elected the same time as the blowback from the Affordable Care Act when it first passed.

He and others have had every opportunity.

to do more to improve health care.

And yet all we've heard year after year after year after year is how they can cut health care to regular Americans.

And it's not working.

And so now they look for the other ways to call the

you know, to create distractions from it.

So they're still working to cut your healthcare.

They're keeping the government shut down to cut your healthcare.

But they're trying so hard to pin it on undocumented immigrants or DEI or, you know, open borders or whatever other kind of stuff that they want to make up.

And poll after poll has shown that Americans are not buying this.

And now we're facing, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the prospect of things like air travel being delayed and other things not happening as more federal employees are furloughed and threatened with not getting back pay.

Every government shutdown, every government shutdown that has been caused by Republicans has blown up in their faces because they keep forgetting that American taxpayers, while they're divided on many things, while they're divided on many issues,

do agree that because they pay taxes, government should work efficiently and effectively.

And if you're just there to shut it all down, you're wasting their money.

Most Americans don't like that.

We'll talk to Congressman Mark Buchan about this in about 15 minutes.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Temperatures by and large around Wisconsin are in the 30s right now.

There are a few 40s scattered about the warm spot being 46 degrees down in Milwaukee.

It's also 46 degrees in Appleton.

But like I said, by and large the 30s

There are some 20s out there this morning in Manitou or I'm sorry in in Hayward rather, and in Merrill, Merrill Tomahawk and Hayward all coming in at 27 degrees right now.

28 degrees in Ashland right now, 27 degrees in superior.

So fall is here, like it or not.

And that's what that's where with the exception of Parker, of course, a warm cup of coffee really comes into play, which I finally have here.

It tells me that took you five days.

my daughter might be thinking it's time for me to go home because the first three mornings here, she had set the coffee maker the night before and so 430 in the morning, there's a hot pot of coffee ready to go.

And that was that was not the case this morning.

So it's like

Oh, that's some somebody's always saying, what time are you heading for the airport?

So the coffee has finally been made.

But looking looking forward to doing some traveling and getting back to Beautiful Lake was so to hear later in the day.

But Wisconsin's excited to have you back.

I don't think so.

No, I think they're they're they're they're much more caring about the fact that temperatures are now in the 30s.

Although, again, for people who have like their packer hoodie and are ready to put that on, that's okay.

Packers will be playing on Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals at Lambeau Field.

It's a later start of 325 kickoff.

And so pregame will begin at one o'clock Sunday on several civic media stations.

And if you hadn't heard earlier, we'll be facing the Cincinnati Bengals and quarterback Joe Flacco.

We just faced two games ago as the quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, but he's been traded.

You know, it's really weird to me that Jake Browning was as terrible as he was for the Bengals.

Yeah, what three starts and now he's been benched and they trade for a 40 year old quarterback.

Yeah, I mean, that's that's got a sting.

If you're that if you're that guy, if you go three games and they're done with you already.

It is the way of the NFL.

I mean, Joe Flacco, I don't know that he's going to the Hall of Fame, but he's definitely proved to have some staying power.

He could.

He's tried and true.

He could.

Yep.

Yep.

So thank you, by the way, in the comments section here, Alicia saying Wisconsin loves Pat.

You know, I need just enough listeners to love Pat.

And then I'm good.

It doesn't have to be all five million of you.

I'm fine that way.

The Badger football team plays on Saturday at Iowa.

The pregame begins at four o'clock Saturday afternoon on some of the stations of the Civic Media Radio Network.

And then there's the burrs.

We haven't talked yet about them this hour, losing to the Cubs yesterday.

So they will try again today, tonight, to clinch that National League Division series with Chicago.

That'll be at Wrigley Field.

It's a late start.

Pre-game begins at 7.30 on several Civic Media radio stations.

First pitch a little after 8 o'clock tonight.

So again, apologies in advance for how tired Parker and I might sound tomorrow morning as we kick off a Friday.

However, Friday, we've got the most of our usual crew.

And so they will kind of lift us up and put put us on their shoulders and curious across the Friday finish line.

We will have Mike Clemens here talking about the game.

He's he stays up all night every night anyway.

Oh,

that's fine.

I mean, he is like the ultimate night owl for sports makes

him so good.

I don't know when he sleeps.

I genuinely have no idea when he sleeps.

It is.

It's like between something like four and seven a.m.

seriously is like, and he probably catches a little catnap somewhere in there.

But we'll have him tomorrow.

Dr. Kristen Lierly, Mark Jacob, Jennifer Scholes, the former US Attorney Jim Santel, and, and hopefully me, depending on how the airlines work things out today,

live from the airport.

Yeah, that could be, you know, again, in this day and age, all I need is a laptop and a phone for a hotspot and a microphone and I can I can do the show from anywhere.

So might it be from the tarmac?

Yeah, yeah, it might be or or TSA jail.

I was gonna say

for broadcasting from an airplane sitting on the tarmac all all things are possible.

We've got Mark Bocan coming up in just a few minutes here.

We will be talking about the government shutdown.

And then an hour later, we'll be talking to Joseph Hecke about state politics, especially the decision this week by Attorney General Josh Call not to run for governor, but instead to run for a third term as Wisconsin's Attorney General.

As you heard Earl Ingraham say on this show yesterday, he reached out to former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes and Mandela Barnes confirmed that he is seriously considering getting into the race for governor.

And so we'll ask Joseph Pecky, what is the significance of all of that of Josh Kahl not getting in of Mandela Barnes, potentially getting in.

And I'll ask him his thoughts on what's happening at the state capitol as well when it comes to PFAS industrial chemicals and cleaning them up.

You might recall that

Not in this current state budget, but more than two years ago in the last state budget, Republicans voted for $125 million to deal with identifying and cleaning up sites contaminated with PFAS industrial chemicals, that stuff that's getting in our drinking water and causing health hazards.

And it wasn't spent because Republicans

kept blocking the rules that would enable it to happen, because heaven forbid, some of the industrial polluters actually be pursued to help pay a fair share of the cost of the cleanup.

At some point, the GOP has to stop carrying water pun intended for WMC, Wisconsin Manufacturers in Commerce, and actually look out for

you know, the rest of us who want clean drinking water.

And they'll tell you, well, we're just looking for exemptions for like, farmers who spread some of this industrial sludge who didn't know that there was PFAS in there.

Yeah, we agree.

So how about we write that exemption in a way where an industrial company that was making all these things and dumping them can't put on a farmer's cap and go, Oh, yeah, me too exempt me make the taxpayers pay for it.

So I'll ask Joseph Peckie if there's a chance at reaching a compromise on that coming up in just over an hour.

But again, coming up next, Congressman Mark Pokan.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

You know, you can stay up to date on things.

We're covering it up with news by subscribing to our newsletters six days a week.

They come out now Monday through Friday.

Ellie Bordeaux puts those together and then I've got a politically themed one kind of a week in review on Sunday mornings.

The newsletter today from Ellie certainly leads with the note of the Brewers losing to the Cubs yesterday but have a chance to win tonight.

She also has a story in there about how Eau Claire County is starting a new program to help coach people on recycling and knowing what goes where so that all that recycling actually can get recycled.

and use properly.

And so again, to learn more sign up for a newsletter up north news w i.com.

On a news matter where people saying, Well, wait, how come you haven't said anything about the the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and the prisoner swap and everything else?

Only because, again, at the, I will plead guilty to being old and curmudgeonly.

I hope it all works.

I want there to be peace.

I want them to, you know, figure it all out, not have the terrorist attacks, not have any more bombings and death.

It's just, you know, I'll believe it as it comes together.

So it's not that I'm not.

happy.

It's not a discussion topic worth having.

I wish them well.

I just, again, the proof is always in the pudding and let's see how things go from the steel that they've allegedly worked out.

I'm putting more of my effort into domestic politics and especially this shutdown that, again, Republicans have the majorities

They could pass a budget they choose not to in order to protect those health care cuts.

And they're not inviting Democrats to negotiate.

Democrats like Congressman Mark Polkan, who joins us now from Wisconsin, where he's been touring around the state, you know, and touring by and large the second congressional district, because the guy in the third congressional district seems to have had a problem.

getting around the district.

Congressman Mark Polkan had joined us.

I've seen, I don't know if you froze up or not.

Congressman, are you hearing me?

I think we might have lost our connection with him.

So I'm gonna just make this little adjustment here.

There he goes.

And we should see him click back in in just a moment.

Like I said, we had him on there and then it looked like the camera shot froze.

So hopefully we'll see the Congressman again.

and get into what he's been doing this week.

Again, as he noted, it's his third week back in Wisconsin, three weeks where they're not doing any of the public business that they could be doing.

They're also not swearing in, for example, new members.

We mentioned that there's a new member of Congress elected from Arizona, Speaker Mike Johnson, not even holding what's called a pro forma session or a very brief session to swear in this new member of Congress.

Well, Johnson says it's Democrats fault as soon as Democrats, you know, reopen the government.

Again, they don't have the majority.

But once Democrats reopen the government, they'll swear in this newly elected Democratic member of Congress.

A reporter pointed out to Speaker Mike Johnson that, you know, in the last government shutdown, you held pro forma sessions to swear in newly elected Republican members.

Well, well, that's just a distraction said speaker Johnson and moved on to the next thing every everything is a distraction with them.

No, this is the distraction is from doing things like, you know, putting the Epstein files out there finally, so that we can figure out why was the president of the United States mentioned in there.

So we'll

We'll see if Congress can maybe get its act together and if Speaker Mike Johnson can finally bring them back into session.

Congressman Polkhan, we've reestablished a connection with him and he joins us now.

Congressman, how are

you?

Good, you know, living in rural America, as many of your listeners know.

I'm now working off of my phone, which has got a couple of bars, but you know, it sure would be nice if...

we had something like a real broadband everywhere in Wisconsin.

Wouldn't it though?

Wouldn't it?

I mean, and to do that, of course, you'd need a working federal budget, which is where we are at all this.

So I mean, we, we've gone through this ad nauseam, we've established that Republicans have the majority and they could be doing something about this.

And yet, Congressman from Speaker Johnson, Senator Ron Johnson and others, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy again yesterday, working

so hard to label this as some kind of a democratic shutdown.

And they can read polling.

They know Americans understand who's at fault on this and that they don't believe them.

How much longer do they think they can keep up this facade?

You know, I don't know.

I don't quite get their game plan because it changes almost daily a little bit on their messaging, especially at the White House level.

But

Last week, I got 85 calls all week about the shutdown.

We were getting up to 500 calls a day when President Trump was stealing funds from nonprofits earlier this year through Recisions.

And this year, I have gotten 14,435 calls so far on healthcare.

So I think I know what people are really watching, not the shenanigans of the Republicans trying to make some political point in Washington, but they understand that

In the next couple of weeks, we're going to get our new rate increases because of the big ugly law for the Affordable Care Act.

We're also getting group plan rate increases that they had to factor in that law.

And just to give you one example, I talked to an employer Friday night who said they got their new rate increases for next year, 41% increase.

And we got people on the Affordable Care Act.

that we've been told statewide, the average for this demographic, but a couple in the early 60s making 85,000 statewide, we'll see about a $17,000 increase next year in health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act because of the Republican action through the big ugly law.

So whether it be the half a trillion dollar cut to Medicare, whether it be everyone's rates going up, whether it be people going to be kicked off of Medicaid after the election in November next year,

or the very real effects of the next couple of weeks with people on the Affordable Care Act, people get what's a priority.

It's their health care and it's not, you know, whatever game it is that, you know, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump are trying to play.

And if I can just for a moment linger on that one group that you mentioned, maybe because I belong to it.

But look, we can say a lot about retirees and we can say a lot about young adults, young families, college students, farmers, there's no shortage of constituencies.

But

We did have a story from Up North News reporter Selena Heller earlier this week, a woman in La Crosse who was getting rather emotional talking about these looming health insurance premium increases because they're in the demographic of people in their late 50s, early 60s.

They are too young for Medicare.

And they've just been waiting and waiting to get on Medicare because they work for a place that doesn't offer health insurance, or you know, the health insurance is completely unaffordable, or they are self employed, and they are just waiting.

But in the meantime, at least we have the Affordable Care Act marketplace to get them there.

But that group in particular, some are realizing how tough it's going to be.

Others, like you said, they're they're a week or two or three away from getting a notice and getting the sticker shock of their lives.

Yeah, the 58 to 64 demographic is in the worst place.

If you're on the Public Health Act, those are going to be some of the biggest rate increases.

We've been told up to $24,000 you could see in Wisconsin.

The average will be more about $17,000 for people in that demographic.

But everyone is going to get that.

And the other thing that I should mention, because you know, obviously the Eau Claire area well,

I was just up there and, you know, they lost their two hospitals, 73,000 people, no hospitals.

You can't even call that a rural hospital when you have 73,000 people, but it still is by definition.

You know, they, in the big ugly law, because there's so many who are going to lose health insurance, that's uncompensated care.

You don't knock it sick.

You still go to the hospital.

That's going to cost about $434 billion, billion dollars across the country.

They

put a little bandaid on this gaping wound of $50 billion.

They're going to cover $1 out of $9.

But when you don't cover $1 out of $9, you're going to have hospitals and nursing homes closing down across the country.

In Wisconsin, one of the three that's targeted is up in Osceo.

It's the Mayo Clinic Oak Ridge facility up there.

And you've got people like Derek Van Orden in Congress who recently wants to pull away all the federal funding away from the Mayo Clinic.

as well as the city of Eau Claire and the village of Ellsworth and other people because they've somehow said something he doesn't like on the internet.

And,

you know,

it's a pretty scary time given, you know, people, you know, the most people think about, can they afford their mortgage around?

Do they have health care for their family?

Can they maybe take a family vacation?

And if we're pulling away a real economic, you know, necessity for people, it's a scary time for people.

What does it say then that somebody like a Congressman Derek Van Orden, or even the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, you know, saying, don't hold these town halls, you know, they love to tar the people, their own constituents who are going to show up as somehow being like paid agitators or something.

And so that you've gone through the third congressional district, Derek Van Orden's district to do these town halls instead.

Is there any way that this works positively for people like Congressman Van Orden?

Not if they don't listen to their constituents.

And if you don't have town halls, you're not really listening to your constituents.

So because we had time when they canceled votes this week, you know, my whole calendar was in Washington.

So we, with about 48 hours, roughly notice, scheduled for town halls in Derrick's district in Richland Center in Verroqua, La Crosse, and Eau Claire, people showed up.

in all of them, as well as the media, because they don't see their member of Congress talking about this stuff.

And, you know, I always used the Wisconsin smell test, you know, if he really did such a good thing with the big ugly law, and this is such a good fight over the shutdown, you'd want to go to every county in your district and brag about what you did and what you're doing.

And instead of doing that, you're hiding in your basement.

I mean, people get

that you don't have a message when that's the case so you know the rumors now they may pull next week we're already trying to assess do I go into another district or should I find three more communities in the western wisconsin district because Derek is obviously one of the

I guess biggest chickens in our delegation because he's never done an open public town hall in the three years he's been in office but you know people are it's a higher hurt in the third district than in my district on what's going to happen on the Affordable Care Act when you look at the actual numbers people are going to have and I think you know people just have to understand that their member of Congress is actually giving them lies about what this is about and I'm going around doing truth-telling on it.

Congressman Mark Buchanan is our guest talking about the government shutdown and again the

their their hook, if you will, is that all of these cuts that they've made are all about making sure that that health care benefits can't go to undocumented immigrants.

And they use, I mean, just blatantly, you know, racist lines about, you know, if you're if you're an American citizen waiting for, you know, the ER, and there's some immigrant there who's going to get their health care first, blah, blah, blah.

Well, first off, you don't know that that's an immigrant.

They may be a citizen just the same as you just not

the same skin color.

But again, can you talk about just how much of federal health care actually does go to undocumented immigrants?

Yeah, well, first of all, let me say the cuts to health care in general, they did the big ugly law, we're done to provide a tax cut for Elon Musk and Donald Trump and people who can afford to belong to Mar-a-Lago.

So first of all, they stole our health care to give rich people a tax break.

That's first and foremost in all of this.

But their argument that this is, I think, as JD Vance said, hundreds of billions of dollars, we're doing this because we want hundreds of billions of dollars of health care to go to their words, illegal aliens.

Well, here's the reality.

You know, I serve on appropriations.

I know a thing or two about numbers.

By federal law, not a dime can go to an undocumented person.

I'm going to use the proper terminology through Medicaid, Medicare, or the Affordable Care Act.

Nothing can go directly to someone in that area.

The only little bit.

is in a program that was created under what was his name, President, Ronald Reagan, which is about 1% of the Medicaid budget.

So 1% of one of those bigger programs budgets is money that goes to hospitals for if you go there and you don't have health insurance, they don't check your papers or anything else, you get coverage.

They can work for you or I if we didn't have health insurance for someone who may be undocumented, but that's a maybe possibly kinda could happen, not reality.

And that's 1%.

And if you don't have the money going to hospitals, Pat, here's the important part.

What happens is we all pay more for insurance to make up for it.

Exactly.

Congressman Mark Pocan, great to catch up with you.

Thank you, sir, very much.

Yeah,

thank you.

Good to check in with you.

Safe travels around both congressional districts.

We'll be back with more impact.

Quite low.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

So there you go with Congressman Mark Pocan in our last segment.

We'll talk to Joseph Pecky in our next hour.

There's a lot of ground we cover every day from six to nine a.m.

And you can't necessarily catch it all.

I mean, I can.

the I have to they pay me I sit here for three hours.

You may not necessarily.

So you should pot this program.

You can listen to us anytime by subscribing to our show as a podcast.

Look for mornings with Pat quite low on Spotify and Apple, as well as civic media dot us and stay up to date on everything that we're following, including what the civic media news team is following from places like our Chippewa Falls newsroom, where we've got James Kelly standing by right now at seven

53 on this Thursday morning, James.

How are you?

Oh,

well, I've been better.

Yankees eliminated from the playoffs, but we still got the blues.

Yes.

My goodness.

You would you between you and the Yankees and Tony with the Guardians.

This is just getting to be

the

casualties are piling up.

Kind of killing our mojo here, guys.

No, they we welcome more people onto the bandwagon.

We've always got room.

So you come join us anytime on there and, you know,

There's always next year for your Yankees.

That's true.

But hopefully not.

Hopefully maybe the year after or sometime after that.

Let's see what James is following for stories in northern and western Wisconsin.

And you're going to start with an interchange project up there in the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

What's going on there?

Yeah, so the Twin Ports Interchange project, aptly named, is going to be wrapping up this month for the most part.

There's still going to be some cleanup and landscaping work done next year, but this is perfect timing for this project to wrap up because this area is going to see a big traffic increase when the Blatnik bridge closes down for the reconstruction project.

So getting this done here is huge.

There's safer intersections.

They moved all the entrance ramps and exit ramps to the right side to just make it a little easier for people.

to get on and off.

The goal is to keep those big freight trucks on the highway instead of driving through the city of Duluth causing more traffic for everyone and just overall a little safer.

And that is very definitely needed.

We're talking about where you've got I-35 coming up from the Twin Cities and then you've got Highway 53 coming up through Superior, Wisconsin.

You've got I-535 in there, kind of a bypass and

I really like the part you said about keeping the trucks there because there's enough that have to go through the Twin Ports anyway on the city streets of Superior and Duluth, but to the extent that you can keep them on the freeways instead, all the better.

And yes, the timing really couldn't be better with the Blatnik bridge replacement coming in the not too distant future.

And we were talking about that Parker just the other day, the Blatnik bridge being one of those bridges that just freaks some people out.

It is it is so high.

Yeah, and

you know, there's there's always that concern of like, are the car rails really high enough?

Well, you know, can they ever be if you're going to Duke's to hazard your car off a bridge?

I mean, just was

it

try to avoid doing that?

Was it Jane Matton air that was saying that she's like terrified of bridges?