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Across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Critello, powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Wissota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Critello.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back.
Nice to have you here, Up North, on a Tuesday morning.
It's November 11th.
7.06 is the time right now.
And let's see, as always, we get a good morning on YouTube in the comment section from Rob.
He says good morning from Tigerton, cloudy and 27 degrees, a few snow flurries.
Says he watched the Packer game until he fell asleep.
Well, that was easy enough to do.
He said the Packers offense was stone cold.
No, sir, it was non existent.
And then, of course, he had thank you to all the veterans for serving and protecting this country to which we say a very hearty amen.
We talked a bit about that in our last hour.
And of course, if you ever miss an hour here and want to listen back, you can head to the civic media website, civicmedia.us or better yet, you can follow us as a podcast head over to Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts and follow us.
And that way you'll never miss an episode.
You'll never
miss a guest like our next guest here, the editor-in-chief of Washington Monthly, Paul Glastres, a former speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton, who has one of many articles in Washington Monthly, but including how the Democrats can play offense, and Paul joins us now.
And then later, we'll be joined by congressional candidate Fred Clark, who is running up north in the 7th Congressional District in northern Wisconsin, and in our 8.30 half hour, I'm sorry, at
8.
Yeah, 8.30.
I'm sorry, got a little messed up there.
8.30 we're going to be talking to Ruth Conniff from the Wisconsin Examiner, who also has an article about the direction that Democrats need to go coming out of the elections last week, but also the budget shutdown and now the effort by some Democrats to bring it to an end.
But Paul Glastres joins us now.
Again, editor-in-chief of Washington Monthly.
Paul, good morning.
How are you?
Pat I'm fine.
I'm glad to be here glad to get to talk to your audience
Yeah, I mean we we were going to talk anyway about last week's election results and it's funny It was like it's like Democrats were giving themselves a victory parade and then some people threw out some some, you know spike strips and stop the parade in its tracks
But let's start with your review on that because then we'll come back to where Democrats need to go.
But as you look from your point of view at the effort that was made by some to bring an end to the government shutdown, it's a process that's happening right now in the Senate and then the House.
What are your overall thoughts at what you're seeing?
Well, you know, with a couple of nights sleep and, you know, reading and thinking about it, it's a little less puzzling to me.
But it was awfully puzzling when it happened.
And as you said, you had a blowout election for the Democrats last Tuesday across the board success in just about every realm.
You had the President Trump step out on a rake by cutting politically.
by cruelly cutting SNAP benefits and having the courts say, no, that's unconstitutional.
You had the polling showing the Democrats coming out ahead in this thing.
Why then cave right then?
And I think we kind of know the answer.
And that is a whole bunch of Democratic senators.
And that's who was deciding this.
We're never into this.
They didn't want to do it.
They got pushed into doing it and they had been looking for a way out.
Um, they waited probably at the insistence of Chuck Schumer, um, to, you know, till after the election till after the, the Obamacare subsidies are at the Obamacare tax credits are at the basis of this.
And they wanted to have those numbers out.
Uh,
So that everyone could see and then they chose their moment and it's interesting to note that of the eight Democrats who signed on to ending the shutdown Two of them are retiring and the rest aren't running in 2026
of course So
what that tell what that tells me is there was a whole lot of other senators who would have signed on But for fear that they would lose you know to a primary candidate or you know not you know
suppress their own base vote.
So I think this was just a case where, you know, and let us be honest, the cutting of snap hurt, Democrats care about stuff like that.
The fear that something would go wrong in the air probably haunted the room.
So, you know, it's, you know, was bad timing, but it is a perfect score for shutdowns.
They've never
once moved policy in the past and they didn't move policy this time.
No, they don't.
We're talking to Paul Glastres, editor-in-chief at Washington Monthly.
And so as you wrote about the road ahead for Democrats, because this, what's happening now with the government shutdown, like everything else, it will move into memory, and then you have to carry on from there.
So taking the lessons that were learned,
What needs to happen in 2026?
What are the kinds of issues that Democrats can be running on?
Because we know the debate.
It ranges from kitchen table issues to keep calling out Trump's danger to democracy.
Where do you feel like the party needs to go from its congressional and frankly, at the state level, its legislative candidates as well?
Well, I
think you saw more
than a hint of that in last Tuesday's elections.
You know, we at the Washington Monthly have been writing for a long time that Democrats have lost the working class, middle class vote increasingly because folks are suffering.
We've had decades in which the economy has not worked for the bottom 60 percent of the country.
Donald Trump got elected.
And reelected by saying I am gonna overturn the powers that be and deliver a better life to you folks who are left behind who are feeling furious at the system and Now he's predictably so far not delivered and a lot of the folks who voted for him will vote for him through a blizzard but a lot of
those who voted for him, voted for him out of exasperation with their lives not getting better in the previous four years and in many ways getting worse.
So Democrats have to focus like a laser on policies that can promise to actually help those folks at the bottom 67, 70% and then deliver.
That's the key.
And talk is cheap.
And micro little changes of the kind that it's most likely to get through Congress aren't going to cut it.
So Democrats have to offer it more thorough going change than they have in a long time.
And that's tough.
And pragmatists will say, well, it can't be done.
Sir, if you can't do it, you're not going to govern.
Yeah.
And I think we're seeing movement toward that.
I
believe so as well.
And I think we're going to see, we're already seeing many primaries here in Wisconsin.
And certainly a lot of what I'm seeing in our own comment section today is talking about primaring, you know, some of these, like you said, a lot of them aren't up next year.
But, you know, again, looking for people who
who actually want to fight.
We're talking to Paul Glastres, former Clinton White House speechwriter, now the editor in chief at Washington Monthly.
And again, of the many things that are listed in your issues and out there, they include things like, you know, not giving up on a rural voters.
We talk about that a lot here on this program.
But also there's a note that says.
Instead of fighting MAGA in today's poisonous digital political ecosystem, Democrats should challenge that environment as the root cause of our dysfunctional politics and vow to be the party that cleans it up.
What do you mean by how can somebody clean up what has become a very poisonous political digital ecosystem?
Well, look, across the board, Democrats and Republicans are aware that the digital
Ecosystem is poisonous that it steals their data that it plays with their minds that it divides neighbor from neighbor there is broad awareness that this sort of hoped for Democratic digital space where everyone was going to get their voice and all that that we heard in the 90s in the 2000s has turned into a cesspool and Democrats have a choice they can get into the cesspool
Right a lot of the political class is saying we need Democrats need their own Joe Rogan Democrats need to go, you know, their own Nick Fuentes or whatever what our author Zach Marcus is arguing is Get on the side of parents who are worried about their kids losing the capacity to focus and
Socialize because they're on their phones so much get on the side of People who want this country to come together around some common sense issues instead of being driven apart and you do that By taking on the tech platforms look Imagine if a hundred years ago the government had said to the new telephone technology, right that was coming up.
You know what?
Telephone companies, you can listen in to the conversations that are happening on your telephone lines.
And when somebody says, I might be looking for a house, you could sell that information to banks and realtors, and then they could call the people on their phones during dinner time to sell the mortgages and homes.
And if they say that they are angry at their neighbor, you can call the other neighbor.
And you can get a fight going.
No, we didn't allow that.
We didn't allow this basic information infrastructure to be both a pipeline of information and something the owner of the pipeline could monetize.
We've done that with tech platforms today.
And we have laws on the books that we can apply to the tech platforms to say you can't do this anymore.
You can't monetize.
this information.
And there are ways of putting speed bumps in the way, right?
If you have a road that cars go fast on naturally and you've got kids in that neighborhood, you put a speed bump.
It doesn't stop somebody from driving, it just slows them down.
There's all kinds of speed bumps you could demand in the digital world to de-accelerate.
the anger, the hatred, and so forth.
Paul Glastres.
Absolutely.
Paul Glastres is here.
Editor-in-Chief of Washington Monthly.
We're talking about the path forward for Democrats.
I've got time for one more in here.
And there is a note about saving social security, broaden the revenue base to include financial returns, increase the taxable maximum, and expand the system's tax base.
Essentially, is that a nuanced version of, you know,
run against the billionaires because whoever knew we'd have so many billionaires in our lifetime in this country?
It's basically a recognition that a lot of people are trying to live on social security.
Social security is losing its trust fund.
It needs to be not only, we
not only
have to put money back in the trust fund, but actually increase payments to people who are needy.
And you know, that's political gold.
If you can do it, how do you pay for it?
Well,
Don't raise payroll taxes on average people, which is what all the Washington series people say.
Tax plastics, tax carbon, tax things that make us unhealthy, tax financial transactions, short-term financial transactions, ways of supporting our retirement that don't require pain on the average
person.
These are very creative thoughts and
move beyond just the usual cliche that you hear in all this post-election coverage, so I would highly recommend washingtonmonthly.com for Paul Glastres and his team there.
Paul, thank you very much for joining us.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for your insight.
Pat, it's been a pleasure.
It's been wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Still ahead, we're going to be talking to Fred Clark, candidate for Congress, about what he sees as the way to win back a very rural district in northern Wisconsin.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Nice to have you back on this Tuesday morning.
It's November 11th.
And as we do every week at this time, we check in with Dan Hagen from NewsWatch 12, WJFWTV and Rhinelander, who, as we learned last week, also recorded an album.
And now I'm finding out, I mean, he is just a true Renaissance man, should be doing a series on HGTV before we know it.
Dan, good morning.
How are you?
What's, what's the latest project?
That's right.
I did some tiling.
Um, I asked everyone what color I should do between blue and teal.
They all said blue.
So I did teal.
Um, and it looks pretty good.
Well, congratulations on that.
All
done.
Uh, it's, I have, currently there are a thousand spacers in between all of these tiles.
So I need to take the spacers out.
I need to grout it and I need to cock it.
Um, so I'm going to hopefully bring in an expert for the cocking as that's, uh, so if you've ever heard the phrase, try your best, cock the rest, Pat.
No, I never have, but there's some advice I'll take to heart.
Yeah, so you get the tile pretty close.
You get the grout pretty good, and then you cock the rest.
OK, well, there you go.
So you got to do that.
You got to catch up, kind of have a longer weekend.
And then you wrap up the weekend with a very relaxing chance to watch the Packers take on the Philadelphia Eagles.
And well, we'll see how that worked out.
Something's wrong with this team.
I didn't think about that until last night.
I held out hope.
But something is definitely wrong.
There's something foundationally wrong there with that offense.
And I think more than you can just blame on injuries.
And I know injuries are a real factor.
But you know what?
They're a factor for every team.
And you work your way around it.
And I think our offensive line has traditionally been one of the stronger units in the league.
And we're not running the ball.
Seeps through the whole offense.
Yeah, no, it's an issue.
Dan Higgins with us from NewsWatch12.
We've got a bit of a connection issue, but we'll, I think we're powering through just fine.
So I want to get your thoughts on one of the stories in the news that you're covering out there.
And that deals with Marathon County Sheriff's Office.
signing an agreement to cooperate with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify and turn over people they believe to be in the country illegally.
I mean, we're talking about an area that is filled with farm workers and people who, you know,
have concerns, but now if they travel and get so much as a speeding ticket, they could face some kind of deportation.
And not everybody in Marathon County is very happy about this arrangement, Dan.
No, they're not.
There is a large Latino population in Marathon County
In Abbotsford and Colby, there are meat packing plants that employ a lot of Latinos in addition to that.
Like you mentioned, the dairy farms, a lot of dairy farms in Marathon County, a lot of them are staffed by immigrants.
So the Marathon County Sheriff, there's some speculation whether his hands are tied, but he's said to agree with ICE that when people come into the jail that they'll do a little bit of
you know enforcement as well when it comes to legal immigration.
So yeah people are people are not happy about this and he says he can't kind of give us a reasoning at this time because of the ongoing litigation as well.
Well obviously we've got a real question about you know whether that's the
you know, the most effective use of time for sheriff's officers is to be doing, you know, immigration checks rather than just on the things that they actually have done, whether it's committing some kind of crimes or things like that.
So you see why there's a controversy on that.
Also, there have been stories with the cutoff of SNAP benefits, with the government shutdown, with other government cutbacks.
You've got, you know, everything from Open Door of Marathon County, getting a large donation to the Rhineland
school district urging families to take advantage of free and reduced price school meals.
The theme really the past several days around the state and around the country Dan has been that in light of the shutdown people are realizing there's more they can do to help each other.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
There's a really strong nonprofit in Eagle River called fork feed our rural kids and they basically gave everyone like $100 grocery store gift cards So they dug into their kind of endowment fund and made that happen
And then there's been some local restaurants as well pickles which you might remember one best hamburger in Wisconsin last year They offered free meals to people and that's that's not a one-time story a lot Okay, well they did return
They should come back as well.
All right, Dan Hagen from NewsWatch12.
I appreciate you joining us every week at this time as always.
Hope you enjoy the rest of the day and I can't wait to hear what your next big project is going to be.
Oh, geez.
Well, man, Ironwood, ABR is open for cross-country skiing.
I would go up there, but the goal is to ski.
That's right.
It's always about the next burkey.
All right, Dan, thank you very much.
Have a great day.
Thanks, Pat.
All right.
Do you remember we we had that issue with Dan's connection?
Was it two, three months back?
It's been a while.
It was a long time ago and it kind of came back there and it sounded like we were putting him through a through a voice distortion thing.
Yeah.
It's really
high and then really low.
And we're definitely going to have to explore that one a bit more or
just
take advantage of it and we'll play like, you know, Looney Tunes music or
something.
Oh, I like that idea.
You know, I mean,
I think we
put like a Darth Vader like.
Look, I'd be happy to do that with somebody not in the news business.
When we're trying to talk about news, probably not the best time to have a cartoon bed sound effect.
But we might be on to something here.
We might be.
For other guests.
Dan, get out of news.
That'll solve the problem for
us.
That's it, Dan.
You're far too serious for us.
We want to have more fun with Dan.
Uh, anyway, also coming up, uh, Fred Clark is going to be joining us candidate for Congress, uh, up in the seventh district.
We're going to talk a bit about the race there.
As you know, Tom Tiffany is not running for reelection to Congress.
He is running for governor instead.
Then in our eight o'clock hour, we're going to be talking to Ruth Conniff kind of along the same lines as our last guest.
Uh, Ruth has an editorial in the Wisconsin examiner.
that says Tuesday's Democratic sweep is a wake-up call for Wisconsin.
Well, since that time, of course, we've also had the latest on the potential end of the government shutdown, so we'll get her thoughts and whether that impacts where she thinks the Democratic Party and candidates need to go from here.
All that still ahead on these mornings with Pat Krightlow powered by Up North News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
It is a Tuesday morning.
It's November 11th.
It is Veterans Day, so don't be checked in the mail.
Instead, be be thankful.
Maybe attend one of the ceremonies that might be going on in your hometown as well and thank our vets for their service and hopefully we do more for them than just recognize them, you know, one day a year, but actually follow through on things that would keep our promise to our veterans.
We certainly have seen how
Some politicians have fallen short on that account in both Madison and Washington DC.
We have spoken at length about the issue with our veterans and homeless veteran services and certainly what's been happening with the VA system as well.
I think Fred Clark is on the line now.
Fred, are you with us?
I am
with you.
Good morning, Pat.
Hey, good morning.
Nice to have you along, Fred.
Fred Clark's candidate for Congress former stage assembly rep now up in the Bayfield area where but the 7th district it is very large.
Fred where do we find you this morning?
It is yeah Pat I'm in Rothschild just looking at the big stack of lugs here at the Domtar Rothschild Mill and we had to move to a spot to get some better signal but it's a good day.
well you know what we never we never miss a chance then to talk about the importance of infrastructure and that we need more people who will invest in things like the internet infrastructure across northern wisconsin so so you're living right near the top of the district and you're you're getting awfully close to the southern border of that district so i'm i'm betting you've put a few miles on the vehicle
we have put a few miles on um it's it's been really enjoyable i've been
traveling as frequently as I can to talk to business owners, talk to residents, talk to civic leaders and communities from Hudson to Crandon and the seat of cornucopia.
There's a lot going on, but believe me, people my sense strongly is that people are paying attention right now to what's going on with the federal government.
Oh, they sure are, especially with the way things have been treated with this shutdown here.
We'll work our way to the deal that is apparently going to end the shutdown.
But before we get there, let's talk about, first off, the pain that has been needlessly caused to families and to the economy and everything else.
Tell me about the things that you're hearing and the local impact that you're seeing.
from everything from snap benefits being cut off to health insurance prices being jacked up, what are folks focused on?
Yeah, those are the two big ones, that and the national sales tax that's been created by our president through this tariff war.
I think those are the three.
For farmers and manufacturers and business owners, the just unpredictably
a wild roller coaster ride that we're on economically because of the president's tariff war is a huge source of concern for business owners who can't make investments with any predictability.
And it's a source of inflation for people buying things that may be imported.
On healthcare, I sat down with one of my neighbors last week who showed me her statement that as a result of increased premiums
elimination of the subsidy, her premium is going to go from $183 a month to over $1,100 a month at the beginning of next year.
So we have people now that are going to face the choice of either mining their retirement savings or dropping coverage altogether as a result of the failure to continue these tax credits.
And I visited a couple of food pantries now that
are all gearing up that are already experiencing dramatically increased usage by people for whom SNAP benefits are no longer predictable.
And we know the governor's made a good move to try to restore those benefits, but without the federal funding behind it, that's not sustainable.
I'll just say finally on that pad, it's an interesting political strategy to me to inflict the maximum amount of harm on as many people as possible by this administration.
leading up to another important election.
I don't think it's serving them and a lot of conversations about that.
Oh, well, it seems a tough time to ask people for votes when you're busy shutting down their government and services and things like that.
Let me ask you about a particular Republican response when it comes to the Affordable Care Act and these enhanced tax credits that made these health insurance policies more affordable.
And you talk about the big increase in prices that consumers are paying.
Well, where Republicans have come down on this is to say, well, you see, that's just proof that we don't
we shouldn't have these enhanced tax credits because that represents just so much money that's going to these big time insurance companies.
Well, okay, but so you're making people pay them instead.
What's the alternative to make healthcare more affordable for folks?
Fred, when you hear them saying, well, this is proof we don't need the premium tax credits.
What do you say to
that?
You know, the Affordable Care Act was a compromise that nobody thought was perfect.
What it reflected at the time was a Republican model that, as you know, as well as anybody, had a Republican model that Mitt Romney adopted in Massachusetts.
And it basically embraced a free market approach to providing health care.
Nobody thinks that this is the perfect solution.
I believe that we need to look really hard at how we provide healthcare for everybody and find out how to do that.
But in the meantime, we've got to stop the bleeding.
And having millions of Americans uninsured in the impact that our healthcare infrastructure will realize as a result of that is going to hurt all of us, regardless of where we get our coverage.
We're talking to Fred Clark.
He's a candidate for Congress in the seventh district all across northern Wisconsin here on mornings with Pat Crite low powered by up north news.
And so let's get to the potential deal that might end the shutdown, which again, was only put forward by a handful of senators.
Again, either retiring or not on the ballot next year.
And there are other senators who are
I think it would be fair to describe them as furious about this.
You certainly have people like Senator Tammy Baldwin who has been speaking out against it because again, it just allows the health insurance price hikes to go through with the promise of maybe a vote on it a little bit later.
Other people making the case that enough pain had been inflicted and you have to get the best deal that you can and then fight another day.
Now that I've described both ends of it, what describes your position on what you're seeing?
in Washington today?
Well, I didn't want to see them, except, well, it's hard to even call it a deal.
They got a very small number of concessions with their agreement to take that vote.
I think that was a mistake.
I think that in another month, the disruptions to travel and the other things that would be going on as a result of this, we're going to really lead the Republicans to need the
finally accept reality.
So yep, I get it.
Nobody wants to see this suffering continue.
But as it is, the house is going to come back into session.
It's a new inning.
The ball's in play.
They're going to have to seat the Congresswoman from Arizona.
They're going to have to take a vote on the Epstein files.
And at least out of this, we're going to see the House of Representatives back in session after a historic
It's not even fair to call it a recess They need to go back and start doing their jobs
Well, yeah, I mean you've had Tom Tiffany on this essentially paid vacation for the longest time Derek van Orden and the others as well and you know getting getting to play politician rather than statesman in in the capital now
Again, Tom Tiffany is running for governor instead, so there will be a different Republican nominee, but I would expect as you're looking at the field right now, I don't think we're hearing anything from the announced candidates or potential candidates that indicates they would do anything other than whatever Donald Trump tells them to do if they were to be the next congressman for the 7th District.
Based on everything I know, that's right.
I was just yesterday at a forum in Wausau with one of the Republican-announced candidates, Michael Alfonso.
And he more or less embraced his ongoing loyalty to the president and to the Trump administration.
And his future is gonna be tied to what this administration does.
It's gonna be a really clear contrast.
Well, again, somebody who has said as Sean Duffy's son-in-law that, you know, he is going to be, you know, an unabashed supporter of all that Donald Trump says or does, hardly a voice of independence, which, by the way, was also the thing Derek Van Orden and, you know, Brian Stiles all said that they were going to be as well.
But it is interesting as well that Michael Alfonso is Sean Duffy's son-in-law, the former congressman for the Seventh Congressional District and
I mean, it sure seems like we're basing a lot in family name and family connections here for a guy in the White House who was the focus of a No Kings rally that
I'm just kind of missing the broader qualifications for office here other than being the son-in-law of somebody who is now essentially the voice and face of the administration in promoting the inconveniences that are coming with the shutdown.
Yeah, he's gonna have to own all of that He's gonna have to own the elimination of food stamps and the elimination of health care and explain why that's a logical rational policy for America and Yep, he'll have the endorsement of his father-in-law Sean Duffy This young man I Know he'll will whatsoever, but he has a lot to learn I think about governing and a lot to learn about how
representation actually works.
Well, maybe a lot to learn about the district because look, the seventh district has more than a handful of people who require assistance through SNAP benefits and through Head Start and through veterans care.
And you talk to these folks every day who have, you know, are either in in, you know, dire straits or they have, you know, earned these benefits and
I have a feeling they're feeling rather ignored by their representatives in Washington these days.
Well, that's my sense.
And yeah, if you're doing the work, you are out talking to as many different groups as you can, regardless of their politics, because it's going to be your job to represent everybody.
And when you do that, you learn a lot about what the federal government does that's important.
It's critical to supporting.
just the lives of so many day-to-day people in so many different ways.
And if you're not aware of that, it's easy to be an ideologue when you don't understand how this stuff lands at home.
I'm sorry, Fred.
I was just gonna jump in before I ran out of time here.
Fred Clark is a candidate for Congress in the 7th District.
Big Democratic wins last week.
So, Fred, last question briefly is make the case after what would be a 16-year break.
Can a Democratic candidate win in the 7th Congressional District?
You know, Pat, I'm more confident about that answer now than I would have been even three months ago.
Number one, it's an open seat.
So every candidate for this district now has the chance to introduce themselves to 745,000 people.
I'm working hard every day to do that.
But the other thing I'm hearing is that there's a whole lot of people whose lives are being affected directly right now by this administration that's got people's attention.
And what we want to do is convert that attention to
Let's consider who's actually in the best position to represent us and do the work.
And I'm feeling better about our prospects in this race than I would have even told you three months
ago.
And that was already a seat that was crying out for some better representation on behalf of the constituents rather than the guy in the White House.
Fred Clark is the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 7th District.
Fred, as always, thanks for checking in with us, giving us an update on the race.
We'll talk to you again soon.
You bet, Pat.
Thank you.
Take care.
All right.
Yep.
Thank you very much.
And now coming up in our next hour, we will be talking live to Cam Stevenson from the nation's capital, part of Courier Newsroom, about the deal that might end the shutdown, and also Ruth Conniff of the Wisconsin Examiner.
I'm Pat Crichtlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio
Network.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
It's about eight minutes until eight o'clock on this Tuesday morning.
It's Veterans Day and so there will be events throughout Wisconsin across the country and James Kelly will be following one for Civic Media.
He's in the Civic Media Chippewa Valley Newsroom right now where he will be attending at least one of these events and following plenty of other stories for us as well.
James, good morning.
How are
you?
I'm good always following more stories even when it's so cold out.
I just don't want to leave the house
Oh, that's that is so true.
You can follow the stories that James is working on Through our station in the Chippewa Valley 935 the tap.
That's WCFW HD 2 or the civic media app and on the web at the tap dot FM Let's look at some of the stories you've got going on here now again for
folks who aren't aware that up here in Chippewa Falls and in Eau Claire, two hospitals, Sacred Heart in Eau Claire and St.
Joe's up here in Chippewa Falls abruptly closed over a year and a half ago now, but there are more things happening to either build new facilities and or reuse the existing facilities and that includes a step forward for work that's going to be done at St.
Joseph's Hospital here in Chippewa Falls, James, right?
Yeah, the Eau Claire Community Foundation has awarded a $250,000 grant to the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative for the purchase of equipment and technology to put at St.
Joseph's.
The cooperative is temporarily reopening St.
Joseph's.
It's not a long-term plan for them to do this, but they're just gonna kind of try to stem the issue until they can open their new independent community hospital in Lake Halley.
What's interesting about the Eau Claire Community Foundation, these funds actually came from the Sacred Heart Foundation originally when they
hospitals closed.
Okay, well, at least they were able to repurpose it in a useful way for what's going to be happening with those facilities next.
Next, we're going to be talking about
annexation issues and it's something I've been very familiar with covering around Wisconsin for going on 40 years here up here in the Eau Claire area there was you know kind of the original fight if you will involved Halley which was a town between Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls.
and eventually incorporated into the village of Lake Halley, but there are other surrounding townships both here in the Chippewa Valley and across Wisconsin that are facing their own debates on what to do in terms of governance, and that would include here the town of Washington adjoining the city of Eau Claire, what's happening there.
Yeah, the town of Washington has been working towards this petition to incorporate as a village for well over a year now.
They needed 50 signatures when they first started circulating the petition last summer.
They got around 625 or so.
So there is a big appetite in the town for incorporation to protect them from further annexations by the city of Eau Claire and the city of Altoona, mostly for housing developments and utility expansions.
So they've officially submitted that petition to the Department of Administration now.
It'll be 100.
80 days to review it, approve it, deny it, make changes, whatever it is.
What's interesting about that petition though is that the city of Eau Claire actually passed their own resolution last year saying that they expect to annex more land for utility expansion and that resolution has to be included in the review process.
And look, there is a true debate to be had about urban planning in a community.
And I completely understand the sentiment that says, well, we want to be our own place and we want independence and we don't want the big bad city gobbling us up.
But then you end up with essentially a checkerboard of services or services that you don't get in Halley, for example, once they incorporated.
they could no longer plug into, you know, the water system in Eau Claire and they had to have to build your own waterworks and all the other kinds of things that you need if you're going to grow your community.
as opposed to having something where, you know, the city is at the center of it and expands and expands its services and is able to do so at scale.
But, you know, if there's one thing we all love, it's a good turf battle as far as whether we're going to be, you know, part of a greater community or if we're just going to essentially build our own little thing and do our own thing.
And that's what they're deciding right now in the town of Washington.
So James will continue to follow that for us.
Healthcare has been on the minds of a lot of folks, especially in this
Open enrollment period not just for the Affordable Care Act, but also for people who need to pick new Medicare Advantage plans So I'm sure any kind of a healthcare event Gets a pretty good turnout there James.
Yeah, there was a pretty good turnout for this town hall at the Ellie Phillips Memorial Public Library last week It was hosted by Citizen Action of Wisconsin and a lot of it was just people telling their own individual stories You know, there's people who you spent their whole lives budgeting and saving and and now they're not sure if they're going to be able to keep their
homes, there's, you know, people who use these programs to pay for services that they need, things that maybe keep themselves or their friends out of nursing homes or institutions when they can't afford to pay for those services themselves, that those are also things that they could end up losing.
So there was a lot of anger and a lot of sadness in that meeting last week, and I'm sure that it hasn't changed in the last week.
No, no, not at all.
But again, it's good to get information and to be able to collect it.
So events like this, you understand why they may become rather popular.
All right, I suppose you want to do this last one, which is another reminder that summer is over and time to figure out what side of the street you're parking on this time in Menominee.
Yep, winter parking rules and monomony.
It's the same thing as the city of Eau Claire, even number days, even number side of the street, odd number days, odd number size of the street.
They start at 2am to 7am, so it's a little bit later than in Eau Claire.
But I think what's interesting about the city of Monomony is they have this program called Foods for Fines, where you can just go to the Monomony Police Department if you get a parking ticket and donate non-perishable foods.
And for every can or item of non-perishable food you donate, you get $2 off your ticket.
Oh, wow.
Wait a minute.
That's a really good idea.
Yeah, that's until January 1st.
That's not year round.
But for right now, that is in effect.
So if you do get a parking ticket, you can also feel pretty good about yourself.
Go donate some food.
Yes.
And I would say, yes, do it in the spirit of helping others.
If you get a ticket, don't take it out on people by just bringing in, you know, 30 cans of canned beets.
Okay, let's, let's make it, you know, things that would be truly useful and appreciated by, by those who have to use our food banks and pantries and things like that.
So there you go.
Food for fines.
The things you'll learn from James Kelly.
Follow him at ninety three five, the tap and the tap dot FM is part of the civic media radio network.
James, thank you very much.
Thanks guys.
Have a good one.
All right.
You as well.
And coming up, we will be talking to Ruth Conniff from the Wisconsin Examiner about the election results.
the deal to end the government shutdown and what this means for framing the issues in 2026?
I'm Pat Critello on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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