 Welcome to the Donahue Group. We're glad you could join us for an interesting conversation about issues relating to the state of Wisconsin. Maybe a little bit beyond, we'll see what time allows. Joining me today, Ken Risto, social, excuse me, social studies teacher from the Sheboygan Area School District. Tom Pineski, math professor, associate dean at UW-Sheboygan. Cal Potter, state senator, political maven, just the guy that you go to when you want to know what's really going on. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue. I'm a lawyer at O'Neill Cannon here in Sheboygan, and we're ready to go talking about, we just got all steamed up about the beer tax as we were sitting here. We finished up our last show talking a little bit about the series of articles that the Sheboygan press had done on alcohol and its role in Wisconsin life. And Cal, you had made the response just in private that the Tavern League is somewhat akin to the NRA in terms of political clout and willingness to kind of go to the map for its agenda. I might have said ADA, but do you want to say NRA? Very cute. Very cute. Or weak in the state of Wisconsin. They drink less, I think. Or WMC, whatever. Yeah, there are certain groups that, I think, if you were to say one of the top five groups that exhibit strong political power, I think one of those groups is the Tavern League in the state of Wisconsin. They have a very strong membership, I think it's one of the most numerous, numerous membership roster in the country. And they have restaurant people and who have liquor licenses and bars. So those folks have their own lobbyists, usually multiple lobbyists, and they're there to make sure that things like increase in the beer tax or liquor tax are not passed. And they're there every time a drunk driving bill is up as well. And I think over the years, they've focused in on the multiple offender. And I think that's one of the reasons why, even in Wisconsin, it's a rather light sense for the first offense drunk driving compared to other states. I think it is maybe the most lenient of any state in the union. And you can say that the alcohol consumption and the popularity thereof has created a situation of tolerance that everybody's sort of do one mistake. And but even I think we've been remiss in not being strong enough in our laws on multiple offenders, as we've seen in the last year or so, there have been a number of innocent people killed by people who've been on the road for multiple convictions. Interestingly enough, as we've been talking about this, we learned that the beer tax in Wisconsin has not been changed since... 1969. Which is pretty remarkable. 40 years, 40 years, 40 years. And it's a buck, a barrel, and it comes out what, a half a sense on a bottle, on a glass of beer? Half is the penny. And it's my sense that any proposal to up that is, I don't know if I would say political suicide, but it is certainly, it's not... Not entertained by any party in the state legislature. Right, and I do know that Therese Berceau, who's a representative, is giving some thought to advancing the cause of raising that tax. And maybe as our finances continue to deteriorate and we continue to look for, goodness knows we tax cigarettes, a substantial amount as we should, goodness knows we tax gasoline, a substantial amount, and that certainly has some controversial, but I think overall, sound public policy. But beer, goodness. I mean, we could increase it to two cents a glass and probably wouldn't make a whole lot of difference in terms of consumption patterns and yet raise some needed revenue. I wonder if there'll be any, if there'll be any move afoot anytime soon? Do you think it's... I don't see it, but I think maybe success might come if you tied it to something of a worthy nature. I've often wondered if you couldn't, if we had a progressive movement in the state to provide health insurance for people or healthcare for people and put another 20 cents in a pack of cigarettes and about two bucks on a barrel of beer and 25 cents on a flask of gin or something like that, you could nickel and dime your way into a good least sum of money to provide people with decent healthcare coverage and you could do it very justifiably because smoking and drinking do have repercussions in people's health. And I think that way it might even be some benefit to tavern owners who don't have health insurance or have a tough time getting it. So everybody could buy into this in some way, both the drinker and the seller and do something for society. It would be great if we had some legislators listening to this conversation on the Donahue Group because I think that is an interesting point. And of course nationwide alcoholism or alcohol is just behind cigarettes in terms of number of people it kills each year. And the numbers for both are phenomenal. Not only health but driving. Right. Anywhere 40 to 50% of fatalities aren't they involved in alcohol in some way? Exactly, exactly. Well, we'll see if there's any courage shown in the legislature and we won't hold our breaths, but in any event it sounds like an idea whose time should come if it has not. I've gone through suggestions like this while I was in the legislature and not only the tavern like making the pitch that the bottle of beer is the working man's friend at the end of the day and you don't want to tax them too much because it's one of the simple pleasures of life to the beer industry that at one time was a major part of the state. I mean, when Blatz and Schlitz and Papst and Miller were the dominant in Wisconsin, it was sort of a protection of our own. These are people that you don't want to tax, you want to encourage them, you love them. They pay taxes, they provide jobs. Then it became when they started leaving and were being gobbled up by other brands. Then all of a sudden you had the sort of the reverse. Well, the Stephen Point brewery or the Lining Cougels or whoever's left is small. You don't want to be punitive, you want to have them grow. So the brewing industry took on a different point of view as to for sort of protection. So between the tavern league and the brewing industry and various facets in this state, those ideas were always had somebody giving some impassioned argument why we are not to have a beer tax of any substance in this state. I just think that, you know, if the math was right in the article we were looking at before, the tape started running, it's a half, the proposal goes from $2, the current $2 to 10, okay? So that means that on an average bottle of beer, the tax is going to go from a half a cent to two and a half cents. Do we really believe that the person sitting down having a couple beers of a watch in the brewery game is really going to be deterred by that extra five or seven cents? I know, I know. When people have been, you know, it's just a, the tavern league is just making really a kind of a bogus argument, it seems to me. Well, switching to energy, and which we could all use a little of here in August, the burning alcohol type. Ethnol, we're gonna talk about ethanol. Alcohol to ethanol. Nice segue. I really think that energy is going to be the sum and substance of a whole lot of campaigns this fall in particular. And what I was looking at, I think remarkably enough, but maybe not, I'm interested in your perspective. Governor Doyle is changing his mind on the 1983 moratorium that was enacted statewide on the construction of new nuclear power plants and saying that that is something that we should take a look at. The sheer cost of nuclear power, constructing nuclear power plants is so stunningly large that I don't know is how that nuclear power plants are really an alternative. But something that we ought to be taking a look at is this something that the governor's principally, on a principled basis looking at, or politics? What are your thoughts? I think $4 a gallon gasoline changes a lot of people's perspectives. I think the general public has gone from opposed to offshore drilling to be supportive of it, which has quite a change within a few months. So I wouldn't doubt that there are many politicians who are saying $4 a gallon for gasoline, which translates into heating oil at $4 some dollars a gallon and propane at $2 something a gallon. So I think there are people who are saying maybe there's the economics of nuclear power aren't as bad as they used to be when gasoline was $1 or $2 a gallon. It doesn't, France's energy structure, about 70% nuclear power. They seem to be doing all, you know. But how are you gonna fight the environmental groups? I mean, they'll be out marching and not in my backyard and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that is one of the real issues down the line is in the short run, if you really want to, on the one hand, find alternative energy resources that aren't fossil based and get greenhouse emissions. That's why France and a lot of European countries can talk a little easier about this topic than the United States can, is because of the reliance on nuclear energy Germany is in not much different shape than France. In the short run, their renewables aren't in a position yet to fill in that gap or provide an alternative and you're almost by default led down this road. But then what do you do with the waste? The Congress, how many years now has Congress been kicking around where to go with waste? And the states are making like Nevada and the Mexico and some other states and Native American peoples on those lands oftentimes are saying, you know, we don't want to take other states waste. So what do you do with the waste and what do you do with the cost of mothballing these things? I think we're getting pretty close to mothballing or having to mothball the Kawani plant, I believe, in the next 10, 15 years, you're gonna have to disassemble that nuclear power plant and figure out what to do with all of those pieces of metal. And I just don't know how we're going to approach that problem. And the new aspect is, of course, after 9-11, what if security is breached and somebody does has a substantial explosive device and all of a sudden something in an urban area is exploded and you do have a leak. I mean, we're in the United States where we don't tolerate that type of risk on people. Russia did it with Chernobyl, but they didn't much at communist. We did it with Three Mile Island. Well, we were more open about it than Russia was and it was not as severe. I mean, Russia never really did own up to what it did to its own citizens at Chernobyl. And so sometimes you wonder, can these, they say, by they, the proponents, that these sites are bomb secure and so on, but in this day of sophisticated terrorism, I'm not so sure, but there are other aspects, I think, that we need to think about. Talking about Germany, Germany has gone on a massive solar kick and they were going to have, I believe by 2020, 25% I think of their energy produced by solar, they're already near that already. Now they're looking to maybe they can go to 40. So here's a country that's not that sunny, but they have made a conservative effort to go to an alternative, sustainable type of energy and they're doing it. We have not. I mean, we have had a president like Jimmy Carter who said this day was coming that we're in today and they laughed at him. Who's this crazy guy from Georgia? What's he talking about? And he was sort of belittled. Well, had we done what he told us to do 30 years ago, we'd probably be better shaped than we are. I note that you may or may not remember that Oak Creek near Milwaukee is the site for these new huge coal-fired energy generation plants that I think we energies. Silly me, I'm not 100% sure. But it is what we energies is put into place and Clean Wisconsin and the Sierra Club got them to agree to a settlement of a lawsuit for various administrative infractions of $105 million over a 25 year period of time. To be invested in safekeeping of Lake Michigan and other environmental issues. So I thought that was interesting because I do think coal plants are still so much more economical to build than nuclear power plants. Very much so. The last article that I read talked about just the sheer impossibility of doing much with nuclear because it's so expensive to build the plants. I mean, we're talking $15, $20 billion to build a nuclear power plant now, as well as all the waste disposal issues which are intractable and impossible to solve. So even though the governor may be changing his mind on the moratorium, I'm not sure that that makes really a bit of difference. But I thought this $105 million settlement which over 25 years is not much money, quite frankly. But it's better than a sharp stick in the eye and was not a bad way of going about the settlement. On the building of nuclear power plants, what's the hardware cost and the time cost? There's a lot of litigation cost that I think always come into play. Oh, sure. The permitting process is extremely time consuming. Time consuming and lengthy, so that puts, you know, you've got this environmental impact statement. And then you think you're all done and then you get sued and then you start the building in one year and 10 years later, you're still fighting legal battles. So is that how much of the cost is just true building cost and how much is litigation and everything else? Building a nuclear power plant is a little more complex than building a coal plant. And so the building costs themselves, I think, are substantially greater. But you're right, the permitting process, I was involved in the permitting process for the peaker power plant that went in the town of Sheboygan Falls. A lion uses it just in peak times to generate extra electricity which goes out on the power grid. And I mean, if you're going out on Highway 23, actually you can't even see it that much. And I mean, it's not a non-degraded piece of property, but there it is. Cold burning? No, it's gas. No, I'm sorry, it's natural gas, I'm sorry. And overall, the permitting process for that relatively simple, relatively small natural gas, non-polluting usually, factory or plant was astonishing because not only were there the state clearances, there was the county clearance. And then, of course, the town of Sheboygan Falls had some very serious considerations about what this meant to the folks living in their town. Just upkeep costs, I mean, there were just a wide variety of things that didn't add a lot of jobs, so there wasn't any positive economic influence. But this is a tiny project in comparison to a nuclear power plant which has the possibility of wiping away. I mean, if the peaker power plant explodes, not that many people are gonna get killed. If Kiwani goes up or Point Beach, I mean, we don't even think about that anymore, but Kiwani has had significant issues with safety in recent years, and I think in part just because it's getting old. So I mean, I do think that it's a combination of things. I mean, if you're in government, you certainly want to make sure that if you're allowing the construction of such a plant that you can be reasonably assured you're not gonna be blowing half the state or the whole state or a portion of the country up in one fell swoop or contaminating an outer circle for years and years. And where you're gonna find the sites, you need water for cooling, and so Lake Michigan has been the site. Look at the hassle with trying to site the Haven plant before it obviously was sold to the Kohler company for their golfing operation, but before that it was not in my backyard, and that was many years ago. I mean, today tried to figure out what the suburban sprawl we have today. Where are you gonna locate a nuclear plant anywhere near the site where the power is needed? So not an impossible, I think. I mean, the backyard's gotten a whole lot bigger. Sure, sure does. And so I think directly, I mean, we were just talking, people don't want, they don't want to have these large wind turbines anywhere near where the wind is. Whether that be talking about, in out in Massachusetts, out in the Bay, near Martha's Vineyard, where you've got Teddy Kennedy's properties in Hyannisport, and those kinds of places where that's where you'd want to site them, even when they want to site them two or three miles out. They don't want to wreck that view, and understandably so, and I know people in Fond du Lac County are unhappy about the turbines out there, and I know in California, they're having a fight about location of turbines because as they put it, where the wind is, where the birds are, and this ends up being a coup in air for all sorts of wildlife. And so you've got some really hard issues that people are gonna, we're gonna have to, if we want energy on the demand side, or on the supply side rather, boy, that's gonna be some tough choices. 20 years ago, we should have a national energy initiative like we did, putting the man on the moon, and focus in on photovoltaic cells. Cheap production of them, so people can put them under houses. We should have looked at fuel cells, all your spacecraft, or most of them are, well, the solar plus, the fuel cell. And that's what this whole electric car thing is. It's literally a fuel cell that takes water and takes the hydrogen out of it, and it's clean. If we could get every household to have their own fuel cell, you'd have a self-contained energy unit right in the house. So the technology needs to be reflected, and we have really not had a national energy policy that focuses on that. We've been drunk with oil for these years in the political power of the oil industry. It's been continued even to this day through the Cheneys and the Bushes. I mean, they have not been out there stellar, leading to charge for alternatives. And it's 20 years, 30 years overdue. Yeah, there's the solar cell, generated electricity is getting real close in cost to some of the other ones now. And the, we are, in a couple of weeks back, they were talking about the president of we are, I think it was the president of weelectrics was talking about, they're trying to build a new plant now in your Milwaukee. And she made some passing reference that if that plant is built, and this must be, they're saying it's dual purpose it could burn other types of fuels besides coal. They had actually shut down the Sheboygan plant here because that is one of the dirtiest ones in their array of coal-burning plants. Or is that right? That's interesting. It is one of the older ones. And I'm all for that. Yeah, it is an eyesore, isn't it? Well, not only an eyesore, but it really does add to the amount of particulate matter that's in the Sheboygan as high as those stacks are. Yeah. You just see those plumes stretching out across the sky and so it's interesting. Well, it is becoming, energy is becoming an issue in the Kagan guard race. We had talked about that. I think even last time that Steve Kagan has had it, I thought an upset victory over John guard. I mean, I was surprised that he won. And now he has a record that he is trying to defend, which of course is always a little bit more, a little bit more troubling and, or not troubling, but more of a challenge. And... What record? They haven't done anything. They're voting. They've got a long history of voting. Yeah. They really do. They really do. Oh, okay. See, what happens, Tom, is that when there are different parties in power, not everything gets passed. It's not a monarchy, you know. There was actually debate and... Nothing gets passed anyway, never mind. In some respects, that's not so bad. In the Senate, you have 60, no, for everything. You really do. Because the filibuster used to... Well, you're even a majority, considering... The filibuster used to be so... Lieberman and the Vermont senators and independents, so you really don't have a very functional majority at all in the Senate. Well, the filibuster used to be rather used extraordinarily. Now it's used as a procedural matter almost all the time. Nothing more than a threat. You schedule this, we're gonna filibuster, so things aren't scheduled even. So it's complex, and... But in any event... I interrupted, you go ahead. No, no, but I think that is, you know, that is part of the national background that Kagan has played in. And so he and Garter are duking it out in terms of energy policy. Obviously, McCain and Obama are heavily involved in energy policy kinds of issues. So I mean, I think it is a time at this point to maybe have a sensible national debate and state debate and even local debate, as we do in Sheboygan with our sustainability committee through the city council about, you know, just, you know, what we're doing. So I don't know how charged up the electorate gets about it. I don't know either, you know, when you look at the amount of 32nd ads that are being felt by people in this part of the state, it's not only the Kagan guard race, but it's the McCain-Obama race, we're one of the top receivers of political ads, and those ads are just inane, 32nd ads. So how much people can tolerate, I don't know. I turn them off, I got that remote in my hand, and they're off, I can't stand it. People in Green Bay are going to be seeing huge numbers of ads because it's really one of the seats that the Republicans have a reasonably good shot at winning. Some say number one in the country. You know, across the country. And so, and I'm sure the Democrats are going to defend that seat to the hills. So there's going to be large amounts of national money pouring into Green Bay, Green Bay channels. Yeah, I don't know how many of those are publicly owned, but they're going to be, yeah, they're going to be seeing. To be on channel eight couldn't get a little bit of, you know, we could call it, you know, public financing dollars, and we could, like even put it the clock back on the wall. I don't think there's going to be much of an edifying debate about energy policy in the midst of this election. You're right, I mean, it's three, it's going to be three second. It's off a short drilling as if it could happen tomorrow, not this couple of 10 years down the future. I don't think it's going to be any substance. Well, I mean, you know, look at, you know, you could do talk about, you know, things that really matter right now, you know, so Obama gets skewered for mentioning inflating your tires, which is really, is kind of silly when you, but in fact is really serious business. If you're really interested about increasing your fuel efficiency and you want to do something right now, as opposed to drilling someplace and maybe getting some oil five, six, seven, eight, 10 years from now. Here's what you do. That'd be actually fairly good, or changing light bulbs, you know, and none of that stuff is exciting. Nobody wants to hear it. And how many, and then you just ask yourself for being laughed at. How many people actually check their tires for inflation? And how many people get oil changes, quote? They just, you know, people drive. Yeah, I go into, I just, you know, people just drive cars into the ground and it's gone. I mean, so what percentage of people would actually look at their tires? And how many politicians will be very direct with their constituents and say, what the heck do you need to be an engine for in that car? One of my favorite articles of all time was in Mother Jones some time ago about ultra-milers. And their big home is in Madison, Wisconsin, and these are the folks who get between 100 and 120 miles per gallon from like my 2001 Ford Focus. But talk about lifestyle changes. First of all, you hardly ever use your brakes. So you don't travel very fast. And so. They call it right-terms. Yeah, you're always ghosting down the road. And they never roll down a window because that will increase wind resistance. And of course, you don't use your air conditioning. And so they have, and these, it was a great article and these guys are focused on their mileage and their even contests. And I think the greatest, I think the winner in this particular contest was 132 miles per gallon. And this is on a regular car. Not a big car, but like a Ford Focus. You don't want to be driving behind them. Well, that's it. On tail or drive. On tail or drive. Although you can also, I thought just in terms of real gas savings, being an ultra-milers. So I try to take my foot off the gas pedal. I've always been good about braking, but I'm trying to be extra good now and see how many people I get really irritated with me. Good news, bad news. We're almost out of time. Governor Doyle, the good news is he has shrunk the size of government by 2,000 state jobs, all in the areas where I need to do business. So it's really a hassle. Bad news, he promised 10,000 jobs. What do you think? Good news or bad news? Good beginning, my guess. I think you want to do a part of the tuition. And I'm not so sure with the economic conditions, how many people are taking early retirement considering the fact that they may have to work till the 80 to pay for the things that are getting more expensive. So I think probably it was over-optimistic to say that by attrition and reorganization you could call out 10,000 jobs out of the state. Well, at least 2,000 are gone. Republicans have to be happy about that. And now it's time. Maybe it's all university professors that he cut out. Now we have to stop. And now we have to stop. So on that happy note. Do what you're telling her. Goodbye, everyone. Thank you for joining us.