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Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
Tonight we continue our special series on nuclear
energy in Wisconsin.
Reporter Art Hackett takes us back to the last effort to build
a nuclear plant in the state and we'll see how area
residents took action.
We'll also tell you how the Wisconsin Presidential
Primary played a key role in national politics
40 years ago and turned the spotlight on a little known
senator from Massachusetts.
But first, this year's primary is less than a week away.
And we have the final report in our series on
how the presidential candidates stand on issues
important to Wisconsin residents.
Reporter Frederica Freiberg looks into how people are coping
with prescription drug costs and how the candidates
propose to solve that problem.
Good morning Canada Drug Service.
This is Bethany May I help you?
A recent morning at this suburban Milwaukee
mail order prescription store was a busy one.
Okay, is that the 70 milligrams taken once a week?
The Canada Drug Service store in Greenfield is
one of six in Wisconsin.
Two more stores are opening soon.
There's a market for prescription drugs that come
cheaper north of the border.
We have the one order here, one milligram, it comes in a
100 tablet quantity for 6297.
David Cron and his wife came to this store to mail order
their prescriptions from Canada.
Cron says they saved about 60 percent off what they
pay at the local pharmacy.
It's something I wouldn't do if I didn't have to.
I'm driven to this point.
Seniors and others without adequate prescription drug
insurance coverage can pay hundreds of dollars
each month for medicine.
In Wisconsin, the senior care program covers the costs
for those of low income.
But many people don't qualify and have little or
no prescription coverage.
A growing number of them are seeking relief at places
like Canada Drug Service.
We're paying my wife and I a thousand dollars a
month and I think I'll be down to 600 a month now.
That's why I say I'll be at Leeds State.
The US Food and Drug Administration says
these storefront operations are illegal.
The FDA says those who aid US residents in purchasing
drugs from other countries are violating federal law.
And the FDA says it cannot guarantee the
safety of the drugs.
Still, the FDA has said it will not go after customers.
And so far, neither the feds nor the state of Wisconsin
has shut the storefronts down.
The owner of the Canada Drug Service Store in
Greenfield says there's nothing illegal about it.
We are a prescription forwarding agency.
All we're doing is forwarding the prescription
to the Canadian pharmacy.
We work with a group of seven family owned
pharmacies in Vancouver.
And they process the orders and shift them to the customer.
Canada Drug Service says it provides a safe way to
get prescriptions from licensed Canadian pharmacies.
That's actually the generic name for Google Fies.
But the service has sharp critics even outside the FDA.
These are big mail order operations.
They aren't pharmacies in the normal sense of what
we think of as a pharmacy.
They're big warehouses that are buying drugs from
anywhere in the world that they can get them.
And they're shipping them out to unsuspecting consumers
in the United States.
Chris Decker, CEO of the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin,
says Americans buying Canadian drugs cannot be sure of what
they're getting or from where.
He says it is not a scare tactic to question the
safety of Canadian drugs.
The Canadian International Pharmacy Association is
outraged by charges that the medicine it chips to the US
is inferior, not strictly regulated or unsafe, saying
its pharmacies have, quote, never harmed an American yet.
Further, the association says every drug that crosses
the border from its licensed pharmacies is approved by
the Canadian government's equivalent of the FDA.
Canada is estimated to do a billion dollar business
with Americans buying its medicine this year.
But that billion dollar business pales in comparison
to this year's projected 200 billion dollar pharmaceutical
business in the US.
And US drug manufacturers' profits are tops.
According to a recent investigation
by Time Magazine, Pfizer had a 2002 profit of more than
28 percent, twice the profit of General Electric, and
nine times that of Walmart.
Chris Decker says part of why they need that profit
is to plow money into research and development of
new disease-curing drugs.
The miracle of modern medicine is the medicine
itself. Our seniors should not have to choose
between food and medicine.
The issue of high prescription drug cost is
politically high profile.
Governor Jim Doyle wants to help state residents
buy medicine from Canada.
There is one thing the federal government could do tomorrow
to bring down health care costs for every American who
is taking prescription drugs.
Allow individuals and states to buy safe prescription
drugs from Canada.
As part of his state of the state address, Governor Jim
Doyle announced to launch a drug savings website, giving
Wisconsin residents the power to purchase prescription
drugs directly from Canada, through pharmacies that
the state would verify as reliable, reputable, and safe.
But here's what the governor currently says on the website.
Most experts agree that with some basic precautions
prescription drugs can be purchased safely and often at
substantial savings from several Canadian Internet pharmacies.
I would like to provide you with the names of those
websites, but I can't.
The Bush administration refuses
to permit states to help people save money by purchasing
medicine from Canada.
In contrast, the newly launched state of Minnesota website,
RxConnect, does contain links to two state-inspected
Canadian pharmacies along with downloadable order forms.
But the FDA says the Minnesota site is illegal.
Officials say they are evaluating the risk
the site might present to the public before deciding whether
to file a lawsuit to stop it.
The FDA says Wisconsin is wise to wait.
They're not helping the citizens out, the people out.
They're helping the drug companies out.
Marvin and Janice Van Lysel got fed up a while ago.
They didn't wait for an Internet pharmacy
or a storefront drug service.
This drug, which is for my diabetes, is in Canada,
256 a pill.
In the United States, it's $6.33 a pill.
Several years ago, Van Lysel started making trips to Canada
by car to fill their most costly prescriptions at a
pharmacy just over the border.
We are saving exactly $2,568 a year.
The Van Lysel say it makes them angry that the
FDA highlights not cost savings, but safety risks.
The Canadian government is not selling unsafe drugs to its
people, and they're not selling unsafe drugs to their people
and other countries either.
A solution can be found.
If, as Governor Doyle says, that allowing individuals and states
to buy prescription drugs from Canada would bring down health
care costs for every American, then where do the presidential
candidates stand on the issue?
The Bush administration opposes legalizing Canadian drug
imports at this time, but will study whether drugs can be
safely imported from Canada.
The new Medicare bill, the president signed into law
prohibits negotiating lower drug prices for patients.
These Democratic candidates say they support getting
prescription drugs from Canada.
L. Sharpton has not commented on the issue.
Kucinich says the government should limit what
manufacturers can charge for prescription drugs.
He would also impose higher taxes on pharmaceutical
company profits to cut prices.
Kerry and Edwards support bringing more generic drugs
on the market, and all of them supported expanding
Medicare to include a prescription drug benefit.
But these candidates specifically opposed
mandating recipients to join HMOs to access coverage.
That one pill is 189.
In Wisconsin, candidates shouldn't have a hard time
capitalizing on the rising tide of resentment over high
prescription drug costs.
And the thing that irritates me the most is our government.
Well, I don't like to get ripped off.
And I think I'm getting ripped off.
This was the third report in our series on issues of
particular importance to Wisconsin voters as we head into
Tuesday's presidential primary.
All three reports are on our website at
www.wpt.org/inwashonson. Once there, you'll find a video
link to Frederica Freiberg's reports on manufacturing,
dairy, and prescription drug costs and the candidates'
positions on those issues.
You can also check out WisconsinVote.org for more on
the presidential candidates.
Beginning this Sunday evening, Wisconsin vote
will feature the Democratic candidates' appearances at
a health forum in Milwaukee.
The candidates will address health care related issues
and their comments will be streamed in their entirety.
You can also hear more from the candidates on Monday,
February 16th during a program called Wisconsin Vote, the
Democratic Presidential Primary.
Frederica Freiberg, along with Dan Jones of Milwaukee
Public Television, will question the candidates
about a variety of topics important to state residents.
You can watch this on Monday, February 16th
at 7pm in Milwaukee and 8 o'clock statewide on
Wisconsin Public Television.
Wisconsin's presidential primary is shaping up to be
a must-have victory for many of the Democratic candidates.
This is a shift from past election years when the primary
was scheduled in March or April and was considered by
some to be less relevant.
But that wasn't always the case.
More than 40 years ago, the Wisconsin Presidential
Primary was make or break time for the competing candidates.
Reporter Andy Sof takes a look back.
In 1960, John F.
Kennedy came to Wisconsin and he
was looking for a fight.
I am today announcing my candidacy in the
Wisconsin Presidential Primary on April 5th.
No one had challenged the Massachusetts Senator in the New
Hampshire Primary, so Wisconsin became the first contest of
the 1960 presidential race.
And the story of what happened would become a chapter of
this campaign classic and the subject of this groundbreaking
film, which 40 years before reality TV followed
the candidates every move.
"Now you've got to have my hands for the guys!"
Today, a candidate for president competes in a crowded series
of primaries, but in 1960 few states held primaries.
Most states still allowed the political parties to
determine who they would support for president.
Wisconsin primary has had a great tradition.
Stretching back to the days of Governor LaFalla
in 1905, who helped design this law in order to permit the
people of this state, as well as the people of other states,
to participate in the selection of their presidential nominee.
Wisconsin played a critical role in Kennedy's candidacy.
What John Kennedy did was he used the primary as a way
of showing his electability.
In a primary, you do get a different kind of candidate.
You get much more somebody who really can appeal to
the electorate generally, both in the primary and
in the general election.
Kennedy was viewed by the Democratic Party
establishment as too young, too inexperienced, and too
Catholic to succeed nationally.
A big Wisconsin victory would force the party to
take his candidacy seriously.
His coming to Wisconsin was a direct challenge to another
presidential hopeful, Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey.
"You will regret the press's attempt for you and me."
A lot of us felt Humphrey was sort of our senator.
He was sort of the third senator from Wisconsin.
We'd had some Republican senators and the Democrats had
to look to Humphrey next door to support their viewpoints
in the United States Senate.
It was personality.
Humphrey was a tremendous orator
and was a Midwest mayor.
"I made the business manifest at last hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of business because of reduced farm income.
Instead of you reading about who you ought to have as
president of life magazine, you ought to take a good
look at it and flesh.
You ought to hear what they've got to say because let me
tell you something, life, high fortune, look, and
newsweek, don't get a whole amount of your dairy prices.
And I know they'll average."
Humphrey was in his element in the Western Wisconsin farm belt.
Kennedy's support was in the urban and industrialized
areas, along Lake Michigan and the Fox River.
Kennedy had his whole family in here and they were doing a great
job of campaigning for him.
And Humphrey had his supporters here that came over and it
was a personality contest as primaries sometimes get.
Though I do think the hidden issue was Catholicism.
Kennedy of course is a Roman Catholic, a pretty
congregationless and some observers think that
the election is resolved into a religious struggle.
But now I don't relate to this thing.
"He makes the nation the key of disproportionate importance."
Catholics made up 30% of Wisconsin's population.
"I suppose I should say the thing that is a Catholic and
we're Catholic also, I think that has a lot to do with it."
While Kennedy went on to win 56% of the total vote,
it wasn't the decisive victory he'd hoped for.
"He's the one that we've done well.
I truly feel that we've done as well
and maybe better than we had the right to expect."
Humphrey ended primary night in high spirits despite the loss.
But his failure to carry Wisconsin would harm him as he
went on to face Kennedy again in the West Virginia primary.
"You know, West Virginia is the very interesting beautiful
state that kills and valleys.
He just worked in valleys."
Ironically, it would be West Virginia, an almost
completely Protestant state, that would give Kennedy his
greatest primary victory.
And with the two wins, Kennedy showed that a
direct appeal to voters in primaries could help pave
the road to the White House.
"I think that's the final.
It's the final.
Great history."
Last week, we began our special series on nuclear
energy issues in Wisconsin.
Currently, there are three nuclear power plants in our
state, one in Kiwani and the two-point-beach plants.
Tonight, reporter Art Hackett tells us the last effort
to build a nuclear plant in Wisconsin became a kind
of David and Goliath story, a battle of sorts between a
powerful utility company and residents of rural Dunn County.
You won't find Tyrone on the state highway map.
The name comes from a long
abandoned ferry landing in Dunn County on the south
bank of the Chippewa River.
Amidst rolling hills, there's a flat plain.
Try and imagine two nuclear power plants
exactly like this one, superimposed on the landscape.
It was to have been called Tyrone Energy Park.
"So this is Tyrone.
This is the plant right here."
Well, the only physical evidence that's not.
"That's the only thing there is really."
What happened to Tyrone?
It's a story of mistaken assumptions by
an electric utility, agitation by local activists and farmers
who got an unwanted visit from the electric company's Landman.
"He come in with a false face.
That's what he did.
He says, 'Gee, you have a beautiful
place here.
Is this ever nice?'
And all of a sudden, well, we like to buy your property."
"We looked at each other and we said no."
Harold and Lucille Bowers Farm was one of several
northern states power, now known as XL Energy, wanted to
buy in 1972 to build Tyrone.
"You should have seen the places they wanted us to move
on, in exchange for our place."
Harold Bowers says the alternate locations were so far away
he could no longer share equipment with his father.
But utilities have the power to take property through
condemnation if the land is needed for a project.
The Bowers were forced to sell.
Tyrone was part of a nationwide nuclear building boom in
the mid-70s.
NSP and three other utilities from New York
to Kansas wanted to build six identical plants to take
advantage of economies of scale.
Meanwhile, NSP began recruiting employees to go out and tell the
public about what was in store.
"We talked about the design, why we selected that
area, the need for power, the options of power."
The utility viewed nuclear power as a cleaner
alternative to coal.
Local activists felt otherwise.
Ted Miner was a seed salesman at the time.
Will Fanto was a member of an environmental
group at Udlia O'Clair.
"NSP's hope at the time was that they would find a college group
that would come out and support and endorse their proposal."
At NSP's request, the group undertook a
study of the project.
"I wasn't part of that particular study committee,
but there were four people that were on it, and the four
people reached a conclusion that nuclear power was not
the best choice or opportunity for Western Wisconsin."
"Well, it was basically the waste."
"Yeah, the waste problem.
Nobody, and today they don't know what they're
going to do with it."
"It appeared to be in my mind a good option, it was safe, it
was clean for the environment."
"It's safe, it's clean, and it's cheap."
"And if we don't build it, you're going to
freeze in the dark."
"They said that more than once, the lights are going
out in Western Wisconsin without the power plants."
Former Wisconsin Public Service Commission Chairman Charles
Chiquetti says it wasn't just a problem of nuclear waste.
Area landowners just didn't see how they would benefit
from the plants being there.
"My recollection of the main opposition was that this was
going to a) upset the lifestyle and change the rural fabric
of this part of the country.
And b) it was really being built for citizens
quite far away, mostly in Minneapolis, St.
Paul." Retired in SP Vice President
Roland Jensen says they would have been very large plants.
Each one doubled the size of Wisconsin's Kiwani reactor.
"From the time that our great-grandfather's got into
the business, the demand for electricity increased
to an average of 7% a year.
So he said, "Well, we've got to really build some big
ones because that's going."
Tyrone was supported by organized labor, but opposed
by an array of protest groups, with names like Badger's Safe
Energy and Northern Thunder.
But by 1974, Tyrone faced another problem.
Per customer use of electricity dropped two years in a row.
The first such decrease since the Great Depression.
"Some of us at least started to see that this could not
continue, but it's hard after you spent your whole lifetime.
The whole industry's lifetime, growing like that,
to all of a sudden say, "Now we're in a new era."
With demand dropping, NSP decided to cut the project in
half, there would be one nuclear plant at Tyrone, not two.
The company's work at the site began with the
drilling of a test well.
The well-drilling gave protesters a rallying point.
"Enough of us said this is enough.
We marched into that area about two dozen of us
and occupied that site in non-violent fashion, shut down
the well-drilling operation, and it caused ultimately a
month later the Chairman of the Public Service Commission to
fly to that very block and talk with a much larger group of
us than about the Tyrone plant.
Listen to our story and agree to hold hearings
on the Tyrone plant."
Former Public Service Commission Chairman Chiketti says
hearings would have taken place even without the protests.
Wisconsin law had recently been changed to require
PSC approval of new plants before they were built.
But the protests motivated Chiketti to take a road
trip to find out what the Tyrone protests were about.
"As I certainly had been visited in my office and more
normal kinds of surroundings, by utility executives who
wanted to look me in the eye and tell me what it was that
they thought Wisconsin needed, what their companies needed,
what was in the best interest of their consumers.
So I thought as a quid pro quo, I
would in fact make my trek up and visit not just in a formal
setting, but informally kind of the equivalent to rural
constituents' idea of what sitting in my office would be."
In March of 1979, the Public Service Commission
decided nuclear plants were more expensive than
coal and turned down NSP's request to build Tyrone.
"Because the lawyer said we could challenge that
decision, probably win."
Jensen says NSP wasn't sure it wanted to win.
Jensen was asked to figure out how much it would
cost if the plant were built.
"So we did, we did an analysis and it said no, it just doesn't
make economic sense.
To do this, so then we scrapped it."
The study showed building Tyrone would drive
electric rates up 15%.
"So there was no sadness."
"I don't think so, there were a couple of guys who
still think it was wrong."
"Rong because we should have built and been good
for the customer and good for the company."
"We lost our property and then the PSC said they couldn't build
it. Why wasn't that decision made before condemnation?"
The Bowers eventually got their property back, but they didn't
celebrate the PSC's decision.
"I don't think we had a party because I tell you, from all
the lawyer fees that we had, we always wanted to hold our heads
above water.
That's that time."
25 years later, the activists remember Tyrone
as a battle fought and won.
Roland Jensen's only reminder is a red valve made for the
test well.
It was given to him as a retirement gift.
The valve and the concrete block which eventually did
cap the well are the only reminders of Wisconsin's nuclear
power plant that never was.
The Wisconsin Public Service Commission order, terminating
the Tyrone project, came 25 years ago next month.
In all, Northern States power spent about
$108 million on Tyrone.
And as part of the settlement with the PSC, the utility
was allowed to charge customers around $82 million
to recover some of the expenses, even though the
plant was never built.
The cost was split between customers in
Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Our series on nuclear energy issues in Wisconsin
continues next week.
We'll take a look at the future of nuclear power in this state,
even as Wisconsin's lawmakers consider legislation that
would repeal the moratorium on building new nuclear plants.
That's our program tonight.
Thanks for joining us.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
Good night.
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