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Hey, good morning.
It is 7 0 6.
Nice to have you back here Up North on this Thursday morning, November 20th, one week out from Thanksgiving.
Parker Olson producing things down in Madison in Studio A2.
Coming up later this hour, Sean O'Malley talking about your money and the markets.
and comments by President Trump that we're now going through a new golden age.
I believe he meant gilded age, but it's pretty golden if you can, you know, be on his income level.
But Sean will tell us about some of the numbers that are finally trickling out thanks to the government shutdown being over that indicate economic health.
They're not great.
If you can't stick around for that or the rest of the show, let me remind you, you can pod this program by heading over to Spotify or Apple, wherever you get your podcasts and sign up that way.
You won't miss a guest, you won't miss a topic, and we'd love to have you as a follower.
Same goes for our daily newsletter, our weekly newsletter as well.
Sign up for all of it at upnorthnewswi.com.
In the newsletter today, Allie has a story, the headline, Discover Nine Winter Festivals That Are Worth Bundling Up For.
So you might have missed some of what Sharita Booker had to say last hour about some big events around Wisconsin this weekend.
And now at least telling us about some nine winter festivals that you should make plans to attend at some point as well.
So take a look at our newsletter and anticipate all of that.
Our question of the day is asking about Thanksgiving disasters.
Frankly, we'll take any Thanksgiving stories, but we're looking for things that might have gone wrong and that way they offer a little bit of, you know, advice and guidance so that other people don't suffer through the same fate.
But before we get to Thanksgiving, Parker, we've got to get a Christmas update, specifically a Christmas catalog update.
Oh, I showed you the first catalogs that had arrived in the Crackle Pino box.
Wasn't too many but it was a few it wasn't it was only the first two and guess what there's only there's only a couple of more Here's Johnson and Murphy of catalog of boots and shoes.
I have never bought boots and shoes by catalog
And I'm here in Chippewa Falls.
I'm at the home of Mason's shoe.
Well, you know, kind of used to be the shoes used to be made here before they went overseas.
But, you know, that was their whole thing was, you know, shoes by catalog.
And so apparently people are still buying them.
And now the other the other one that we just got was from O&H Danish Bakery.
I think that's in Racine.
and that would be the cringles.
Oh.
Oh, yeah.
See, now we have.
Now we're talking.
We have done cringles by catalog and we will be doing cringles by catalog.
I can I can already tell you this particular catalog is going to get a workout with some folks and cringles are great.
I mean
For me, it's very easy.
If you have your catalog in front of you, just go find anything with cherries and send it to me.
I love a good cherry cringle.
But I mean, it's got sweet stuff.
It's got savory stuff.
All kinds of other flavors and cakes and things.
So yeah, cringles by catalog.
I would take that.
Any time that anyone is offering me food by catalog, you probably have to be a little careful because I don't know if I trust...
food that people are mailing me about.
However, I would always eat something that shows up.
And for listeners at home, Pan has been kicking around down here,
looking for something.
Under the desk, I realized I still have the Newskies catalog for bacon.
Again, a good Wisconsin product.
But I also have, I don't know if Harry and David is one where it's a lot of fruit baskets.
Oh,
OK.
I didn't have it handy, so I thought I had it down there in the garbage can.
I did not.
I thought you were
That's where I'm currently keeping them.
Oh, in the garbage.
I will eventually pull them out and put them in a pile for the visual.
So, yeah.
So that's your catalog update.
And trust me.
Many, many more are coming.
Let's say from Joe on YouTube.
Welcome.
Thanks for the comment.
Trader Joe's sells those cringles out West anyway, and that was a lifesaver for me.
Yeah, I like that.
Anyway, you can get them.
Trader Joe's, that'll work as well.
All right, so getting to your Thanksgiving stories, 855-75 Civic, 855-752-4842.
Here's, this is fresh on the text line from Jim and Brookfield.
A few years ago, my mother-in-law hosted Thanksgiving dinner, not knowing that my brother-in-law would be bringing his new dog.
I'm not familiar with this breed.
Is it a wine marner?
Anyway, large dogs bred for hunting.
Large dogs.
Needless to say, the large dog made short order of any food set out and would bark constantly if left outside.
At dinner time, we had to ration the food and eat standing up to avoid sharing our food with the dog.
Lesson to be learned, beware of any dog that joins your Thanksgiving, especially if it's on par with Clifford the Big Red Dog.
On top of this, not to throw Jim's brother-in-law into the bus here, but apparently his mom, you know, Jim's mother-in-law, did not know that her son would be bringing this big old dog to Thanksgiving dinner.
Don't do that.
Don't do that to your family or friends or whatever.
And by the way, if you're a pet owner and you're having people over for Thanksgiving, please do not assume...
that your guests have the same tolerance for an animal as you.
People might have, you know, cat allergies, or they may not like the fact that a pet like a cat is sitting right on the table.
Right on the table, as happened to us one year, being at somebody's place.
And I'm just looking, going, this cat is sitting right on the table.
I don't like that.
It's just
You know, fur and whatever else everywhere.
And so, you know, not saying you got to kennel everybody, but maybe think about it.
I don't know.
Tony says you bring a pet that's your responsibility.
Why wasn't the brother-in-law holding the dog by a leash away from the people while they ate?
Yeah.
Well, that's that's the whole thing.
You got it.
You got to control, control your kids, control your pets, control your monkeys, you know, keep them, keep them.
Some monkeys are hard to control.
Don't just let them loose and go, well, you know, I just, I just brought this bag of squirrels.
I thought I would open up for everybody and enjoy Thanksgiving.
So no, they're, they're still, even in this day and age, there's still something called etiquette.
Okay, there's still little rules of the road that we follow and I know etiquette is a dying thing said the old man Like for example getting off topic baseball etiquette.
Don't go up and down the aisle and make people stand up in the middle like between pitches Do it between batters, you know, it's like there's two strikes on a batter and somebody somebody's like, oh, I got two beers.
I got to squeeze right by here No, no, you wait up there until the play is over
like go through a row.
You said aisle.
I was
ending.
Okay.
Yeah.
If you keep your head down and don't be blocking the play, I mean, just wait till in between plays.
Anyway, there was my thing on etiquette.
There's still etiquette at Thanksgiving time as well.
That's all I'm saying.
If you want a little bit of harmony, just just just
it would help.
It's definitely a thing if people would, you know, and again, etiquette is sometimes the little things like everybody passing their food in the same direction or, you know, if you're supposed to bring something, don't bring a bag of M&M's, okay?
Go through a little bit of effort.
It's not that hard.
We used to joke when we were a young couple and couldn't do much.
We used to joke that we were bringing a seven layer salad.
and it was seven layers of M&Ms.
We just want to put a bunch of M&Ms in a bowl.
We never did that, but that was always the joke.
We would always find a way to do a little bit of something.
Find one thing to make.
You don't like to cook, that's fine.
Find one thing that you could do.
You know what it was for me?
I saw this recipe, I saw how easy it was, and it was a big hit every time.
Stuffed mushrooms.
Just take some mushrooms, wash them, pull the stem out, and then you take a little bit of deviled ham.
chop up some of the mushroom stems, a little bit of garlic salt, put all that together, put a spoonful in each of the mushroom caps, 400 degrees, 10 minutes, boom.
Big hit.
It's nothing, just pick one thing, learn it and bring it.
the bread.
That's Tony heavier.
Yeah, bring a bag of tiny bags.
It's so easy to share.
Etiquette, there you go.
That's something that
Other people have to think about is the leftovers and are you gonna send leftovers with somebody?
If you're gonna send leftovers, be prepared for that as well because otherwise you find yourself later on going, where's that Tupperware Bowl?
Where's that thing?
Oh yeah, you sent it with Aunt Edna and are you gonna call Aunt Edna and go, hey, I want my Tupperware Bowl back?
Similarly, if you're given Tupperware or something by somebody,
How
all the time.
Yes, it's like socks.
You know, why is there only one sock where to go?
Yeah, we have a Tupperware drawer kind of.
And every so often, I'll go through something and realize, I don't have the lid for this.
And I will pull out the entire drawer and reorganize it.
And that lid is still nowhere to be found.
Turns out it was at the sink drying off.
Oh no, but mine is just lost to the ether forever.
So these are some of the small things and then there's big things like a big dog.
We'd love to have your stories of Thanksgiving, 855-757-855-752-4842.
Now I want to talk briefly about the end of the legislative session for the calendar year.
There's still going to be a session early in 2026.
But these guys are done for the year.
The Republican leadership in the Assembly and Senate has said, yeah, we're done.
Mission accomplished.
Got everything done.
They did not get everything done.
And in an especially heinous bit of political trickery yesterday, Assembly Speaker Robin Voss pulled a maneuver that would make sure that this bill that basically he's the only one that opposes wouldn't get a vote yesterday.
and it is a bill that would expand Medicaid health insurance coverage for new moms from 60 days to 12 months.
The money's there to do it.
It is federally supported.
48 states have done it, but not Arkansas and Wisconsin because Assembly Speaker Robin Voss considers health insurance for women postpartum to be welfare.
And so he single-handedly is blocking a bill that, you know who co-sponsors this?
Three fourths of the members of the assembly, including about 30 Republicans.
30 Republicans, and they sat on their hands and did nothing yesterday.
I was part of a Democratic caucus in the Senate that when we didn't like something that our majority leader was doing, at the end of that floor session, there was a vote and that person was out and a new caucus leader was in.
I can't even imagine why.
the Republicans who sponsor this bill, who know that this is a good thing and is going to keep new moms healthy and in some cases alive.
Didn't at that point say, you know, Speaker Voss, you're maybe getting a little too big for your britches.
Thank you for your service.
Time to move on.
But no, Robin Voss has either puppet strings or purse strings in the case of campaign cash.
Whatever it is, you have
Republicans there, co-sponsors like Jesse Rodriguez of Oak Creek and like Patrick Snyder of Weston and others who just allowed a house speaker to put ideology ahead of health.
And there's nothing wrong with having, you know, ideology or having values and things, but when you're defying the will of most of your members just to put down new moms, you guys might want to rethink your leadership.
Sean O'Malley is talking about your money and the markets coming up in 15 minutes.
I'm Pat Kratlow live from Lake Wissota.
Follow me at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
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Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
It's a Thursday morning November 20th.
Nice to have you along.
I'm back right low at 7 23 just about here from Lake Wissota from Robin Tigerton.
Good morning.
He says it's foggy and 36 degrees has a meeting to go to in Shano today.
Yesterday took his aunt Leah to Appleton to see his cousin Bert.
who has had heart surgery and is doing better, and we are very happy to hear that.
Thank you very much, Rob, for writing in.
We're always happy to have updates from you as well.
What's going on weather-wise?
What you're doing for Thanksgiving, and do you have some Thanksgiving stories that you'd like to share as well?
855-75-CIVIC is the phone number you can call, text, or use that Civic Media app.
Let's look at a little sports here.
You might have heard earlier from Jimmy Cusco that the state high school football championships are taking place today and tomorrow.
Divisions four through seven today.
Divisions one, two, and three tomorrow.
Let's see.
The Badger women's basketball team defeated UIC Chicago last night.
They will next play Sunday hosting Detroit Mercy.
The Badger men's basketball team will be playing this Friday afternoon.
It'll be at BYU in Salt Lake City.
Coverage begins at 2.30 Friday afternoon.
afternoon on several civic media stations.
The Milwaukee Bucks are at home tonight, taking on the Philadelphia 76ers.
Let's do a little hockey here.
The Badger Men's Hockey Team will be playing on a couple of civic media radio stations this Friday.
They will be playing at top ranked Michigan State.
You can listen starting at 7 p.m.
Friday on WFHR in Wisconsin Rapids and WJMS up in Ironwood, Michigan.
The top ranked Badger
The Badger Women's Hockey team will be hosting St.
Thomas tonight and tomorrow evening.
The Badger Women's Volleyball team, number 10 in the country, they swept number 9 ranked per due last night and so on Sunday now they will host Iowa.
And football, you've got the Badger Football team playing on Saturday.
They will be hosting Illinois on Saturday evening.
Coverage begins Saturday afternoon at 4.30 on several Civic Media stations.
The Green Bay Packers, meanwhile, they will be hosting the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.
It's a noon kickoff.
Coverage begins at 10 a.m.
on some Civic Media stations, and then it's a short week.
They'll be playing again next Thursday.
Thanksgiving, that'll be a noon game.
at Detroit, taking on the Lions.
And that's a look at some of the sports that we've got covering.
Well, except for there, there's this sports show that airs Saturday mornings at seven.
What's, what's the name of this thing here?
Call your shot.
What is it?
Make the call.
Oh, make the call.
Yes, make the call.
You can listen to Jimmy Cusca leading the round table of myself, Greg Underson and Conrad Kruger.
We often have Jay Kokorowski from the Badger Observer.
Join us for a quick segment.
This week, I think we've got a really fun show coming up, especially for me, frankly, because we've got a lot of division three sport.
We always talk a little bit about division three sports, but today or on Saturday, we will have Pat Coleman from d3football.com.
He's going to preview D3 football.
playoffs that start this weekend.
And Mike Shaw, who is the director of the couple of bowl games that are in Wisconsin, the Ismus Bowl and the Lakefront Bowl, he's going to be joining Jimmy for an interview there.
So
really fun.
And by the way, speaking of Division III and the WIAC, if you missed it earlier, the WIAC, you know, the smaller UW schools, five, five of them are in the, in the postseason tournament, right?
For D3.
Oh, good.
So there you go.
There's a little sports update for you.
Turning back to some of the things we were talking about with the legislature being done for the calendar year, despite getting paid for the whole year.
Do you remember us talking a couple of weeks back about how there were Republicans, including State Representative Scott Krug, who were talking all about being in support of allowing local clerks to start to process absentee ballots on the day before Election Day?
Not count them, but process them.
Make sure the information on the envelope is correct.
Save a lot of time on Election Day.
You'll get the results earlier.
It's a common sense thing should have been done a long time ago.
Republicans keep tying strings to it.
You know, things like, I don't know, getting rid of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and things like that.
Well, anyway, there was a bill yesterday that would require clerks to return to voters absentee ballots that have faulty or missing certifications as long as they are received no later than seven days before the election, which was fine except that Democratic Representative Lee Snodgrass
saw that that bill was going to pass.
And so put up an amendment, amend the bill to also allow the processing of absentee ballots the day before the election.
And Republicans rejected it.
And so Representative Snodgrass criticized the author of the bill, Representative Scott Krug, for going on what she called a media tour, saying that he would pass a Monday processing bill, and then not including that provision in the bill.
Snodgrass said and was politics is reporting this this amendment would enable those clerks to begin to process those ballots ahead of time and therefore get those results that my own colleagues said people want to know before they go to bed Krug acknowledged his belief that Monday processing would benefit the state But he said there was too much opposition in the Senate and the quote I see here in was politics is Krug saying quote I'm smart enough to know
I've been married twice and I have six kids.
I don't always get everything I want.
I'm just pausing for laughter here.
Again, this is a state representative who did a media tour saying, you know, Republicans are on board now.
We want to help the election process.
We want to help our clerks.
And when the time came to help local clerks and to help facilitate counting of absentee ballots, they rejected an amendment to a different bill related to it.
with Scott Krug saying, I'm smart enough to know I've been married twice and I have six kids.
I always don't get everything.
I don't always get everything that I want.
Well played.
The bill that would allow for some online sports gambling through tribal casinos that was put on hold.
Apparently the votes were not there to do that.
And there was no bill passed that would give relief to wedding barns that are facing tight restrictions on alcohol licenses.
We're going to talk to Sean O'Malley about your money and the markets coming up.
Live from Lake Wissota, I'm Pat Crichtlow from Up North News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You might have heard during the Midwest Farm Report there during the break that
The facility in Wisconsin advertises Wisconsin as the Silicon Valley of Bullseiman.
We'll talk more about that in about 15-20 minutes or so, but first we got to get to business.
Right after I tell you that we'd love to have you sign up for our daily newsletter at UpNorthNews, head to UpNorthNewsWI.com, click subscribe in the top banner, and you can see the weekday versions that Ellie puts together for us, Ellie Bordeaux, and then I have a Sunday morning newsletter as well that includes our question of the week and our question of the week.
This week deals with
whether you have a close friend who has the opposite politics of you.
And if not, why?
And if so, how do you make it work?
So again, that's part of our Sunday morning newsletter.
You can be the first to see next weekend's question by signing up.
And by the way, for all things about the show here, head to upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings and you can sign up for the newsletter.
You can subscribe to the show as a podcast, read all the latest articles that I put on our website and more upnorthnewswi.com slash mornings.
Well, once again, President Donald Trump gave a very.
interesting speech, this one on the economy, and this one to a group of franchise owners of McDonald's restaurants who had gathered in Washington.
And that's where we bring in Sean O'Malley to talk about your money and the markets.
Sean is a Hudson native.
He's had a lengthy Wall Street career in anti-money laundering, financial risk management, fraud.
data analytics and compliance.
Easy for me to say, Sean.
He's got a business card that, you know, is the size of a hubcap.
He's just... Yeah, yeah.
It's all one big acronym.
It looks like an I chart.
Exactly.
How are you today?
I'm doing
well.
I'm doing well on yourself.
Doing well because as I always, as we always like to tell people, when it comes to speeches by the president, don't listen to the audio.
Just read it.
read it.
And so in this case, as he's talking about the issue of affordability and the economy, he said that on Sunday, his team was still working to come up with new ways to bring down costs, quote, we worked on it this weekend.
And you're going to see some of the items that were a little bit higher.
They were lower than the last administration, but a little bit higher.
We're going to have some little price reductions.
And in some cases, some pretty good ones.
Okay,
Clear, clear,
clear as mud.
Okay.
Republicans are supposed to be pro-market.
That sounds socialist.
That is observation number one.
Yeah.
Number two, given the ideas, I mean, he keeps floating out.
He seems to be fixated on housing costs.
So his solutions, which we've talked about previously, was one, the 50-year mortgage.
Ridiculous.
probably the dumbest suggestion I've ever heard in financial circles.
Now he came up with another proposal that was brought to my attention, that is kind of an interesting notion, although completely impractical.
Basically, that your mortgage rate should stay the same, and it sort of moves with you, regardless of, you know, as you sell your house, and I'm trying to
kind of work through the mechanics of that i'm thinking okay so you basically have to have like a mortgage account that you're paying into but if you know you to make it equal you're gonna have to have the interest rate set which means you might have to have interest rate subsidies which is definitely not market you know
it sounds like concepts of a plan
it will sound like really bizarre concepts of a plan and the mechanics of it um i mean the sheer implementation uh
Aspect of it would be ridiculous and what happens to you know real estate agents then and everything else It's just not
but but Trump posted that he had quote normalized inflation Had slashed regulations like water restrictions in order to help small businesses don't know how I'm seeing that And really didn't give any details other than to say quote This is the golden age of America because we are doing better than we've ever done as a country Prices are coming down and all that stuff
and all that stuff.
The New York Times notes that beef prices are approaching $10 a pound and he really did not have an answer for that for all these McDonald's franchise owners about how ordinary Americans are gonna struggle to afford things like the Big Macs that Donald Trump loves to talk about.
Golden Age or Gilded Age, that's our new trivia question for Sean O'Malley.
Yeah, we're basically, he likes to liken it to the Gilded Age, yes, of the 1920s or even back to the 1890s, where as with now, increasingly economic power and financial might is controlled by the few and more and more people are disenfranchised.
Now, I do have one observation about
the the comment about sort of beef in general or beef related things if Wisconsin is the Silicon Valley of bull semen I would say that Washington DC is the Silicon Valley of bull crap
It's just there's nothing and the thing is as the the Times article notes Trump has vacillated between blaming his predecessor for the affordability problem and
claiming that there is not one at all.
So, I mean, unless you can't fix a problem, if you can't define the problem, and frankly, a lot of people criticize the Biden administration that they were living in denial about inflation issues.
Well, this is denial on steroids, basically, when it comes to how they see it.
Are they going to blame Biden?
Are they going to say it doesn't exist?
Are they doing something?
Are they not doing something?
There is no clarity coming from this White House right now.
That's absolutely right, Pat.
I mean, Biden did fall into the inflation trap trying to say, hey, but we're doing a lot of good.
And I understood what he was trying to say from an economic perspective.
The spending plans in his economic plan really boosted long-term projects that we weren't going to be realizing the benefits of for many years to come.
And because Trump would not allow the Fed
Basically put a lot of pressure on them not to raise interest rates during his first term back from you know, 2017 to 2021 That meant that everything sort of got overheated and they needed to raise rates rather rapidly which they did and they actually overshot the mark quite a bit which led to kind of a bit of a benign bank crisis which is why Silicon Valley Bank and a few others went out but
Denial is not the way forward on this.
No, no, you cannot tell people what they can see with their own eyes when they're looking at their grocery bills at their energy bills and things like that.
So we're talking to Sean O'Malley, a finance and economics expert about how or whether the Trump administration is trying to address the issues of affordability.
And one of the things that they're starting to take credit for that they say will bring down prices
is selectively reducing some of these tariffs, which begs the question, who was the idiot that put these tariffs into place that now they're taking credit for, you know, getting those tariffs set aside and reducing prices?
I can't imagine who put those tariffs in place in the first place a few months ago.
Yeah, we'll have to do some research on that, obviously.
Yeah, it's going to be a very short research project.
This is something that Trump has unfortunately done repeatedly in his business career, if you read up on the gentleman.
He will create a problem and then take credit for solving it by making the problem going away by not insisting on what he was doing.
insisting on creating the problem in the first place.
Right.
And
again, it's what made things so puzzling a year ago is that we knew all of this.
And yet still, so now we've got the next trick up his sleeve is to say that there are going to be these tariff checks.
that, you know, because apparently all this tariff money came in from other countries, which I believe financial experts like Sean O'Malley has told us the money does not come from other countries.
It comes out of our pockets.
And so are we going to get these $2,000 tariff checks?
It sounds a bit like a business scam.
It does if it's too good to be true.
it probably is too good to be true.
Yeah, so the numbers have bounced around a little bit, but everybody's in agreement that about $200 billion has been collected from US consumers and businesses in the form of tariffs this year.
So if you're going to try to refund that, and the experts say there's maybe a 10% chance of that actually happening, even if it does happen, even if
somehow the long shot comes in and they're able to get approval to send these checks out.
Don't plan on spending it for Christmas this year.
Those checks would not arrive until middle or late next
year.
cabinet officers maybe was asked, well, isn't that going to increase inflation if you're putting out all these $2,000 checks?
And of course, then the official said, well, maybe they'll save them.
That's what wealthy people do when they get these big tax cuts is they save and don't put it back into the economy.
If you're giving people checks, you want them to put it back into the economy.
That's
what it's there for.
Yeah, right.
Well, and this is the whole
crux of the trickle down versus, you know, kind of trickle up theory.
Trickle down, as we know, does not work, but hey, it doesn't stop us from keeping on trying.
It doesn't stop the Republicans from advocating it as an economic solution.
But as we have seen, it doesn't work.
And that's been evidenced by studies that have been done that we've talked about on this show.
You know, the top 10% of Americans being responsible for over 50% of consumer spending.
I mean, that illustrates it very clearly that the people who are spending are the ones who can afford to, and this is even trickle down to, if I can use that expression, McDonald's.
McDonald's has noticed significant drops in sales, not
not because burger prices are up, although that is certainly the case.
And so the affordability, yes, I'm going to use that word, for a lot of people has gotten increasingly out of reach.
And what's happening is that you have a segment, particularly at the lower economic strata of society that literally cannot afford to go and eat at McDonald's.
They will stay home.
They will find another alternative.
Basically, they have been priced out.
of dining at McDonald's.
Yeah, I mean, because again, the supply side economics might be the biggest fairy tale and scam ever foisted upon the, the American public.
We're talking to Sean O'Malley about your money and the markets.
There was this, there was this government shutdown thing.
It has finally come to an end, but it did dam up some economic data for a while here.
So I think some of the data is starting to trickle out.
What, what have we been learning so far?
of the
gone replace it with a loyalist you know numbers aren't good well we're gonna delay the announcement but this was normally this is done on the first friday of ergo month of at eight thirty a.m.
They
had rescheduled the September data now that the government has reopened to be announced this morning.
Here's what I've got here
from the the New York Times says the manufacturing sector continued to shed jobs, losing another 6,000 jobs in September.
A key argument for Trump's tariff policy is that it would bring back manufacturing jobs.
It's an especially sluggish report the Times is saying that job growth was stronger than expected in September.
but increases in the unemployment rate will temper the enthusiasm somewhat.
The unemployment rate hasn't been this high since the late stages of the pandemic.
All told, employers added 119,000 jobs in September and unemployment is at 4.4%.
I got 30 seconds left, Sean, but that is
not
evidence of a golden age.
No, that's evidence that you're coming close to replacement for the number of jobs that you're losing, but you're still not quite there.
Yeah.
Sean O'Malley follows your money in the markets for us and we always appreciate you having to follow whatever data we're able to get and make sense of here.
I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.
We will talk to you in two weeks.
All right, very good.
Have a good one.
Thank you, Sean.
Talk to you a little later.
All right, coming up in our next hour, we will be talking to Joseph Pecky, the State Assembly, and the State Senate are done meeting for the calendar year, what got done, and a whole lot that didn't get done.
I'm Pat Crightlow from Oak 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.
Welcome back.
It is 7.52.
Pat Kratlow here in Chippewa Falls.
Parker Olsen down in Madison Studio A2.
James Kelly in Chippewa Falls over at the Civic Media Newsroom there.
James, good morning.
How are you?
I'm good.
How you guys doing?
I'm doing good things.
It occurs to me that I go through different coffee mugs.
A lot of times they're the ones with the grandkids on.
I don't know if you have a regular coffee mug, but I've got, in this case, a coffee mug that everybody always sees the one side of it, which is nothing, just plain, because on the other side is a UW-Clare alumni thing on there.
But because they only put it on the one side of the mug,
the people watching on the camera, they never see that side.
So some free advice.
If you're making a coffee mug, put your design on both sides.
Yeah, people use both
of their hands.
Yes.
Some people are
righties.
Some people are lefties.
If you want, if you want that branding out there, you got to put the brand wherever it goes.
So anyway, so from the Chippewa Valley here, this, this proud little blue gold turns things over to James and you can follow what he covers for Chippewa Valley News at ninety three five.
The tap.
That's WCFW HD two here in the Chippewa Valley and you can follow on the web.
headlines and weather and more at thetap.fm.
Again that's thetap.fm and let's get started here next door to Eau Claire in the Altoona School District.
What's going on there James?
Yeah, so the school district has been conducting this survey to kind of gauge interest in some potential referendum options for April that they were hoping to get enough support to maybe fund a new high school because their current facility needs more space that, you know, it doesn't have an auditorium.
So the total cost of that was estimated at over $88 million and then with some repairs that would have been made to the main campus, it's another 15 something.
So that's over $100 million and there is not support for that in the
Altoona community right now.
Most of the survey respondents said they would not be supporting that referendum.
One of the things that they did support was just that $15.6 million for the critical repairs.
That was 64% of the respondents said they would support that, but that was the only option that received over half the vote.
So district officials are gonna kind of take that back to the meeting in December and decide where to go from there.
And again, I would add that the
the referendums, all these referendums, would the reason they're proliferating
the way they are is because of the chronic underfunding from the state legislature that we talked about in yesterday's homeroom segment.
If you missed that, go follow us as a podcast or go to the Civic Media website and look up our 7 a.m.
hour from yesterday.
We talked to two members of a blue ribbon commission on school funding about the things that have led to all of these referendums being needed all around Wisconsin and why you're seeing people in Altoona and other places starting to push back on
referendums, which could have a real impact on education unless the state legislature changes their minds or changes their composition, as the case may be.
Let's head down a little south now to the village of Fairchild, where again, there are just things that you want to invest in.
schools or in this case drinking water that's safe seems to seems like an important thing James.
Yeah so Governor Tony Evers and the DNR earlier this week announced two hundred and eighty two million dollars in safe drinking water loan program funding for seventy four municipalities across the state.
The village of Fairchild is getting one of the most significant portions of that funding.
They're getting almost two million dollars to address nitrate contamination in well number one there and also construct a new well and well house.
so that they could just abandon that site if they need to, if they can't clean up the contamination.
So we're gonna see a lot more of that over the coming years, a big focus on cleaning up nitrates, cleaning up PFAS from the water, addressing problems with lead service lines, just trying to make sure that there's nothing in the water that's gonna cause any health risks to people.
Yeah, I mean when people say why do things cost so much more now than they they used to well It's it's not a matter of just sinking a well anymore.
You know, we we've had decades of Industrial chemicals going into the water and you know different fertilizers and everything else over the years and so You want safe drinking water?
It's it's gonna take some money and that's why you've got the state loan program Local farmers are being asked to take part in an event by the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
What's that about?
Let's say it's almost the other way around.
The Wisconsin Farmers Union invited anybody earlier this week to come and write some letters to local farmers just to kind of show them some appreciation.
It's been a tough year for farmers just with everything going on with food share and the way tariffs have affected the international market, especially with soybeans.
So the Farmers Union just wanted to have some people come in and write letters to local farms and say, hey, we appreciate you guys.
We know you're not doing this for the lifestyle.
We know you're not doing it because it's
this ultra successful line of work that you're in, but it's important work.
It's how we eat.
It's how we clothe ourselves.
So just a nice little way to show them some appreciation after some tough times.
And let's take a moment to appreciate just how backwards I got that because the note in front of me says Wisconsin Farmers Union hosts a thank you letter writing event for local farmers.
And I was very curious when I saw that I'm like, Oh, this event for local farmers.
Who are they writing?
Thank you letters to themselves, themselves.
No, farmers could have
attended and said,
you
know,
but my neighbor did a really good job this year.
I'm
gonna write him a
letter.
Where's that Snoop Dogg?
I was just gonna say.
I'd like to thank me.
I did this.
I got up early and milked those cows.
I got out there on that combine.
I'd like to thank me.
That's what we ought to see from the Wisconsin Farmers Union is put Snoop Dogg in a farmer's cap.
and give that speech.
I would watch
that for two hours.
That would be so great.
The Public Service Commission is the group that looks at rate hikes by utilities around the state, and there's some news from customers of Excel.
Energy gets set to shell out a little more.
Yeah, so as you know, XL Energy supplies a lot of the power to northwestern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan.
But for the northwest Wisconsin region, where I'm more concerned, the average customer could see an additional $25 on their monthly bills starting in 2027.
It's a rate hike that's going to go into effect over the next couple years.
So this year, it'll be closer to about $9 and the next following year, it'll be closer to 25 total.
The total is a little less than they had originally asked for.
from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.
The Alliance Energy also requested a rate hike, so it's over $300 million in higher rates over the next two years between the two.
So electricity costs are going up and...
It's just costs going up everywhere.
The costs are going up.
But I also know there's a consumer group out there that has been pointing out that these utilities don't seem to be teetering on bankruptcy.
They have to make a return on investment.
A lot of these are not nonprofit companies.
And so they have been putting pressure on to keep the lid on these rate hikes.
But these rate hikes continue to be approved.
James Kelly, thanks for covering everything for Civic Media in our Chippewa Falls Newsroom.
Thanks guys, have a good one.
Much more in our eight o'clock hour coming up, including Joseph Pecky.
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