 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. We're delighted you could join us for a fast paced, we hope, half hour of conversation about politicking at the state level. And of course, it all gets mixed around with a little federal here, a little local there. But at the end of our last show, we were talking about the Great Lakes Compact, which is a matter, I think, of some great interest to the state of Wisconsin and conservation, in general, of water resources. Kind of trying to figure out the politics of why really this compact has been approved in so many of the states that border Wisconsin and that are involved, eight out of eight states in the two provinces in Canada. And, Cal, in our last program, you said Ohio has not approved either? No. I thought we were at the last, okay. So there are two of us, Ohio and Wisconsin. We were just talking about the articulated reason, at least, that HIPPSH is not going to allow the bill to come to the assembly, even though it passed the Senate pretty overwhelmingly, really relates to the veto power that any governor could have to disallow the diversion of water to a sister state or to Arizona or wherever water is needed. And one of the interesting statistics is that the Great Lakes hold 20% of the world's freshwater supply. The ice caps hold 70%. And then there's another 10% out there. So, of course, if the ice caps melt. Which they are. Which they are. Maybe that'll solve some of our problems. And of course, by a winter of massive amounts of salt, maybe we're turning Lake Michigan into a bit of a salt water body anyway. But I'm just interested in how, just talking a little bit more about how important the Great Lakes Compact is. You know, we were talking about shared services in our last program, city and county. To me, to have eight states and two Canadian provinces sit down and it's taken them a long time. But to hammer out a very, very controversial issue in a fairly rational way. I'm sorry that Wisconsin can't get behind it. Yeah, I think it's very short-sighted. You know, one of the reasons why the governor's got together in the first place is that there were some Asian companies that wanted to use tankers to take water from the Great Lakes and ship them off to Asia for bottling purposes or whatever. So, as you cited, if the ice caps do indeed continue to melt as they are. People are predicting the demise of the polar bear by your 2050, that 20% of the world's fresh water supply will become even greater because when the ice caps melt that's gonna be diluted into the world's oceans. It's not gonna be creating another set of many Great Lakes. It's gonna be lost. And so, more of the world's pressure will be on this area of the world for the use of that water for human consumption and other uses. So I think, you know, we have a golden opportunity where Congress has been cooperative, where the pressures from the South and the Southwest are still manageable, that we can do this fence-me-in type activity and get away with it politically. And before the pressures just get such that we're gonna be bowled over in some manner. Let me add, though, Michigan really is in the Great Lakes basin. They'll never have to ask to extend the Great Lakes. So Michigan is really exempt. And then they say that Illinois is exempt for a great part of Illinois. So they're never gonna have to ask. It's the Ohio probably and the Wisconsin that have a couple of basins. So they're on that, they might have to ask for water. And of course they have to buy. So they're in a legitimate questioning kind of situation. That what happens when people say no or I can't get it or if communities wanna pipe the water back or get the water back a certain way, but another county says, I'm not gonna be the, that's what it's quoted in here. I'm not gonna be the toilet of Waukesha as a receding county legislator. So because we have two basins, we do have these conflicts that I think legitimately are trying to be resolved. I don't know, there may be political undertones at this I'm sure just because it's two-party system, but we are physically different than Illinois and physically different than Michigan. I don't know about who would be another state. Who are the other states? Minnesota? No. That's a Mississippi. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Indiana. New York. New York. Although the other states and they, but they're in the Great Lakes Basin. Are they in the entirely? I guess I don't know if they're in the Great Lakes. I'm not sure the geography of New York. But I imagine a good portion of New York would be within the Lake Erie. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those are the eight, okay. In Ontario and? Quebec. Quebec. So Minnesota is similar to Wisconsin in the way the geography pours out. Oh yeah, the Lake Superior and then. They would have to, part of it would be in the Mississippi Basin and they would have to seek permission in some cases like we would as well. And interestingly enough, we don't talk about it much and I think the quantities probably boggle our minds, but there have been recent revelations of billions of gallons of water being lost from both Lake Michigan and Lake Superior on a daily basis in Michigan, I'm sorry, in Lake Michigan resulting from some construction errors in the St. Lawrence Seaway. And I always measure the lake levels and I do understand that they do vary even in our lifetimes, but when my husband and I got married in 1985 on the shores of Lake Michigan, the water was right up to his mom's, the beginning of her property and she had to put riprap in and so forth to shore things up. And now the staircase that we put in to go down to the beach because it had been so scoured out has been by now completely covered in sand and there are trees growing and this is 22 years. So, and now the lake goes out at least to city block. And it's interesting to me to see that amount of change in not that short a period of time, but nonetheless, I mean, we can just clearly measure it and we have memories of when there was lots of water and now there isn't so much. And I understand there are natural ebbs and flows of those lake levels and so forth, but it is, when will be the time when we wake up and the water's not there anymore? And it's more than water, it's also an issue of where should there be human growth in development? I mean, there's some point at which Arizona and New Mexico and some of the Southwestern states ought not to be growing like they are without water. They grow and then all of a sudden, oops, we don't have any water. Now, who can we steal it from? Well, maybe there ought to be some rational thought about how many millions of people should be able to live in the desert. And the same thing is occurring in Milwaukee. You've got blocks and blocks of blighted area in Milwaukee, tax bases gone down the tubes that probably should be replotted, bulldozed down and rebuilt because the sewers are there, the water's there, electricity, everything's all there, but everybody has gone to the suburbs and so the New Berlin's of the world and so when you keep on moving out there, they're growing very, very substantially. The wells can't sustain a population growth. So we're asking the same question, is white flight and other things that are occurring out of Milwaukee and out of Milwaukee County and the traditional lakeshore communities, at what point is that rational to have occurring? And then all of a sudden we're supposed to change water policy and water useful policy because somebody has moved to Phoenix or somebody has moved too far west out of Milwaukee County when they should be using their heads and saying, this is how we ought to be creating and maintaining and sustaining our urban areas. Well, I probably don't have a whole lot more to say except that we'll continue to watch and see what happens. I do think just when you despair about politics and the lack of governing and so forth to really look at a rational, well thought out, long-term negotiating group of governors who really have worked and worked and worked to try to bring a sensible resolution to difficult problems, you gotta give these folks credit and to at least say, I mean, politics are politics and who knows ultimately what will happen but the fact that they went ahead and did it and got so far I think is pretty impressive and I mean, it may be like Adley Stephenson, you know, great candidate that too bad he lost but, great guy, great treaty too bad it didn't do any good but I, at least just to put a pitch in because I think we have so little respect for legislators and politicians these days and I think this is an example of people working in a cooperative fashion and if the eight governors can do it, maybe the city and the county can. So we talked a while ago about a court decision that limited, actually found unconstitutional online charter schools within the state of Wisconsin. The legislature is now making some attempts to fix the problem. Do you think that's gonna happen? Will they be able to come through with a plan that will allow, I should ask you, you're the teacher. You have the vested. Not in the charter school, anymore. We were talking about this off camera before we got more, we got back on camera but it looks like it's on the governor's desk right now. Since the last conversation we've had the only wrinkle that came into the discussion was there was some caps put into the legislation essentially saying we're only going to let a certain number of these online charter schools operate in Wisconsin until such a time as we get some assurance that these are actually like other taxpayers' schools giving the public reasonably educated kids coming out of the system. And Kal and I were all talking here too is that it pretty much mures how the legislature in Wisconsin has approached some of the choice schools within Milwaukee. It's an experiment, it's something new and there's a go slow and some sort of a cautious approach. But it's a hands off approach, at least it has been in Milwaukee. I mean those choice schools were virtually unregulated. But the number of kids who could enroll in those schools was kept below at least the number of kids who wanted to go in. People, kids were turned away in certain cases. And you're absolutely right. I mean, across the country, the charter school movement there have been some really, really strong successes and there have been some really abysmal failures. I mean, to the point where some of these founders found themselves in court for fraud and embezzlement and all sorts of misuse of taxpayers' dollars. It's a real spotted picture. Whether you're talking about private charter schools or even some of the publicly funded charter schools. And we had a recent analysis of the performance of the kids in Milwaukee school choice schools. And it says that they are not doing as a whole any better than the kids who remain in public schools. That's the track record of a new far reaching experimental new approach to education. We're saying, well, maybe we ought to put the same caps on the charter schools to find out exactly how well these kids are doing. I mean, it's a convenient thing to do with kids who are troubled or who are not successful in a traditional school setting. Just put them in front of a computer and hope for the best. I sure wouldn't expect without some strong guidance and mentoring and so forth. Interaction with their peers and all the other things that go along with a good school program. I mean, fond memories I think most of us have about school and friendships and all the extracurricular activities and other things that we made for a sort of a full day and a full experience. I'm not so sure that eight years in a virtual school is a good thing for any kid. But that's something that I think we ought to think about a bit. I have a couple of students at university right now who've been through that kind of school. They have excellent study habits. They have excellent study habits compared to some of the other students. Were they like homeschoolers? Yeah, the homeschooler kind of thing. Yeah, they were homeschooler kind of kids and they come in, they've got their work done with maybe comments like, I don't quite understand this. And could you explain this? And they always have their work done or almost all done with maybe some questions. And I appreciate it very much. I think that's the kind of student that I'm glad to be a teacher for. I'm glad to help. But some of the other students come in. I don't understand. Well, let me see your work. Well, I've not done a thing, you know? Well, that would be my approach to math. Tell me how to do it. Pick up my hand and fill in the blanks. My brain doesn't work that way. Fix it. That's really the issue here is that in homeschooling Wisconsin, it's really wide open. It's literally a parent filling out a form and having it filed, I think, in their local school district, I think, or maybe with the DPI in Wisconsin. And there is absolutely no accountability whatsoever. The parents could be doing a really, really good job because folks in my neighborhood are homeschooling their children. There's an association in Sheboygan and they do field trips together and the parents have certain strengths and weaknesses of things they know and they literally have created, in a sense, a community of learners and schools. And I think those students are pretty well served because they have those kids and the kind of things Cal's talking about and those parents are really conscientious. That's simply because of those parents. And then some of them, some of the homeschool kids that I've gotten over at South, who've come in fairness to the Sheboygan community, come from Texas and other communities, are utterly lost in terms of basic skills of reading and writing. And honestly, is every kid coming out of the Sheboygan area school district as literate as we'd like? Absolutely not. But I think the point that we're concerned about is when you give taxpayers dollars to any educational effort, are the taxpayers getting their money's worth? You know, the public schools in Wisconsin are facing a whole set of regimes under no child left behind and new expectations that we document that we're making progress. And it seems only fair that if you're gonna get taxpayers dollars, you really ought to be shown to the public that you're doing something with kids. And that's gonna be the nickel. That's gonna be, and Sheboygan, to its credit, has an online charter system and there are the kids have to check in with a teacher, a licensed teacher on a periodic basis. It's called face-to-face, so that there is, they aren't just sitting at home all the time and there is some interaction with the human being eyeball to eyeballs. And there's also an education, a teacher there when they get stuck, either they can get help online or they can, in this particular case, because they're all in the Sheboygan community, they can go to the site. And there are some kids who are just so unhappy in a school setting, not that many, but enough that there's some way that you can just do something to try to get some sort of education drilled into those sweet brains. Oh yeah, the Florida Charter School, one of the first virtual charter schools has got thousands and thousands of students spread out all over everywhere. And so they're never interacting with an adult, they're just simply turning in work to a teacher who's hired by Florida to grade work and be online in chat rooms and to have conversations with students. My question always has been, in terms of quality control, is as a teacher you can watch your students doing the work in front of you in a testing or assessment situation. We call it assessments now not testing, because that's more impressive. More syllables, I like the syllables. But when you get student work being turned in over online, I don't know if Ann Sally's doing the work or if the kid's doing the work. And I don't really ever know how they answer that accountability question. Yeah, yeah. Well, moving on, and we'll keep an eye on that, along with the Great Lakes, maybe those will be the kids who are driving the water to Arizona or on the ships to Japan. Can you imagine shipping water to Japan? I mean, somehow my mind just can't get around that. In any event, the Supreme Court race is about, today is quick. It's about three weeks away. March is always the toughest month, of course, in any kind of spring election, winter election, really, but. Around here, too. Yeah, it's a brutal, brutal time of year to run for office. The ads on TV are predictably pretty yucky. That it hasn't gotten to the level of viciousness that the Clifford-Ziegler race was last year, but. But give them time. Give them time. Give them time. And I'm just stunned. The Tom Basting, who is the current president of the state bar of Wisconsin, actually constituted a nonpartisan, bipartisan watchdog group of lawyers and judges to try to keep some accountability in the Supreme Court race. And Judge Gabelman, who's running against Justice Butler, his group went after the state bar committee, accusing them of bias. And the information that I read would clearly indicate that that's just simply not the case. I mean, the state bar has no dog in the fight in terms of who gets elected. They just want to make sure that whoever gets elected is not. I mean, Ziegler, I think, is tarnished for a while. She'll eventually get over it. But I mean, she comes into office with this huge cloud over her head. And whether it's justified or not, I don't know. What do you think? I think one thing is that you've got these independent groups, again, financing most of the ads. It's not the candidates. Right. Respective candidates, Butler or Gabelman. One is saying, one is probably the more conservative manufacturers type group who would like to see a candidate who's more receptive to business interests. The other is probably got some labor money in it who wants to see somebody on the court that has more labor sympathies. And so they start picking at things which are taken out of context and that person is made, like you said, to be unfit to be on the bench. And so whoever wins this race is gonna have that cloud over their head. I mean, Gabelman's gonna be looked at a person who is completely inept. Butler's gonna be looked at as someone who has been sympathetic to criminals when in actuality, he's the highest court where these cases have been brought there because there's been a question raised somewhere about the procedures and so on. So it isn't the basic trial court where somebody has been deemed guilty or not guilty because they stole something, a loaf of bread or something. You know, this is a whole different game but it's not portrayed that way. And who's it being betrayed by? Groups who have interests other than the good of justice in the state of Wisconsin. That's what's burning me right now is as I see the ads on both sides. They're tarnishing people with out-of-context situations simply because there's an underlying agenda from those groups and that's really, if you're not a savvy viewer of these things and don't know what this fund or that fund as they put the disclaimer on the screen really is and what their motivation is, you'll take it at face value. And like you said, these two individuals are just gonna be made as rotten people when April 1st comes around. In some cases, the money is coming from outside the state. Yes. You have to look, you're right, Cal, you have to look really quickly to find out the name of the group that sponsored it. And then if you go and look and really do some digging around, you find out it's like watching, looking at some of some Rube-Goldman plumbing scheme because you've got money going from this group to this group to this group to this group and pretty soon you realize it's, you know, coming out of somebody from California's money and they're just shumbling it. And that's important that I think people understand. Emphasize Cal's point. The Supreme Court doesn't deal with criminal trials. It doesn't have people in front of it finding guilty, not guilty. It's a group of lawyers making cases about points of law. And so to say that Justice Butler, for example, is siding with criminals 67% of the time is just silly. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You could say that Justice Butler is very, very careful about setting standards that police have to follow and talk about that in a meaningful way, perhaps. And I don't know what the significance is. Maybe you're the lawyer, I'm the teacher, you're the lawyer, you tell me. I mean, the fact that a judge is turned over on appeal at a certain percentage, is that really a statement about that judge's fitness to be on the bench? To some extent. It is. It's relatively rare for a judge to be overturned. That there's the trial court level, which is really where the judge is acting as the finder of fact, and then also law, determining what the proper law is. Most of the appellate work, the huge burden of appellate work is done at the court of appeals level. And we have four districts and four separate courts of appeals around Wisconsin. And everybody has a right to appeal to the court of appeals. You don't have an automatic right to appeal to the Supreme Court. I mean, you can certainly file a request for review, but they take very, very few cases. And this mirrors the federal system. And so really it's at the court of appeals where trial court judges are getting overturned or affirmed, or often affirmed in part and reversed in part and modified in part. Because the law is some complicated stuff and it isn't these simplistic issues about, you know, siding with criminals. What in the world does that mean? I mean, as you pointed out, at least from my perspective, you know, that's a fairly meaningless descriptor. So hard to say. Public, there's a bill before the legislature now, these 527 groups, who are pouring all this money into these ads, they don't need to disclose their contributors. Everybody who runs for office, if you're spending more than $1,000, you're listing all of your contributors unless they give you less than 20 bucks. And so there's a bill now that if you're a 527 group running ads 60 days before an election, you have to do that. And I think that would be an excellent idea because then you can see, you can follow the money. And when you follow the money, you know. What the agenda is. What the agenda is. The problem with Supreme Court races is it would be nice not to buy justice. I mean, we're buying, our legislators buy in large, but wouldn't it be nice that, you know, judges at trial court and appellate judges and justices of the Supreme Court could actually make decisions based on the law and not on whether they're gonna get reelected or not. So, but silly me. What can I say? I think it's a, I think it's an interesting point. But it goes back to what we talked about earlier, you know, Justice Ziegler in a certain sense, and it's not her fault, has really had to recuse herself and be very, very, very careful. Well, this next judge, whoever that might be, is going to end up facing the same sorts of questions in front of him of whether to recuse yourself or not. And so as you go through these election cycles, eventually it'll be interesting to see how many judges will be able to actually listen to anything because we've set such a high, a relatively reasonable standard of recusal now. Well, we've gotten to the point where because of campaign contributions, you've had a couple of cases where three out of seven justices have had to recuse themselves. What happens when four out of seven have to do it? And well, in any event, it's interesting to me. And then only then will there be a serious discussion about what we're talking about here. When people can't actually get a definitive statement of the law in Wisconsin, then we'll probably take it seriously about some sort of public financing or some sort of campaign contribution limitations. You think so, Mr. Buck. I'm convinced of it. And it's going to have to get really, really horrible before somebody does something about this. Talking about really horrible, we've seen that you have been doing some coloring and our extremely competent producer and director up in the control booth would like to focus in on your, I almost said doodling. Yeah, this has got through to the state primary, which will probably be old hat by the time this is aired. But I was just noodling around. I was at a meeting in the district, which was really pointless. And so I was getting some work done. But in this, I don't know if you've heard of this. I was just looking around to see, when you looked at the candidates on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, Hillary and Barack and Huckabee and McCain. I was just kind of interested. Oh, there you go, there you go. Thanks, thanks guys. The pink state, the pink counties are where Huckabee actually won. And it's always just kind of interesting to see where Huckabee's support was. And I was absolutely amazed that it's really, look at that big chunk of Wisconsin. He actually prevailed. Now those are sparse, not very well, for the most part, except for Eau Claire, pretty well, not very well populated counties. You can see the orange is where McCain won over his state margin, where he did better in those counties than he did in the state overall. You can see that McCain's support really is in the most populous state, populous counties in Wisconsin. We're running out of time. Show us the color coordinated. This one real quickly. Which way do we want me to turn it fellas? There it is. Okay, here's the same thing. The blues were Hillary Clinton won the actual counties in Wisconsin. You can see it's just really almost just northerly. And except for, I don't know which one the state is here. Adams counties are dead middle. And the Barak is yellow. We've got to wrap up. So interesting stuff. Hope to see you. There you go. We do get an A for coloring, working and playing well with others. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.