Expensive Climate for Turkey Dinners (Hour 3)

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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Gritlow.

powered by Up North News.

Now, from our Lake Wissota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crightlow.

Hey, good morning, 806.

Nice to have you back here up north on a Wednesday morning, November 26th.

Parker Olson producing things down in Madison studio, A2 Earl Ingram standing by in Milwaukee.

Tell us about the what's going on podcast.

And later, we're gonna be talking...

less than a half hour from now with Tom Nelson, the Out of Game County executive.

Remember we talked to him about the Edmund Fitzgerald and the book that he wrote and the book encompassed not just the Edmund Fitzgerald but shipbuilding overall in this country and how far it has fallen and how that's a problem not just for jobs, not just for commerce, but for national defense.

Now comes word that the Secretary of the Navy is ending the construction of a particular class of Navy frigates, which have been plagued by delays and cost overruns, but by canceling it outright, is that going to be a step backward?

Or is that a case of one step backward, two steps forward, if it's replaced with something better?

Tom Nelson has studied some of this and so he'll talk to us about it coming up at 835 But first I wanted to pass along from the mailbag here from Jim in Brookfield and he's got here.

Let me scroll back up to it

There it is.

Oh, Casablanca.

Yeah, this is for you, Parker.

We were talking about old-timey movies.

And this is the anniversary of Casablanca coming out 83 years ago.

And Jim writes, yes, Casablanca is timeless, classic lines.

Just yesterday, a list of the 100 best comedies came out, where scenes of Naked Gun were shown.

Leslie Nielsen was parodying lines from Casablanca in that.

I remember that well.

He also said my wife and I will be taking a transatlantic cruise next week with a stop in Casablanca.

We made reservations at Rick's Cafe months ago.

Parker, please add the movie to your list, Jim and Brookfield, whom I will add.

We got to have some Culver's ice cream together.

you know, custard, yogurt, whatever it is.

We had dessert at Culver's yesterday as he was passing through town so that I could report back to Dr. Lierly on his own knee replacement.

He and he and Kristen both are comparing notes on knee replacement, but it was great to catch up with Jim.

Thank

you very

much.

Yeah.

And so yeah, thanks for the affirmation on on Casablanca.

It just, it needs to be on everybody's list.

Let's turn to Earl Ingram now.

You can get the what's going on podcast with Earl Ingram by heading over to civicmedia.us.

Clicking on shows and you'll see Earl's right there and Earl joins us for, well, let's talk a little turkey first because we've got Thanksgiving coming up.

Earl, good morning.

How are you?

Hey, good morning to you Pat.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Yeah, thank you.

You, you are a turkey fryer, it turns out.

Well, you know, I've been kind of

messing around with frying turkeys for, I don't know, 15, 18, 20 years.

And I used to do it outside with propane.

And that's kind of like the Model T Ford still using that and people don't realize.

And you say, I have so much trouble with it.

Once you put it outside and you couldn't put it in the garage, you had to put it out in the elements.

And when the wind would blow on the fire,

and the propane coming through, it would kick the heat up really, really high and you couldn't control the heat.

And so a lot of times you would burn.

They scan on the turkey and kind of ruin it.

So it was always hit and miss.

At least 10 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago now, Butterball created an electric fryer.

And so you can just plug it into your...

outlet in the kitchen and and it's perfect.

I mean it doesn't, peanut oil burns at 376 degrees.

It keeps it at 375 the optimum temperature and so you can't go wrong and you can walk away and do whatever it is you have to do.

I

feel like I have lived on a desert

island

that you you mentioned and I'm looking up like it really indoor turkey fryers and I'm looking at all of these things that have been and where have I missed this this is outstanding these these electric

turkey fryer roasters that are available out there and that's so how many turkeys are you you making up

well i'm only doing two today there have been times that i've done as many as six or seven on the Thanksgiving day okay and and really the key to it is what i do with it is you know i i injected uh i injected with fresh basil butter orange juice different spices you inject it all throughout the bird and uh and then the spice that you add to that injection and

And the white meat that's generally dry is moist and it's got all this flavor.

So, you know, I mean, when I was a little younger and a little more energetic, I would do it.

Everybody would ask me and I would do it for them.

So, got into the point.

And they make them as smaller.

You can get them where there's

12 pounds, 14 pounds, all the way up to 22 pounds, 24

pounds.

I have been telling people for years and years that the the single best turkey I ever had was the one time that it was, you know, deep fried.

But again, we're going back almost 20 years when I was at somebody's house and that's that's how they made it.

And I've never had it since.

And now I have a funny feeling that starting next year, it's going to be nothing but that based on everything that you're telling me.

This sounds amazing.

Oh man, they're the best.

that are best turkeys you'll find because it's succulent.

Right.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't know if you knew it, but I mean, I cook, man.

I do a lot of cooking.

Clearly.

Yes.

Maybe I'm getting out of my element here, but

I

mean, could you, could you, if you get the one for like a 12 pound turkey, could you conceivably do that with like a chicken as well?

It's not just for turkeys.

It's anything that you fry.

If you fry fish and you don't want to fry it with the regular oil, use the peanut oil, which is the lightest oil.

It's the best for you and anything that you fry, you can fry in these fryers.

I mean, I don't know what else to say.

My mind is blown.

I have

learned all this.

All right,

well, let's get to the show itself because you've got the what's going on podcast.

Find it over at civicmedia.us and some of the things that you are working on for the show, some of them that are coming up and some that you've done.

I know most recently, you know, last week we talked about Sandy Williams being in and everything that you talked about there.

Since that time on the rundown,

We've got certainly Sean Fetaplace from Main Street Alliance has been on, Dr. Robert Craig from Citizen Action has been on, and you've got a couple of others that are coming up dealing with everything from, you know, Palestinians to heart disease.

You're just covering all the bases lately here.

Well, you know, Janan Najib is a world-renowned woman who created the

Milwaukee Muslims Women's Center, she's been on major news outlets and had her on to talk about how Palestinians are perceived in this nation and how Muslims are perceived.

It was a great podcast, it was a great conversation, learned an awful lot about a woman who has been in America for over, for the majority of her life, she came to America at the age of three.

and she's probably in her 60s, but she is a woman who goes all over this place and all over talking about Muslim women and Muslims in general, the misunderstanding that we have in this nation on Muslims, especially Muslims who are citizens.

Great podcast.

Sandy Williams and I had a conversation about health, I mean about

insurance, health insurance, and why we are at this crossroads.

Pat, I know your wife is a doctor, but why is this healthcare such a major issue in this country?

And it's only going to get worse.

And what do we think is happening?

Why is it that American people, all over the world, people are able to deal with healthcare and issues in China?

clearly 1.3 billion people and they can figure it out.

Why can't we figure it out in this country, Pat?

Why is it that we think that the American people were born and raised in this nation?

When I was a young person, I had insurance.

My father worked in industry, so I always had insurance.

Then I worked in industry.

I had insurance all my life.

And then I wound up with Medicare.

So I've had insurance all of my life, Pat.

I can't even begin to imagine why we think it's okay for the American people not to be covered in insurance.

Right.

And

we tie it to work.

We try to work which is such an outdated model for folks who don't know health insurance really get tied to your employment in World War Two because of the labor shortage.

It was so tough to attract workers and pay rates were constricted.

Of course, it was wartime.

And so there were government controls on wages.

So

employers were like well we can offer health insurance instead as an enticement which was fine for that era and for the for the boom the industrial boom after that but in this day and age when people nobody works at a job for 40 years and gets a gold watch anymore people are moving from job to job and so they might get covered they might not get covered this is a model that is just crazy broken and I can't believe we still have politicians with no interest in fixing it

you know Pat it's

It's so erroneous in the way we approach this.

So if people don't have health insurance and they go to the emergency room, let me say this to you.

About a couple of months ago, maybe three months ago, I wound up going to the emergency.

I was feeling really...

Not good.

I got there at 8am in the morning.

Pat, I didn't leave until 6pm.

They gave me every test known to man at the emergency room because they knew I had Medicare.

They didn't have to run all those tests and after they were done, they said, you checked out, go see your doctor.

But when it's the way it's configured, Pat, it has to be

Changed.

Yeah.

Yeah, because we do have problems on both sides of the equation.

We definitely have underutilization because people don't have insurance and so they don't get things taken care of right away.

And then we do have overutilization where people do run more tests than necessary in part because they don't want to get sued.

So they

feel

like they've got to do all this.

But somewhere in there is that that sweet spot.

But you got to have politicians who are interested in crafting good policy rather than just winning the next election.

I mean, what are they waiting on?

It's not going away, Pat.

It's getting worse every day, right?

It's getting worse every day.

And I'm fortunate because my generation, we were able to live at a time when we didn't have to worry about that.

But all the generations after us, my goodness, I don't know what's going to happen.

No, I have the toughest time with that.

And in all areas, I mean, we talk a lot here on this show about rural medicine and the hospitals and the clinics that are closing up.

But the same goes for our larger cities, especially the ones where places have moved out of central cities and gone out into suburbia, you know, instead, leaving a healthcare desert there.

there are real problems here.

And I'm not telling you that there, nobody's saying there are easy answers.

The only easy path is to do nothing or to play politics with it.

And we got way too many folks like that in there.

So I'm glad you're calling attention to this and so much more.

It's all in the What's Going On with Earl Ingram podcast.

To get it, head over to CivicMedia.us.

Click on shows.

You'll see it there.

All kinds of episodes you can listen through the website or subscribe and listen at your leisure.

Earl, happy Thanksgiving.

Hope you have a great meeting.

You know, I know you're sloughing off with only two turkeys, but try to enjoy it anyway.

Well, the last thing I want to add is I love the, it must be your granddaughter, great granddaughter.

It breaks over in 30 seconds.

Oh, that's Tony.

Tony's one of Tony's kids just

reported that.

That's great, man.

How great is that?

I love that.

Best part of

our commercial breaks.

Thanks, Earl.

We'll talk to you later.

All right, take

care.

Yeah, absolutely.

So folks hear that if they're watching us on social media.

But for the rest of you, this is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Tom Nelson coming up in 15 minutes.

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.

Welcome back just about 823 on this Wednesday morning.

Time for our climate check with Melissa Baldoff joining us.

And we've got stories to talk about the climate impact on the cost of your Thanksgiving meal, as well as the effect of inflation on all of our electric bills out there.

Melissa, good morning.

How are you?

Melissa, are you able to hear me?

Oh, how about you?

Oh, there we go.

There you are.

Okay.

Hey, nice to have you here and wanted to let's just jump right into one of the stories that we want to talk about and that dealt with how even climate change is driving up food prices and impacting holiday meals.

And you know, we talk about inflation from all kinds of reasons, but

the way the climate has changed has also disrupted things that have led to inflation for all of our meals, not just Thanksgiving, but can you tell us a bit more about that?

Sure.

So, you know, we know that prices are up and people are struggling to make ends meet, you know, everything from those utility bills going up to, you know, the cost of groceries.

And when it comes to Thanksgiving this year, you know,

something that's kind of central to that meal for most people is the turkey, which is up 40% in cost.

And that's something that climate change plays a role on because we know that it increases drought, heat waves, heavy and unpredictable rain, all things that make it harder to grow food.

Yeah, I mean look we've talked so many times about flash flooding and the impact that that can have either at planting time or Harvesting time you've got you know, what the climate does to animal welfare as well and Look farming is important, but nobody's saying not to do it.

I was just saying that farming itself contributes to greenhouse gases and so it's why we try to Be mindful of just how much we use in terms of fossil fuels

Exactly.

And that's why anytime we can be switching to clean renewable energy, it's going to be helpful all around and reduce those fossil fuels and help us to have cleaner, cheaper, more affordable energy.

Yeah, exactly.

According to one article I'm seeing here, about 20% of the insured crop losses

from 1991 to 2017 were due to a warming climate.

These losses traveled from farms to grocery stores, eventually to grocery store prices because of the crop losses that are there.

And this is only going to continue to go up, which takes us to another inflation matter, Melissa, and that deals with electricity costs.

They have the Washington Post has taken a look at rates and electric rates are going up.

at a much higher rate than the rate of inflation overall.

Yeah, you know, people, um, people feel it and they feel that crunch and they're not wrong.

In fact, we are seeing more and more examples of why they're right, that it's not just a feeling that costs are up.

Um, and this is something that,

you know,

isn't just a, for so many people, it isn't just a, Oh, well, hey, you know, maybe, maybe our spring break vacation is.

only four days instead of a full week because of this.

There are folks that the amount that their utility bill has gone up is the difference between are we getting groceries this week or are we even able to keep the power on?

We're seeing a drastic increase in people getting their power shut off because they're not able to afford the bills.

These are folks that

have have have jobs they're working and You know had been doing okay, you know, maybe things were tight, but they were you know able to able to make the bills and now they're finding out that you know Things have gone up so much that they're not gonna be able to afford to pay the bill

Right.

And I mean, from the demand side of things, you've got all these data centers that are going up.

And of course, they are going to be sucking up electricity like crazy, which is going to lead to more demand for electric generation.

But it's also going to demand more infrastructure.

And Melissa, we, you know, in this segment, we are no strangers to talking about the need to upgrade the power grid.

throughout this country.

So when people are saying, well, why are these costs going up?

It's a little bit of both.

It's both the demand through generation.

But it is also that, you know, we've put off upgrading our electric grid for a long time.

It is finally starting to happen at a faster level.

But that does come with a price.

If you've got a hostile government like we do now, that doesn't really want to be a partner in all of this.

Exactly.

You know, we again, switching to

using more renewable clean energy is not only the cheapest kind of energy, but it's the quickest to deploy.

Wind and solar are very fast to stand up as opposed to building or expanding a power plant, a coal or methane gas power plant.

So it's not only cheaper energy, it is quicker to deploy.

quicker to add capacity to our grid and help people,

you know,

able to afford their bills.

So yeah, it's, you know, we're seeing the hostility from the federal government when it comes to, you know, gutting investment and clean energy.

And, you know, during the shutdown, also, you know, we have we do have programs that help people pay for utilities.

And there were delays in those programs and getting the funding out the door during the government shutdown.

So, you know, just the dysfunction in Washington DC is causing problems for people, you know, just in every

in every possible way.

Oh, there's there's so much to lay at the feet of the folks in charge right now in DC.

So with that, we'll wrap things up here.

Melissa Baldoff with our climate check for this week.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

And we'll talk

again soon.

All right, take care.

When we come back, we're going to talk to Tom Nelson.

And we're going to talk about shipbuilding in the United States based on the some recent changes that are going to affect things up in Marinette.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

All right, first I've gotta warn you, you're gonna experience a case of deja vu.

If you tune in about this time tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken, tomorrow we're gonna have some Thanksgiving leftovers, some of our favorite conversations of the past several weeks, and then one more from over the summer.

We talked to AutoGaming County Executive Tom Nelson about his book about the Edmund Fitzgerald, because of course this month marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and he wrote a book called Wrecked, The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy.

You can get that book, by the way, at msupress.org for Michigan State University, msupress.org.

But here's the thing, Tom's with us right now too.

So you're going to hear about the Edmund Fitzgerald more tomorrow if you're listening in or just, you know, look us up through a podcast and listen to Tom that way.

But I reached out to Tom this morning to see if he could join us because there's so much more to his book than just the shipwreck of this of this great ore carrier.

There's also a lot about shipbuilding in America and the way things have declined overall.

Only to find out yesterday that the Secretary of the Navy has decided to cancel further construction of the constellation line of frigates, which are kind of the ships above a combat ship but smaller than a destroyer.

The constellation line has been plagued by cost overruns and multiple design changes.

None of it the fault of the good people at Fincantieri, Marinette Marine, up in Marinette, but

Those are the folks that were going to be building these ships and now they're not.

And so I wanted to ask Tom about it.

He was gracious enough to come in and talk about, you know, what he's learned about shipbuilding in America and what we can learn from yesterday's news.

Tom, good morning.

Thanks for being here.

All right, great to be on.

Happy almost Thanksgiving.

Yeah, to you as well.

So look, I am, as you know, I am not one that's normally going to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt on something.

And Senator Tammy Baldwin has some very sharp words to say about the Navy Secretary's decision to just outright cancel this whole line because it's going to make us fall further behind, further behind China in their ability to build ships that can, you know,

the seas that are out there.

But having said that, I have to ask, and I'm jumping right into the media things here, is this in fact a step backwards for the Navy and for shipbuilding in the U.S., or is it possible that this is one step back?

two steps forward if they make some good decisions going forward or am I being too generous?

Yeah, I think that you're partially right.

I think you're going down the right track and this is definitely a step back.

It's a step back and not two steps forward because we simply don't have the demand on the civilian commercial

shipbuilding side.

Now, you mentioned President Trump, he had talked about a few months ago about how he was trying to get a South Korean shipbuilding company to come to the US, I think specifically, California.

And this has something to do with the tariffs, or it had something to do with the latest Epstein bombshell.

So it's not clear where this is going.

I haven't really heard much from this.

And

But what happened with Fink and Terry is the constellation class goes back to the freedom class of the LCS, which was the littoral combat ship.

That first ship was birthed back in 2004, 21 years ago when it was when, when, when Fink and Terry Marine was still Marinette Marine and still part of the old Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company that had merged with a couple of companies in Sturgeon Bay.

So,

They have had, you know, the Navy, you know, has oversight and they've had over 21 years to inspect these ships, to work with the builders, more significantly the designers.

And that's the problem here.

But what happens in Marinette, they're the ones who build this.

They're not the ones who design it.

That falls at the doorstep of Lockheed.

and specifically Rolls Royce.

And Rolls Royce was the company that designed and built the engines.

And that really is the underlying problem here.

There were a lot of problems with the littoral combat ships.

There are, of course, additional issues here with the constellation.

But as you suggest, right, the workers are going to bear the brunt because the people who are supposed to do their job, not them, they didn't do it.

But this is a good example.

This is a great example of how we have capacity right here in Wisconsin.

We have history because this goes back to Marinette shipbuilding.

I'm sorry, Marinette Marine, which goes back to Mantua shipbuilding, Mantua shipbuilding, constructed 29 submarines in World War II.

So our history, workforce shed, capacity infrastructure goes back decades.

This is a great example how if the Navy, the military backs out of a submarine or a ship construction class that this workforce can easily fold into commercial construction, but we've given up on that.

Yeah, and it's something that when I mentioned Senator Tammy Baldwin being unhappy among the things that she says in her statement is that the secretary of the Navy made promises to send other shipbuilding work to Wisconsin to stabilize the workforce, but promises aren't good enough.

I call on the administration to immediately share its shipbuilding action plan for supporting Wisconsin workers.

And that ties into what you've talked about, you know, again, for the entire nation, not just what's happening in Marinette, is that we have

over decades again this is not a recent thing over decades we have allowed our shipbuilding capacity to shrink to a fraction of what it once was and people might say well you know we're not at war why would we need so much shipbuilding but there's a real danger when you're outsourcing all of that to other countries.

Yeah, exactly.

And so this is a great opportunity.

We are going to continue to have these kind of opportunities.

And I think what Senator Baldwin pointed out is this is why not only is it not one step backward, two steps forward, but it's one step backward.

And what Senator Baldwin was advocating for is to kind of stabilize this one step back and one step forward.

But.

the military, just like Wisconsinites and specifically Fincantary Marine and their workforce, we have an interest in a stable shipbuilding industry because for us, it's of course jobs and this is a big part of economic development in Northeast Wisconsin, specifically the UP, Northeast Wisconsin, Marinette, Green Bay, but at the same time too, the military sooner or later is going to need

Marinette Marine, Fincantary Marine to build a ship.

And so we have to make sure that we have these established companies, a workforce so that when it is needed that they're there.

And if they pull these contracts out, if they don't do their job, which is to make sure that these ships are up to spec and it's what they need, then this is going to be bad, of course, for Fincantary Marine, for the workers in Marinette, but also for the US Navy.

We're talking to Tom Nelson, who's written a book about the Edmund Fitzgerald, but also about just shipbuilding in the US overall, both military and commercial.

And you bring up the workforce.

And I'm reminded of an associated press story from just over a year ago out of Marinette and the labor shortage that is there.

It is

a

real struggle to find and then keep people, the bonuses that have to be paid out.

Because again, this is not something, you know,

pun intended, this is, you can't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime.

Same goes with the workforce there.

So, you know, the point is well taken that, you know, what else is the military going to do to not let things continue to stall out?

Let me ask though, apart from the military, when we talk about, you know, commercial, all the things that bring, you know, goods to and from our shores, is this a case where

the military, meaning the government, the public sector, should be leading the way.

In other words, if we have a healthy shipbuilding.

sector for the military, then commercial traffic will naturally follow right along?

Or should we be doing more to build up our commercial shipbuilding needs regardless of what the military does?

Yeah, we have to do both.

I mean, the objective here, and I hope it would be the objective, is to expand shipbuilding beyond military and to commercial.

which is going to have a direct benefit, not just on American industry, across the board, all kinds of industries, but also Wisconsin specifically.

We need to have this congruent effort where we are maintaining the workforce that we are continuing to meet the needs of the U.S.

Navy because the U.S.

Navy is going to continue to need ships.

And really, Marinette Marine is one of the few here in the Midwest.

So they're going to need us for the same time, too.

The Trump administration needs to follow through on what they said they were going to do.

and to bring this South Korean ship manufacturer to the US.

So they need to do that.

They need to follow through on that.

So on one hand, you have administration that kind of gets this.

What they have to do is to really understand it, follow through, execute on this and bring this Korean company.

I mean, in the case of Fincan Terry, this is an Italian company.

So they want to be able to, in the case of South Korea, if they're serious about building ships globally, which they are, it's a pretty big company.

one that they're looking at that they're going to have to have a North American presence.

So they need to get on that.

They need to make this thing happen.

And then I can tell you right now knowing Senator Baldwin, she's going to be at the head of line to get this company to get these jobs here in Wisconsin.

Oh, she most certainly is.

And in fact, in late August, when the Trump administration announced this shipbuilding deal with South Korea, she made a lot of those points right from the get-go to make sure that this does include an American presence and it doesn't just become an excuse to outsource more shipbuilding work to South Korea.

In the two minutes or so, I got left here, Tom.

Let's follow up on the book about the admin Fitzgerald.

I mean, there were things that you had to say in there about the quality of the shipbuilding.

and the maintenance, and since we talked about it back in August, what kind of reaction did you get?

Any pushback?

Did you get affirmation to some of the things in the

book?

I would say, and this is worth retelling, probably the most rewarding conversation I had validating the research, my thesis, came not from a book review, came not from an interview, but came from a family member.

of one of the fallen crew members.

And this family member, I don't want to go too far into it because they want to, you know, they want to be, you know, you know, they just don't want to be so public on this.

But this crew member, this family member, I met them for dinner because they want to talk more about that.

And they brought my book along.

And she said, I want you to know something, this book right here, this is my Bible.

because this has answered so many questions that I've had over the years, and I wish somebody had written this kind of book 50 years ago.

So, you know, doing a book project is pretty long, complicated, but I'll tell you what, that was worth every minute I spent on this project.

Well, and you took great pains to say this takes nothing away from the men who are on board that night, but that because of everything from just the lore to the song to everything else, there's a lot of romance, if you will, in there, romanticizing this, and not so much the accountability that maybe should have taken place back then.

And that's really, it sounds to me like the point you were trying to make is there should still be some recognition that there should be some accountability.

That's exactly right.

And I think that we've been chasing our tails for the last 50 years where we're focused on these proximate causes, whether it's the hatches running around the shore, whether it's the three sisters waves, those are proximate causes.

That's what happens in the 15th round of this boxing match.

I'm interested in the first 14 rounds.

And the first 14 rounds speaks to the bad bosses that did not keep the ship in good shape, did not maintain it, who were checked out and let the Fitzgerald fall apart so that when it hit a storm like that, it sank and the other three ships did not.

Tom Nelson, AutoGaming County Executive Author of WRECT, the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the Sinking of the American Economy.

You can get it at msupress.org.

Tom, thank you very much for coming in on short notice and telling us all about this.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

You too.

Good to be back on.

All right.

Thank you very much.

When we come back, we'll have some final news and notes from here on Lake Wissota.

On a Wednesday morning right after this, I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Does anyone know where the love

of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searchers all say they're the midway...

My thanks again to Tom Nelson for coming in on short notice and talking about his book and about shipbuilding and especially this new decision by the Secretary of the Navy to scrap construction of a line of frigates that were going to be built in Marinette and where we go from here and the need for much more information.

So again if you want to read Tom's book about the Edmund Fitzgerald

You can head over to msupress.org.

And again, tomorrow when we play some Thanksgiving leftovers for you, you can hear my August interview with Tom Nelson, which is all about his book.

And some of the stuff that we mentioned right before the break there that there really has not been

a proper telling of the poor condition of that ship, its construction and its maintenance.

And a lot of it, I think people think, well, why would we denigrate the memory of those workers or the people on board the ship?

It wasn't about that.

It was about all the shortcuts that were demanded in typical corporate fashion over the years.

And so I just wanted to make sure that you had a chance to see that and review for yourself the record as Tom Nelson researched it for his book.

If you missed it earlier in the news, one of the stories that I really want to make sure the highlight was the, I'm still, I still chuckle when I tell this story, what the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled yesterday and how it's got some conservatives in a tizzy because the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the creation of a pair of three judge panels to hear two lawsuits that challenge the current congressional maps.

Now, as you know, the legislative maps were changed because, well, they're rigged.

They were gerrymandered spectacularly when Republicans took over in 2011.

The priority was on the legislative maps because you're talking about 99 assembly reps and 33 state senators.

But you also have a congressional map that in a 50-50 state has six Republicans and two Democrats because of the way the maps are drawn.

But there wasn't time before the 2024 election to get that changed.

Well, here comes the challenge now to those congressional maps, potentially in time for the 2026 election, because you no longer have a Supreme Court as you did for 15 years dominated by right wing justices.

Now you have a progressive majority on the court.

So a little history here.

In 2011, along with rigging the maps,

Republicans also tried to rig the game because when you wanted to challenge the maps, the easiest path forward was to file a lawsuit in Dane County Court because that's where the state capital is.

That's where the decisions were made.

Republicans did not like that, assuming Dane County to be filled with a bunch of godless liberals or whatever the heck they think it is.

and said, no, we're gonna change this.

We're gonna create a three judge panel.

The Supreme Court has named three judges and they will hear the case and then it can be appealed right to the state Supreme Court if there's a challenge to the maps, which of course at the time was dominated by conservatives and so mission accomplished, right?

Well, in a way it was for 14 years.

And now here we are.

with a Supreme Court that has a progressive majority.

And so when the challenge came in, their progressive justices yesterday said, okay, well, you guys changed the rules.

Here are a couple of three judge panels.

And boy, you'd think we'd let some hair on fire from people going, this is outrageous.

This is, I can't believe how they did this.

Because again, unless those justices specifically plucked out three judges who were all, you know, on the record of voting for Donald Trump,

They would have whined about this But this is something that they set up themselves now just because that's the way the process is unfolding Yesterday with the naming of these two three judge panels for these two lawsuits Challenging the congressional maps does not mean that we're gonna see changes in time for the 2026 election We might But there's a pretty good chance.

We might not these things have a way of dragging out.

They can be appealed

You probably won't recall that a couple years back when the state Supreme Court had a remedy for the legislative maps.

The US Supreme Court took up the case unexpectedly and basically ruled with the Republicans on how the legislative maps were gonna go.

So there's a lot of room left yet to determine what's gonna happen with the congressional maps.

In fact, in the ruling yesterday, it was a five to two ruling.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagridorn sided with the liberal justices yesterday that the panels were appropriate, that they were following the law as written by Republicans in 2011.

Now, Hagridorn, as a conservative, did object to the way that the court assigned the judges to hear the case.

He was saying a more neutral process should have been used.

But again, it's my contention that, you know, unless these were judges that were all the county chairs for the Trump for president campaign, they would have found a way to say, no, no, no, this, this just isn't going to work for us.

Well, it is because that's the way the law was set up.

You could have left the law as it is, but you decided to monkey around with it and now you're in the finding out phase as they say.

All right, so as I mentioned tomorrow, we'll have a best of program here.

It'll be nice to share some conversations that we had throughout the course of time.

Parker Olson put a lot of this together with my great thanks.

That's no easy task, Parker.

Thank you for making my thanksgiving week a heck of a lot easier than it would have been otherwise.

Yeah, of course.

Thanks for making it easy on me.

I did nothing.

I just turned on this mic and started yapping and you just brought it brought it all in.

That will include by the way a Mondays segment with author Laura Bird with some books all about gratitude and then on Friday we've got a fresh new show that we've already prepared for you and Laura Bird will be part of that as well with books designed to beat the winter blues and looking outside my window right now.

I thought maybe Parker this would be a little early for that.

Yeah, it is not.

No, it is not.

Tomorrow, you're also going to hear back on segments from Brian Kennedy about local elections and running for local office.

Amy Pahacheck, the secretary of the Department of Workforce Development, Chuck Collins from Patriotic Millionaires, and Kelly Snooks will be talking about the measles.

She's a pediatrician.

And then on Friday, we'll spend some time with our Weekend Review panel.

That'll include Jonas Pizito from WCPT Radio in Chicago, and much more.

Dr. Kristen Lierly and Greg Bach, all joining in.

So in the meantime, have a happy Thanksgiving.

I will see you back here live on Monday, but have a safe travel throughout the Thanksgiving weekend and eat up on this anti-obesity day.

Give me a break.

I'm Pat Crichtlow from Up North News, part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.

Have a great day.

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