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Good afternoon, everybody.
Todd Albaugh here, along with Mr. Aaron Zommers, our producer and engineer.
It is Tuesday, July 8th, 2025.
It is a great day to be Wisconsinite.
Welcome, everybody.
Six minutes past the hour of two o'clock.
through the world headquarters in downtown Madison on State Street.
Overcast skies, a little cloudy here and there.
Might be some rain in parts of Wisconsin, but you know, seasonal weather this time of year, not too bad at all, was across town a little earlier this morning.
The mom in town, get some, some worked out of the car.
And then I, Aaron Zommer, got my oil changed in the old Dodge Ram.
because gotta get on the road tomorrow, going up to beautiful Chippewa Falls area for the Northern Wisconsin State Fair.
It's gonna be broadcasting live, our program on Thursday and Friday of this week.
Our friend, ongoing contributor and colleague, Mr. Patrick J. Creightlow, host of Mornings of Pat Creightlow.
Every morning from six until nine over many of these stations will be our guest co-host as well.
Cannot wait to have Pat on the show.
We have confirmed Rusty Volk,
the fair
director.
He is going to be on the show as well.
We have more local author, Ken Samansky, who's been on the show before.
He's going to be on the show.
I believe BJ Holler is documentarian, who has a new documentary on Kube.
We're going to have the... Oh, really?
Yes, a national director of the Kube National Championship.
And my goal, here's my goal for the Northern Wisconsin State Fair this year's Omers, I want to have a kid on from the small animal barn.
I'll take a rooster, I'll take a chicken, I'll take a rabbit.
Anything in a small animal.
I'm looking for a because that's you know kids with live animals on a live radio program What could possibly go wrong?
And that's when hilarity and entertainment ensues.
That's right.
That's exactly what we're looking for and of course we'll have great fair food up there as well By the way, you don't have great fair fair food.
That's what you want Not great food not bad.
You want fair food and a fair
So I'm looking for should be a really, really good time.
So joining us on Thursday and Friday this week live from the Northern Wisconsin State Fair.
Tony, watching on YouTube says my goal for the Northern Wisconsin Fair to remember some of it.
A noble goal, Tony.
Tony's taking part in the beverage stands, apparently, up at the Northern Wisconsin State Fair.
He
Right, exactly.
It'll be a great time to join us a little bit later this week for coverage of the Wisconsin-Northern Wisconsin State Fair.
Coming up later on in this half hour, Tom Kircher of Wisconsin A Watch will be in talking about some of the big stories they're covering at Wisconsin.
Watch also a little bit more on the state budget the past last week, and Governor Evers signed into law.
to another edition of what's worse.
Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?
We'll talk about that.
A what's worse edition?
A sore or sick?
Well, what's worse?
We'll ask you that question.
And also our number two big Supreme Court Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling today on J. C. R. A. R. I love that acronym acronym, by the way.
Basically, this is a ruling by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court that says, Hey, as it turns out,
A handful of legislators on one committee cannot overrule the actions of the majority of the legislature and the governor.
And Amy Berio is going to be here.
She's been on the program before from Clean Wisconsin.
And she's going to tell us how this relates to PFAS rulings here in the state of Wisconsin.
So that will be very interesting.
I'm looking forward to having Amy Berio here on the program in October 2.
And of course, your phone calls as well.
But first I wanted to get to this.
Did I have time yesterday?
Busy busy day and lots of lots of great guests.
So that was that was fine.
And I started talking about this yesterday.
Then I said look this is not just a one-way street here Todd doesn't just get on the microphone and blather for a couple of hours and go home I actually consider what all of you say and text in and your your listenership your viewership on the streams is important to me and one of the great things about this show is that I hear different perspectives and I think about them and I know last week when I was talking about the 4th of July and I do love the 4th of July Independence Day always have
And some people said, Todd, I don't feel like celebrating.
I don't feel like putting on red, white, and blue, because our country is in, you know, a mess in many people's opinions right now, from human rights to other things.
And I said, look, I get it as much as I can.
I mean, I happen to be gay, so I get it under this administration.
My rights to a degree are under scrutiny and under threat right now with this administration.
Certainly, I would argue it could be as bad, not worse, for people who happen to be black or brown in this country.
So as much as I can, I try to appreciate that.
But I said, what I believe is that the American dream lives in each of our hearts.
And I still actually do believe that.
And that we can't lose hope.
I spent part of my weekend, my fourth of July weekend, on Saturday.
Couple of dear friends of mine one happened to immigrate to this country from El Salvador many years ago over 30 years ago now and She has been an American full-bird American citizen for what I don't know 20 years plus something like that Full-bird American citizen legal citizen naturalized citizen of the United States taught for many years helped countless kids and parents
active part of her community.
Everybody loves her.
And she said she happened to be listening.
I'm not sure exactly where.
But God bless the USA, the big Lee Greenwood song that I used to really like, by the way, until it became a anthem for MAGA and for Trump.
But she said it just, it wasn't like in her quote unquote playlist, but it just came on.
It came on and she heard this song.
And she said, Todd, I heard the line, I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
And she said, I kind of lost it, just sitting there by myself.
I just started crying.
And she said, because you know what, Todd, for the first time, for the first time in my life as an American, I don't
feel free.
She said, when I go to Walmart or I go out, I'm thinking, you know, if I shows up in my town where I'm at and does a raid, I'm a brown person.
I could very easily get arrested or detained.
Hopefully they would believe me that I'm American citizen.
I'd be able to prove that.
But she said, I don't
Feel free anymore.
Another individual I know through friends tangentially.
Had a birthday this weekend.
He is from Venezuela.
He has a green card.
He is here legally.
Had a birthday, posted a picture on Insta.
With a cake.
And he said, my only wish this year on my birthday is that I don't get deported.
That is where we are in the year 2025 in the United States of America.
And I passed that on hopefully to give everybody a little food for thought, a little reflection like I did this weekend.
I actually, like I said this yesterday, I stayed home on the 4th of July, not necessarily intentionally.
But I guess I was a little bit of a funk.
I was tired anyway.
But I spent the 4th of July contemplating a lot of things.
And then I heard this story from my friend on Saturday.
And so I wanted to pass it on to each and every one of you for what it's worth to maybe stop and think.
And I think the danger right now in this country isn't necessarily all policy, although that's a lot of it.
It is the rhetoric that is coming from President Trump through elected officials.
And this rhetoric is dehumanizing our fellow Americans.
It is dehumanizing people who are here legally.
It is dehumanizing people who might
be undocumented.
It's dehumanizing brown kids that are your kids' best friend and teammates on football, on soccer, in forensics, in marching band.
And they come over to your house and they have supper with you and you have no idea that they were brought here when they were two years old and they're dreamers.
You have no clue.
And they're scared out of their minds.
The psychological warfare that is being perpetrated on fellow Americans.
And it's extraordinarily dangerous.
And it's sad.
It's really sad.
Zombers, we don't have time for the first clip, right?
Let's play the other clip.
Because there's a lot of talk.
Look, I got a lot of good friends who are Catholic, by the way.
We're like Catholics from everywhere, right?
A lot of my good friends are Catholic.
Been to a lot of masses over the years.
I think it's good.
The Pope Leo, by the way, from Chicago, right?
White Sox fan.
We won't hold that against him.
He has spoken out about this dehumanization, this rhetoric right now in America.
Here is one of the Catholic Archbishop's and God bless the Catholic Church at least some of them for speaking out against this.
Here is what a Catholic Archbishop had to say over the weekend about this dehumanation of the Trump policies on immigration.
It's right to be able to control our borders.
However, what's going on now is something far beyond that.
It is a mass indiscriminate deportation.
of men and women and children of families, which literally rips families apart and is intended to do so.
And the mechanism by which is doing it is the creation of fear, deep, profound fear within the community of about 10 million.
This is simply not only incompatible Catholic teaching, it's inhumane and it's morally repugnant.
Morally repugnant.
Zombiers I don't have the clip in front of me if you have the the Archbishop's name by chance Cardinal McElroy it says Cardinal McElroy God bless Cardinal McElroy for having the Hutzpah to speak up and the Cardinal is a hundred percent right It's the fear It's about the fear Because if you're afraid to go out in your community even though you're a full-bird naturalized citizen of the United States if you're afraid to participate
Guess what's next?
You're afraid to vote.
People have called in this program and texted when I've said things like, well, assuming there are elections in 2026 and 2028, people say, oh, Todd, you're over the top.
I'm not necessarily saying that it's going to be full out canceled elections.
This is the example of how they
the steel elections.
It's putting the fear of God, which is not God at all, is putting fear into people so that people who are full-bird and titled United States citizens are afraid to go to the polls, just like you have people following the laws, quote, unquote, doing it the right way, going to their immigration appointments, and then getting rounded up by, as our friend Matt Flynn says, the Trump brown shirts and deported to another country.
Those same people, American citizens, will be afraid to go to the polls.
That is how you attempt to steal an election.
And we cannot allow it.
Gonna come back.
I'll explain why I used to be a Republican after
this.
Welcome back to the Taliban show across the state of Wisconsin, from Lake Superior to Lake Michigan, Green Bay to the old mists and everywhere in between.
Glad to have you along here on a Tuesday coming up after the bottom of the hour.
Tom Kircher of Wisconsin-Wachelby and taking a look at Wisconsin headlines.
Glad to have you along.
Twenty two past the hour of two is Zomers on the board.
Talking a little bit about immigration.
But more importantly, where we are at as a country.
After reflections, I didn't get to this yesterday on the fourth July weekend.
I just had a chance to Think about this Talk to a very close dear, but she's family actually Been a US citizen well over 20 years been in the country 30 Saying she heard the phrase this weekend from Lee Greenwood Lee Greenwood song.
God bless the USA the line I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free
And she said for the first time in being in the United States for 30 years, she does not feel free, even though she's a full bird legal US citizen.
And again, this is the way that authoritarianism attempts to steal elections, not necessarily by gun gunpoint.
It's about putting the fear into people so that they're afraid to go to the polls.
And now with this new federal budget upping ICE's budget like five times.
Some of these guys, I won't even get into this right now.
Some of these, they're not actual cops.
They're not law enforcement.
They're basically white dudes who cannot get a job anywhere else.
And so they want to be, you know, volunteer, posse, comatotus, glorified ICE people.
And the rhetoric that is being used from Trump and MAGA leaders puts fear into people.
I want to play you something.
I get this is a little long.
I get it.
But please, please listen to this entire thing.
It's four minutes.
And we've played cuts of this before.
I want to play the entire thing because it's really important.
And I get it.
When I bring up the word that the person Ronald Reagan, a lot of people, and look, I've reflected, I've said that trickle down economics doesn't work.
Reagan was not perfect.
I'm not here to glorify Ronald Reagan.
Put your personal feelings aside just for a minute politically and listen to Ronald Reagan.
This is the sitting president of the United States in the White House back when he left in 1989 on immigration.
And since this is the last speech that I will give as president, I think it's fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love.
It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago.
A man wrote me and said, you can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman.
You can go to live in Germany, or Turkey, or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or Japanese, but anyone.
from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become an American.
Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors.
It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world, for it's the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America's triumph
shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond.
Other countries may seek to compete with us, but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on earth comes close.
This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America's greatness.
We lead the world because unique among nations, we draw our people our strength.
from every country and every corner of the world.
And by doing so, we continuously renew and enrich our nation.
While other countries cling to the stale past here in America, we breathe life into dreams.
We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow.
Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas.
and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier.
This quality is vital to our future as a nation.
If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
A number of years ago, an American student traveling in Europe took an East German ship across the Baltic Sea.
One of the ship's crew members from East Germany, a man in his 60s, struck up a conversation with the American student.
After a while, the student asked the man how he'd learned such good English.
And the man explained that he'd once lived in America.
He said that for over a year he'd worked as a farmer in Oklahoma and California, that he'd planted tomatoes and picked ripe melons.
It was, the man said, the happiest time of his life.
Well, the student, who'd seen the awful conditions behind the iron curtain, blurted out the question, why did you ever leave?
I had to, he said.
The war ended.
the man had been in America as a German prisoner of war.
Now, I don't tell this story to make the case for former POWs.
Instead, I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America.
We may sometimes forget it, but others do not.
Even a man from a country at war with the United States, while held here as a prisoner, could fall in love with us.
Those who become American citizens love this country even more and that's why the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp to welcome them to the Golden Door.
It is bold men and women yearning for freedom and opportunity who leave their homelands and come to a new country to start their lives over.
They believe in the American dream and over and over they make it come true for themselves, for their children and for others.
They give more than they receive
They labor and succeed, and often they are entrepreneurs.
But their greatest contribution is more than economic, because they understand in a special way how glorious it is to be an American.
They renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest nation in the world, the last best hope of man on earth.
Former President Ronald Wilson Reagan.
That's what the Republican Party used to stand for.
Reagan was right.
American immigrants make our country stronger, and they are what make us have hope for the future.
Back with Tom Kirchner after this on The Civic Media.
Ready now pursuing truth wherever it may lead and having fun doing it.
Welcome back to the title ball show on the civic media radio.
We're 35 now past the hour of two o'clock on a Tuesday, July the eighth.
Glad to have you along here on a nice afternoon across the state of Wisconsin.
Always great to have our next guest because too often in the world today, you got all kinds of people in news silos hearing only and listening to only things they want to hear and not getting down to the.
truth of the matter, always a great to have Tom Kertcher here from WisconsinWatch.
You can find all of his stories and so much others, so many others at Wisconsin spelled out WisconsinWatch.org.
That's WisconsinWatch.org.
Tom, how the heck you been?
Hey, I'm good.
Thanks for.
Have me back again.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for the attention to Wisconsin Watch.
Now, our pleasure.
First of all, before we get into the news, it was the holiday weekend.
Did the Kirchers, did you have a big barbecue?
Did you go anywhere and just chill out in the air conditioning?
You know, it was a mix of things, including sort of the traditional stuff.
But actually, I spent part of it working on something.
I don't want to go all 1965 on you, but I've been asked to give a
I've been asked to give a banquet speech.
Really?
That sounds like something from, you know, many decades
ago.
No, I've given banquet speeches.
They're great.
Rottarians, lions, whatever it is, right?
Yeah.
It's similar.
It's a private event actually in Madison.
You know, and I've done speaking things and five or 10 minutes at a time.
But this one is much lengthier and I'll be.
talking about my career as a journalist.
So it's been kind of a
fun
exercise to go back over the years and pick out different highlights.
That's
fantastic.
And some lowlights.
Hey, you haven't lived if you got all highlights and you're real, right?
I mean, it started off, I guess, to show a little humility.
I was so done about journalism coming out of high school that the summer before I started at UW Madison, I actually sent.
to the Badger Herald student newspaper and the Daily Cardinal student newspaper, a cover letter, my resume, and my high school graduation photo.
Thinking that it was going to be so difficult to get a job at either paper, right?
Well, I found out later that the guys at the Badger Herald women, too, took that high school graduation photo of mine in the office, put it up on a bulletin board, and threw darts at it all summer long before I started school.
Totally deserving, I think.
When I worked out, I ended up joining the Badger Herald and eventually became the editor-in-chief.
So, you know, you can have in auspicious beginnings and things to work out.
You've done okay for yourself, Tom Kurtz.
I'll say that for sure.
Well, this is great.
Again, absolutely my pleasure.
A lot of I've talked to people, somebody this morning, actually, we said, you know,
There's so much out there, it's hard to just wade through all this.
You have a new, a new piece, Tom Kircher at WisconsinWash.org called, here are six claims about Donald Trump's big bill and the facts.
No, it's not the biggest spending cut in history.
Yes, it will add trillions to the national debt.
So this is, this is fantastic.
Take us through this great piece, please.
Yeah, well, thank you.
So again, what we try to do at Wisconsin Watch is whirlwind on statements, a claim.
Somebody's claiming something is true.
We pose that as a question, and then we answer the question yes or no in 150-word stories.
So they're meant to be quick bites, but they are pretty heavily researched.
So in this case, a lot of the people in the Wisconsin delegation and others were making comments about the big, beautiful bill.
itself that we thought were to be fact checked, or they were commenting about the bill.
And then they made statements about, let's say, Medicaid or food stamps that caught our attention.
And so we picked out six of those and wrote fact briefs in each
one.
All right.
Here we go.
Number one.
Yeah.
So Scott Fitzgerald is a congressman.
here in the Milwaukee area, suburban Milwaukee.
He made a claim.
He fits to his friends.
Fits, all right, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah.
And I should preface this by saying, like most legislation, right, these are moving targets.
So the bill might say one thing on one day and it could change a few days later.
At Wisconsin Watch, we fact check statements based on the facts available at the time.
So, you know, things could change after
this.
What was true on the day they said it?
Go ahead.
Exactly right.
And so his claim was that, hey, the big beautiful bill is the largest federal spending cut ever in US history.
And he used the figure of $1.7 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.
It's not true.
What we found is that-
Turns out not true.
Fits us wrong.
Yeah, even if the $1.7 trillion were true, it would only be the second largest spending cut.
There was a $2 trillion cut back in 2011.
But more importantly, what he was ignoring there is while the big beautiful bill increases, excuse me, does cut spending quite a bit, in some areas, it increases spending in other areas.
So if you look at the net, the actual spending cuts from the big beautiful bill, when Fitzgerald made his statement, the cuts were about $1.2 trillion.
over 10 years, so nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but not as much as what he said.
Number one, Fitz was wrong on his claims about the federal spending.
All right, number two.
Yeah.
And so here's an example of where elected officials talking about the bill and then makes kind of a tangential statement.
In this case, Congressman Tom Tiffany, who represents
most of northern wisconsin he was talking about the big beautiful bill and he was making a statement that there are a lot of as he put it able-bodied people who are on medicaid who are draining medicaid as he put it
and we've heard this as a former republican we've heard this for a long time but go ahead
yeah i mean he was correct in that we did we did find that in fact millions of people have been added to medicaid
Since Obamacare took effect, it increased the income eligibility.
And in fact, in many millions, more people now are unmedicated than there used to be.
And these are non-elderly, non-disabled people.
Sort of the rest of the story, and this one, even though his statistic was accurate, is that a lot of those working age adults who are unmedicated are working.
The survey we looked at by KFF, which is a nonprofit policy organization, they found that 44% of the working-age adults who are on Medicaid work full-time and another 20% work part-time.
So it's not as if all able-bodied people, as he said, who are on Medicaid.
are not working.
I'm just laughing because I'm going to talk about Tom Tiffany our next segment by the way after after you leave.
But so here's Congressman Tiffany.
Yes, yes, Congressman, more people are on Medicaid, but he forgets to tell us that well actually most of these people are actually already working, which seems to be an important detail you might want to disclose.
You know, there's a good, I think a reasonable policy debate on that, right?
How many people should be eligible?
Should they be required to work?
Should they be required to look for work if they're not employed?
That sort of thing.
But yeah, it's important to understand if we're going to talk about how many more working age adults are on Medicaid, it's important to know.
how many are working.
And also important in case you didn't hear Tom correctly, the nonpartisan health policy organization is KFF, not KFC, which is very different.
All right, go ahead.
Next
one.
Right.
So this next question has to do with unauthorized immigrants, undocumented immigrants, whether they're eligible for Medicaid.
And this came up, actually, Congressman Mark Polkan, who represents the Madison area, of course, was saying that, hey, a lot of Trump administration officials are claiming, when they're talking about the big, beautiful bill, these officials are claiming that unauthorized immigrants are eligible for Medicaid.
They're not.
So they never have been eligible for traditional federally funded Medicaid.
If there's a wrinkle here, it's that
There are 14 states, not including Wisconsin.
There are 14 states that use their own state Medicaid money to provide health coverage for unauthorized immigrants.
So there is a form of Medicaid, if you will, that some states provide.
But in terms of the traditional federally funded Medicaid program that people are most familiar with, undocumented immigrants are not eligible.
So as it turns out, Congress from Mark Polkan from Madison Democrat is correct that there are, there is no federal Medicaid direct dollars for unauthorized immigrants and the Republicans and the Trump folks that were saying that just flat out wrong.
All right, very good.
Next one.
So this came up actually during the Wisconsin Democratic Party Convention.
One of the guest speakers, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia.
was talking again about the big beautiful bill and he referenced SNAP or what used to be called food stamps and he made this statement during his speech that there's a county in Wisconsin where about half of the residents receive SNAP benefits food stamps and that caught my attention that that percentage seemed high.
But he was correct.
It's actually a nominate county, according to the latest figures that are available.
About 46% of the residents in that county do receive SNAP benefits.
And I think one reason we wanted to pursue this one was just, first of all, see whether it was accurate.
But I think it was maybe also surprising to some people that if you said, hey, there's one county in Wisconsin where half the people get food stamps.
Some people might have guessed it was Milwaukee County or an urban county when in fact it's a rural county.
This is fantastic because US Senator and the Reverend Raphael Warnock was in Wisconsin and so his claim that one rural Wisconsin county receives half the residents receive food stamps turns out true.
True.
We're talking with Tom Kertcher from Wisconsin Watch.
You can find all these stories and more at WisconsinWatch.org.
I also like saying the Reverend Raphael Warnock.
Remember back in the Rush Limbaugh days, he'd talk about Jesse Jackson and say, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, just
the
way he said it was entertaining.
Not to glorify Rush Limbaugh, but I'm just saying sometimes it's entertaining.
I do remember that.
All right.
Next one, Tom Kertcher.
Here we go.
So there were a number of people saying, criticizing the big, beautiful bill because it would add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
And we had, you know, the full spectrum here of people on the left, Congresswoman Gwen Moore from Milwaukee, people on the right, Senator Ron Johnson, saying that they were criticizing this bill as it was moving toward, moving through Congress saying, hey, this is going to add way too much.
and debt over the years.
And they were correct.
They were different figures were put out there, but conservatively at the time we looked at this, the nonprofit, nonpartisan estimates showed that this bill would add $2 trillion to the debt over 10 years as it made its way to final approval that estimate actually increased.
And now it's expected to add 3.3 trillion to the debt over 10 years.
So it's even worse than originally billed.
People, they don't agree on much very often, but Democratic Congressman Gwen Moore and Republican U.S.
Senator Ron Johnson both claim to bill it add trillions.
The difference, of course, Tom, is that Congressman Moore voted against this, but Ron Johnson cashed in and said, well, I guess I'll still vote for it at the end.
Yeah, Johnson is, you know, he, for a good period of time during the debating Congress over the bill was criticizing the bill, holding out against it in particular because of the debt.
He has been pretty consistent and someone criticizing how much debt we have.
It's about $36 trillion now.
So this bill
play as not as projected.
We got
one more on 65% tax increase, but people can watch that.
I know you got to go, but people can watch that read for themselves at the wisconsinwatch.org.
That would be great.
Hey, Tom Kirchner, appreciate your time.
It's always great facts.
We always appreciate it when you bring it.
Have a wonderful day.
We'll talk to you soon.
Sounds great, Jeff.
Come on back.
I'll talk about Tom Tiffany giving you the truth on that, dude.
It's Tommy Boy next on Civic Media.
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 to the Todd O'Ball Show on the Civic Media Ready Network, eight minutes for the hour of three o'clock.
Zomers on the board, always got the great tunes, all the behind the mic, glad to have you along.
Fans of Wisconsin's one of our favorite sons, Chris Farley, his big breakout movie, Tommy Boy, right, Zomers?
Absolutely, absolutely fantastic.
We're here to talk about another Tommy Boy.
As I said right before, we went to break here.
Maybe one Wisconsin loves a little less.
A little less, I think that's fair to say.
Congressman Tom Tiffany.
Tom breakfast at Tiffany's.
Now here's a guy when I was working at the Capitol for former state senator Dale Schultz Tom Tiffany was just a newer state senator And he was one of these guys where even like in Republican closed-door rooms people say well Tiffany's gonna do that and they just mentioned the word Tiffany and other Legislature Republicans would just roll their eyes like oh geez not Tom Because the guy's a little off
All right, he's just he's kind of mousy.
He's kind of meek.
He doesn't really have all his facts It was not not thought of highly by his some but hey give him credit somehow he got himself elected to Congress More than I could do I couldn't even get myself elected to the assembly So now he's congressman Tom Tiffany and he has aspirations of running for governor in 2026
So representative Tom breakfast at Tiffany's put out a tweet last night and he put a letter he is very good at this he Copied and pasted his letter on official congressional letterhead to Canada he wrote to Canada to the Honorable Kristen Hillman ambassador of Canada And he has a beef with Canada he says in his tweet quote
The upper Midwest has suffered with repeated waves of smoke due to Canadian wildfires.
Today, I join my colleagues from Wisconsin and Minnesota to demand better forest management in Canada.
Our communities shouldn't suffer because of poor decisions made across the border.
Unquote from Representative Tom Breakfast at Tiffany's to quote Khan in Star Trek to the wrath of Khan.
You are the position to demand nothing.
I, on the other hand, am in the position to grant nothing.
What is he doing demanding things of Canada?
What's really rich about Congressman Tiffany writing this letter, being all indignant about wildfire smoke coming from Canada, by the way, caused in large part by climate change and global warming.
I'm old enough to remember working in the state capitol when Tiffany was a state senator.
And there was a guy in Senator Schultz's office that worked with me, a native of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, Joe Hassler Jr., a very proud graduate of the University of Wisconsin Medicine J School, an expert journalist.
And he did most of the work, I helped a little bit, to suss out the facts on a bill then-State Senator Tom Tiffany wrote,
environmental laws protecting lands in northern Wisconsin in order to fulfill former Governor Scott Walker's promise of new mining to bring thousands of jobs in northern Wisconsin.
And by the way, part of this land in talking to Native American leaders in this part of the state, there is sacred rice beds, rice fields.
which in the Native American culture are like our temples or synagogues or churches.
In this bill that came into law that Tiffany helped author gut in the protections of these Native American areas, not to mention the groundwater for farmers and other things up there.
And Tiffany was all, he was fine with it because it was going to be a job creator.
And Walker, remember that state of the state address where it looked like the village people behind Scott Walker, where they had hard hats on.
They're just missing a headdress, quite frankly.
So Walker got his village people behind him and promised thousands of jobs for Northern Wisconsin.
Let's do a fact check.
How many jobs did Tom Tiffany and Scott Walker create in Northern Wisconsin after raping the land?
I don't know.
The number zero comes to mind.
But the law change still lasts.
My former boss Dale Schultz, because Republicans had a one seat majority, he stopped it for a while.
And then the term was coined, we have to Schultz-proof the Senate.
In other words, Schultz can't be the deciding vote, and that's when they started doing these recalls, and the Senate got more, Republicans got more than one vote majority, and it went through.
By the way, after this happened, guess who came calling to buy some of that land?
The Chinese business people who wanted to even to buy this land to mine it let's check in on the environmental conditions in China right now Not good as it turns out But I mean the Chinese business people they're real stewards the land right so yeah
to quote Trevor Noah, Tom Tiffany, miss me with your false indignation toward our neighbors to the north and quit trying to score quick political points.
Because there's some of us around to tell the story of the real Tommy boy, Tom Tiffany, better known as toxic Tommy, to make sure that yes, Tom, you never see the family quarters of the executive represents in Maple Bluff.
I'm done.
This guy, this guy, I mean, I can't imagine.
And they're, they're so, they get so proud of themselves.
They, they hatch these things and, you know, the goose stepping 25 year old boys in their offices who, who think like this, oh, we're really gonna, we're really gonna get them.
We're gonna, we're gonna write this.
It's just ridiculous.
And it's completely disingenuous.
Tom Tiffany doesn't give two rips about the environment in Wisconsin.
Because I was there when he wrote the legislation to screw Northern Wisconsin over.
This letter about wildfire smoke in Northern Wisconsin.
And I get blaming Canadians.
What have Canadians ever done to Tom Tiffany?
All right, come on back.
What's worse is next.
A sick and tired edition.
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