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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crichtlow.
Hey, good morning.
It is 7.06.
Nice to have you back here up north on a Thursday morning, October 23rd, 2025.
Parker Olson producing things down in Madison Studio 8-2.
Not just producing.
Turns out he's a he's an aspiring news journalist and is going to tell us all about that story you might have just missed in the newscast coming up in just a little bit and also ahead this hour we're going to be talking to a guest Megan Lowe about how
Some of the recent political moves that are impacting healthcare access and affordability are hurting mothers and their medical decisions when it comes to some of their children who might have developmental or other disabilities.
So listen for that coming up at 7.35 and then in our next hour we'll talk to Joseph Pecky as well as Chad Holmes from our Civic Media Station in Wasaw and Sean O'Malley will be along to talk about your money and the markets.
We'll talk a little state investment in cryptocurrency.
We'll talk a little
why is Trump sending enough money to Argentina that could pay to keep our health insurance premiums from going up kind of stuff?
That's all ahead in our eight o'clock hour.
So a lot of ground to cover here.
But I also wanted to take note of something that came up in our eight o'clock hour yesterday with our friend Earl Ingram.
And as we were talking about his podcast that you can find here at civicmedia.us.
I made mention of a New York Times article that was especially critical of the prospect of former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes running for governor, as has been rumored that Mandela Barnes is thinking about getting into the race.
He would be
propelled immediately to at or near the front of the pack, having Abe and Lieutenant Governor and B run a very close campaign against Senator Ron Johnson back in 2022.
where he lost by the smallest margin ever in wisconsin u.s senate election history and of course i've had a lot to say about whether it was so much that mandela barns lost the race or that ron johnson's billionaire buddies were able to scare enough people about mandela barns to help ron johnson win but whether whatever you believe is the case there are clearly people that
look at the former lieutenant governor and say well he lost in 2022 and so if he couldn't win that statewide race against somebody as unpopular as Ron Johnson they don't want to take a chance on him next time around.
And there wasn't much for direct quotes in there.
There was one direct quote from former lieutenant governor Barbara Lawton who Said something along the lines of that, you know, he proved that he could he wasn't running hard enough and couldn't win the campaign on a statewide basis and so there is clear that there is some unease there but Earl Ingram yesterday Was very critical of the report said that the New York Times reporter
had meant to call him Earl, but it did not for his own comment and take on the race and really stuck with just the critics of Mandela Barnes.
And that would be enough of a story if it stopped right there.
But then yesterday from a Black-owned newspaper in the city of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Courier,
comes the editorial that reads, we can't afford to lose in 2026 and we can't risk another Mandela Barnes loss.
And again, it was highly critical, especially in this sense, that even though Mandela Barnes came close and the primary field had cleared for him to take on Ron Johnson, he lost by some 26,000 votes
But not just that he ran about 50,000 votes behind Governor Tony Evers who you'll recall was on the ballot for a reelection that year and that even in Milwaukee County Mandela Barnes ran behind Tony Evers in other words reads the editorial he couldn't finish the deal
And the editorial says, let's be clear.
This is not personal.
Mandela's story is one of promise.
He's bright.
He's passionate.
But this moment is not about promise.
It's about performance and politics.
You earn your next opportunity by delivering on the last one.
And in 2022, Mandela didn't.
That Senate seat was ours to win.
He had national support.
He had resources.
He had the attention.
And still he came up short.
And what's more, it says, instead of spending the past two years organizing here at home, building bridges, proving he learned from that loss, what we've seen is a campaign and waiting with no clear rationale other than a desired try again.
And that's not enough.
Now, I would take issue with that on a couple of fronts here that Mandela Barnes has hardly been spending his time twiddling his thumbs and waiting for the next race.
He has worked with a group forward together Wisconsin that has tried to match new federal green energy resources with homeowners and with school districts and more.
The East Form Day Political Action Committee designed to help other candidates to, you know, make a run for office.
He's appeared on this show a couple of times.
I am not in any way telling you that Mandela Barnes ran a perfect campaign for U.S.
Senate.
He didn't.
He fell short.
But he also went up against the the buzzsaw of literal billionaires who literally made millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, because Ron Johnson gave them a sweetheart tax deal in the 2017 tax bill.
And they were willing to take those hundreds of millions of dollars
in taxes they no longer had to pay meaning you and I had to make up the difference in the taxes that these billionaires weren't paying and instead they put that money into a Ron Johnson campaign so I'm not here to tell you that anybody would have necessarily beat Ron Johnson even though the man is consistently underwater he's not popular in the state but every year at election time he or his cronies find just enough negative material just enough negative ads
to for Ron Johnson to squeak out narrow victories.
And while I would guess not run for a fourth term in 2028, if you were to run, that would probably be the formula again.
But the question here is about whether Mandela Barnes is the right choice to run for governor.
And as noted in some of the reaction to this editorial, you know, there are people in the Milwaukee area that
still are unhappy that Mandela Barnes, when he was in the state assembly, ran a primary challenge against fellow Democratic state Senator Lena Taylor.
And that just gets us into the whole inside baseball of Milwaukee politics overall.
And by the way, that's not just a Milwaukee thing.
There's inside politics about, you know, Chippewa Valley politics that we could talk about.
And we've talked before about the eighth district, the eighth congressional district in Northeast Wisconsin.
And especially on the Republican side, there's a lot of inside baseball that most voters, frankly, don't want to hear about.
But it's real.
And it's what gets in the way of, you know, races that are are clear and not filled with primaries that can get messy.
And that's definitely the case in Milwaukee.
I've watched that for decades.
And I know how
You know there in when you get into regional politics like Milwaukee the Chippewa Valley Northeast Wisconsin elsewhere The clicks are worthy of high school You know who likes who who doesn't like who and it gets rather annoying sometimes if you're just a observer if you're inside of one of those clicks You actually have real genuine feelings Not of love of your fellow Republican or your fellow Democrat
I will be the first one to say publicly that I have said privately many a time, there were some Republicans in the legislature that I got along with better than a couple of Democrats in the state capital.
People that I would, you know, be very happy to have seen replaced and that I could have worked more with a couple of moderate Republicans and there are moderate Republicans who feel the same way about some of their Republican brethren.
So having set the stage that not everybody in politics gets along even if they're of the same political party.
You have to open up the blinders and ask yourself, OK, can this candidate win?
That's what Democrats are facing in the Third Congressional District right now.
They're looking at Becca Cook.
This is now her third time running in the Third Congressional District.
The last time around, she ran as the Democratic nominee.
She fell short against Derek Van Orden.
And you have very clear
Sets of Democrats there some who believe she is almost there a little bit more support and we can finally You know have representation other than Derek van Orden in the third congressional district and others who say nope She's peaked that's as close as she's gonna get it is time to try somebody new That's why you have the primaries and if Mandela Barnes wants to get into a primary for governor He's going to get into the primary and he's going to have to answer these questions about why he trailed governor Evers
in milwaukee county voting in 2022 why it is that some democrats in in the milwaukee area in the fourth congressional district just don't warm up to him you'll have to address that if he wants to get in and if he answers those questions to the satisfaction of others same as beca cook in the third congressional district or in some of the legislative districts where there are now multiple democrats running for office well then that builds you a stronger nominee hopefully not always
There are times when primaries are absolutely destructive.
The quintessential example for me is the 2012 primary among Republicans for U.S.
Senate.
That's how Tammy Baldwin got elected.
Tammy Baldwin, people did not give her easy odds of winning, but Tommy Thompson, the former governor, emerged from a bruising three-way Republican primary.
The Republicans at the end of that primary cycle hated each other.
And there was not a lot of instant general election support for Tommy Thompson.
Tammy Baldwin masterfully took advantage of that and made sure people understood how much more moderate, easygoing, sensible, sane she was compared to a dysfunctional field on the other side of the aisle.
won that election and has proven herself again and now again running for a third term.
So primaries are just a way of life in this system.
And Mandela Barnes will have to expect that one way or the other if he decides to run for governor.
And he hasn't decided that yet, at least not publicly that we know about.
But I thought it was important that we talk about the fact that unlike when he ran for Senate,
The decks are not going to clear.
The sea is not going to part, and other primary challengers say, you know, he is going to be the most popular one.
Let's coalesce behind him.
It's not going to happen this time.
He or Sara Rodriguez or David Crawley or Kilda Royce or Francesca Hong or Missy Hughes, they're going to have to earn it.
But if they earn it in a primary that stays above board, that does not devolve into what the Republicans did in 2012,
then they have that much better odds of that nominee being able to hold on to the governor's office in Wisconsin.
Because in a cycle where Donald Trump is as unpopular as any president has ever been, if Democrats cannot ride that wave to holding the governor's office, taking over the assembly and the Senate, and maybe even sweeping some Republican incumbents like Derek Van Orden out of office.
Well, and that will have been a terrible opportunity lost primarily because of inside politics and that's not what anybody wants to see In sports the NBA season is underway and the Milwaukee Bucks won their opener at home against the Washington Wizards 133 to 120
Giannis Andatacumpo put up 37 points, 14 rebounds and five assists.
There was a very hearty welcome back for former teammate Chris Middleton, who's now with Washington, big standing ovation during pregame introductions.
Another big ovation when they played a video tribute to him during the first time out of the game.
So it was the best of all things.
You got to welcome back an old friend and at the same time beat him and his old team.
That kind of thing we should have done a better job of with Willie Adamus.
But that's another story.
Coming up in 15 minutes, we're going to talk to our guest, Megan Lowe, about how Republican political moves have been hurting families who are about to see health care costs spike.
And that's especially harmful for families that have a member with developmental or other disabilities.
That's all coming up live from the heart of America's Up North here on Lake Wissota.
I'm Pat Whitewell from Up North News.
This is a radio network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
It is a chilly morning across Wisconsin, 33 degrees right now here in the Chippewa Valley, where we turn down to Madison Studio A2 and Parker Olson, who apparently is moonlighting.
When he's not busy pulling today's history lesson songs and writing all the teases that I keep forgetting to read and all the other things that keep the show stitched together, he's found time to do reports for Civic Media News.
which is really cool.
I want to play the little 60 minutes stopwatch in the background like, I'm Parker Olson and he's doing stories.
Some of us went to go fill our coffee cups, either for real or metaphorically.
What did we miss?
What was today's report there, Mr. Olson?
The report that you heard earlier today was about Tammy Baldwin.
She sent a letter, I believe, on Tuesday to, I'm going to forget exactly what the name of the company is.
I think it's
Canadian Pacific Kansas City, which is the most tongue twister name of all time, to that railroad company about a derailment that happened in August in Dodge County.
Very, very close to where another derailment two years ago was also by that company.
So she is asking for a little accountability from them to hear what they've been doing to kind of
write the ship a little bit, make that more safe for those derailments.
I can just say, again, from a legislator standpoint, it doesn't matter if it's the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railroad, or, you know, Canadian National or all of those that have existed.
The response from them is something along the lines of, you may direct your comments to this brick wall, because railroads are notorious for
writing the guarantees that they were given in law well over a hundred years ago, when they were laying tracks across the country and they were given immense tracks of land, they were given immense power when it comes to our transportation system.
And there is no shortage of ways that lawmakers and others have approached railroads to ask them to do this or do that.
And the railroads have said, oh, we don't have to, so we're not gonna.
So Senator Baldwin is right to call them out publicly then and say, you know, this is going to be on you to have these kinds of derailments that cause these kinds of, you know, safety hazards to workers, to the public and others.
She has been, like you said, a longtime supporter of rail safety legislation.
But you have to get a Congress that's willing to pass those things into law in order to hold the railroads accountable.
But that was a, you know, that was definitely a worthy story of doing.
And do you have any other impressions of, you know, what what the senator had to say or what what was happening with the other railroad here?
As of right now, no, I don't think there's too much more than I've got.
I do real ones in Wisconsin or something that I've been following for a couple months now.
So
It piques my interest there.
Oh, as well, it should.
I mean, you know, parts of Wisconsin still remember very vividly the derailment in Waiowiga, which in the late 90s had to clear out an entire town for something like two weeks, you know, because of the hazardous chemicals that were on board.
We have a rail system in this country that is so in need of upgrades.
I mean, we talk about infrastructure in all sorts of ways.
And
we should be doing so much more with our rail.
You hear me talking about passenger rail a lot.
But our freight rail system is in need of that as well.
And so, you know, that's that's exactly the kind of thing that we need to be working on.
And that Senator Baldwin is right to identify as a potential problem.
Is that the only that's is that the only story you've done for for newscast lately?
Or have you worked on some others here?
Um, lately, it's probably
Fair to say that's all you
can tell how close I pay attention
when
when it when it's not my turn to yap I you know right away just gaze into the distance here and
think
about my grocery list.
I've had a couple of reports.
That is the second one I've had on train derailments.
There's a longer kind of feature ish story about train derailments on the civic media dot US website.
It's got a map of all the train derailments in Wisconsin over the last couple of years that I made.
but also got a couple Korean Hendricks and I actually got to interview her sometime this summer during a childcare protest at the Capitol.
They have a couple of things here and there, not a ton, hoping to do more.
Look at that.
What do they pay you like a hundred bucks a story or something when you do that?
What's the going rate these days?
I wish it was.
I wish I was aware.
I should have negotiated that.
totally made up.
Nope.
And
now, now I've got shawly and sage and everybody mad at me like, don't
tell him
he gets paid per story.
Like, well, who am I if I'm not stirring the pot a little bit here.
So no, those are those are great.
Let's see, there's also new stories in our daily newsletter at Up North News for you to follow.
But more than stories now, we're starting to get your fall color pictures in here.
And I'm looking at what Ellie put out this morning, our Thursday newsletter, you can sign up again over at UpNorthNewsWI.com, click subscribe in the top banner.
And there is a
drone photo here from Megan who said her husband John took this shot from his drone in Hayward and it looks to be about I don't know 200 feet up maybe and just a forest as far as the eye can see and so many different colors and it just serves to remind me that I've
I've got a drone, but I haven't used it in so long and this would have been the perfect time to do that.
I've been a little gun shy since I had little drone accidents.
Uh-oh.
And
I need to get, now that I've got it repaired, you think I'd get out there and start using it again, but I'm a little gun shy.
I would love to get a drone.
I haven't, when I was a kid, we had like remote control helicopters, but I haven't had an actual drone.
That would be fun, especially with a camera on it.
Yes.
Oh yeah.
It can be really fun.
But and the funny thing is I'm on the ground.
Okay.
I'm on the ground.
And yet looking at the monitor as I'm doing this thing, I start to get like a little, a little woozy and I'm like, Oh, don't don't go too high.
Don't worry, Pat.
You're not the one that's up there.
And yet here I am being overly cautious.
It's like crashing it and proving why I'm not a pilot.
It's like when you look up and you're like in Miller Park or something like that, you look up at the roof.
It's like, Oh
God.
No, so some people are meant to work at those levels and the rest of us really ought to just stay on the ground and be more careful with our drones.
We're going to talk about spiking health insurance costs and the problem with coverage for families with disabilities coming up.
I'm Pat Critello from UpNorth News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
This next topic is a little more on the mature side when it comes to politics policy and the real-world impact on people and includes discussions about sexual assaults, but also about the medical decisions that have to be made by families.
It gets beyond the, what I would say is just outright game-playing that's happening in places like the nation's capital right now.
where healthcare to some people just seems to be a case of numbers on a spreadsheet and that these are very generic concerns.
But when it comes to people, families with people who have developmental and other disabilities, this is no game.
And we're not just talking about the medications that people need on a daily basis.
There is for an example of statistic that says somewhere around 80%
of women who have developmental disabilities or intellectual disabilities, around 80% have been sexually assaulted at some point in life.
And so access to things like contraception and the full range of reproductive health care services is vitally important.
and yet is under threat in so many ways through Medicaid cuts, through cuts to premium tax credits that make health insurance affordable through the Affordable Care Act and much more.
It's these kinds of real issues that Megan Lowe has to deal with with her daughter, Nora, and she joins us now to talk to us about that from the Merrimack area.
Megan, good morning.
How are you?
Good morning Pat.
We're doing great here.
Good and You have Nora there with you as well.
Can you tell us just a little bit about Nora's story?
Sure Nora is 17 years old.
She has what is called ret syndrome RETT.
It's a neurological disorder It affects everything she does but she is
a 17 year old inside.
So she understands us.
It's just her expressive language and her body control that really hinder her daily life.
Yeah, it's a case of, like you said, muscle control, speaking, walking, seizures are a feature as well.
And this is something that does not currently have a cure, as I understand.
Correct.
No, there are just ways to mitigate
symptoms.
So that that takes us to the need for all sorts of affordable health insurance resources.
And I am going to assume that you are not independently wealthy,
and
that health insurance and medications and things for Nora are are probably a constant
struggle.
We actually, we do have private insurance, but a lot of our private insurance doesn't, they don't cover a lot of her daily needs.
Those are picked up by Medicaid.
Like her formulas, she eats through a G tube.
All of her syringes, diapers, wipes are even some of the durable medical equipment our private insurance does not cover.
So I'm really worried to think of families that that do rely on ACA How are they going to get these items that they need for their child to survive on a daily basis?
Yeah, because again, part of it is through Medicaid and part of it as well would be through these enhanced premium tax credits.
These are things that were added through the the Biden administration and Congress four years back
to help
make these plans under the Affordable Care Act more affordable.
So between the expiration of these
enhanced premium tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, and the approximately $1 trillion in cuts coming to Medicaid.
I can only ask you to speak for yourself, but how concerned are you when you hear about health care cuts in these two different areas?
I'm incredibly concerned because how are we supposed to prop up and support our state's most vulnerable people?
especially when they are at risk of such egregious actions just by having a disability and being a woman.
The fact that under the Affordable Care Act, birth control is free with insurance.
There's no copay.
If they let these premium tax credits expire, women will lose coverage.
They're going to lose protection.
I don't understand why they're trying to get rid of tools in our toolbox.
As caregivers, these are off-ramps that we need to have access to, and they're taking them away.
And doing so, again, to a population that was vulnerable to begin with, but as I noted at the top of the segment here, there is a
a depressingly large number of, you know, sexual assaults of one type or another that take place for women with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
And so you had to have this very real conversation about making sure that Nora had contraception.
Yep.
We spoke with her medical team and they approached it.
They approach it as I was doing it as a caregiver to limit the number of periods or you know to make her care easier and
I
said no the the actual reason is because she has an over 80% chance of being sexually assaulted in her lifetime It's 50% of having it happen more than once That is that is the reason why we're putting her on contraception And then of course sure there's other
A lot of women go on contraception for other reasons.
And those are just some benefits that we will see when she's on it.
So we cannot lose this for this vulnerable population.
This is just so important that we cannot lose this.
We cannot lose the tax credits.
No, and for folks who might be saying, well, I mean, if she needs virtually 24 hour care, how is it that she's unsupervised, I can tell you not just as a, you know, from a family standpoint, I can tell you from a journalist standpoint, again, a depressing number of news stories that have been done over the years of people who were, you know,
violated by people who are in their care for a short time or an acquaintance or anything like that.
So this need for contraceptive services is extremely real,
along
with all of the other medications.
And then you've got the nature of Medicaid itself, which in Wisconsin covers around one out of three births
to
begin with.
So Medicaid truly is a lifeline to all sorts of families around Wisconsin.
Mm-hmm without affordable coverage women are gonna lose their right to no-cost contraception premiums are gonna rise Women are gonna pay the price women with disability.
I mean, what are we going to do?
We can't institution like I'm and at the federal level as even as far as the special education I just feel like this this vulnerable group of people they are just being forgotten about
and I have to say one
Again, startling statistic that I was aware of being married to an OBGYN, and of course, knowing several of them as well, is that there are at times one in five uninsured women who say they've had to stop using a birth control method because they couldn't afford it.
And again, that shouldn't be a thing, Megan.
No, no, it shouldn't be a thing.
That is reproductive health care.
Mm-hmm.
Megan Lowe is our guest.
She's a mom and caregiver to Nora.
We're talking about how cuts to health care, whether it's affordable, Affordable Care Act insurance premiums or Medicaid cuts, are having a real impact on families and a real concern for families that maybe haven't felt the impact yet, but it sure seems like they're going to if this government shutdown continues on.
Have you done outreach to any elected officials about this?
Clearly, it's good that you're speaking out about this, but I wonder if you've had interaction with elected officials in the past and whether they share your level of concern?
Oh, definitely.
Diane Hesselbein and Lisa Subeck, we have been working with them for the Access to Contraception Act.
The Republicans...
They're not interested.
This act would ensure that people have access to contraception and the reproductive care that they need.
But it's not going anywhere because we know the political environment in the capitol.
So, I mean, people are talking about it.
There is legislation.
It's just hard to get things going down at the capitol.
It really is and we're talking about the the state capital here.
You've had discussions I know with with Republican lawmakers and I mean do you feel feel like you've come away that they either don't Empathize or maybe don't even believe you when you talk about your concerns
I feel like when it's a face-to-face conversation for conversation They definitely empathize with us and they they seem to to support us
That's why I don't understand the disconnect between the actual voting for legislation versus just the lip service.
Well, there's another topic that we hear about with that, and that deals with cannabis and legalization of THC and things like that.
That's something that you're concerned about as well from the standpoint of pain management and things like that.
Definitely.
Nora and I are part of the Wisconsin Wellness Coalition.
We're working with, we actually just worked with Senator Tastin and Senator Felskowski, their medical bill that they are introducing is really great.
And I really hope that it gets traction because that also really helps women with disabilities, women and men with disabilities throughout the state.
Again, it's our most vulnerable people in the state that seem to be overlooked.
This is a safety issue.
These people exist.
They are loved.
They are in our families.
They deserve a place at the table.
And it's it's also, you know, frankly a convenience issue Wisconsin is quickly becoming an island Surrounded by states that have provided some form of legalization at least for you know medical use of cannabis products
And
so there's a whole lot of Wisconsinites that face a very long drive for
an
assortment of services and products right now
Well, I'm a breast cancer survivor.
I was I was diagnosed in 2023 and I I have utilized our neighboring cannabis
for my treatment and to get better.
And it was amazing.
And I testified to that.
I feel like there are a lot of issues in the state capitol that are, they have the support, the contraception access act, cannabis, the legislator, the Republican legislators just not letting those bills come forward.
And there is support and it's very sad to see.
It is because again, at both levels, at the state legislative level and at the federal congressional level, there are things that can be done at the federal level.
maybe not slash a trillion dollars from Medicaid and at the state level, maybe accept the Medicaid expansion and cover more people so that they have affordable care.
So
moving forward, Megan, then as people hear about this shutdown and they hear that it deals with healthcare issues like the enhanced premium credits for the Affordable Care Act, what is the ultimate takeaway?
What is it that you hope people
think about moving forward whenever they start hearing the news reports about the shutdown dragging on.
Well, when premiums rise, women are going to pay the price.
Congress needs to keep the premium tax credits in place to protect contraception and reproductive care.
There is no way around it.
I'm not sure what we're going to do for these people if they don't.
Megan Lowe joins us from the Merrimack area with her daughter Nora to talk to us more about
how this is all real.
This isn't just some game that they play in Washington.
It's
not
just some stalling that they do in Madison.
There are real people and lives affected by this.
And Megan, I appreciate so much that you were able to take time with us today and help share Nora's story and your story with us all.
Thank you again.
I hope you have a good day.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Megan, very much.
Still ahead, coming up in the next hour, we will be talking to Sean O'Malley about your money and the markets.
We'll be talking to Chad Holmes from 98.9, WXCO, and Wausau.
And of course, catching up on the week's political news with Joseph Pecky.
I'm Pat Krightlo from Up North News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
civicmedia.us.
32 right now.
It is 30 degrees here in the Chippewa Valley.
It is 28 in Amory, one of the cold spots in the state.
32 in La Crosse, 39 in Oshkosh.
And in front of Madison Square Garden where the New York Knickerbockers are one and all on the season, it is 51 degrees and Knickerbockers fan, James Kelly joins us.
Mr. Kelly, did you agree with our discussion yesterday on the definition of Knickerbocker?
A new york descendant essentially
not just
absolutely
not
just baggy pants that you wear
Absolutely.
Okay.
So the, so your, your Knicks are one and Oh, the Bucks are one and Oh, I think, I think we're ready.
We can do the Eastern Conference finals now, right?
Yeah.
Nixon Bucks.
I'm sure that won't get a hectic at all in the big work group chat.
No, not, not even a little bit, but you know, before we get to the stories that you're following for civic media out of our Chippewa Falls newsroom, while we're talking about the NBA, Parker Olson with the, the breaking news out here.
And this is, this is, this is huge.
Parker we were just talking it.
We were just talking about sports betting.
I know that's why I told you about it I can't believe it straight off the press from from the Associated Press Miami Heat Guard Terry Rosier and the Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups Yeah, they have I believe both been arrested in connection with a federal investigation into a sports betting
That is amazing.
CNBC is reporting that Chauncey Billups, who was a former star player for the Detroit Pistons, who played 17 years in the NBA, was arrested in Portland.
Rozier was arrested in Orlando, Florida.
Rozier is a 10-year NBA veteran.
And apparently had been eyed for months over suspicious sports betting activity related to his play.
The US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn is scheduled to hold a press conference on the case a little bit later on this morning.
James, I don't know what more could fit into my question of the week about sports betting and whether it's a blessing or a curse.
And I'm not asking anybody for an opinion on it.
I just want an ad-boy for picking that for a question of the week.
Yeah, good
timing,
Pat.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's all I was
looking for.
You've got a nose for the news.
Yeah, something something like that.
I'll take that.
So all right, so we'll move away from the nicks, the bucks and sports betting scandals and get into some of the stories that James is following for us.
Starting with boy, if there's if there's things that we talk about on a regular basis, it's affordable housing.
It's affordable health care.
It's just affordability overall with like, you know, inflation for groceries, and then affordable childcare.
and accessible child care.
And in Dunn County, they're doing a child care survey.
Yeah, the survey is organized by the health done right child care action team.
There was a survey done by the county last year on overall health needs in the area and child care was actually noted as one of the biggest health needs.
Is it really a health need?
Sort of, yes and no.
But it's a difficult issue to fix because on one hand, you need to have more facilities.
You need to have more funding for those facilities to get more kids in there at a more affordable price.
But the childcare providers themselves are also fighting for higher wages.
So how do you raise the wages of the workers and lower the costs for the parents?
It's a difficult topic to address.
So they're looking for input from community members, how they use childcare, whether they're working right now or not.
That survey will be open until November 7th.
Yeah, and there's been, of course, a lot of talk at the state legislative level about things like the child care accounts program, providing direct support to child care providers at the federal level.
Certainly they can talk about, you know, expanding the child tax credit.
There's also a role to be played by the business community.
We've done stories at Up North News about how in some communities, you know, one of the large businesses takes it upon themselves to either start their own child care center or to fund a local child care center so that they
they don't lose workers, you know, who have to stay home if they can't find good child care.
So it'll be something to watch in Dunn County how this survey impacts any future discussions and developments that might come out there.
Let's move just down the road to St.
Croix County and a foundation launching a new grant program.
Yeah, speaking of funding challenges, the St.
Croix Valley Foundation just launched a new $3.5 million grant program.
They're going to be supporting area nonprofits across western Wisconsin and a couple counties in eastern Minnesota.
Most of those nonprofits over the course of the last couple years have reported issues with staffing shortages, leadership turnover, and just overall lack of funding, and they might be losing some more funding over the
coming months, years.
So it's a big issue in the area right now.
So this new grant program will offer individual grants of a smaller amount, not the full $3.5 million for training, planning, and implementing some new programs to kind of benefit the region, and even just, you know, system-wide infrastructure, just improving the operations of these nonprofits already.
Yeah, we don't I don't think we ever talk enough about the nonprofit world in any given community I've been exposed to it here in the Chippewa Valley through a group that was called literacy volunteers that I worked with for many years and some of the people there went on to work in in other nonprofit sectors and you have
some real unsung heroes in that sector when it comes to attracting the funding support and then, again, the administrative paperwork to weigh all of the requests and then to put those requests back out the door and put money into the hands of groups and people that are in need.
And so whether it's in St.
Croix County or anywhere, I think it's worth anybody's interest who wants to know more about the nonprofit.
world in their community to take a look and see if they can't be helpful in some way or another.
All right, let's head up north to Bayfield County here for a program that did benefit from somebody's generosity.
Yeah, this is the Meals for Seniors program up there.
If you remember, it was actually operated out of Northland College, not, you know, operated by Northland College, just.
like physically located there.
And when the college closed, they ended up having to find a new location.
But they were voted as the community recipient for the 100 Who Care Ashland and Bayfield counties program operated by Northlake's Community Clinic.
So they're going to receive $10,000 in funding there.
And this is a very important program for seniors up there.
Not only do they get nutritious meals, but they also get a little bit of a wellness check.
These are people who mostly don't leave the house at all.
And they get a bit of social interaction.
Yeah, I recall one of my grandmas back in the day, you know, was was perfectly capable of of cooking her own meals, but you know, was getting slower and making the same old things.
And so she was able to get some variety and get again, that safety check in and all of that.
There's a lot of benefits to to meals for seniors beyond just the meal itself and certainly worthy of support like this.
James Kelly follows all this through 93 five the tap and chip will falls.
You can see him over at the Civic Media Radio Network website.
Look
for the news stories there.
James, thanks very much.
Have a good one, guys.
All right, thank you.
And we'll have Joseph Pecky, Sean O'Malley, Chad Holmes all coming up.
I'm Pat Crightlow from UpNorth News.
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