 Hello and welcome back to the Donahue Group. We're delighted that you're joining us again for some important, incisive, and also intelligent political commentary. My panel members here today are really looking pretty spiffy. We've got some ties around the table, as it were, and at least a sport coat. Cal Potter on my far right, Tom Pineski in his Republican blue shirt, Republican blue coat jacket, and Republican blue elephant tie. That's right, but it's supposed to be never mind. In any event, we're enjoying the Republican tie, if nothing else. And Ken Risto. I'm purple. I'm uncommitted. There we go. My name is Mary Lynn Donahue, and I'm hosting our discussion this afternoon or this evening, whenever you're going to be watching. We thought we'd focus today a little bit on life in the state of Wisconsin. May is just upon us. That means that the highways in Wisconsin are bound to be torn up. Those of us who have tried to make our way through Milwaukee, it really does look a little bit like a war zone, and I guess it's going to get a little bit worse. We thought we'd start out today with just talk of our own highway destruction and construction, which might happen here in Sheboygan County, Highway 23. Cal, what do you think? Is it going to happen? Are we going to be able to whiz to Fond du Lac as quickly as we can get from Fond du Lac now down to Madison? Well, this is a dream that's been around for a long time. It started really with Ernie Kepler when he was in the state legislature, and Ernie is no longer with us on his earth, and he's been out of the legislature, of course, for many years, and so this issue is not new. When I was in the legislature, the road was planned to go to Plymouth and with future construction all the way to Fond du Lac without a time schedule being set. What has changed since the time of my years in Ernie Kepler and our efforts to get an improved road have been the creation of the Highway Projects Commission, which is a citizen's board, so to speak, or panel, which is supposed to take projects and rate them and prioritize them based on traffic counts, accident rates, those type of things. One of the issues that's now surfacing is a review by that body saying it's the legislature that's pushing, particularly with subordinary legislators that included previous Senator Baumgart to stipulate this is a priority road that ought to be constructed sort of parallel to the list that's being put forth by the Projects Commission, and what the Department of Transportation is now saying is that if you take a traffic count west of Plymouth, they question whether there's going to be sufficient traffic to justify a four-lane road within the time schedule that the legislature is specifying. The difficult issue with that is that when you looked at Highway 23 traffic counts between Sheboygan and Plymouth many years ago, they were not as high as anywhere near as high as they are today. And what has happened, and one of the interesting things of that whole roadway and many roads of that nature, is that when you build it, they come, sort of like the baseball fields. If you build it, they'll come. What happened is that people were taking alternative routes. They probably were taking county J or whatever it was to work because the old road was unsafe. I think if you build a four-lane road between Plymouth and Fond du Lac, you'll also see traffic increase because people who probably want to go to Madison from Manitowoc, for example, might come down on I-43 to take a four-lane 23 over to Fond du Lac to connect up with a four-lane 151, which would take you all the way to Madison on four lanes. So those type of traffic counts that are now being taken, I don't think are real accurate because they weren't accurate when they were taken for the original section of Highway 23. So it's going to be a political salesmanship job that our area legislators are going to have to do. Ultimately, I think everybody agrees that growth in eastern Wisconsin will be sufficient to have traffic counts no matter when you take them, be high enough to have a four-lane road to all the way to Fond du Lac. Well, some of it's becoming a lost art, don't you think? I have teenage boys who are learning how to drive on a two-lane highway, and particularly Highway 23, which is at times treacherous, at times pretty frustrating if you're stuck behind a truck, or then if you're just speeding along and it's a fairly heavily patrolled road, so it's easy enough to get a speeding ticket as you're trying to make up some time, but it seems that the standard is a four-lane road, and why would we do anything else? Well, you look at what has been built somewhat by political maneuverings. There's a Highway 10 now that goes west of Appleton. It's four lanes all the way to Stevens Point. Not too many miles north of that is the four-lane Highway 29, and really between Highway 10, Appleton West, you have a difficult time finding another four-lane road that takes traffic west until you really get to probably I-94. Everything else, whether it's 33 or 23 or other roads, 26, these are all two-lane roads, so I think there should be serious consideration to have something between 10 and I-94 going west for people who live in Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, and so on. I've traveled, I bypassed Fond du Lac, and I do take the alternate routes. I go south of Fond du Lac, because I go to Madison a lot. I go to other campuses, and especially with the football games going on in the fall, I traveled to Madison, and I go 49 and B and 60 and do that southern route and bypassed Fond du Lac. Through Eden. Through Eden. Through Eden. East of Eden. East of Eden. Which it is, by the way. And we stop in Eden for breakfast, you know, things like that. So I bypassed it, and I suspect if we're a four-lane, I would take the, I'd go straight to Fond du Lac, because I could just put it in cruise and go, and I do travel. I've been on 29 north. I go up to a campus up there in Wausau, and then even to Baron County, which is Rice Lake. I love that highway 29. Sure. It's a great road, and I remember when it wasn't. Oh, it was dreadful. Well, just like 23 can sometimes be, and like I say for those of us who do travel to Madison from time to time, the road between Fond du Lac and, is it Beaver Dam, is now almost complete the four-lane. I'm always astonished at number one, how incredibly long it takes to build a mile of freeway road, and number two, the cost. And when we're facing really extreme budget difficulties, the enormous cost of road building is, where's the money coming from? Is it a priority? Is it what we want to do? Yeah, I mean, I sort of, a little bit agree with, I agree with Kell, and if you build it, it will be used, but how do you justify building it? You do have to take traffic counts, and if you do a good traffic count kind of survey, you're stopping cars along the way and asking why are they traveling, and I suspect a good portion of them were just traveling between homes and businesses, and they're not traveling from Plymouth to Fond du Lac, they're traveling from their home, go on 23, and go visit somebody. I don't know, the people who are driving 48 miles an hour never turn off, at least as far as... I usually end up being a tractor on the way, somewhere along the way. You're a little Calvary or something, it's got to be one of my relatives, I'm absolutely convinced that you're coming in there out there. You know, I don't know, I mean, we talk, we always bemoan the decline of central cities, we talk about urban sprawl, we talk about paving more and more of our great farmland, and sounds like this panel wants to build another four-lane highway, and the problem is it's going to contribute to urban sprawl. I mean, one of the reasons why Plymouth is growing, certainly, is because people now get from Plymouth to Sheboygan in 15 minutes, and I would think that once we start doing this, the sprawl is going to continue to go out and out and out and out, and I'm just not necessarily convinced at $2.25 gasoline that... I'm a romantic here about maybe mass transit, I suppose, but I'm just really... I'm just not so sure that going beyond what we already have done is really a wise idea, even though I have sat behind tractors going at 35 miles an hour, looking for an opportunity to pass safely. There are people who believe strongly that four-lane roads do contribute to urban sprawl. Former mayor of Milwaukee, Northwest, was one of those who constantly did not like freeway building, because he simply said it exacerbated the decline of the inner city. I used to have discussions with him when I served with him in the legislature, and that I'm not so sure it's that great of an influence, because a lot of people do not believe accidents will happen to them. In other words, whether roads are safe or not, sometimes people will take it, and they'll go as fast as their impatience is going to take them. They're not always thoughtful drivers, so I'm not so sure that that's the reason. I think there have been white flight issues in Milwaukee, flight from the school system, poverty. A lot of things are people wanting their five acre lot and horses, and a lot of lifestyle changes that have contributed to urban sprawl as well. I mean people built today an average of what, 2,500 square foot house. You couldn't fit that on a 60 foot city a lot, so there I think a lot of things that have contributed to urban sprawl other than highways, and I just think that the number of cars on the road today warrant a certain number of four-lane roads for safety, and I'm strongly in favor of a four-lane Highway 23 for no other reason than this was something that was sort of agreed upon politically, like I said, going way back into the 60s and 70s, and interestingly enough it was supposed to have been built all the way to Fond du Lac way before the debate that's now going on, and the reason it wasn't is that Marty Schreiber and Pat Lucy were in office when I was in assembly, and we kind of politically agreed before the Projects Commission that this road ought to go ahead. Well, when Lee Dreyfus was elected governor, we had a little change in who was in charge. Marty Schreiber was short-term interim governor, and as a result some of the money that was committed to Highway 23 moved. I can tell you what road, but I won't get into that. Moves south, and Highway 23 stopped at Plymouth with the promise that some day we will finish it all the way to Fond du Lac. Well, just to wrap up the discussion on the highway, your prognostication, will we get the four lane road before those of us take that great automobile to heaven? Well, I hope so. I think the political, I hope that one of the interesting things is that the debate that's now going on in the legislature has no idea that probably Ernie Kepler even existed, and you can just see that they're not really living up to, I think, commitments and promises and plans that were on the drawing board, you know, like I said, 30, 40 years ago. And that's the shame of it, the beauty, I guess, of now having the project, Projects Commission, is that there is some type of process that hopefully it's in place for any length of time. We'll be a very deliberative process and we'll look at traffic counts and accident rates and so on. But there was a promise made a long time ago to the community such as Sheboygan and Fond du Lac to get this road built and it's just that intervening business now has put a different light on it. And I, from what I'm sorry about not being able to drive through Greenbush anymore, but that's a story for another day. Life in the legislature has been interesting lately. The voter ID bill passed handily and was also vetoed. Handily? Handily. Any chance of an override of that veto? No. I doubt it. I mean, I don't think they have the votes. Yeah, they said they didn't have the votes. They're two short or three short in the assembly and one short in the Senate, so I don't see it. Well, here's my idea, is that let's let that bill go through, but then wouldn't it be fair on every election day to have a photo booth at every polling site so that if we really do want picture IDs, rather than as I had related to taking my two boys to the Department of Motor Vehicles and waiting in line for three, count them three hours to get temporary licenses, we'd just have those photo opportunities right there at the polls. To me, that would be equity. If voter ID, if pictures are that important, then that's what we ought to do and probably not a popular solution. This is a classic case where you've got two competing values. On the one hand, we as Americans always talk about making it easy to vote, making it as simple as possible for people to go cast the ballot because there's this underlying idea that if we made it easier, more people would vote and I'm not so sure that's the case. On the other hand, the easier you make it vote, the more you're open to fraud. I mean, that's just a simple fact of the matter and that's, and this is a classic case where, you know, the Republican Party feels that by making it a little more stringent to vote, they're going to, I think, reduce, they think they're going to reduce voter turnout. Yeah, but isn't it true? I mean, we've certainly made voting in this country difficult for any number of years and it had the intended effect, which is that people didn't vote. So, if you had to pay to vote or if you had to pass a certain educational test in order to vote, I mean, it was a pretty effective way of keeping people from actually doing that. In a modern way is to make people wait three hours or four hours or whatever while they have insufficient poll workers and there's a lot of people get sick of waiting and leave. I think this whole issue of voter fraud is perpetuated by politicians who don't know what the heck they're supposed to be doing in office. It's people that ought to be serving people's health care needs and education and roads and other things. And this idea that the major issue is voter fraud, I think, is a bunch of baloney. There aren't that many people that are there in the business of being fraud dealing voters. It's few and I think it's been shown. There have been investigations in Madison of college students even. And in Madison, in one election, there was a multitude of students, supposedly, that were going from polling place to polling place and voting multiple times. They investigated and there was a few students that tried to do this. And so, in the scheme of hundreds of thousands of votes, you have a handful of college kids who are abusing the system. I don't know that you need to have all elderly people and whatever go around and get picture IDs in order to continue to vote, which they've done in religious and good citizen manner for many years. I just think it's politicians that ought to find something better to do. That's just my personal opinion. I think there are too many politicians who get off and get in office and those cited the fact that they're major problems they ought to be addressing rather than having somebody take a picture in order to go vote. Would the fellow in the elephant tie care to respond to that? Oh, well, I don't see what the problem. Getting, I think getting an idea is fine. I mean, I think the fact that they relaxed the voting standards that you could vote on on the election day is probably I think a poor choice. I would rather, you know, people registered to vote. And then they have an opportunity then to correct their roles and they have an opportunity to and I wish they would have stuck with that sort of thing where you were you register and you vote and you're proud to vote. And if you want an ID, I would even be pleased to carry one. I could say I have a voter ID. I have a picture and sort of like the Iraqis, you know, I flash my card. I could flash my willing to wait in line for three hours to get your picture taken. I have no problem with it at all. A lacially slow moving line. I have no problem. A lacially slow moving line. And I also think parties have an idea. How about my 83-year-old mother-in-law? I mean, there's no place to even for her to sit. I mean, she's got to stand in line. Parties have an opportunity. I can't, for the life of me, a Democratic Party and a Republican Party have an opportunity to go out and help these people get IDs. And that's the way to build the party. And they just want to sit back and complain. I think it'd be a good party builder. Yeah. And actually, I think you're right in that respect. It's a good organizing tool. But there isn't an end place where you can go to get a picture taken in anything resembling an efficient way. And with cutbacks in state funding, I just... The eight places where they could have people at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Sheboygan only has three people. So... I go to Walgreens to get my passport picture and click. Just like that, done. Yeah, but to get an official ID, you... At least I bet you didn't... I had to send it in and they had to check me out and all that. But I got a passport and it was real easy. And we can continue to privatize government and make Walgreens responsible for taking care of voter IDs. But we're picking up our prescription drug cart too at the same time. Something along those lines. I don't know. I think that parties are really good at the day of elections, getting the base, energizing, getting their people out to vote. It'll be interesting to see if parties could actually spend a considerable amount of time identifying people and getting their pictures taken. Americans get the heebie-jeebies about any kind of voter ID card or any kind of ID card whatsoever. And I'm not so sure that's going to ever really, really ever happen. But I think there's some other technological things we could do. I don't know why we're so married to Tuesdays, quite frankly. But we're really serious about opening up more people to vote. Why can't we have several days and why can't we have weekends? You know, European countries do that. And we've increased the ability to do absentee ballots and provisional ballots and all those sorts of things as well. That's a good point. And some states have had multiple early voting. Well, that's the absentee voting. But they also set up polls in Florida where they could actually limit a number where people could vote early. So that just alleviates the lines on the official day of voting. And it would be, by the way, I'd be real cautious about looking historically, at least when you start looking at some of the data about how many people turned out to vote earlier in the 20th century because then fraud ran rampant. I mean, Boss Tweed turned out to vote pretty high. And it turns out in Chicago where even the dead can vote. That's how democratic they are. So I think there is kind of a romanticism too about high voter turnout compared to these days. Do a lot of people not choose to vote? Yes. Is it really an obstacle? I don't know. I think people are fairly apathetic for lots of reasons. Some are apathetic because they're happy with the state of affairs. Some are apathetic because they don't think the parties present them with any real options or real choices. And the criticism that Milwaukee, the voter lists contain thousands of people who they can't locate. That's true. I mean, if you talk, but there's a reason for it. It's called urban mobility. If you go to the inner city and talk to a third grade teacher and say how many kids in May are the same kids you had in September, you find out probably three-fourths of the kids are new. And they moved. And so the parents along with them. So that's the plight of the urban situation. So Milwaukee probably does the best they can under a very difficult, urban, poor situation that they're faced with. The voter ID could handle that because you'd be a statewide ID and you could, even if you moved, it would identify you. Except you have to be a resident for a certain period of time. But in any event, moving on. It's an interesting issue. And I'm sure it'll come back. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, WMC had a half-page ad in the Sheboygan Press yesterday, bemoaning cuts in Medicare. I'm sorry, medical assistance or Medicaid or Title 19. It goes under all three titles. Essentially saying that it's a cost-shifting program. So who would have thought that WMC would speak out in favor of medical assistance? What's going on? Well, I think the rate of reimbursement to healthcare providers for any particular procedure cost. And well, one-two-thirds of the cost is not being met by the person who's supposed to be paying for it. Somebody's picking up that tab. It's not the profit margin of the healthcare provider anymore that can be squeezed. If somebody else is going to be squeezed, then it's going to be people who are either paying their own medical bills or people who have insurance. And namely, employers in many cases. In most cases, probably in Wisconsin, because we have a high level of insured people. So it's the employers who are now picking up not only the cost of their employees, but the cost of people who are in medical assistance. And I think it's getting to a point now where it's prohibitive to be competitive if you have to provide health insurance for your employees. Last week's Newsweek had an interesting figure that more cars being made in Canada by American car companies than in Michigan. It cost $6,500 a year to ensure an employee of, say, General Motors. And it cost about $800 a year in Canada. And it translates to $1,300 a car difference to make a car cheaper than in Canada than in Michigan. So if that's a good example of cost-shifting and cost of health care to those who provide insurance, you can see why WMC in this state is concerned about the fact that maybe only one third of the cost is being picked up by the state for medical procedures. One of the interesting things, though, is a personal injury lawyer who takes a look at a lot of medical bills. I see dramatic, dramatic discounts. The actual cost of the service provided, the agreed upon cost between the health insurer, the company, and the medical provider, and the amount that's actually reimbursed. So a $600 procedure, which would be the usual and customary charge that an uninsured person would be responsible for, the employer has negotiated that it will only pay $250 for that procedure and then ends up eventually paying, say, 70 or 80% of that cost with the employee picking up the rest. So I think in many respects, it's the employers who are 800-pound gorillas who can negotiate these really, I think, dramatic reductions in reimbursement. Don't you think they're contributing to the problem in the same respect or in the same fashion? Well, I'm glad to see the manufacturers have finally come to the table because one of the things that's been going on in this county, real quietly, is that the employers of the county, some of the bigger employers in the private sectors have been cost-shifting onto the public sector. I've sit in rooms where they could complain about the teacher health insurance package, and yet those same manufacturers are telling their employees that if you're married to a shabuagon area school district employee or to a city employee, you need to take their healthcare benefits. So the amount of hypocrisy in this issue never ceases to amaze even me, even me. But it's an interesting mix-up of usual political roles and expectations. But I think the ad, as Kaden's mentioned, is a good step because it's starting to see that they, the private sector, have to come to the table. Once you have 45 million people in this nation now with health insurance, there's cost-shifting going on, and as a result, somebody's gonna have to say there's a better system. Everybody has to participate in that creation of that new system. Time is running short. We're covering the state. Just in the couple minutes that we have left some interesting political developments. Although we're talking about 2008, and Hillary Clinton and Madison with 2,200 people, and Senator Russ Feingold, certainly. She went to Madison. No, there's a stunning place to choose for Hillary to arrive. Oh, you are cynical! Is it a friendly audience or really? I just bet it was, except that we had Jim Haney and President Bush went to Waukesha. Wisconsin Manufacturers in Commerce here on Friday night, talking about Tabor and so forth, but in any event, leaving the federal picture out, Mark Green has tossed his hat in the ring against Jim Doyle. He and Scott Walker is gonna be, how do you think that's gonna play out? First of all, will there be any more Republicans jumping in? There might be, but I think you're seeing the major players right now. Congressperson and a county exec, two high-profile people, those are gonna be, I think, the two that will battle it out. Both are gonna raise good chunks of money. I don't see anybody else entering the field, they can't compete. I think there's some legislators who are wannabes, but I don't think they're gonna get the first base. Yeah. Just consider the Lieutenant Governor's position then. And both of these fellows are fairly, relative newcomers, I mean, we're not talking about years and years and years and years of political service, so at least in any kind of apparent way. What do you mean by relative? I mean, six years in the Congress for Green and six years in the Assembly, and then Scott Walker had nine years or 10 years in the Assembly, and now three years, so I don't know if they're newcomers. They're not newcomers, but their visibility, I guess, is in the particular jobs that they have. Any idea which candidate might be stronger as against Doyle? Walker. I mean, Walker's got infomercial every morning at WTMJ from 7.30 in the morning till God knows when. Well, the fact that he comes from a Democratic county, any time you can cut away a base which Doyle needs in Milwaukee County, that'd be a plus for Walker. And Walker's got executive experience and that plays well for the governorship. I mean, Green is fairly well known, but I think head-to-head on debates and discussions, I think Walker's gonna look head and shoulders a better candidate. So, well, we'll just have to wait to see what eventually develops and we'll keep talking about state issues as they develop and thank you for your kind words and incisive wit. It's been a fun time. Thank you.