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Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
Each week we bring you stories about the people, places,
and issues in our state.
Tonight, residents of Northern Wisconsin speak out on the
economy and homeland security and the nation listens.
We'll also reflect back on how agriculture became such
an integral part of Wisconsin life, a life that is both
grueling and rewarding.
Agriculture will certainly be on the agenda as
candidates visit Wisconsin in advance of our presidential
primary and February 17th.
Prior to the primary, in Wisconsin, we'll examine
candidate stances on issues of particular
importance to state voters.
We'll look at ag issues and prescription drug plans.
Tonight, Frederica Freiberg begins this special
series of reports with a look at manufacturing.
Our bread and butter for most of the last 70 years has been
that manufacturing sector.
Maybe even more than seven years, going back into the
1920s and 1915, we've been a big manufacturing state.
And we've stayed that way.
The state's chief economist says Wisconsin ranks
second only to Indiana in the percentage of workers
employed in manufacturing.
More than a half million such workers here.
But those manufacturing jobs are in a free fall.
Since 2000, Wisconsin has lost nearly 80,000 such jobs.
That's extraordinary loss for a sector as important
to us as manufacturing is.
That loss has a face, thousands of faces.
I'm trying that to be bitter about it.
Sue Krueger worked for Amcoh Medal in Milwaukee
for more than 30 years.
The corner office there was main right there.
Working her way up the ladder, Krueger was human resources
manager when Amcoh closed the plant just before the holidays.
Like leaving home.
30 years.
Nearly 100 workers at this Milwaukee metal
plant lost their jobs.
Don Dobrat says when he started with Amcoh in 1965, 750
people worked at the plant.
The days he says when Milwaukee was proudly known as the
machine shop of the world.
A developer now plans to raise the Amcoh property.
There was very little money put into this plant.
That's the biggest problem.
Why it shut down, it became obsolete.
But there's another reason.
Chinese competition.
Amcoh union leaders say that Chinese started
doing some of the same type metal work cheaper.
As a result, displaced workers from Amcoh are getting
tuition assistance from a federal trade program that
helps employees that are hurt by foreign competition.
We cannot continue on this path because these are
family supporting jobs and they're going to be
pretty hard to replace the majority of our people.
And because you acted to stimulate our economy with
tax relief, this economy is strong and growing stronger.
President Bush drew applause for that assessment in his
state of the union address.
But workers in the former machine shop of the world
don't feel like they're experiencing an economy that's
strong and growing stronger.
That's because Wisconsin manufacturing
job loss continues.
According to just released state figures, 2003 marked
that sector's fourth straight year of decline in Wisconsin.
So where is the growth?
I guess that old saying about where is the
beef is the key here.
I think one of the interesting things about that growth is I'm
a little bit anxious about some of what may be growth generated
in China that shows up in our gross national product because
of overall product level.
But doesn't show up in our general economy that most
people are, you know, that strikes most people.
That is their jobs and their wages.
So in other words, there's growth because we're
actually purchasing things back from China that they're
making that we used to.
Correct. That shows up in our overall product.
We routinely, they're undercut by anywhere from 33 to 65
percent under our price.
Mike Retzer is controller at WG Strohwig Tool-in-Dye
in suburban Milwaukee.
And while his business is going strong now, he
worries about its future.
He blames unchecked free trade for manufacturing job loss and
plant closings all around him.
You drive through Milwaukee and every month it seems
there's more vacancies in not only retail but factories
closing up and across the country.
It's the same story.
I fear for our future and not our future long term.
This is all happening so quick that we've only got
a couple years to fix it or we're going to lose the
critical mass necessary to have a manufacturing
infrastructure like we have.
The manufacturing infrastructure at this plant is cutting it.
Retzer says it has to be to keep up.
He says this company invests millions of dollars
each year in new technology.
As you can see here we're cutting again with high speed
cutting copper perillium which becomes part of a
plastic injection mold.
And obviously all very high-tech.
Yes. This is being run from a computer program that
was loaded and we set it up and go on to the next
machine while this runs.
And so in essence this is now running with no labor.
Very highly skilled labor though that what you have here.
Absolutely. This is high-tech manufacturing.
We train our employees constantly.
So compared to what a year employees it might
make on average more than 50 grand a year.
What are they making in China?
Boy they're making 27, 50 cents an hour from what I
understand. Maybe up to 90 cents in the more populous
coastal cities but that's for a fully trained engineer.
So we hardly stand a chance.
To understand any chance at all, state economist Terry Ludeman
says companies must upgrade.
First and most important we have to get more productive
with the workers that we have in manufacturing.
We have to raise our production our total overall
value in that industry.
One of the ways you do that is you bring the technology to bear
in that particular industry.
That means we have to somehow generate investment in
that manufacturing sector.
How do you compete against the millions of highly educated
Chinese and Indians that are now doing some of this
work for much less money?
Well I think that's a good question but again you have to
keep going back to productivity.
You have to keep going back to how can we raise
our workers beyond that.
Now one of the problems has been lately that the
capital has flowed to China.
That's where the investment has taken place rather than here.
So something we have to do in Wisconsin as well as the United
States is find a way to get that investment to seek our, you
know, our places, our geographic areas rather than China.
Now I know that's easier said than done but that's
a puzzle that we very simply have to solve.
Most all the candidates for president say they
have the policy pieces to help solve that puzzle.
On the issue of job creation, president Bush stands behind his
tax cuts, dividend and capital gains tax relief and his newly
announced worker training plan.
That plan would funnel $250 million to community
colleges for training workers in high tech job skills.
Several democratic candidates propose old fashioned
public works projects to put Americans back to work.
Cousinage would put 500 billion into rebuilding
schools, buildings and bridges.
Sharpton about half that.
Dean II includes rebuilding infrastructure in his $100
billion fund to restore America.
These democratic candidates propose tax credits to
manufacturers who create jobs.
Several call for eliminating corporate loopholes they say
create incentives for American companies to set up overseas.
On the issue of trade, president Bush says he
stands committed to free trade, wants to lower trade
barriers and make agreements with individual countries.
All the democratic candidates want strict enforcement
of trade agreement rules, especially in the area of labor
and environmental standards.
Some of the Democrats come out swinging on trade issues.
Sharpton and Cousinage opposing the North America
free trade agreement.
The candidate's platforms don't apparently offer
much comfort to workers who just lost their jobs.
Our politicians pay lip service and that's about it.
None of what happens in the race for the White House
can come soon enough for people already shut out of
manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin.
But policy shifts could shape what happens next.
Next week, Frederica Freiberg reports on the state of
Wisconsin's dairy industry and how the presidential candidates
weigh in on dairy issues.
You can get more information on the candidates and
their views by logging on to www.wisconsinvote.org.
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We move now from Wisconsin's economic future to
its agricultural past.
Author Jerry Apps delights in sharing details from
his days growing up on a Wachera County dairy farm.
His books recall a time when the work was hard,
but the pace of life was perhaps a little slower.
It is mid-August and I'm standing at the edge of
a large field on my farm.
A slight breeze blows from the southwest.
The field where I stand is no longer cultivated hasn't
been for more than 40 years.
Yet among the wild grasses that are returned to this land that
was once prairie, big blue stem, little blue stem, Indian
grass, the remnants of cornrows are still evident.
I look across the field of waving plants and
I listen to the wind.
The wind has always been a great mystery to me, one of nature's
powerful and visible forces.
Beyond the wind I hear calls from an earlier
time, reminders of my growing up years on a farm,
located less than two miles from where I'm standing.
When I was in grade school for whatever reason I sent off
an article on rural hunting to outdoor life magazine.
A handwritten, I had this idea that I could write as well as
those articles I was reading.
I was wrong, of course, but that was the first
thing that I wrote.
I was probably 12 years old.
I have probably 12 or 14 books now that relate
in one way or another to rural history in the land.
I'm writing about the land.
I'm writing about the relationship of human
beings to the land.
I'm writing about the source of everything that
allows humanity to exist.
That's what I'm doing.
And it takes many forms.
It takes sometimes a form that looks very trivial.
And at other times it becomes very philosophical.
Sometimes it's poetic.
Sometimes it's just a dumb, ha ha story.
On a rainy day and summer, after the morning chores were
finished, my father, my brothers and I often crawled up the
wooden ladder to the hemal.
Sprawled on the fresh hay to talk and rest, listened
to the raindrops pat her on the wood shingled roof.
In dry weather I could see sunlight shining through
the shingles of many places.
And I always wondered why the roof didn't leak.
But once the rain started, the cedar shingles swelled
and filled the cracks.
Jerry is a master with the written word.
And along with that he is a masterful storyteller.
So even if you come from a big city, really know nothing
at all about the Midwest.
And you just by perchance would come upon Jerry speaking and
telling one of his stories, you would be totally captivated.
The Christmas program was a community wide event.
All of the neighbors came, whether they had kids or
not, the uncles and the aunts and the cousins
from far distant places.
And Mrs.
Janks is playing the piano, has her back to the
stage, has her back to the students, has her back to this
little mowers that stuck its head out top of the piano.
And it prayed so it stops right in the middle of
the stage, right by the naked doll, the baby Jesus.
And the way in the major went out with the giggles.
The front roll is "Who high?"
Mrs. Janks' neck is getting redder.
She is angry and pretty soon everybody in the
school sees the smiles.
And everybody is "Who high?"
and she is fit to be tight.
She whirls around in her chair and sees the mowers
and starts to giggle herself.
And people remember that as the most outstanding Christmas
program we've ever had.
For a long time I wanted to discount the fact that I had
grown up in a farm that we did not have electricity, that
we didn't have running water, that we milked cows by hand.
All of this that I went to a country school, I didn't
want anybody to know that.
I wanted people to think that here is a
cosmopolitan young guy.
I mean he's smart enough to graze away from college,
he surely didn't have a background like I had.
People often say to me, "Well, all you're doing is writing
nostalgia, you know, that didn't get you anywhere."
But sometimes, sometimes, when you write something
that's nostalgia, you can bring somebody into the
story and in the process you can teach some history.
They are all around us and we take them for granted.
They are the symbols of our rural past, scattered
throughout the countryside, on farmsteds, in villages,
and at the crossroads where dusty trails once converged.
Many are easily seen, others less so, as time has aged,
rusted, and hidden them behind the icons of progress.
And a man would straddle a log with one of those big broad
axes and hew off on each side until it looked like that.
Can you imagine how much work that would have been?
We feel very strongly, and a bit chauvinistic about the
talent here in Wisconsin.
So we came up with pride of Wisconsin and Jerry
abses the first recipient.
It was just a natural.
He epitomizes not only just a good, solid author, but
someone who values our state.
By one liner is, when we forget our histories, we forget who
we are, and we forget our histories, we forget who we are.
And today, our society is such a hurry to move on, to
always on to the next thing.
Many people sell them take time to revisit where they
have been.
There's a line I have in one of my books
that goes something like, "The best of what is next
has been here all along."
That's a powerful line.
The best of what is next has been here all along.
That requires that we know what's been here all along.
And that's why I'm so caught up with history.
[Music]
As we mentioned earlier, agricultural and manufacturing
problems are sure to be addressed by the presidential
candidates while they're campaigning in Wisconsin.
And there are a host of other national issues that directly
touch all of us.
Issues such as Homeland Security, International
Trade, and what America's role in the world should be.
Contemplating those issues and acting on our beliefs
is the responsibility of everyone in a democracy.
That's the premise behind, by the people, a national
project spearheaded by McNeil-Lare productions.
By the people gathered citizens in ten cities around the
country this past weekend, including Green Bay for a
national day of deliberation.
Present, armed.
Patriotism is often celebrated in song.
But the hard work, the heavy lifting of citizenship,
looks more like this.
This world's changing and we're going to have to
have the security measures.
It's a big, bigger picture.
We need to try and step back from our civil
liberties a little bit.
It involves discussion, consensus, deliberation.
Government spending has to be tightened.
So there's going to be a lot of cuts.
We're all going to feel a pinch.
We don't have enough money to provide health care
for all of our citizens in this country.
We don't have enough money to finance a
top-notch education system.
And different points of view.
It's pretty fundamental, but sometimes we forget.
Democracy is about talking.
And how do we regain those liberties if
it has gone too far?
This exercise in democracy and citizenship was
held in Green Bay.
A day long session where ordinary citizens got
together to talk, to converse about our country.
We have not seen a good debate.
I think we need to have a thorough discussion
of civil liberties.
I think there is a danger if we are not careful that we will
compete upon civil liberties.
Why Green Bay?
Title Town is in Brown County, one of the 10 sites around
the country participating in this national conversation.
This national conversation with more than 700 people.
The talk centers on two issues, two issues of crucial
concern to our country, the economy and homeland security.
And who were the talkers?
Well, here are two of them.
Virginia Wanderersky and Kay Freishlag.
Kay Freishlag is a homemaker who makes her home in Depeer.
75-year-old Virginia Wanderersky, a widow,
is also from Depeer.
Two different people.
How do they see the issues of
the economy and security?
Two issues that confront our country.
Kay's husband works as the chief financial officer for
a company based in Atlanta.
They have two children, one in college, one a year away.
Like many, they are feeling a bit of a squeeze.
We put off buying another car, you know, just
refinance the one we had.
So you think about things a lot more.
You make decisions.
Let's have dinner at home tonight.
Let's don't go out to eat.
Just want to get it started.
The economy makes itself felt in the everyday.
For example, in housing, the Freishlag's plan to move
to Atlanta in the next year.
They have their house on the market and Kay's noticed
that it's been slow to sell.
When we moved here, we bought the house of 24
hours. It was on the market.
We've been on the market three months and it's just not, you
know, you don't feel quite.
I people are jumping into moving up, changing houses.
So I want to see, you know, what are the other people feel?
This is Hank, my husband.
Virginia and her husband lived a life that was defined
by work and their family.
My priority was so that they were educated and had
a better life than, you know, that they didn't have
to struggle like we did.
We worked hard.
We worked all our lives.
And the hard work paid off.
Times were good.
Her husband worked for one
company for 32 years.
But then the company folded and at age 53, her
husband was unemployed.
The children were all, you know, through school
and away from home.
And I said, it felt like we got to the top of
the ladder and fell down.
That was about the way it felt.
Fortunately, her husband got a job with the county.
The benefits from that job have proved to be
Virginia's lifeline.
Well, I'm still drawing his pension that he drew when he
retired from Oakland County.
So if it wasn't for Oakland County, I don't
know what I'd be doing.
[inaudible]
Both women have a keen interest in the world.
Kaye participates in book clubs, reads news periodicals.
She and her family had a extended period
of living abroad.
That experience of being outside America, looking in, may
explain a certain skepticism she has about the way America
is portrayed in the media.
I think people are smarter than what the media thinks we are.
And she's skeptical about the way America is tackling the
issue of homeland security.
We're playing a game.
We're playing a game to try
to make us feel better.
When I wish they would just take this money and
get a few more FBI agents out there, a few more.
Let's learn some foreign languages.
Both women have opinions about America's place in the world.
Our responsibilities, our security.
If there's a threat, well, then we have to defend ourselves.
But if there's no threat, I don't think we should
-- and I still think we have to have compassion.
And we need our neighbors.
Our other countries, just like our neighbors, you have to
get along with the neighbors.
Kaye and Virginia.
Two people who are part of the By the People Project.
Two people who are part of this national conversation about
our country and its future.
And the whole of our brave.
So, what did people have to say during Saturday's
national conversation?
Well, you can find out tonight at 9 o'clock.
There's a national by the People broadcast.
Citizens from all over the country, including some
from Green Bay, will share their views on national
security, the economy, and America's place in the world.
You can see that here on Wisconsin Public Television.
You can also hear more from the Green Bay participants by tuning
into this week's here and now.
And now an update to a story we brought you last month.
We reported that ACE ethanol in Stanley, Wisconsin's first
full-scale ethanol plant, was being prosecuted by state
and federal environmental agencies for violating
its air emissions permit.
Well, Attorney General Pegg Lautenschlager has announced
a proposed settlement of the legal action.
In it, ACE agrees to have new pollution control equipment
in operation by late February.
In addition, ACE will have to pay a penalty of $300,000.
The consent decree to settle the state and federal lawsuit
will still have to be approved by a US district court judge.
That's our program.
Thanks for joining us.
And good night.
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