A Green Bay talk show host’s two-week suspension is not enough.

WTAQ radio host Jerry Bader is suspended for the next two weeks for offensive comments he made this week about Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton. Lawton says that suspension is not enough.

“It actually should be a second step. We’re missing an apology here from Mr. Bader, from the station management, and from the ownership.”

Lawton is quick to say, though, she has no interest in speaking directly to Bader. The Lt. Governor says journalists, or “would-be journalists,” need to be held accountable for their statements, which have a huge impact on their audience. And, she adds, residents need to be held accountable for how their community is perceived. Lawton says Bader’s comments brand Green Bay as a quote, “provincial backwater.” [Read more...]

Officials sign a trade agreement making a Chinese company the exclusive distributor of Wisconsin ginseng in China.

Governor Jim Doyle says customers regard Wisconsin ginseng as the world’s highest quality.

“In China, I know from my travels there, when you say ‘Wisconsin,’ people in China know the word … because it is symbolic with particularly high-quality and very mild ginseng.”

China is Wisconsin’s primary market for the ginseng root. It’s estimated that this new deal with the largest producer of traditional Chinese medicine will bring more than $12 million back to Wisconsin in the next five years.

“While 2009 has been a very difficult economy for a lot of businesses, in the first part of 2009 the exports of ginseng from Wisconsin have increased by 70%.” [Read more...]

Wisconsinites aren’t as enamored by President Obama as they were six months ago, according to a statewide survey by St. Norbert College in De Pere.

Political Scientist Wendy Scattergood, who coordinated the polling, says Obama’s approval rating dropped to 50-percent. That’s down from a favorable rating of 60-percent in a poll conducted this past spring.

Scattergood says the drop is expected of Presidents when the “honeymoon period” wears off. [Read more...]