Vicki McKenna Show - Wisconsin Knows a Grifter When It Sees One

Good morning and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. Kicking off the program a little late. Yeah. Not my fault this time. Not my fault. Not taking blame for this. Yeah. I don't know. Brandon. Why we're late. Madison in the morning. I had to blow out a few things to get this. I know you did. 9.07. Just so you know, this is like, you know, Sean. I'm just going to give myself permission to just totally blow the clock as the boss does it. All right. Anyway, but it's welcome to the program, a little late, better late than never, as they say. Feel free to blow out more ads. No, you can't do that. Brandon, we love the advertisers. Don't do that. Don't do that. I'm teasing. I'm joking. All right, what's coming up on the program today? Well, We are going to get into the, even I'm shocked, lack of pride that Democrats have in the United States. A shocking statistic from an NBC poll, very recent NBC poll, only 29% of Democrats say the proud of America. 29%.

Why? You've been taught to hate yourselves. And you've been taught to hate yourselves, but you can't, of course, just process self-loathing. So instead, you externalize your self-loathing to your nation. Anyway, we're going to get into that on the program today. Also on the program, Madison Police. who have endured two separate investigations in a use of force incident, two separate investigations. One, actually three separate use of force investigations, one by the Madison Police Department, one by the Dane County DA's office, and one by the state. of Wisconsin Department of Justice. Remember, thanks to Scott Walker, all use of force in custody deaths have to be investigated, not just by local communities, but also by the state of Wisconsin, right? Scott Walker did that. So three separate investigations have concluded that Madison police officers were not criminally liable for the death. of a man in custody a couple of years ago. Three, medical examiner says that the death in custody was a cocaine overdose. Medical examiner says that. Cocaine overdose. Dan County Medical Examiner. Never had any complaints about the competency of the Dan County Medical Examiner before. Dan County Medical Examiner says it's cocaine overdose. Three different agencies investigate the actions of the officers, which included chasing the suspect who had stolen a car with a gun in it and then fled police. They caught the suspect, knocked him to the ground and held him on the ground. Not on his neck, on his back. Knee wasn't on his neck. Knee was on his back. Put him into custody. Cocaine overdose. But the independent police monitor, a woman who is hired by the city of Madison at taxpayer expense from Baltimore, because they're really getting it done in Baltimore. Eramik Mika Glass decided months after these officers were cleared after almost two years of investigation. And for a year they wrote a desk, she's decided that she is going to hire someone she knows in Baltimore. A private pathologist who will say that it wasn't a cocaine overdose. It was cardiac acidosis caused by restraint. And she even says, Most medical examiners just have no idea that overdoses are actually cardiac acidosis caused by restraint. So the Dane County Medical Examiner.

Apparently every declaration of in custody deaths now could potentially be called into question because Mika Glass from Baltimore and her pals in Baltimore, whom she's imported at taxpayer expense, to do another forensic examination, but not of the actual body, just of the report. Mika Glass has decided, though she's not a pathologist, she knew immediately that she needed to call in her pals in Baltimore so that she could then make a claim that Madison police officers somehow acted criminally liable for the death of this guy. Where's the union? Where's the police union? Anyway, I'm going to get more into this, too. But where in the heck is the police union? Where's John Patterson, the police chief? Speak up, man. Those guys have been riding a desk for a year after being put through the sausage-making factory of this endless game that is Madison trying to do everything in its power to undermine the effectiveness and the authority of the police department. You're the police chief. Don't be a pus. Defend your guys. We're going to take a quick break in the Vicki McKenna Show. Welcome back to the program. That is not a bump song I recognize. Oh, there we go. Now I do. Okay, I was, maybe it's still the jet lag. Yeah, that's okay. I know that song. Anyway, welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. I'm going to dive more into that police situation, which is, I mean, honestly, you've just got Madison wanting it's George Floyd moment. That's what this woman is doing. is trying to create a George Floyd moment in Madison. Who knows why? Because that's what leftists do. But anyway, let's talk about the, I don't, maybe it's too early to say the death of the climate change political movement. I think it's too early to say that, but there are certainly an awful lot. of tells out there to suggest that we are moving on to a new political theory of everything. Mark Morano from Climate Depot, you may actually have to change the name of your website soon. It's great to have you on the program. Thanks for joining me again. Thank you very much, Vic. Yeah, it's over. There's no more climate alarm, no more environmentalism alarm, no more energy restrictions, no more calls for central planning, no calls for you. It's all over. We won. Let's declare victory. I'm announcing my retirement today. Okay, I'm kidding. Of course you are. Because they're going to come because it's got, look, climate became. an organizing theory of everything. So when I say political theory of everything, it became an organizing political theory of everything. ESG. So you had major asset management companies, global asset management companies, the ones that own the world, Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street, and now Blackstone, with ESG ratings and controlled so much in the way of global wealth that they were able to create what amounted to.

policies that promoted socialism. So under the guise of climate and race, you know, fighting racism, basically is what they did. And so that's not going away. There's too much power. We're talking trillions of dollars that potentially are under control of these companies. And these companies are still trying to manage and manipulate human behavior. Yes, and that money has been invested. The international organizations are there. In many cases, all the treaties are still intact, although not in the United States. Trump pulled us out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit Treaty, which is the bottom Jenga block. And we're going after the endangerment finding. But what I think is over for now. is the idea that they're going to sell to the public that, you know, the Arctic is melting, Antarctica, and Florida's going to be half underwater. You're going to have extreme storms. We're going to have doomsday. Even the UN has pulled back from those extreme scenarios now. They tried to do it quietly, but luckily for people like Dr. Roger Pilke Jr. of University of Colorado, he was able to amplify it. It actually made major international news. They're getting rid of their dire climate emergency, you know, predictions. their climate models. The billionaires are defunding all of their schemes. Jeff Bezos hasn't even hit a third of his $10 billion climate Jeff Bezos fund. You have Mark Zuckerberg, who's literally not even going to continue. They're winding down the climate portfolio. Bill Gates trimming staff. Bill Gates now funding, this is important. Bill Gates is now funding beyond Lomburg. The Danish climate skeptic, who I've cited, quoted, met several times, very, you know, very important player in the climate skeptic movement. Bill Gates, as of the last year or two, is now funding beyond Lomburg, according to public documents. And Bill Gates now says climate is a catastrophe. And so what's happening here, not only Donald Trump, it's not only 30 years of fatigue and 30 years of lies coming exposed, but it's also... the AI data centers. And the AI data setters shifts the billionaire money to promoting energy. And promoting energy is contrary to the whole net zero climate agenda. So in the sense that I think the first phase of the climate, let's call it environmental extremism, because climate wasn't like unique. It originally started with overpopulation, the global cooling scare. And the rainforest scare of the 80s and 90s, things rainforest. It morphed into sort of an all-in on climate. I think COVID was an eye-opener for this same impulses. You know, you say it's an operating theory for everything. Well, I think public health is now the new operating theory. And I think climate is a key component. World health thing, world climate is the greatest existential threat. You have doctors, toolkids, doctors. adding it to cause of death on death certificates, climate change. You have doctors diagnosing patients with climate change. You have the American Cancer Society, fretting over the carbon footprint of cancer treatment. You have anesthesiology society talking about cutting back on anesthesia to lower the carbon footprint. So you might feel a little more pain. And that kind of thing, the reason that's appealing to merge it with public health is you don't need votes of Congress. You don't need carbon taxes. You don't need climate bills. You don't need it. This can all be done under the radar.

And that's where I think they're going. I think they're, I just think they're going to fit. I think they have to give up or severely modify scaring the public. So I think so too. Yeah. You have to find a way to, you have to insinuate it rather than beat people in the face with it. I think public health has, has maybe jumped the shark, though, because you're right. So everyone understands it's never, it was never about the climate. Maybe it was for some lunatics like, like, you know, folks out there who thought the polar bears were going to die, but they were just lied to. That was just a scare tactic used to get wide-eyed, idealistic people to think that they could save the planet by banning plastic straws or something like that. So I know there are true believers, but they're not in the power structures of the climate movement. Climate was always about control. It was about political control. And so race, gender, sexuality. And then we saw with COVID public health, it was meant to capture the mechanisms of powerful political, you know, control. So race is going away. People are, I mean, you want to talk about something people are tapping out on being hectored endlessly about racism. Folks are sick and tired of that garbage. They're also sick and tired of having some freak. fetish lunatic shake his junk in kids faces. So the gender thing is, I mean, I think I think the gender thing threatens all women. I'm saying men are not women, but I'm also saying that shove, so that's what the Democrats or the left or aggressives, whatever, globalists, whatever you want to call them, got so confident that they started to just, I think, reach for the, you know, the one cookie jar they probably shouldn't have been dipping into and shoved everything in our face so fast that you, you, it's a global reaction, Mark. I mean, look at what's going on in Europe right now. The utter rejection of the nonstop hectoring on race. So you're supposed to let your daughters get raped because, you know, guys from Sudan, you know, have been mass imported into your country and are colonizing it while you are told to sit there and suck it up. That is starting. You're a racist if you're a racist if you oppose. Yes. Yeah. And again, it's transgender, critical race theory and climate. And COVID. Let's not forget the role of Anthony Fauci. I credit him extensively with the collapse of everything you just mentioned. Why? Because usually they would appeal to an expert. You would have a critical race. Harvard professor talking about the history of slavery. You would have a transgender. You'd have some sociologists talking about how gender is a social construct. I'm sorry. Yeah, gender is a social contract. And then you'd have the climate expert appeal. You'd have the appeal. Anthony Fauci, by declaring himself to science. By overreaching with the COVID lockdowns, the mask manned, the vaccine manage, et cetera, et cetera, all the way across.

has literally made appeal to authority null and void in the Western world, particularly the United States most effectively. So no longer can anyone appeal to the 97% consensus on science. You can't appeal to the experts on race. You can't appeal to the experts in public health because no one buys it. And I think Anthony Fauci deserves more credit than probably Donald Trump and the AI data centers and the fatigue we've experienced. I think so too. I think the overreach on public health. particularly through COVID, is it popped a bubble. We already saw the climate resistance going on. We particularly saw it in Europe a couple of years ago. They've now moved on to resisting just about every one of those four legs of the table of the control table that the left has been relying on, which is public health, climate, race, and gender. ESG. That's basically ESG, except it didn't have public health, but they wrapped public health into ESG under the guise of, I don't know, structural racism. I mean, I remember being lectured. If you don't get your poison COVID shot, then somehow you're a bigot. So that they did. Are they still getting the boosters today? What happened with that? If you're really into the science, I hope, I hope all these people are still getting every single COVID booster shot. They might be, because I think they rolled it into the flu shot. I don't get either anymore. I mean, I never got the COVID shot. Who's getting that? Who's getting? So here's the thing. The rejection. quotient on this is massive. It's massive. I mean, Elon Musk, I think, needs a little bit of credit for, you know, sort of opening the relief valve on the nonstop white privilege, white this, white that, you know, you're a structural racist, you're a fascist, you're whatever. He's helped enormously on that because he's just open about it because he's, you know, he's got family in South Africa. The climate stuff, I mean, everyone's looking at their utility bill and saying, what the hell? I'm not even, I'm paying more. I'm changing my light bulbs. I'm using all this high efficiency stuff. Why the hell, et cetera, et cetera. The gender stuff is just too scratch and sniff, ick at this point. People are sick of having someone's kinky fetish rubbed in their face, especially their children's, and on health, Mark. No one trusts doctors. I won't say no one. Lots of people stopped trusting doctors. They just stopped because they started to follow the money. When they couldn't figure out why their doctors betrayed them like they did, then they started following the money. And the cynicism is at its highest I've ever seen. It really is. If you go back, looking at this from a broader long-term scope, America really was rolling in the 80s and in the 90s. And there were seeds planted, like signing the Rio Earth Summit Treaty in 1992 and even some of the free trade deal, the normalizing relations with China, which allowed them to overtake us. But we were riding high, I would say, until 9-11, 9-11, 2001. And it wasn't, I'm not alleging any conspiracy, but our reaction to 9-11 with multiple decade-long wars and creating a mass surveillance date.

injured America greatly. And then the 2008 bank bailout injured us financially and put more elite power brokers in charge. And then COVID was the third event that was overly devastating. By the way, all three of these were pretty much under Republican presidents. I need to point that out. Obama did, there's a tail end to George Bush. It did the big bailout. But George Bush administration set that whole narrative that they needed this bailout because the whole country was going to collapse, et cetera. And then you had COVID, which was the third of these events. That was devastating. And I would argue, now this is going to be controversial. The fourth event. I believe is the surveillance state being done by this insane AI data center craze that we're living under. That is not a popular opinion. I am in a minority of my own company, okay? But what I'm getting at there is. But it is a popular opinion. You're wrong. It is a popular opinion. It's just not a popular opinion in elite circles, but it is a popular opinion. Most people look at this and say, And are terrified of it, terrified of the manipulation of the information stream, terrified of the power of the surveillance tools that can be used. I mean, at the same time, you're awed, you're terrified at the potential for abuse. And how do we, so we can resist. We rose up. Only 35% of us did, but we rose up during COVID. We rose up against the, it took 20 years, but we rose up because we're. you know, decent people and don't want to be considered racist against the lies that we're constantly being promoted about racism in the United States. And we rose up against the endless fleecing of Americans through the utility bills on climate change. And so I'm just a little worried that on the AI stuff, Mark, it's going to be just. extremely difficult to rise up if you can at all. Yeah, because Whitney Webb, the researcher, there'll be a digital Epstein island. You don't need an actual island. They're talking about a total surveillance. By the way, we have over 5,000 data centers in the U.S. China has under 1,000, this idea of a race we have to beat China. We've already beaten them in many respects. But the issue is this doesn't make AI, this doesn't make big tech money. So there's a whole theory out there that these are actually a military industrial. you know, essentially a Pentagon project using big tech and they want these. And, you know, we're subsidizing these one way or the other. That's why you have Pentagon contracts going out to big tech. None of this is good. None of this is, I think it's going to end up like the other three pillars, the 9-11 reaction, the bank bailout, COVID, and now the AI data center. This is not making us a better country. It's making us less free. And it's making us into a modern system. And that's probably your next, the next attempt at the organizing theory of everything. Seriously, it is. Yeah. Climate Depot. Climate Depot.com, Mark Morano, as always, thank you for joining me on the show. Thanks a lot, Vicki. Appreciate it. We'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show.

I've got Todd Sheets on Wealth in Progress, one of my favorite substacks to read. On Wealth in Progress, go tosubstack.com and find Todd Sheets, or just go to Toddsheetswriter.com, and you can link directly to his substack. Todd is on the program. Thank you very much for joining me again, Todd. Good to have you. Vicki, it's great to be back with you again. I want to talk about billionaires and trillionaires. Let's talk about not millionaires. Maybe we should talk about millionaires, millionaires, millionaires, billionaires, all right? Because there's a new wave. Maybe it's not a new wave. Maybe it's the manifestation of an old wave in the United States, particularly of young people. to declare war on billionaires. All the while, of course, their political party accepting massive bundled contributions from billionaires and billionaires who want to destroy anybody else's access to the ability to become a billionaire. Okay, I decided to do something that was really simple and everybody can do this. Go into your AI tool, whatever it is. created by billionaires, by the way, actually probably created by the government. And type in broadly, has capitalism improved the economic conditions around the world in the last 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, even with a cronyism? That's what I typed in. What do you think the answer was, Todd? There's never been anything like it in the history of the world for lifting people up out of the depravity, which most of mankind lived in, almost all of mankind, other than a very tiny percent that was politically privileged and born into political privilege, that capitalism changed all of that. And it lifted people up off of the, you know, to shift an old phrase, the ash heap of history and into the middle class and gave. you know, a certain number of very hardworking capitalists, the opportunity to go above that, which is where you get to your millionaires, your billionaires, and your trillionaires, kind of. So, and you tag it essentially to about 19, what, 13, when we started to really embrace the idea of limited government capitalism, mind you, I asked even with the cronyism, has this system worked? But before the cronyism of large government picking the winners, hyper-regulating, you know, fencing out regulations, things like that, you saw in your piece, you said that for hundreds of years, average GDP grew about 0.3% per year. after the United States. 0.3, yeah. 0.3%. So after the United States embraced the limited government, limited, you know, free market principles, GDP grew 4% a year, 4% a year. So you went from 0.3 to 4% a year in historical terms almost overnight. When we began exporting it, the same thing happened to the world. And I'm looking at a data point here that said global poverty.

was cut in half between the years of 1990 and 2005. Global poverty was cut in half because of the more of the exportation of the principles of market economics, including private property rights and entrepreneurship and things like that. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, you look at, you can go back for centuries, roughly four or five hundred years leading up until the early 1800s, which is when the limited government model really took hold in the United States. We started to see the diversity moving away from an agriculturally based economy. And also, unfortunately, in the south, a slave-based economy. And we saw the diversification away from that. to the creation of the industrial cities, which started to diversify the economy, create new sources of opportunity for workers and employers and customers. And we saw this massive movement of people within the country from the farms to the cities and internationally from dysfunctional countries and economies around the world to America to participate in all of this. And this is what created in the middle class and the upward mobility. This limited government era lasted for around 100, 130 years. And then we entered with the Great Depression into what I've called the growing government era. And the growing government era has not performed anywhere near as well as the limited government era did, but it still performed better than socialism, communism. and the types of societies that everybody else around the world finds themselves pressed. Yes. See, that's the thing. That's why I said even with the bad stuff that comes from massive expansion of government, again, cronyism. We see, you know, it's next to impossible to compete, say if you wanted to start your own, you know, browser company or AI company that was, you know, a wholesale developer. Very difficult to do that because, and that's honestly because. of government contracts, picking winners and losers and things like that. That said, which is really frustrating, put it aside. And I mean, I'm looking here, this is just since 1990 from 1.9 billion people in extreme poverty. to under 700 million people. So that's half. That's still a lot of people, but that's half. Then you had access to electricity, access to air conditioning, access to clean water, access to sanitation. There were people in 1990 who didn't have access to sanitation, to sanitation. There was virtually no mobility outside the Western world, outside First World economies. Once First World economies expanded capitalism and created more billionaires, This is what you saw happen. Life expectancy went from 51 years to 73 years globally. That's a shocking statistic. Infant mortality dropped so precipitously that you can almost say it barely exists any longer. And, I mean, statistically speaking.

And so here we've got Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire on paper. And in the process of doing that, created 4,400 millionaires because he paid people in stock at his company. And so the janitor, I read a story about a janitor who's now a multimillionaire because of his boss giving him stock. You know, this is a bad thing. This is what Zohran Mamdani is saying. This is what this woman who's likely to be mayor of DC is saying. This is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying. This is what Hakeem Jeffries is saying. Why can't we seem to correct the record on this? Yeah, the reason that we can't is because the far left, which has taken over the Democratic Party, if we went back to the 1950s, 1960s, it was a very different Democratic Party. They didn't believe these things. They still at that time believed America was the greatest company in the country in the history of the world, and capitalism was a far superior system to communism. Now, that's the vast majority of the Democratic Party. But then you had the far left start to... you know, come in and gradually take over the educational system, the traditional media, other key institutions within the country, and eventually the Democratic Party. And now they are hell-bent on the idea that we will become a socialist country. And they are pitching a socialist agenda. And as a result of that, one way that they pitch that, maybe the most important way that they pitch that is they demonize. successful people, especially successful entrepreneurs, and they tell their listeners, whether they're a political audience or an educational audience or a media audience, that the only way you can become a billionaire is by exploiting labor and taking advantage of your customers. And then that gives them what they think is the moral authority to win their votes and have the right in their minds. to then turn this country from a capitalist country into a socialist or even a communist country. And it's one of the most bizarre things now is, as we were going through this transition period that I've been talking about here, from when most of them believed in capitalism to where we are today, there was a long time where none of them would admit to be socialist. They were closet socialist, so to speak. Today they're out of the closet. They're running as communists and as members of the Democratic Socialist Party. It's as plain as day. But they have to legitimize the change of the system. And the way they do it is to sell this story of exploitation and greed and ruining the system. It all goes back to Karl Marx. There's nothing that's really new here. This stuff goes back to the mid-1800s when Karl Marx first started, you know, claiming that capitalism. was a system based on exploitation that would eventually implode.

So as you were talking, I said comparing capitalism as an organizing economic and social system to socialism, does socialism produce anywhere close to the same results? No, is the blunt answer. Socialism as an organizing system defined predominantly by state ownership and means of production, central planning, and collective allocation of resources does not nearly produce the same results as capitalism through private property, market competition, profit, and loss incentives. Empirical evidence from the 20 and 21st century shows overwhelmingly capitalism, especially in mixed forms with rule of law, delivers superior long run economic growth, innovation, social expansion, and absolute material improvements for broad populations, while pure or heavily socialist systems do not. So there you go. This is just AI spitting out, you know, the analysis of, you know, millions and millions of pieces of research documentation and historical evidence. And it's, you mean, just go to AI and just say, does socialism work better than capitalism? No. Period. This should be simple. And it's, and I think it's the envy. I think that we have had such abundance in the United States, and we've gone over this, that the younger, maybe the younger generations can't. and can access the abundance in the same way. And so somehow they feel like the system itself needs to be completely trashed, despite the fact they are experiencing abundance. That is clearly part of it, and I would take your analysis another step that envy analysis. An enormous part of that comes from the people who become professors, teachers, maybe go into other professions besides business, and they see some business people in capitalism. Going back to what you started with, the millionaires, the billionaires, and the trillionaires. And they just can't stand the idea that somebody else in the system has become so successful relative to where they are. It stirs up these feelings of envy and hatred. And that's what we see coming out in their teachings, in their political discourse and that kind of thing. But what we've got to remember is, you know, as you were pointing out earlier, it's very important for people understand. This is not just the billionaires and the trillionaires. that are doing well, it is what lifts up the system for everybody within the system. It's what alleviates poverty. It's what pulled all the people who came to America at one point in time or another up out of poverty in the first place and into a lower class life that, you know, today lower class would look like the upper class of pre-capitalist era. And then the middle class. looks like something that the upper class didn't even have access to. When you think about the lifespans and the infant mortality that you were talking about pre-capitalism, you know, and then you've got this tier beyond that. But those are the people who are leading the economy forward and creating the companies that create all this opportunity and this wealth and the job opportunities and the upward mobility that comes with it. And it's what we absolutely have to preserve. And who's screwing it up?

Government is screwing it up. I've frequently talked to someone in our manufacturing, basically our big state chamber of commerce, who says that it's around almost $50,000 just to put somebody to work in a high-risk field like manufacturing. In terms of the ownership of the companies, it's high-risk ownership. I shouldn't say it's high-risk job. It costs so much in regulatory compliance that you want to know what's in the way. of wage increases, of, you know, of expansion, it's regulation. It's climate regulation, energy regulation, legal, whatever. It is government. I mean, you've got Elizabeth Warren, who today is talking about taking and trying to destroy private lending, private capital. Well, she already did it with Dodd Frank. She got the banks to stop wanting to make loans to small businesses or to medium businesses. So private capital comes in, fixes that, fills that hole. What she trying to do, make it harder for small and medium businesses to get access to capital. It's so dumb, but it's government, Todd, that is in the way. And I think that if we had people who could explain this adequately to the young generation who feels left out, Maybe they would help us fight back against the ever seemingly expansion of government. Yeah, I agree completely. And another point we've got to make is so much of the problems they're dealing with right now, which are the affordability issues. have to do with the inflation that was created under the Biden administration with all the spending. Now, we still have relatively low inflation, not as low as we would like it, especially with the war here, but that's going to be a transitory thing. But the reason this current inflation of, right now it's at 4% before it was at 2.5 to 3, the reason why that stings and hurts so much. is because price levels got pushed up so high under Biden. Housing got pushed out. Affordability got pushed out of the picture. So that's one big problem. And then the other big problem is, like we talked about earlier, the educational system, which has gone from training people for worthwhile careers at a very reasonable price relative to what you could expect in terms of extra earnings. You know, that was 50, 60 years ago. Today what we've got is an incredibly high price tag for an education that in many cases is highly dysfunctional. It actually teaches you habits and ideas and beliefs, which will make it harder for you to go out and work hard and become successful. And most of the people can't read at any kind of decent competency. Todd Sheets, on Wealth in Progress. Just go to Todd Sheets writer. and you can find your substack, but if you're a substacker like myself, just simply go to the app and find Todd Sheets. Thank you so much for joining me on the program. Vicki, thank you. And have a great day. You as well, and we'll take a break. And welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. So I want to get into the troopers arraignment yesterday. That's coming up. I want to go back to the Madison Police story, though. So let's go back.

A couple years ago, coked up guy steals a car with a gun in it. A couple of Madison police officers give chase, catch the guy, restrain him on the ground, typical restraint, need of the back, holding the guy on the ground while they make an arrest, transport him into custody. He dies. Dan County Medical Examiner determines that the death was caused by cocaine overdose. And the cops ride a desk because that's what happens in Madison. They don't get to go out into the street. They just plunk the two cops on desk duty for more than a year. Finally, three different investigations clear the cops. Finally, so the three investigations are the Madison Police Department, D.N. County DA and Wisconsin Department of Justice. Again, the Wisconsin Department of Justice is always involved in an in-custody death or use of force death because Scott Walker signed a piece of legislation saying that there would be a totally independent investigation, separate from the district attorney, separate from the internal police department investigation. So as to. avoid any appearance of conflict of interest or impropriety. So those three investigations go forward. So you've got technically four, you've got the Dane County Medical Examiner. Nobody has ever questioned the competency of the Dane County Medical Examiner. If we're suddenly questioning the competency of the Dane County Medical Examiner, we are in trouble. And three separate investigations, DA, internal police investigation and the Department of Justice investigation. All of the investigations say, Cops had no criminal liability in this. Enter the independent police monitor in Madison, Wisconsin, a woman named Amerique Mickey Glass from Baltimore. What did she do in Baltimore? Well, she was an activist in Baltimore. Independent is the wrong word for this agency, which is funded by taxpayers. It is not independent. It exists to accuse the police. of criminal behavior always. That's its purpose. If it were not the purpose of this agency to always accuse police of impropriety or criminal liability, then you would not have hired Mika Glass to run it. Because that's her history. That is her history. She is an anti-police activist, and she has been for years. She gets paid to, quote, advise police departments what a bunch of racist pieces of garbage they are. Because that's what we do now in cities like Baltimore or Madison. She gets paid to tell everybody the police department's horrible and to tell the police they can't do their jobs. And then to accuse the police of impropriety or criminal behavior, any time some black male complains. And that's exactly what she's doing here. The family, of course the family complained. Everybody's always treated badly by the police. You're arrested by the police you think you're being treated badly. 1997, I was arrested by the police at a rock concert. Did I think I was being treated badly? Yes.

Everybody always thinks they're being treated badly when they're arrested by the police because she don't want to be arrested. And so the family complained. And so what did Nika Glass do? She calls her pals in Baltimore and she says, you know what? I need to have the pathologist that will come and undermine the Dane County Medical Examiner and then claim that the Dane County Medical Examiner just doesn't know enough. about this very, you know, this totally obvious and completely common thing that apparently happens all the time, restraint-induced cardiac acidosis. It happens all the time. Just none of these white medical examiners or, you know, or mainstream medical examiners know anything about this, but I do. And so she hires this guy at taxpayer expense to come and make an accusation against the police. The same police have been riding a desk. because of an investigation already for a case that happened years ago to pull him back off the streets and run them through the ringer again so that Madison can have its George Floyd moment. Why? Because the man in custody said, I can't breathe. Can't breathe.

And so this is where Madison has decided to plan its flag. I don't know why anybody wants to be a police officer in Madison, but I'm going to tell you something, Union, Madison Police Department's Police Union, you need to take up the flag for your cops. And so does the police chief, John Patterson, take up the flag for your cops. Because if this woman has her way and the progressives in Madison who hate the police department, remember what happened when Mike Kovall was police chief, do you guys remember that? They claimed that they felt threatened by his presence, his required presence at city council meetings at budget time. They occupied the Dane County Board when the jail debate was going on. Derail the jail. ACAB, all cops are blanks. They shut down the beltline. They fanned out across the beltline and shut down traffic on the beltline. I lost count how many times that happened. If you guys don't stand up for your cops. And I mean it. Hold a press conference. Bring the Dane County Medical Examiner. This actually potentially challenges all determinations by the Dane County Medical Examiner, who is, until this point, never been accused of being too dumb to determine what a cause of death was, potentially puts determinations of in-custody deaths by the Dane County Medical Examiner in question. giving people the chance to go to the independent police monitor and say, I mean, there have been 15 in custody deaths in the last 10 years to say, well, yeah, the in custody death of my loved one was also exactly the same. He was restrained. He was arrested. And then he was transported to the Nane County Jail, where he died. You want to open up a can of worms? Don't fight this. You want to completely wreck recruiting? Don't fight this. You want to completely destroy morale for street cops. Don't fight this. Or, or you can take advantage of people's thorough, disgust and fatigue with the endless hectoring that all cops are racist and all cops are horrible while they let mayhem run the streets. You can take advantage of people's fatigue with that. We're done with it. We're tired of it. Even people in Madison are tired of it. It's still only a small fraction of the Madison population that just thinks criminals should run the streets. They might be voting for Kamala Harris or whatever left-wing socialist is the candidate, but at the end of the day, they don't want to be carjacked. They don't want teen takeovers. They don't want the streets to be filled with people that could hurt them. They don't want that. These two cops who are involved in this arrest are good cops.

They deserve to be back on the job. They deserve to not be harassed. They deserve to just, they've already given more to the community than every single one of the bitchers on the common council have. You've done nothing but tear down this community. You've done nothing but create mayhem. These guys go out into the streets. get spit on, get harassed, have a crummy job. And they do it because they believe in law and order and peace and justice. And they don't get paid well for it. So they've done more in a day's work than all of these carping, griping, harpy, hectoring, progressive racialists. on the common council on the county board and in the mayor's office have done in an entire lifetime in one day we'll take a quick break welcome back to the program it's the vicki mckenna show so i want to talk about yesterday's arraignment of judge jim troopers who as you know everyone knows now is a friend of mine um he pled not guilty yesterday in dane county court was a trial date set no There was no trial date set. The DOJ totally happy to drag this thing out. And that's a good thing because it suggests that the DOJ is starting to get a little bit nervous, I think, about this particular case. Why? Because this case is a purely malicious political prosecution. But I have Hans von Spakovsky on the program to discuss this. So Jim pleads not guilty. He's been accused of 11 felonies, all related to a federal election, for behavior of people he didn't even represent. but the behavior of those people and their attorneys was totally legitimate as well. That's this case, Hans, and I know you've been watching it. This has gotten more national attention and more truth has been told by national media outlets and national writers like you than ever has been printed in a local journal here in the state of Wisconsin. So I always want to get this information out there so people get the reality not. the political spin that our media is putting on it. Well, yeah, this really is a malicious, phony prosecution. It's malicious because it's clearly a political persecution because Troopus and the other defendant, they're being criminally charged for something that was not criminal behavior. You know, I actually look through some of the local coverage, and they keep saying... and referring to the fake electors scheme. That's not what this was. This was a slate of contingent electors, which is completely and perfectly legal. In fact, it's something that would be necessary if you're contesting the outcome of election. And the whole point of it, without going into elaborate detail, is that, look, there are deadlines under federal law.

for electors to cast their votes, for those votes then to be submitted to Congress by the state. And the point of having contingent electors is to have them available if, if... the courts or the legislature determine that an election contest was in fact correct and that the wrong person was declared the winner. If that's the case and they say actually the person that was initially declared the loser is the winner, then the contingent electors have to quickly vote and submit their votes to the state to be submitted to Congress. That's exactly what was done in this case. It's exactly what John Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did. Yep. In 1960, when Richard Nixon was initially certified as the winner in Hawaii, he contested that. And they eventually, of courts, eventually said actually Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won, not Nixon. And his contingent electors, the ones everybody in Wisconsin keeps referring to his fake. cast their votes, and that's what the state sent to Congress. So this whole thing is bad. And I have to tell you, Troopus isn't saying this, but I'll say it for him. I think that not only is Josh called the Attorney General one of most unethical. attorney generals in the country, so are the judges who are allowing this to go forward, including, by the way, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Jill Karovsky and Rebecca DeLay, who refused to recuse themselves from this case despite their inflammatory. remarks and criticisms of who Jim Troopist. And yet they said, oh, these prior statements in which we condemn Jim Troopas don't somehow... raise any questions about our ability to have unbiased decision making in these cases. The fact that they refuse to recuse themselves, I think, talks about just how biased they really are. Well, and just how the game is rigged. So even if you get to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the game is rigged. Why? Because the two main justices who have been bashing you on podcasts and radio interviews in newspaper interviews, literally. just bashing you, calling you a racist, calling you, you know, basically the second coming of Hitler. These two people are, no, no, no, we're totally neutral. Yeah, we've been bashing you for a year. Any chance we get, but we're totally neutral. We're not going to recuse ourselves. The game is rigged. That's the telegraph. The game is rigged. In Dane County, when you had a judge who's got communication with someone who's not even on the bench and lets the guy off the bench right.

The opinion from the judge, and that judge doesn't set aside himself or transfer the case out of the county, the game is rigged. They want everyone to know the game is rigged. Jim cannot get a fair trial in Dane County. He's not got a trial date yet, but he cannot get a fair trial in Dane County. The more people tell this story, Eric Tony, call your campaign manager and start talking about this. If you want to beat Josh Call, then the better off Jim is going to be and maybe we'll eventually get a venue change. Yeah, and everyone should keep in mind a very important fact. And this is one of the reasons I say Josh Call has got to be one of the most unethical, in my opinion, Attorney General's of the country. His own lawyers, his own lawyers provided an opinion saying that nothing the troopers had done, that the whole contingent election, that it was not illegal. The AG actually overrode that and had no basis to do that other than politics. Period. Yes. The Department of Justice itself rendered an opinion under the moniker and official authority of the Department of Justice that Jim Troop has acted legally. And worse than that. Advised him to do it. advised him to use contingent electors. And they are not fake electors. And Scott Bauer at the Associated Press should stop using that term. And everybody in the news media should stop using that term. That term is a smear. Fake elector scheme has already convicted Jim Troopus by smearing him with lies in language. Yeah, no, it's very true. Now, it's unfortunate. This is a state prosecution, so obviously a federal pardon. And as you know, the president has issued federal parts doesn't help them. But I have to tell you, I actually think the misbehavior of Josh Call, the misbehavior of him and his lawyers who are pursuing this malicious criminal case. I think it potentially violates a federal statute. It's called 18 U.S.C. 241, conspiracy against rights. And this is the statute that was used by federal prosecutors against state officials, state prosecutors, and others, particularly in the South. when they were denying the civil rights and other rights of individuals in those areas. And here, here, I think that's exactly what was going on. This is a conspiracy against Jim Truppist because he was exercising his rights under the laws of the U.S., particularly under our civil rights laws and our election laws to engage in political activity. And I would hope.

that the U.S. attorney in Wisconsin is seriously considering bringing a criminal indictment against Josh Kahl under this federal statute. Because he can't get his civil rights. He can't get a recusal. He can't get a venue change. He can't get, I mean, he can't even get the information from the DOJ. They've still not provided the defense. with all of the evidence and the argument they claim to have against troopers, Lord knows, we can't figure out the argument they're going to make that they think they can, and they can convince a jury, because you've actually seen people in Dane counties say they wish they could put him in prison for the rest of his life, for what? Because he's conservative in support of Trump. But no one's seen the evidence. I mean, the defense doesn't have access to the case. They don't have the actual, you know, the documents are supposed to have to be able to produce an adequate defense against the arguments of the prosecution. All his civil rights have been violated. And the media acts like he's the bad guy. The Associated Press makes it sound like he has some mustache twisting scheme. And yet it was the DOJ who said, you need alternate electors to protect the rights of your client, the president of the United States, in an election challenge. This is really boring stuff, actually. And the claims that forgery was involved, Jim Troopus wasn't even the attorney for the electors. I mean, literally, everything that you think you can rely on in civil rights in a court of law have been denied Jim Troopus. Yeah, I, boy, I really feel for him because this is one of the worst miscarriages of justice I've ever seen. Now, now I have read, and I hope it's true that Troopus has submitted a claim to... the U.S. Department of Justice trying to get reimbursement of attorney's fees and other fees that he's paid. Again, I think the U.S. Justice Department has the ability and should do that under what's called the Judgment Fund. That's a fund that the U.S. Department of Justice has. which they can use to compromise and settle claims made against the Justice Department. And I actually hope they would use that to help Troopus in this particular case. Yeah, he has made a claim, I know, for the weaponization of government fund, which, of course, was now enjoined by a federal judge and whatever the feature of that thing is, I have no idea. But I hope there is some relief because we're talking millions of dollars here. We're talking a man who is going to have to sign over his mortgage.

He's literally everything he ever worked for will be ripped away from him because Josh Cole got marching orders from national Democrats to try to put Trump on trial ahead of the 2026 midterms thinking maybe they'll get an extra half a percentage point in some key house races. That's what this is for. A man must be destroyed to try to boost. A little bit of turnout for Democrats in 2026. It's sick. It's sick. And everybody who's participating this is going to go to hell. I appreciate the time on the program. Hans von Spakovsky. Thank you very much. I wish they would go to jail, though. Good to have you. We'll be right. Me too. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And we are back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Quick reminder. Keep listening for your chance to win that $2,500 in our I-heart 250th. Birthday celebration contest that's coming up throughout the day, not every hour like our other contests because we're giving away more money. All right, I wanted to get to this. I got to kind of calm down a little bit, but this is going to tick me off too. June is men's health month. Did anybody know that? I did not know that. June is men's health month. And men die on average of five years earlier than women in the United States. Didn't used to be like that. But it is like that now. There is a piece of legislation that is limping through Congress that would establish an office of men's health under HHS. I look this up and it has been introduced every single session since the early 2000s. And for some reason, it just never gets enacted. Meanwhile, I don't know, we have like eight or ten offices dedicated solely to women's health. Not that I'm complaining. But what is going on here that we can't seem to take any serious look at the crisis that is affecting American men right now? Ed Bartlett, who is standing by, who is the founder of SAVE, SAVE, stop abusive and violent environments, formerly was an employee of HHS, joins me to talk about this topic. Hi, Ed. Hey, how you doing? Very great to chat with you. Well, I must say I was pretty dismayed. First off, whenever this legislation gets introduced, it never gets any attention. And then it dies. And so it's been introduced again and maybe with a little bit of attention now that we are starting to see from the Trump administration on men's issues, this thing can go forward. But why do you think it's necessary? Why do I think it's necessary? Well, let's start with the fact that the right to life is considered the most essential and the most foundational rights that any person can have. The reason is, if you're not alive, all the other rights just disappeared, right? So that's kind of the call it the philosophical explanation, but in a more practical sense. Men play a critical role in our society, in the workplace, in the family, and society in general. And when you remove men large numbers of men from society because they die earlier, we're talking about men dying in their 40s or their 50s. When that happens, the effects, there's a ripple effect that happens through our whole society. Productivity goes down.

It has a devastating effect on children, especially male children. And let's talk, if we can, for a minute, about the effects on these men's wives. That's the piece that has not been talked about. But I'll tell you, this is a personal issue for me because my wife, bless her heart, her father died when she was eight years old. He had a heart attack when she was eight years old. All I can say is this has had a lifelong negative effect on her, just sort of her psyche. And so I relate to this issue just because, you know, I've seen this issue on a daily basis. Well, I, you know, what I see is this political movement to marginalize men being largely responsible for the complete dismissal of any issue that would be related to men specifically. Men build things, men order things, men defend things, men protect things, men create things, right? So when you've got men, increased risk of suicide. You've got loneliness levels among men that are at stratospheric, you know, historic stratospheric levels. When you've got men who are not able to access the workforce because they are considered toxic and we now see multiple examples of widespread discrimination against men in the workforce. You've got a problem. Your civilization is made because men partner with women, but largely men build the civilization itself. So, you know, this is political, I think. This is feminism writ large. 30 years of it wreaking havoc in ways that I think could have been predicted if we would have been paying attention. Well, Vicki, you just said the issue beautifully. You use the word marginalization. And I have to agree with you 100%. There is a sense, a feeling of, hey, you know, you guys don't matter anymore. You know, we've been dealing with, quote, patriarchy all of these years. And now it's our turn. That's the logic. that I hear a lot of. First of all, let's be clear, there is no such thing as patriarchy. Go down the list of, you know, all of these areas like health care and education and, you know, homelessness and treatment by the legal system, and I could keep on going through a long list. And every one of these areas is men are lagging behind women, but feminists refuse to even acknowledge these areas of discrepancy. Some people say, well, this is all because of the matriarchy. But again, there is no such thing as patriarchy, and let's just say that loud and clear. If we had a patriarchy, then men wouldn't be dying earlier. If we had a patriarchy, that men would not be foreclosed from high-income jobs. If we had a patriarchy, men would not be foreclosed from medical school or law school. If we had a patriarchy, men would be going to college and graduating college at the same levels as women who have now surpassed men.

We had a patriarchy, we wouldn't have preferential treatment and lectures on male toxicity and fake accusations against random guys in the office in the Me Too movement. So I haven't seen the patriarchy myself. I think I've probably benefited from the matriarchy, quite frankly. But all of us should just simply understand that you can't have civilization unless you have strong men. Well. Vicki, you just said it so beautifully. I should actually be taking notes from the way you pronounce it and the way you say it. Yes, we do not have a patriarchy. If we had a patriarchy, you know, all these all-powerful patriarchs would be standing up and shaking their fists and saying, I'm not going to allow men to die five years earlier on and on. So you're totally right. You've hit the nail on the head. And so, yeah, we have to change the paradigm. And part of this paradigm, if I can explain more, is the feminists have pushed this either-or mentality. In other words, if we do more for men's health, that will somehow disadvantage women. Well, that is utterly, totally false. And my wife's example is a good example of that. But there's more to that, and I'll just go and explain what I'm saying. If a woman, an elderly woman, husband dies, guess what? Her chance of being since ending up in a nursing home is increased threefold, three times greater risk of going to a nursing home. But that's just the beginning. Her income is likely to decline, 22% according to one analysis. There's just the emotional and psychological trauma from bereavement. In other words, this is not an either or issue. This is an and both issue. And that's why we just did this press release and just came out earlier this week is that women are some of the strongest supporters of men's health. Me, hand up here, hand up in the back. Look at how miserable young women are that they've completely inculcated, been inculcated into believing that men are the enemy. I mean, look at how miserable. They claim they're just miserable all the time. And then men are miserable because women don't want to date these same men. So that's a problem. Everybody's miserable. Only men have a much higher proclivity. into allowing their loneliness to ultimately, you know, become despondency, become suicidal despondency. And so if you want a recipe to destroy civilization, by all means, keep bashing men, keep making men, you know, distanced or disconnected from their true natures, which is to build things, to provide, to protect, to defend. Anyway, let's get back to this piece of legislation. It's a perennial piece of legislation, Ed. I mean, if we had this office, if we tasked one person, like we had Marty Makary before he resigned, was tasked on, you know, women's health issues and he comes out of the gate and he gets like eight things done in six months. What if we had a Marty Makary for men? That'd be amazing. Well.

Everything you've said is absolutely correct. This year's legislation is not the first time. I think there's been 10 previous pieces of legislation or something like that. And basically, they all said the same thing. Establish an office of men's health in the Department of Health and Human Services. Right now, there are seven offices of men's health. And, you know, as you said earlier, I used to work in HHS. I was there 17 years, so I know a little bit about how HHS operates. Fortunately, we do have a new, what's called an assistant secretary of health, also known as the Ash. His name is Brian Christine, Brian Christine, and he is a urologist, and he has come out publicly to say he wants to have an office of men's health set up in the DHS. The problem is, He's now fighting with the bureaucracy. And to be very specific, we strongly suspect it's the women who operate these seven offices of women's health that are dead set against this because, again, they're operating from this either or a framework. They think somehow that allowing research and guidance to improve outcomes for men somehow takes away from women. That's something that that leads me to believe that Bobby's got to do a better job of draining the deep state and the HHS. because that is a terribly toxic ideology. It really is. So because there are so many lobbying organizations that are now supporting this, I'm somewhat hopeful on it. And during June, I didn't even know it was Men's Health Month, right? Nobody does because I guess, you know, we shrug our shoulders at the fellas thinking they can take care of themselves. Maybe this is the time to start seeing if we can get some other people to sign on to the legislation. Yeah, right now we have 10 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and passed off to those individuals. But obviously, in the House of Representatives, you have 425 representatives. So we've got a little way to go. But bottom line, we don't have to wait for this bill to be passed because Brian Christine does have the authority. He does have the... administrative power to set up this Office of Men's Health. But again, he's dealing with some pretty stiff opposition within his own ranks. I do appreciate the work you guys are doing there. Keep talking about it because it's just not something that's getting enough attention. However, Ed, the appreciation of men, I think, is having a bit of a renaissance.

which I'm happy to see, thanks to the Trump administration. Even if it's just changing, you know, the Department of Defense to the Department of War, and all of a sudden we've got a whole bunch of very, very masculine badasses at the top of the heap. So that's a good thing for guys, even if it's just by extension. Yes, right. Yeah, we have a one way to go. I mean, we are making progress. We've had discussions with Admiral Christine. He's totally on our side, but we have to be honest. There is deaf opposition, and yes, it comes from these seven offices for women's health. We have to be honest about that and stop pretending this is an either-or discussion. Dead guys and sick guys do not make women better. Great to have you on the program. Thank you very much for joining me. All right. Great pleasure. Be in touch. And we'll be right back. So coming up, because I have to take a break and send you all off to lunch, besides the fact that I'll have a chance for you to win that $2,500. We're to talk about property taxes, Madison's property taxes. Did you know that even though there are fewer students in the Madison Public Schools, the Madison Public Schools need to demand an 8.5% increase in your property taxes. This is a common theme. So they got Tony Evers just gave them authority to raise per pupil spending by $325. every year for 400 years. So every year, an extra 325, an extra 325, not enough, not enough. And so they want an 8.5% increase in property taxes. On top of that, you've got Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore looking to foreclose any options to escape the school system, the lousy, underperforming school system itself. All of that's coming up at the 2 o'clock hour. We'll get into that. Plus those teen takeovers that are now starting to coast across Wisconsin. We'll get into that topic as well. Have a great lunch. Good afternoon and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. We're going to get into school funding, massive property tax increases, teen takeover is going to try to cover a lot on the program today. Before we get to anything, your chance to win $2,500 in our I-Hart Radio 250th birthday celebration for America's Big B-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-A. $2,500 could be yours if you use the keyword birthday. B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y. and simply enter that keyword at newstalk 1130.com or WIBA.com. It's a nationwide contest you have until 55 minutes past the hour to play. We'll call you on the phone if you win. Don't screen your calls. Don't have those call screening settings turned on on your phone. You will likely miss our call if you're a winner. That would be terrible. All right. So I hope you win. Again, the word is birthday.

Birthday. All right. So I already told you what's coming up. I want to start here, though. Tony Evers posted this just a few hours ago on X. While folks can barely afford to put food on the table and fill up the tank, President Trump is busy blowing $600 million to build a golden ballroom, and over half of it will be paid for by us, the taxpayers. Wisconsinites know a grifter when they see one. Okay. That's what Tony Ebert actually said that. The man who delivered us a 400 year property tax increase. 400 years. Every single year, property taxes go up. by $350, I'm sorry, $325 per student in the schools every year, every year, $325 this year, another $325 next year, another $325 until it accumulates $325 plus $325 plus $325 plus $325. Every year for performance that's approximately 37% proficiency. So that's number one. Yeah, Wisconsinites know a grifter when we see one governor. Because we ain't getting our bang for our buck in education. But wait. His party wants to raise income taxes by 17%. For what? But wait. His party is responsible for a 47% inflation of energy prices in Wisconsin. Energy prices, 47%. Inflation. Since Sony Evers became governor, what are you getting for it? You get more electricity for that? Are you? More power? 47% Wisconsinites Noah Grifter when they see one. But this is my favorite. My favorite way that Tony Evers proved he cares so much about taxpayers, hammering them with property tax increases, his Democratic Party wanting a 17% income tax increase, 47% energy inflation. importing the third world into Wisconsin to take jobs away from Wisconsin citizens is COVID relief money. Wisconsin knows a grifter when it sees one, Tony Evers. How about $2.4 million off the top to Planned Parenthood? What did they have to do with COVID? $2.4 million to plan parenthood so that Planned Parenthood could perform abortions. $2.4 million in taxpayer money. From COVID relief funds, $30 million to his fake child mental health agency that is doing nothing except promoting anti-white, anti-American, anti-capitalist, communist propaganda. I talked about it yesterday with Scarlett Johnson, 30 million for them. But that's nothing.

That's nothing to the $3 billion he gave the teachers union to shut down the schools during COVID. They shut down the schools. They got $3 billion for shutting down the schools. $3 billion. Schools weren't even open. They got $3 billion. $3 billion to government. Tony Evers gave $3 billion of taxpayer money to government and called it COVID relief. I crap you negative. $3 billion went to government. Directly to government. Local and county government. They're still collecting taxes. Local and county government. Got $3 billion. COVID relief. It paled. Small business grants paled in comparison to what the local and county governments got. But my favorite, my all-time favorite, has to be the $700 million that went to the hospitals that were closed down. Closed down, not even providing services. They got $700 million of COVID relief from Tony Evers. So what happened to them? Well, they went, even though they're nonprofits, from having net revenue of $2.16 billion. to shutting down and having net revenue of $3.98 billion, thanks to the taxpayers. We didn't get service. We didn't get care. We got a bunch of doctors wanting to stick poison jabs in our arms and telling people not even to bother to come in until they had pneumonia so bad. They threw them on a ventilator on which the hospitals also made money. But Tony Evers made sure that the already highly profitable, so-called nonprofit hospitals, almost doubled their revenue during COVID. Wisconsin knows a grifter when it sees one. And he's griping about a ballroom. Half the ballroom's paid for by private investors. The rest of it comes out of things like the secret service budget. Why? Because we host dignitaries in the ballroom. We have always hosted dignitaries in the ballroom in the antiquated ballroom that wasn't large enough to hold everyone, making security that much harder because tents had to be erected for the overflow. $300 million from American taxpayers. This guy has... The gall to gripe about that? When he gave $2.4 million to plan parenthood, set up a fake child mental health agency to promote woke indoctrination in Wisconsin public schools to the tune of $30 million, $3 billion to the teachers' union so they could sit on their butts and mail it in during COVID, $3 billion to government? Just off the top, just because, because we got it.

And $700 million to already wildly profitable hospital systems that were able to double their net revenue. And he's griping about $300 million. I mean, we are in the trillions of dollars wasted in federal education spending. This is the same guy who doesn't want to turn over criminal illegal aliens. Because they're part of the welfare grift in the state of Wisconsin and they're a key voting constituency for the Democrats. But he's griping about a $300 million taxpayer commitment to a ballroom that we need, that we use, that needs to be safer and needs to be more secure. And it wouldn't be bad if it were beautiful. He spent billions. billions and billions wants billions more with his 400 year property tax increase and the Democrats want billions more with their 17% income tax increase. What gall. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Now, as I mentioned, I want to talk about the story that I saw, and as you read it, it's just, it's unbelievable. The Madison School District, having lost students, so they're losing students with proficiency rates in reading and math around 37 percent, and ACT scores that keep going down. They're losing students. They need more money. 8.5% tax hike is what the Madison School Board says it needs in order to keep people getting raises and all of this high quality education at sub 40% proficiency. This with Tony Evers tax increase as a backdrop, $325 per student. every year for 400 years. So 325 this year, another 325 next year, an additional 325 the year after that, in perpetuity, plus a lawsuit in the offing that demands unlimited dollars for education. Will Flanders from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty joins me on the program to talk about this. 8.5% increase is pretty intense, especially given the massive amount of money Tony Evers just gave the school board in taxing authority. Yeah, there's just seemingly no end, right? From every angle, there's a demand for more funding. I think what's even more important to note about this is this isn't something that was approved for new construction or, you know, we're updating facilities. This is just basic operating funding in general. They're, you know, looking to do some things with teacher pay. This essentially is saying that the district cannot continue to operate or meet its basic functions without this additional funding. And for a district that's over $22,000 per student, the second highest funded large-scale district in the state just behind Milwaukee, it's pretty absurd to think that they're making the argument they can't even continue to meet their basic obligation without raising taxes even further on Madison residents.

Well, that sounds like Milwaukee, doesn't it? That's what Milwaukee says every year. We just can't meet our basic obligations. They spend over a billion dollars in Milwaukee, around $25,000 per student for even worse results than Madison. But Madison is spending $22,000 per student already. And we are getting proficiency. Now, put aside the cut score change. We're getting proficiency that suggests the entire system in Madison is an abject failure. When I say sub 40%, you're talking about somewhere around 37% of kids proficient in reading in math, 37, and I'm using pre-cut score changes, 37% proficiency in any subject, fourth grade, eighth grade, whatever, 10th grade, fourth grade, And they can't do it for 22 grand? What are they spending their money on? Yeah, even if you use the post-cut score stuff, which unfortunately we're going to increasingly just be in the environment of because it's the only data trends we have at this point. We're still under 50% proficient, even on these absurd new cut scores, we're at 47% proficiency. So, you know, the real numbers were in the 30s, with the new fake news numbers, we're still below 50%. So even if you want to use those new numbers, the majority of kids aren't living up to expectations in Madison. You know, you can see a lot of districts that spend significantly less money that are getting significantly better results. And it's not as if Madison is dealing, you know, there are some demographic challenges in Madison, but it's not to the level of Milwaukee. Yeah, proficiency doesn't look hugely different than it does in this district. Nope. Doesn't look hugely different than Milwaukee, especially for black kids. Doesn't look hugely different from a school district that is considered one of the 10 worst in the country, which is Milwaukee. So you said they have demographic challenges. They've imported their demographic challenges. Madison schools have asked. for the demographic challenges. They have openly advertised in Chicago for the Chicago population to come into Madison. So they do maybe have some additional demographic challenges around 15% that they didn't have in the past. It was more around, you know, 5%, 7%. They're asking for it. But they're spending $22,000 per student with fewer students. So every single year. Madison loses population, and it does to open enrollment or just population decline. And so they get more money every year with fewer students to have to educate. So why can't they meet their obligations?

Yeah, and you'd think for one of the few areas of the state that is sort of experiencing at least stable population or population growth that they'd be able to maintain their enrollment. But actually, you know, Madison is one of the biggest senders to neighboring school districts in open enrollment. So that just tells you that parents don't think for that $22,000 they're getting a great education. You know, McFarland, one of the largest receivers of open enrollment students in the entire state, some of the other districts as well. They're spending more than some of these neighboring districts, even though you think those suburban districts might be more financially better off. Madison is spending more, yet parents are choosing to send their kids out of the district in many instances. Again, another signal from parents themselves that they don't think what they're getting there is meeting expectations. And guess what? Spending more money, raising property taxes further, only going to drive more people out if they can leave. And it's not going to lead any better results from years and years of data across the country. But you shouldn't force people out of their homes because they can't afford their taxes. So we just had the big property tax hit. That 400-year property tax we keep talking about. That just hit the state of Wisconsin. I think the statewide average was around 8%. I personally know someone in Dane County who had a property tax bill double. double because of a reassessment and because of the property tax increase under Tony Evers. So we're talking already big property tax increases. Mine in Jefferson County was 17%. Statewide it was around 8%. Don't know what it was in Madison, but it wasn't small. So you're going to add another 8% plus the next increase because next year the school board will be able to increase spending even more. So, I mean, there's like this endless increasing pot of money because of this veto. And it seems to me that you can plan because you've got a guaranteed increased pot of money as long as you maintain enrollment. Yep, you're absolutely right. And according to the cap time, the increase last year on average in Madison was 20.4% in the property property. So just an absurd amount of increase last year. And yeah, year after year, we're building on top of it. Now, you can blame local voters to some extent for approving these referenda that are leading these increases. But I think, one, it's difficult we're able to perceive how much this is actually going to cost them in the long run, this monopoly money when people are thinking about evaluating these referenda in some instances. And, you know, additionally, you know, it's incumbent on school boards, obviously, to exercise some level of control of their spending. And we're not certainly not seeing that in that. Okay. So let's talk about the idea that, I mean, you're trapping people in costs they can't afford. And not everybody can move. Not, I mean, you think, well, just move. Well, that's not a choice. Afford it or move? That's not really a choice you're giving someone. You're forcing someone out of their house. If they can afford to move. The ones that suffer the most are the ones that can't afford to move. Correct. Correct. So there are people who literally can't afford to move because it is expensive to move. We have high interest rates. We have high housing prices. It is expensive.

to move. So maybe you're thinking, well, maybe we can have some more choice schools or something like that at least to try to give us a relief valve on the bad performance. But no, you've got, and school choice schools are what are in large way is kind of a ratcheting down of cost in education. Gwen Moore and Mark Poe can want to eliminate school choice entirely at the federal level. So anything we can use right now to maybe contain some costs are not going to be available if these guys are successful. Yeah, that's right. There's a new proposal from our lovely left-leaning, left-wing, I should say, Congress people in Wisconsin to end the federal school choice tax credit that was contained in the big, beautiful bill. So for anyone who's not familiar, we have had a lot of discussion around the state around this, but essentially this is a tax credit. No taxpayer funding is used. It's a tax credit that allows folks to get funding towards... private schools, but also towards other educational environments. It could be supplemental services for a public school as well. And just like we've seen from Governor Evers, who's rejected this funding for the state because of the chance that private school kids get benefit, here we're seeing Congressman Moore in Pocan essentially trying to end this benefit for kids in Wisconsin and around the country merely because private school kids could benefit. And this is shouldn't. outrage, even liberals, because we see demands constantly, as we've just discussed, for more funding. Here's a free source of more funding for not only private schools, but for public schools as well, and they don't want anyone to have access to it because private schools could potentially benefit in addition. So it's better no one benefits. We should talk about the private schools. Let's talk about the private schools in Wisconsin, who are the, who we have a legal school choice program. allowing taxpayer money to be used for a student to attend a private school. How are they doing? Number one, we should get out of the box say they can't cream the crop. They can't be selective, the private schools if they're participating in the statewide school choice program. But how are those schools performing compared to the public schools, the traditional public schools will? Yeah, so there's ample evidence that we've put out in from sources, you know, university-based peer-reviewed studies over the decade that have showed these schools get a better result for a lower taxpayer cost. And we're actually going to have some new data. I'll preview with new student-level data sort of replicating what was done back in the early 2000s that hopefully will be out in a peer-review journal in the next couple months. It's going to show a similar thing with much newer data. So the evidence in Wisconsin is very definitive. These schools get better outcomes. And they don't cream the crop. They deal with the students that sign up. And oftentimes those kids are those that are actually behind in school because those are the families that are seeking more options. So pretty comprehensive definitive evidence. These kids are doing better at a lower cost to taxpayers. Yeah. And the discipline problems are not as prevalent in the choice schools in Wisconsin. You know, better outcomes, better reading proficiency, better math proficiency, better placement in college, better successes in the workforce for about $10,000 less.

per student, if you're looking at the high spending districts like Milwaukee or Madison, for about $10,000 less, more difficult challenges to educate because kids who are further behind, those are the ones whose parents tend to choose these schools because now they can afford to. But no, we don't want to promote that. in our state. We don't even want to do it modestly with a tax credit. And in fact, if you look at that lawsuit, that lawsuit wants to shut down school, the broad statewide school choice program entirely. That's the lawsuit that wants unlimited funding for K-12. For what? Yeah, that's right. For what? People need to start asking for what? Because the proficiency stinks. Yeah, they're attacking it from all angles. The lawsuit is one potential angle to bring it to end. We'll end the federal tax credit with Moore in Pocan Bill. And then if that doesn't work, we see most of the gubernatorial candidates on one side of the aisle are saying that they want to bring school choice to an end. Only exceptions, by the way, are some of the folks that are from Milwaukee who have large constituencies that are using these programs and see the benefits every day. They're the only ones that are equivocating at all on that. So that should be instructive. Multiple angles school choices under attack from the left. Yeah, you know, not a single Democrat is saying these proficiency scores are terrible. We have to do something about this. We've got to teach these kids to read. Not a single one of them cares about that. Not a single one of them. The Milwaukee candidates, by the way, aren't exactly going out and beating the streets for school choice, though. They're just not saying they want to see it attacked. But they're not beating the streets for it. The rest of the Democrats, they just want more money for public schools so the teachers union and their NGO pals can get school contracts like we talked about yesterday with Scarlett Johnson. That's it. It seems like, does anyone care? No one can read and people can't afford to stay in their houses? Is anybody on the Democrat side motivated by this question at all? Will Flanders, I do appreciate the time on the program today. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Great to have you on the program, and we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. All right. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. So a new, it's, I guess it's kind of a new thing. Teen takeovers, they're calling them. And you are seeing some reporting on this. Teen takeovers were a mob of delinquents, criminal delinquents, flood into an area. destroy things, you know, destroy cars, light things on fire, stab each other, shoot each other, whatever. It's a trend. And police seem to be just completely befuddled on how to deal with this.

It's happened in Milwaukee multiple times since the beginning of the year. The response from the Milwaukee Police Department is, well, we just can't tolerate this any longer, but they don't do anything to stop it. Sheriff David Clark is standing by on the program. Something tells me there is a way to handle this. They're just not doing it. Yeah, well, there's no model for it, at least at this point in terms of accounting strategy. There are some effective things that can be done, unfortunately, it's in the reactive mode, but to punish the perpetrators of this riotous behavior. And that's what these are. These are riots. These aren't takeovers. These aren't their typical garden variety, juvenile delinquent, just hanging out sort of thing, converging on an area, just hanging out, playing loud music, that sort of thing. basically taking over public spaces. Public spaces were meant to be shared. And a couple of these have happened down at Bradford Beach. That was a no-no when I was a sheriff. We guarded that thing. From basically what started getting nice in May, what we did was we tried to preempt it. And I had... 50 deputies assigned to the entire lake fund. Like I said, starting when the weather started to turn on the weekend, anyway, in May and then all the way through the rest of the summer, put the mobile command post down there. We had the mobile jail down there. And we were able to keep it from starting to begin with. Now, in fairness to... police agencies across America, you know, I could contain the lakefront. How do you contain an entire city when you don't want to, when you don't know where these things might pop up? However, once they do, your resources become overwhelmed immediately because of 100, let's say it's just 100. I know a couple of these things that have happened nationwide. There have been like 200 people. and participate in this. You only have about 10 squad cars, so let's say 10 officers, you're not going to be real effective. But what I would do as a counter strategy, you have to regain control. of that public space. And the way to do that is immediately dispersed. Immediately. Don't waste time. Don't try to make arrests in the early stages. No, disperse. Make the announcement. It's unlawful assembly. Leave immediately. And then I would employ certain resources like I wouldn't be afraid to use tear gas to dispersems. To give the order, tear gas, pepper spray. that sort of thing, the bean bags, the rubber bullets, just to disperse the crowd and regain control of that area. So one of the other things I would do, you know, for the stragglers, then you can move in and make arrests. But I would charge them all with felony. Take these young people and hang them with a felony arrest and potentially a felony conviction early on in their life, which is going to be very disruptive as they move through life.

They're going to have to learn the hard way. Forget about citations. Forget about the reason I say forget about citations. They're not going to show up for court. And then that'll turn it to a warrant. And if they're arrested on the warrant, the jails won't hold them anywhere, immediate release, you know, no bail, that sort of thing. So that's going to be ineffective, and I think it's a waste of time, which is why my initial objective would be let's regain control of this area here immediately. And if they want to gather at another area, I'd have teams of, because this is kind of what we did with. the county parks that have teams of officers that could immediately be dispatched to an area that they may want to recongregate. And you do that all over it. And you make sure the resources move with them, the tear gas. And I know, I say tear gas, a lot of people, you know, will gas. We go, well, you know, isn't that a little heavy handed? No, it's not. First of all, it's non-lethal. Secondly, The objective is to gain control, to utilize your resources, to overcome the resistance. And if there's 200 of them and only 10 officers, what the heck is you supposed to do? So, you know, there's just a few examples of what can be done. What I would do if they were under 18, you know, and you make a rest. I'd go after their parents. for a parent in this case, to go after their government benefits because most of these people, you're going to find their parents are on some sort of snack program, rent assistance, some government assistance, and I started whacking away at that. So I say the first time, okay, $250 is coming off your rent assistance. $250 coming off your... SNAP benefits. And every time that kid's arrested for the same violation, up it. 500 coming off your SNAP benefits. 500 coming off your rent assistance. This would be better than writing a citation of which they're never going to pay. You just take the... The last idea ends it. Because you need multiple interventions to deal with this. And I think it's to one-dimensional right now. It's trying to make a rest. Well, and they're only making three or four rest at a time when 200, 250 kids show up. And most of them have juvenile records. But taking a whack at someone's rent assistance or snap benefits, that ends it. That ends this thing instantly. Better than tear gas, it ends it. Because mom will beat the ever-loving crap out of her kid. If her kid is costing her $250 every single time he decides to act like a juvenile delinquent. And she can whine all day long. But of course, there are the contingencies, the social service industrial complex contingencies who will say, that's racist. That's racist. Well, you know, that's part of the problem is that everybody's afraid of being called racist because let's face it, most of the kids doing this.

are black kids. That's what we're not supposed to say out loud. And so if you do anything heavy-handed, instantly the cops are bad, the cops are racist. And I think that's why these police agencies are tentative. You look at all of them, Hyde Park. There was just a takeover at Trader Joe. Sometimes it's not public spaces, David. Sometimes it's private spaces. There's takeovers at Walmart or whatever. The cops have the intel. They're monitoring social media. It's not like the cops aren't doing their jobs and aren't monitoring the frequent flyers who are out there posting this crap on social media. They are. So what prevents them from proactively dealing with this? Accusations of racism, I think. Yeah, too bad. You know, that weaponization of that term racist does not have any effect that it used to, especially with the new generation. They're not as fearful. As a matter of fact, I'm seeing instances now where these new generation people are provoking this sort of response. They call racist so they can laugh in their face because they're not affected by it. Like, you know, they used to be affected. tactic in the past, but it's not anymore. The other thing you can do with monitoring social media, that's a good point. I'm glad you brought that up because that's another tactic that needs to be employed. But for instance, Milwaukee Police Department has policing. Those are people under the age of 21, not old enough to be an officer, so they work in administration doing clerical work. Put a team of them together. Look, those, you know, police say that generation is very savvy online. And try to infiltrate these groups, these chats, try to infiltrate so that they can gather the intel. Hey, they're planning one Saturday at, you know, touch and such an address. So you can be ready ahead of time. So, you know, the thing is you've got to just keep trying different creative tactics. until you find something that works. But in the meantime, if you just want to stay in the reactive mode... You're not going to be very effective. No. And you said tear gas zones heavy-handed. No, you say this is the moment you've got to declare an unlawful assembly. So people just there milling about, high-fiving, playing music, even drinking, probably, you know, whatever, that's, that's annoying. These are pop-up riots. So the moment someone throws the first brick, the moment someone lights the first fire, Then you get an unlawful assembly. Then just let loose the tear gas. And by the way, tear gas, we mean pepper spray. And when did that become a dirty word? That's how you disperse crowds. It's just, it works. That's why it exists because it works to disperse crowds. So, I mean, why are we even talking about that as like a heavy-handed tactic? These are pop-up riots, not just, you know, not just hooligan kids gathering to drink, you know, drink beer and listen to music too loudly.

Well, you know, like we all know, the number one goal of any law enforcement agency is to preserve the peace. And you can't wait until the first gunshot is founded, until the first brick gets thrown, until the first fire started. And in some of these instances, they damage law enforcement vehicles. things like that. You can't wait for it to happen. You want to prevent it from happening. And based on your experience, because all you really have to do is be able to articulate it if this thing goes to court, that we can't wait for this. You know, we're talking about people can be injured, killed, whatever. Law enforcement officers can be injured, killed. And we have to do things to prevent that from happening. We've dealt with this before. Look at all the instances that you mentioned earlier in our conversation here that have happened nationwide. There's your evidence right there. Hey, look, we cannot let this come to this. And, you know, somebody in police administration has to have the colonies. Fortunately, at MPD, there aren't too many adults to talk like I'm talking now in terms of rationalizing this stuff because you know you're going to get your...

groups of cop haters, civil rights, you know, and the NAACP and all the other nonsense. And you just have to have the will and you have to have the courage to stand up to them, articulate it, be articulate in this thing, and just keep on doing what you are supposed to do, what you took an oath to do, and what the public expects you to do. I think public at this point expect them to do nothing. That's the problem is that the expectations now are for the police to do nothing. I'm running out of time in this, but I will say this. Every, I think every single one of these has resulted in either a stabbing or a shooting. And so you could plausibly say you're saving lives because people are getting hurt and killed at these things. And if black lives really do matter, then nobody would want to see these teen takeovers continue. Or I shouldn't even call them that pop-up riots continue. These pop-up riots are organized by delinquents, by criminal delinquents, by gangbangers. They're not organized by just kids bored. And they always result in criminal violence, always. So, David, thank you very much for your thoughts on this. I appreciate it. Hopefully people are paying attention. My pleasure, Vicki. Be well. Great to have you on the program. And we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. That's going to do it for me on the program today. Hope somebody won the money, $2,500, having that big 250th birthday party celebration contest going on. Coming up on tomorrow's program, we're going to get into that big indictment of Antifa in Minnesota and also the indictments related to the massive welfare fraud taking place there. In the meantime, I hope everybody has a great afternoon. This is the Vicki McKenna Show. I'll see you tomorrow.