(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about the people and issues
in our state.
This week, discover why Wisconsin's dairy farmers
may soon lose a financial safety net.
Find out how you're indirectly footing the bill
for students to be transported to private schools.
And meet a young man who balances the typical lifestyle
of a college student with the very unusual role
of spiritual leader.
We'll have all that plus the next chapter
in our video poem series.
This one takes place in a beloved hangout in Wisconsin.
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy,
who bring safe, reliable and environmentally friendly energy
to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly, a lion's energy,
offering energy saving ideas on the web.
When Congress debates the next Farm Bill,
there are likely be efforts to control costs
by limiting the size of payments to any one farm owner.
That may create controversy if the debate over a
dairy subsidy program in the 2002 Farm Bill
has any indication.
The dairy program is known as the milk income loss contract
or by the acronym milk.
While the rest of the 2002 Farm Bill runs until 2007,
In Wisconsin producer Art Hackett tells us
that milk is set to expire at the end of September.
- If you've shopped the dairy case recently,
you know prices are up.
Today a hundred pounds of milk earns a farmer
in the upper Midwest about $15.50.
But three years ago when the current Farm Bill was enacted,
the cross-county dairy farmer Sue Bytlick says prices
weren't nowhere near 1550.
- What were prices running then?
- In the $9 to $10, a hundred weight.
It costs at least $14, a hundred weight to produce milk
at a break-even point.
So we were taking borrowing more money,
taking money at any savings to make the farm operate.
- For decades the federal government has
tried to keep prices from dropping too far by buying
up surplus non-fat dry milk, butter and cheddar
cheese at a fixed price.
But in the 2002 Farm Bill Congress created
a new program, milk income loss contracts, MILC.
- The dairy industry's always had to struggle
with geographical oddities.
There was the milk marketing order system
that set prices based on how far away you were
from O'Clair, Wisconsin.
Now there's the milk program that sets dairy subsidies
based on what milk is going for in Boston.
- Why Boston?
UW-Madison Dairy Economist Ed Jesse says
the Boston price is used to set payments
under the North East dairy compact,
which covers six new England states.
- And that program is very popular in the Northeast.
We have some powerful North Eastern congressmen
notably from Vermont who wanted to extend that program
exclusively for the Northeast.
But as part of the debate on the dairy portion
of the Farm Bill, that particular program,
or a very close variant, it would became nationwide.
- Well, the rest of the 2002 Federal Farm Program
runs until 2007.
The milk program, because it was negotiated
at the last minute, will expire at the end of September.
So, bite-like worries that if it's not extended,
she'll be farming without a net.
The prices drop again.
- It kept us in production.
We went to be farming if we didn't have MILC.
- In 2003 and 2004, Sue Bite-Lick and her husband
Will received about $9,400 in cash payments through
the milk program.
- So, that's not a lot of money, but when you want to be able
to put groceries on the table or maybe pay for Dr.
Bill's, it all helps.
- But Dairy Economist Ed Jesse says
multiplied by all the nation's dairy farms,
it all adds up.
- The MILC program is made retroactive
to December of 2001.
At the same time that milk prices went into the tank,
big time and stayed there for almost a year and a half.
- When milk prices go down, the subsidies per
100 weight go up.
The Congressional budget office found
that what was supposed to be a $1 billion program
cost $2 billion.
But Jesse says the issue isn't only the program's price.
- The biggest criticism of the MILC program
is that the production cap prevents larger dairy farmers
from benefiting.
- The Bite-Lick's 50 cow herd is slightly smaller
than average for Wisconsin.
But 2,500 cows at Emerald Dairy and your Baldwin
are unusually large herd or the upper Midwest.
- The payments under the MILC program
are limited to the first 2.4 million pounds
of milk produced annually.
And for a very large herd, they'll hit
that cap very quickly.
- That cap is based on a herd of about 135.
So the Bite-Lick's would be eligible for a payment
based on the production of all of their cows,
John Breeze, who owns Emerald Dairy,
would be eligible for payments for only a small fraction
of his herd's production.
- So I received, even though I have more cows in that,
I received as much as somebody that would have 125 cows.
- The larger farms get it just like the smaller farms,
it's just they may get it in a shorter period of time,
depending on the size of their herd.
- Therein lies another problem.
The production cap is calculated on a calendar year basis.
The per 100-weight subsidies are calculated monthly.
So Breeze's cows hit the production cap during a month
early in the year when the per unit subsidy is low,
his large farm could be short-changed.
- MILC has offended some of the producers
that milk more than 125 cows, especially in the
West and the South.
- This letter signed by US Senators
from Texas, New Mexico, California, and Oregon
recently circulated on Capitol Hill.
It criticizes the milk program is unfair to large producers
and argues that a plan to double the amount of milk
eligible for subsidy will drive up the program's cost.
It urges letting the program expire at the end of September.
Sue Biteleck and the Wisconsin Farmers Union
of which she is president hope that doesn't happen.
- We want some safety net in place,
whether it's MILC or some other type of a program.
- Breeze says the organization he heads,
the Dairy Business Association of Wisconsin,
doesn't oppose the milk program per se,
but they are worried about the political side effects
of extending it.
- So because it's being viewed on the folks out there
in the West Coast as an unfair program,
the Senators and congressmen from the states
that you just mentioned are getting letters
from the dairymen, let's scrap the MILC program all together.
- At this point, it's hard to come up
with a replacement dairy support program.
The next farm bill will have to comply
with international trade agreements,
those haven't been negotiated with the world trade
organization yet.
And they may not be done in time,
even if the MILC program is extended to 2007.
- President Bush has included a two year extension
of the milk program in his proposed budget,
an aid to US Senator Herb Cole, who is spearheading
the extension effort.
So Senator Cole has the votes to pass the extension
in the US Senate.
He's now working to get the votes
in the House of Representatives.
We'll keep you up to date on any developments
with the legislation as it happens.
In the meantime, you can find more information
on the milk program by logging onto our website
at www.org-slash-in-messonson.
(upbeat music)
The state budget is tens of billions of dollars
worth of spending.
The largest part of it goes to education.
As part of school funding, Governor Jim Doyle
wants to increase money for school busing.
But as in Wisconsin producer Frederica Freiberg reports,
there's a little known item concerning school transportation
that has some taxpayers scratching their heads.
- I propose using the transportation fund
to support school transportation and will provide a $16
million increase targeted at districts that must take
students the longest distances between their homes and schools.
- The governor's proposal to boost spending
for school busing goes over well with the man
who's both a Republican budget writer
and chair of the Senate Education Committee.
- As much as we don't like to make transfers,
if there is one that I can approve of it, be this one.
- Because Senator Luther Olson says it's been too long
since the state hiked the transportation
budget for schools.
And that service, he says, hasn't gotten any cheaper.
- We all know that buses cost more, gas costs more,
labor to hire people to drive the buses,
cost more, insurance costs more.
He says that equation has left school districts
using instructional money to cover busing.
But while schools grapple with making ends meet
and lawmakers grapple with trying to fund them,
there's a little known school transportation expense
that also adds up.
Adds up to nearly $20 million a year statewide.
That expense can be traced back to a state law passed
in the 1960s.
The law requires local public districts
to pay to transport private school students.
It's been on the books for nearly 40 years.
- Today, given the financial crisis that we're in,
to me, it seems like something should be looked at.
I'm not sure that that's spending the money away,
it should be, and I would be surprised
that most taxpayers know that their money
is being spent that way.
- The Madison School District spends more than $300,000
a year transporting private school students.
- I had no idea.
- But having learned of it, parent Mark Lillalab,
questions the expense.
- It doesn't seem quite right to extend those aids
to private school children.
- In Milwaukee, private academies dot the landscape,
and 5,000 children attending these private schools
get public school district money for transportation.
MPS spends $2.3 million getting private school kids
who live in the district, two and from class every year.
The money includes payments to either the private school
for busing costs, or for something called
a parent contract for parents to use
the family vehicle, no matter the parents' income.
- If your children went to the exclusive university school
in River Hills, the Milwaukee Public School District
would pay you nearly $500, $495 every year
for each one of your children that you drove
to and from school.
- I think there's an issue when it comes to the economics
that if the parent can afford the transportation,
so there probably needs to be some type of
income level threshold to determine whether or not
the child should receive this type of a stipend.
- Superintendent Andrew Coppolis says
one parent from university school routinely sends
the payment back, but the parents of 139 other children
from the exclusive school don't.
Some may be low income scholarship students.
University school declined our request for an interview.
According to state numbers, 47,000 private school
students are transported with public school
dollars each year.
Senator Olson says there shouldn't be a means test
for this service.
Besides, he says paying public tax dollars
to get kids to private schools is actually a bargain
because parents paying for private school
are also paying taxes for public schools,
but not using them.
- I think honestly it's a good investment
because if we can have folks go to private schools,
it lowers the cost for the state.
- But at least one public school principal is smarting.
Over $20 million going out the door toward private schools.
- I'm sure that my colleagues across Madison
and across Wisconsin would agree and they could find a use for
that money in a heartbeat.
- As for the larger state budget process,
the joint committee on finance is scheduled to vote
on individual items starting next week.
The committee heard 40 hours of public testimony
across the state about the budget
and spent three days in briefings
with Doyle Administration Agency heads.
In our next story, we introduce you to a young man
who attends the UW-Madison.
In some ways, he's like a typical college student,
but in many other ways, he lives a unique life.
That's because as a baby, Chang Wang was determined
to be a very important spiritual leader
in the Hmong culture.
In Wisconsin producer Andy Soth has the story of
how Wang balances his two worlds,
the modern and traditional.
(cars honking)
- It's a Friday evening in Madison
and a group of mong boys and sneakers and t-shirts
are practicing the Kang.
The contrast of the ancient instrument
and the contemporary attire symbolizes
how young mong Americans live in two worlds,
modern and traditional.
Their teacher, Chang Wang, knows all about
straddling different worlds.
He's not only an expert on mong culture,
he's also believed to be the youngest practicing
shaman in the mong world.
- I'm happy to be the youngest shaman
for the mong people.
It's just like a gift.
- Traditional mong people believe the shaman
is an intermediary between this world
and the world of the spirits.
Usually a person only becomes a shaman
in middle age after a long illness.
But when Wang was ill as a baby, in a Thai refugee camp
in the late 1980s, his mother brought
him to a shaman.
- She told my mother, "Oh, I still don't believe myself,
but I think your baby's a shaman."
You know, so that's kind of like shock
that everyone in the village.
- But the villagers in the refugee camp
soon came to the young shaman for healing ceremonies.
And mong people continued to do so,
even after Wang's family emigrated to Wisconsin.
This young woman has come all the way
from St.
Paul for Wang's help, because her hair had been
mysteriously falling out.
- I have to start with a drum.
Drum will be able to help me gain my power
and to have connection with my spirit.
So the first step is gathering all my spirits.
You have a meeting, tell them what's going on.
- What's going on is that at an earlier ceremony,
Wang promised an offering to spirits
if the girl was cured.
Her hair has since returned, so the spirits must be rewarded.
Symbolic paper money is burned, and chickens sacrificed.
- In mong shamanism, it's thought
that illnesses can be caused by an evil spirit
capturing one of a person's 12 body spirits.
Wang uses a rope that gathers the girl's body spirits
to journey with him into the spirit world
to retrieve the captured spirit.
- The meaning of bone, the water,
to scare the evil spirit away from her body.
(singing in foreign language)
- My spirit has a power to watch all you evil spirit
away from your body.
(upbeat music)
- Wang puts a black cloth over his face
to block out this world and prepares to
enter the spirit world.
He travels there on a wooden bench,
which in the spirit world becomes a horse.
Every shaman had to have a horse,
'cause I cannot go without my horse.
- In the spirit world, Wang travels to the girl's home,
where he reminds evil spirits there of the deal they've made.
They release the hostage body spirit,
but to return that spirit to the girl,
Wang has to capture it.
- It's kind of like exciting moment too, you know.
- He does this by using a metal ring like a lasso
as the ceremony climaxes.
(upbeat music)
(speaking foreign language)
- It's kind of like after you call a player, right?
And then you have to, you have to,
and then you go and you kind of make the play work.
So.
(cheering)
- Wang often uses sports analogies
to explain the relationship he has to his spirits.
- I'm like the coach.
I don't know to play football, but I can coach him.
Call the play.
I'm the one to call the play, you know.
- The play that Wang is working on now
is being the first in his family to go to college.
He attends UW-Madison and plans to study anthropology
to continue his work, preserving monk traditions.
- I believe that without my spirits,
I will not be here today sitting right here,
talk to you, or go to UW-Madison,
or, you know, educate monk culture very well.
- Because since I remember my heart,
my heart always think that, well, what can I
do to help the monk people have a good, better life?
That's like my dream.
(upbeat music)
- We turn now to the next chapter
in our video poetry series called
Poems About Places.
April is National Poetry Month, and each week we're bringing
you unique collaborations between state poets and our
Wisconsin Public Television videographers.
Producer Joanne Garrett brought our artists
to different locations around the state
and gave them this challenge, worked together to
create a visual poem based on the experience.
This week's installment of Poems About Places
finds us at an O'Clayer landmark called the Joint,
and it features poet Bruce Taylor
and videographer Chuck France.
- You may meet at a salon, posse up at a saloon,
party at the pub, gather at a tavern
or beer garden where you bring
the dog and kids.
Everybody goes to a bar, but you always
come to the joint.
(upbeat music)
- All great bars are a lot of different bars in one.
This is Tuesday around 2 p.m.
You gotta be here when it's Friday night,
around 11, the place packed into the max
everybody like dirty dog used to say,
starting to be somebody.
The big windows in the front of the bar
sometimes get you all the outside,
whether you are in mood for, sometimes the best thing
to do with a beautiful day is to spend some of it
sitting in here looking out.
Story is a couple of guys super glued,
some change to the sidewalk out front
and made a day of it until the guy from the bank
came out with a snow shovel.
You'll notice there's no longer a sign out front.
This has become the kind of place that doesn't need one.
(upbeat music)
? She had an offer ain't original ask her ?
? After falling for a small plain pilot house ?
- Everybody has to have a third place.
You gotta have work, you gotta have homes
and the other place.
Whether it's just saloon or a barber shop
or a styling salon or whatever.
(upbeat music)
? And then the malls are ?
? I'll be sitting there and be fine ?
That chair became sort of Harry's domain.
He was from Old Claire as a kid.
He went down to Mississippi on a raft
when he was 16 from here.
And then when he retired, he would come here every
morning and sit in that chair.
And so that was Harry's chair.
? Look at my heart, something told me ?
? Every thing is made to see ?
- This place is unimaginable without music.
The boss starts it off with whatever he's
listening to lately when he comes downstairs
to clean up at 7 a.m.
I call three people, the boss, the guy that signs my checks,
Springsteen of course in Bill, who owns this place.
He calls me Taylor, last name only, just like prep school.
? Can we believe that we can help you ?
This place spins at different speeds around the jukebox.
45 LP, compact disc, Ogeda, Caruso, big head, Todd,
and the monsters who dock at Bay, Georgia.
Georgia on my mind.
Everybody whose picture is up here, played here.
This is not the kind of place they put just anybody
on the wall.
(upbeat music)
? ?
Okay, so maybe it's music and beer this place revolves around.
A shot and beer here can be a mixed drink.
Tequila is okay if someone else is buying,
but mostly it's beer.
Rumor has it, if you drink too much from the
tap closest to the door, you'll end up more
drunk and more hungover.
Guys swear that.
They do.
You know what they say?
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat
and drink beer all day long.
The bartenders had to keep saying no like beer so often
that the bus put up that neon sign
and now all they have to do is point contemptuously.
There are a lot of other rules here
and it takes your years to learn them.
No spitting in the sink.
Peanut shells must always be thrown on the floor.
Only certain people can sit in the big chair.
The bus is always right.
Bottoms up, cheerio, cheers, down the hatch.
Here's looking at you, here's mud in your eye, here's to you.
La chiam, many happy returns.
Nostrovia, chindan, salute, sante, scal, scol.
Where are you going to get more welcome than that?
Where else are you going to find so many people concerned
about your health and your luck?
? Good night ?
? I read ?
? Good night ?
? I read ?
? I see you ?
? In my dreams ?
Join us next week for another poem
about Places Video Poem.
We'll travel to Sock County with Poet Judith Straser
and videographer Frank Bohl.
The pair goes in search of a state natural area
called Pine Hollow.
In the meantime, you can go to our website at
www.wpt.org/inwisconsin to read this week's poem
and find out more about author Bruce Taylor.
We'll also be streaming the poems
about Places Video Poems throughout the
month on our website.
And that's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you with an early springtime walk
along the boardwalk through Cherokee Marsh.
The marsh is the largest wetland area in Dane County.
Enjoy and for in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
See you next week.
(soft music)
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who brings safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web.
(soft music)