You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Hey, good morning, 8.06.
Nice to have you here back up north.
On this Monday morning, it is October 13th.
It is Indigenous Peoples Day.
It's a holiday for some folks.
Parker Olson producing the show down in Madison Studio A2 and joining us now from Madison Studio A1.
our friends from 90, 90, 92, seven.
the seven, but
Yep.
There's John and Gordy.
Guys, how are you?
Good.
All right.
How are you?
Happy Monday?
Yeah, it's nice.
It's a nice Monday.
Nice to be able to wear the brewery gear for a little bit longer here.
I'm heading into game one of the league championship series.
is.
Yes.
It's subtle.
It's understated.
And yet it's a brewery t-shirt.
Yeah.
And I put
Oh, I
a
No, speaking of, speaking of whining, let's, let's just get, let's get Gordy into this right away.
There were at the team photo after defeating the Cubs on Saturday.
Trevor McGill grabbed one of the L flags from one of the fans
and
held up a, you know, fly the L flag above the team photo.
And you heard from some social media circles, you have the, oh, that's poor sportsman chip.
And yet there are also Cubs fans who were like,
Oh yeah, we'd have totally done the same thing.
They get it that that, you know, in the moment of beating your division rival.
So Gordy, Milwaukee Brewers, flying the L, classless or understandable.
I
I think
are there are still plenty of folks, you know, scattered throughout Wisconsin, you know, older folks who predate the brewers arrival in 1970.
So the Cubs are all that they knew, and continue their Cubs fandom to this day.
That's that is completely understandable.
You know, it's just that, you know,
this year, it feels particularly good because first it was against a division rival, one manager by our former manager Craig Council.
And now the next step is to exercise the demons of 2018 in going up against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
And I should be, I mean, I am nervous about it.
Don't get me wrong.
But the fact that we swept the Dodgers and all six games this season, and with everything else that this team has done, I'm not sitting here.
fixated on losing to them in 2018.
It's now about no, I think we can take these guys this time around.
Yeah, nobody's jumping into agree with this.
well, we'll
Well, there you go.
Well, which if maybe maybe we could take the Dodgers payroll and just use that to buy out Luke fickle.
And then everybody would be happy, you
That's a great observation.
They do that.
Playoff baseball is a little bit different than regular season.
So they, you know, they use their best pitchers and they use them as often as possible, depending on what the lineup looks like.
Yeah.
So, you know, they, those games are spaced out enough that they can use their pitchers and they're, you know, they're ready to go, you know, two or three days later again.
So they use the very best.
I'm I do.
And I am so looking forward to this.
But there will be these nerve wracking moments like when Jacob Mizorowski was on the mound.
Because he'd been so erratic at times that it was nice to see, you know, he kept thinking except for giving up the one home run, which really
frightened me for a moment, but he kind of held it together after that.
So I'm just thrilled to have, you know, mid October baseball that is still relevant.
By the way, real real time corrections here.
The song lyric goes, we're from Milwaukee, and we ought to know it's good old Blatts beer wherever
kegs cans and bottles all taste the same.
The three best is one beer.
Blatts is the name.
marketed directly against PAPS Blue Ribbon in the so-called working class market of the time.
Well, that didn't work out in the long term.
Schlitz is long gone.
And
Right?
Like something out of the Simpsons, they
with
beer.
Goodness.
Yeah, we're talking to you.
You know, in, in, in the Chicago area, old style was like the, the, the king of the market there.
This beer brewed in La Crosse for all those years.
And it was, there was, there were some good stories there about the marketing of old style down there back in the day.
And people just really responded probably because they didn't want to drink anything out of Milwaukee with the rivalry and everything else.
But this would be
this is under the category of Madison history here, because Milwaukee you had it was all blats and schlitz and perhaps for a while.
And Miller was kind of like, you know, the on the undercard.
But Miller somehow survived everybody.
But in in terms of history of Madison, I wonder is is would somebody be able to say oh my gosh, in the 50s or 60s or 70s.
I mean, it was this if it was old style or if it was one of the Milwaukee beers or heaven forbid something from Missouri.
Wow.
the official beer historian of the Madison market.
I want to have to find that person.
Yeah.
Yeah.
no problem.
You know, things change.
I'm sitting here over at the home and lining coogles and that brewery ain't produced online at Google.
that?
Oh, yeah, they have the Liny Lodge, which
basically a gift shop and a tasting facility.
It is they're still using part of the brewery for I forget how they call it like test brews or micro brews
that.
Yeah, yeah, they're allowed to do that.
And so, you know, they're and they're trying to milk whatever they can out of the name for as long as they can.
And now now you kind of are in that period of
you know, later on, nobody was drinking PAPS for the longest time.
And now PBR is back and now there's a PAPS light that is really catching on.
And so what will be the future of line in Google?
And will that come back?
And you really have to have a history discussion like this to realize, you know, things do change.
It doesn't seem like it.
But over time, you know, people's taste change as well.
There was a hibernia in, you know, Claire as well.
And then Walter's beer, which we mocked.
We did a commercial at the college TV station.
The slogan was come taste what's flowing through old Claire.
Walter's beer did not make it.
Tony writes on YouTube, the beer historian of Madison is Luke Mathers, I believe.
that could be but he's he's off today so we can't we can't ask him about that.
We're talking to John and Gordy from 927 WMDX down in Madison.
Gordy has spent his weekend not only nursing his wounds from the burr or from the cubs losing but from from all the paper cuts you get from moving boxes.
Thanks a lot, man.
Are you are you moving on up as George and wheezy did or are you
a little downsizing too
their brown was.
Are you filming hallmark movies back there?
No, it was all
It
so did the gazebo stay with the house or did you know it was more like
Yeah,
Think about this.
yeah, you know, but that would make even for a good studio because as you know, as you can look around your TV screen and say Madison Studio A2, of course, is a glorified broom closet.
Yeah,
imagine
if we kind of reconfigured it and put the gazebo in there and Parker was just always broadcasting from a gazebo, basically playing the role of like, he was like Woody Harrelson on Cheers.
He's just the friendly young bartender there.
You put me on the roof, maybe?
I think we could do that.
Yeah, I could put the tent up
Yeah, that's it.
We've been up there.
Now, the gazebo was great for about a year and a half.
But then we got some pretty gusty winds.
And I would have the first year I took it down a couple of times when there were 50 mile an hour winds predicted.
And I okay, I'm gonna take it down.
Second year, I thought, you know, it stood up pretty well last year.
I'm just going to leave it up.
That was a bad decision because it didn't start to tear a little bit in a few places.
And then that was,
that was fine.
And Parker's young.
Well, yeah, I was gonna say Parker's young and skinny enough that he, it could be a balloon boy situation where he just, he gets blown away with the gazebo.
Very
happens.
Well, look, just provide traffic reports while you're doing it, at least be useful.
I mean, you're gonna get carried away by the wind.
At least try to earn that paycheck.
Okay.
And, John, how are you doing?
You had you took a little tumble.
Built in airbag.
Is that what we're
My check.
Yes.
Now I have a border collie and that border collie followed me into the house.
Did not do anything else.
It made sure that I made it into the house.
And you know, that's what border collies do.
You know, that's my pet.
I would have preferred your finger too.
Well, I injured my finger.
So just a clutch, Pat.
He's got a brace
my yeah you know we have levers well I like to say lever it's a lever and you know I put a lever on all our doors in the house because it's easy when your hands are full of groceries you know you just pop the lever up or down you know but I did that with my finger and it really hurt
a nerve or a muscle and I'm, you know, injured again.
My goodness.
I know I'm trying to gather some sympathy around the station.
Maybe we can,
can we nurse it with some Faurbach beer because I've got a guy Larry from Deerfield on the line showing us a photo of Faurbach beer, a Madison brewery.
And he says he went to college with Pete Faurbach, whose dad was the last of the line.
I
okay.
right, for for more scintillating beer history, tune in to John and Gordy weekday mornings from 68 on our Madison Station 927.
WMDX catch it through the civic media app if you're out of town.
Hey guys, thank you very much.
Hope you have a great day.
Thanks, man.
All right.
Coming up next, we're going to be talking to State Representative Jody Emerson from Eau Claire about support for higher education in Wisconsin.
This is the Civic Media Radio
Network.
Welcome back.
It is a Monday morning.
It is October 13th, 2025, Indigenous Peoples Day holiday for some folks, including a courier newsroom.
So no newsletter today, but it will resume tomorrow.
And as always, you can sign up at upnorthnewswi.com and click on subscribe up in the top banner.
You can also get our Sunday morning newsletter with its question of the week.
And this week we ask, where do you stand on mining?
up north because once again there was more test drilling done potentially for some day mining for zinc or
gold or whatever else they think that they can find up there, but at what price.
And so I ask if you are opposed to mining up there, if you're in favor of mining up there, and you trust the companies to regulate themselves, or if you're okay with mining, but only if there are some strong regulations that, you know, kind of keep things from getting out of hand.
So again, to see our question of the week first, sign up and up for news wi.com.
State Representative Jody Emerson now joins
represents the Eau Claire area.
Representative Emerson, how are you?
I'm doing well, Pat.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing fine.
Thanks.
We're going to.
talk in our next segment about a new package of bills that you're putting forward on higher education and supporting it in the state.
So we just wanted to, in this segment, cover some of the more local matters that are out there.
We were just talking to John and Gordy about Madison and Milwaukee area beers.
And I know the Eau Claire scene, the Chippewa Valley scene is much more than lining Google.
I don't know how many events you and others have held at the Brewing Project and there's lazy
monk brewing and all that.
But you go way back and you know, we were talking about Walter's beer was there.
There was the hibernia beer garden for a while there.
Did I miss any?
I mean, between you and Julian, you probably you strike me as people that, you know, grabbed a six pack and drank it in the car a few times at Carson
Park.
Oh,
No, we were so young that when we were dating that I wasn't even legal before we got married.
To be
clear, we're talking about the beer, folks, in case stuff.
Please don't write anything about that.
So of course, I never had any alcohol in a car in Carson Park or anything.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of, I can't think of the older breweries that are now gone, but you know, there's a couple of great little, you know,
modicum brewing is in the area.
And it's always fun to find those little started breweries.
And the history of brewing in that area is such that the oldest continuously operating business in town is the amber inn, which at the time back when breweries had their own bars.
And I don't recall if it was Walters or if it was some other brew,
But Amber Ann is still open, still serving great cheeseburgers, by the way.
Oh my goodness.
Such a good history of brewing there that I just wanted to continue the conversation over here.
So we've got the assembly in session tomorrow and one of the bills that is being taken up, and I've talked about it briefly before, but you know, want your thoughts on it as well.
This Republican package of bills.
meant to end what they consider to be the onerous regulations in the state that were one of the most heavily regulated states in the country.
And when you think of regulations as safeguards for the environment and for consumers and for employees, my response to that is
good.
It means we're doing something right in the state.
Not that every regulation is perfect, but I would much rather have, you know, a proper amount of safeguards than to let, you know, business and industry run roughshod over the rest of us.
Yeah, I mean, talking about your question of the week with with mining, I just think, you know, if we don't have some safeguards and some parameters in place, we're going to have some
you know fly by night mining operation that's going to come in dump a whole bunch of chemicals in there take the things out that they want to and leave and quote unquote go bankrupt with that company so that there's no legal ramifications at all and you know safeguards regulations are there to safeguard us all.
It's there to make sure that the company is working in a safe way for workers and leaving the environment safe for the rest of us who stay here.
So I don't think all deregulation is appropriate.
Like you said, there's probably a few we could roll back here and
there.
Well, yeah, it's all a matter of ongoing monitoring as things are brought to your attention.
I think, for example, of the liquor industry overhaul bill from the last session, we've had on the program a couple of times guests who have said that, you know, they would like to revisit that for, you know, so-called wedding barns and other venues.
There is always
an opportunity to look at things and and look at modifying them but the answer is not like in this republican bill well every regulation disappears after seven years unless an agency takes steps to renew it uh that just sounds like a recipe for disaster
well and i hope that seventh year that eighth year isn't an election year because you know we only meet like twice in the beginning of the year and then are out for the rest of the year so
it could get like the wild wild west at some point so.
We have been talking about not just this session but also basically the lack of sessions since the budget bill passed.
There's a headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this morning from Molly Beck saying Democrats vying for control argue lawmakers need to work more
and she notes that the state senate hasn't met since it passed the state budget in early july uh the state assembly has met on the floor 13 times this year by comparison and uh senate democratic leader diane hasselbein says the senate hasn't met for 90 days it's terrible we have a lot of work to do in the state of wisconsin i urge my republican colleagues in the state senate to get to work so this is all to say jody that
Y'all seem to be doing your part over in the West Wing of the Capitol and need to talk to those people with senitude over in the South Wing.
I'm glad you brought up my favorite word, Senateude.
We've been working really hard in the Assembly.
Lots of committee meetings and, you know, doing a few more floor sessions than the Senate.
But, you know, you were in the Senate, Pat.
You know how that goes.
The Assembly does the work and the Senate takes the credits.
I don't know
that I'd put it that way, but definitely this Senate needs a kick in the pants.
We're talking to State Representative Jodi Emerson and we'll talk about her package of bills to promote and support higher education in Wisconsin on the
other side I'm back right low this is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Along with the daily newsletter from Up North News, our friends here at Civic Media have a daily newsletter that they have begun recently over at Substack.
To sign up, head over to civicmediatoday.substack.com.
Again, that's civicmediatoday.substack.com.
To get signed up, it's all about, it's got all kinds of show highlights.
Talk about the guests, news stories, other links.
So get yourself signed up for Civic Media Today.
And again, if you
Didn't follow it earlier as far as the Brewers playing the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series Game 1.
Coverage starts at 6.30 this evening on Civic Media Stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine, Park Falls, and Hayward.
Our guest now is State Representative Jody Emerson from Eau Claire, who has put together a new package of legislation designed to strengthen and protect the state's higher education system.
And Jody, let's start with the need for a package like this in the first place.
Then we'll break down each of the elements, but.
Why did you feel it was necessary to have a package of legislation with all these types of elements?
Is it like a lack of support or do you feel like higher education is being undermined in the state or what led to this?
Yeah, thanks for having me Pat.
So with I'm the ranking Democrat on our colleges and universities committee and I've served on this committee since I got into office in 2019 and it feels
To me, like in that committee, we are just talking about a lot of the perceived boogeyman instead of the impacts of things that are really, truly impacting students' lives.
And when I talk to students, I'm hearing about the crushing debt that they have.
Well, Wisconsin.
taxpayers pay in about 17% of what it costs for college education now.
You know, back when you and I were in school, that was closer to about 50%.
And so that's part of the reason why it is so expensive.
There's a lot of things that need to change in higher education.
I would say respect is a big piece of it.
We need to stop having these conversations about
you know,
indoctrination.
Yes, I was trying to think of a nice way of putting it.
Thank you for jumping
in.
The other word that comes to mind is micromanagement.
When you talk
about
what the boogie men that they're talking about are all these ways to micromanage again, the alleged party of small government is all about micromanaging the educators who are there and denigrating them with with insults, you know, like, like indoctrination and things like that.
So, so to actually see a package of
of legislation that supports higher education is rather noteworthy.
So let's break these down.
There's five different areas.
Where do you want to start?
Yeah, so we've got a couple of bills that we really highlighted in our press conference last week that really focus on students.
You know, the faster that students can get out of school and with a degree, the more likely they are to pay back their their loans and be successful in the future.
And so we've got a big a bill that deals with student success and retention.
And we also have another bill that mirrors what is happening in Madison where with the Bucky's Promise.
So any family
that earns under $71,000 for the entire family would get free tuition at any campus around the state.
And we think that's incredibly important.
Minnesota has something like that, several other states do.
And this is a bill that says to our working class families,
you can get higher education if that's something that you want to do and are willing to put in the work.
Don't let money be a factor with this.
And then the other three bills that we put out really deal with staff and faculty.
So restoring shared governance, restoring tenure, restoring collective bargaining.
All these are things that went away during the Walker era when the insult to higher education really started full force in our state.
And we think that
if we're going to be micromanaging all of these people, we at least need to make sure that they've got a seat at the table so that they can have input as well.
So when you talk about restoring shared governance, the decision making authority for students and faculty, that again, you said that was something that Walker, Scott Walker and Republican legislators took away.
How does that, what is the current situation compared to what it should be under this package?
With the current situation, it's really a top-down approach.
If the Chancellor wants something, if the Board of Regents wants something, if the President wants something, it's going to happen.
So these are all kind of shared governance and collective bargaining really work hand-in-hand.
They're very similar.
So think of the workload requirements that came through in the budget for higher ed, for the UWs in particular.
This is all being decided at the Board of Regents level.
And people who are on campus who are doing the research, who are doing the work, don't get a say in, you know, does this mentoring of all these students, does that count for a class load or does it not?
The universities are not the way that they were back in the 70s where people go to lectures, they come in, they take a test, and that's, they're great.
Everything is a lot more hands-on than it ever used to be.
And we want to make sure that the workload requirements reflect the work that all of these professors and other teachers are doing.
Then there's also the note there about restoring tenure protections for faculty.
And again, that's a famous bugaboo for folks on the far right.
So let's take it back to basics and explain
Why is tenure important?
Why is it important for faculty to have the protection of tenure in the ways that they teach their classes?
Yeah, so one of our new people this year, Ben Desmit, is really leading on this bill, and I wish he was here to really make the case for this.
He's worked in universities before and taught classes, and he's got some great arguments for it, but really it comes down to it is getting harder for us to recruit.
people to come in, teach
at our
universities of Wisconsin, whether it's Madison, Milwaukee, or one of the smaller comprehensive campuses around not having tenure is a key protection that most people are looking for.
That means that if you say one thing wrong that gets blown up on Twitter, Instagram, or whatever, you won't get fired immediately.
Even when there is tenure, there still is a way that people can lose their jobs.
So this isn't some almighty protection that people can just, you know, slough off and never work again and still get paid.
Tenure just means that in our current political climate, President Trump can't make a phone call and fire somebody.
Or Derek Van Orden, in the case
of you.
Or Derek Van Orden.
Can you put up a tweet that gets a
teacher fired?
Yeah,
right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You never know what's going to happen.
And so in the political climate where higher ed is getting beaten up time and time again, this really does give some protections to people.
But the bigger piece that we're seeing is it's impacting who is actually coming into the state and taking these jobs.
We're talking to State Representative Jody Emerson from Eau Claire about a package of bills designed to support and strengthen higher education in Wisconsin.
And you know, the topic of tenure protection, I think it's one of those that was prior to this year, it was a little tougher.
to make that argument because it was easy to paint tenure as something that could be abused.
But I think the script has been flipped on this thanks to Trump and Derek Van Ord and everything in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder where, you know, people who say they're for free speech until a speech that they don't like and now they're actually using their power as a congressman, as a president or whatnot to try to get people fired from their jobs.
It seems like this year amidst the
sweeping arm gesture, the wreckage of what we've had to deal with this year, it becomes a little bit easier to stand up for things like actually protecting the free expression of people like university faculty.
Yeah, and I mean, I just want to make it clear that, you know, professors, teachers, assistants, all the folks who who get our keep our universities running, whether it's maintenance workers or whoever, they all deserve a safe place to work.
they deserve to be compensated well for their their time and they deserve to have some say in their working conditions and that's what collective bargaining is you know as we saw during the COVID pandemic I think that really flipped the script on what it's like to have collective bargaining because it's not just about pay it's about working conditions as well making sure that
you know it works for your life and being able to have a say in the job that you're taking I think is is incredibly important and we know that that has been beaten up in the Republican controlled legislature for going on 15 years now and if if we're going to make changes in this state these are some of the changes that Democrats would like to be able to see.
We're talking to State Representative Jody Emerson about higher education and it's just my own opinion on this is it feels like the pendulum is swinging back towards something closer to equilibrium in the sense of how we look at the different types of higher education.
We had heard for years that people in the trades, technical colleges and things like that
felt like, you know, the people in the ivory towers were looking down their noses, you know, and that everybody was supposed to go to college.
How many times have we heard college is not for everybody?
So then there was this emphasis on the trades and on technical colleges and things like that, to the point where I as, you know, an unabashed supporter of liberal arts felt like it had flipped.
And now now there are all these people looking down their noses at higher education, like, why would you go to college or university?
And I feel like we're finally getting back to a point where people go, you know,
We don't have to be fighting one or the other.
Let's support all the different ways that you can have a healthy, educated workforce and citizenry in the state of Wisconsin.
Is that too much to ask?
Absolutely.
I mean, this package really, some of the bills focus specifically on the universities of Wisconsin, but student success and retention, that is for both the technical schools and the UW.
And we need both.
If we look at a medical industry, we need the x-ray tax, the ultrasound tax, all of those folks trained at the technical schools, and then we need the RNs and the docs trained at the universities.
Both are true.
You know, when we look at the roads that we drive on every single day, yep.
The road builders need that technical training that comes from either their apprenticeships or the technical colleges.
But we also need the engineer to design the roads that the road builders build.
One of the great things about the universities of Wisconsin and our technical schools is that they are present in all 72 counties, whether it's a campus or whether it's research that they are doing on behalf of a local Lake Altoona to help the sediment go away or perhaps they're working with the local governments to help write grants to get better.
projects done in their area, there's not a corner of this state that isn't part that doesn't benefit from our universities of Wisconsin and our Wisconsin College technical system.
We need to have good discussions about these, make sure that they are fully funded to the best that we can do so that we've got a well-trained and workforce of the future.
One note on YouTube from PJ says corporate America caused the problem by requiring a college degree for entry-level jobs that don't exist I believe that was called the paper ceiling and yeah, I'm not gonna put it all on there But again, I feel like we're doing a better job of getting back to equilibrium and having you know the right sized qualifications for jobs But that means the right size support for every level of education as well And some of that is coming through this package of bills introduced by state representative Jody Emerson of Eau Claire Jody
always great to talk to you.
Thanks for getting up and being with us this morning.
Thanks for having me and go brew crew.
There you go.
All right, talk to you later.
Thank you.
And also, Jody is doing a great job of talking about universities of Wisconsin.
That's the official name now.
Some of us are going to call it UW system forever.
But anyway, Jane Mattener tells us what's coming up on her program next here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
We are joined now by Jane Mattener.
conveniently named host of Matt and Aaron here along with Greg Bach coming up in just a little bit here across the Civic Media radio network.
Jane, good morning.
How was your weekend?
It was wonderful.
Obviously happy about the Brewers winning.
That
is a great thing.
And the Packers pulled it out yesterday.
So that's all good.
And people are happy.
People are
happy.
See how nobody's talking about the Badgers?
So we just concentrate on the happy stuff.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Exactly.
See, I
had no idea.
There's some other good news that I just I'm just seeing now from this morning in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel So I'm probably completely stealing Greg box thunder, but it says here The laughing tap is moving to the former Watts tea shop location So I know Greg has been extremely busy on that and that was an asset at the end of the 20th anniversary of the Milwaukee Comedy Festival So pass along our congratulations to Greg for the new the new digs
I will do so.
He's very excited.
And this was always the plan.
They've always been looking for a new space.
So it's going to be great when it comes back.
I really, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm betting he did not take my advice and basically video the entire search because in post production, think of what a great series you could make out of a reality show of a bunch of comedians looking for a new place for them to put their comedy club.
Oh, the potential.
Yes.
All potential for it.
Yep.
Not
only for the funny, but comedians can also be, they can be rather cruel to each other.
Shall we say biting, you know?
Oh, extremely.
So I'm looking forward to hearing Greg talk all about the experience at some point here.
But there's so much more coming up on Matt and Aaron here.
What other things are you talking about this week?
Well, we are Shallie Pittman, Civic Media's new director is going to be joining us after 9.30.
We're going to talk about the rejection, at least in Mount Pleasant, of that data center.
And then the late, it sounds like a little late opposition to a data center in Port Washington.
We're going to talk about that when we head off, I'll lead off the show.
And also I wanted George Stephanopoulos had JD Van Son yesterday.
Oh, yes, yes.
That was really, you know, that's the way to do it.
When you get a politician on who refuses to answer your questions, George Stephanopoulos, I thought, handled it in exactly the right way.
And
nobody can quibble with it, because to set this up...
The the current porters are Tom Homan is recorded as accepting $50,000 in cash
in a fast food bag
in a fast food bag last
year.
Yes, as one does
as part of an FBI investigation into corruption.
Now again, this was during the Biden administration when you were actually looking for things like, you know, corrupt people who would accept bribes.
Well, now the Trump administration takes over the investigation conveniently disappears.
But there's still one lingering question.
Did Tom Holman keep the $50,000 bribe, my words, or did he give it back?
Was he required to give it back?
It's a very simple question.
And the vice president of the United States is only the latest Trump administration official who can't seem to or won't seem to answer whether that bag of cash went back to taxpayers or not.
well and whether or not so okay so Tom let's say he kept the cash did you pay taxes on your bribe yeah I'm just I don't
not having taken many bribes in the course of my life.
I'm not sure exactly what the protocol is.
The
protocol is
I actually know this.
I know that if you if you get that much like in gambling, you have to report you have to pay taxes on you
do.
So I would have to I would have to call my tax guy and said, look, I took another bag full of $50,000 in cash.
I guess I have to report this shucks.
Yeah.
And
look, somebody else will have to investigate it as a bribe.
Of course, that investigation again, mysteriously disappeared.
But
yes, he could still theoretically face tax evasion, but he won't answer the question as to whether he had it.
So when JD Vance was tap dancing and going, how many, how many, how many, I don't know what to say.
And finally, just George Stephanopoulos just cuts them right off.
It was so great.
Perfect.
It was it was a thing of
beauty.
It really was.
I
am just
I'm just glad, glad that you see this because I don't like sounding like an old man all the time saying how Tim Russert was the last guy to ask these kinds of questions.
I need a new generation of people now, George Stephanopoulos, it's not part of the new generation, but I truly need the next Sam Donaldson.
who's out there, you know, who's asking these tough questions or the original gang from 60 minutes.
And we're just not getting that we're getting so much of what you would call access journalism, that I am so glad to hear that you're going to be, you know, calling attention to the right way to hold an administration accountable.
Well, and you bring up such a good point, pet, because
Donald Trump keeps saying now that they're gonna cut drug prices by 1500% There is not been one follow-up question from a reporter on how that math works And I don't math myself, but there are people who do and I just even I know you cannot reduce something's cost
by 1500% no unless the unless my my my my statin guy is going to be paying me they're going to pay me money now up
here.
Right.
And that's I'm pretty sure that that's not what's going to be happening here.
And and again, these are things that I don't know in in the prior administration would have been there would have been merciless amounts of coverage.
And we don't seem to be getting that here.
So that's why we're celebrating this one nugget.
of accountability in the Sunday morning interviews, because the Sunday morning interviews, quite honestly, had become so useless lately, without the appropriate follow up, that it's nice to see something as basic as a repeated follow up until you understand that this guy's just not going to answer.
So yeah, it was a thing of beauty.
So it was, it
was, I know.
And then of course, the previewing some some brewers action against the Dodgers tonight.
Brewers and Dodgers in action.
Hopefully we can just, you know, one, two, three, four, boom, boom, boom.
It'll just be done.
Oh, I like one, two, three, four, boom,
boom,
boom, boom.
There you go.
Parker, that's it.
That's
what we
need.
It'll be done.
That's and we're gonna, we're gonna do it.
Brewers and four.
Love
it.
Jane McNair coming up after the news here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you, Jane.
Have a great day.
Gentlemen, thank you so much.
See you next
week.
All right, sounds great.
Thank you very much, Parker.
Thank you as well.
And thanks to all of you for being part of our morning here, powered by Up North News across the Civic Media radio network.
Up North News is part of Courier, a pro democracy news network and career newsroom.com.
Have a great day.
We'll see you
tomorrow.
The national news cycle never stops.
but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
