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Miller Park naming rights go to American Family Insurance

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The Milwaukee Brewers and American Family Insurance announced their new partnership for the naming rights to Miller Park.

American Family CEO Jack Salzwedel says this is a part of a larger effort for his company to create a new office location in Milwaukee.”And a strategy that includes more jobs, and jobs in the software engineering and data science area. And we’ve been working very closely with the Mayor to look at different sites.”

Brewers officials say that MillerCoors will continue to be a strong partner with the team, and that you’re not going to see them leaving Milwaukee baseball any time soon.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett says he’s happy to be a part of the process. “The city of Milwaukee is very excited about this. We think that this is a beautiful relationship that’s going to grow even stronger between your company and this city.”

The actual name of the park and other branding issues will be discussed at a later date.

Women’s efforts highlighted at Wisconsin MLK day celebration

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The State Capitol in Madison played host on Monday to a celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and also a call to action. The event highlighted the women who struggle for racial equality, and author Rita Coburn said that the unjust racial killings of African American children have to come to an end.

“As we build our tribe, awakened women and men must lift their voices across aisles and racial lines for these injustices to stop.” Coburn highlighted the 40 years of activism of Mamie Till, whose son was lynched in 1955. “African American mothers all over this country are still grieving the wrongful deaths of their sons and daughters,” she said.

This is the 39th year of the event in Madison, one of the longest continuing celebrations in the country.

WIAA asks parents to “cool it” at sporting events and not to bully referees

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The WIAA wants to remind parents to enjoy their children’s sporting events, and not get angry at officials.

Spokesman Todd Clark says parents should sit back, relax and cheer for their kids, because it is just a game. 

“Enjoy the time, enjoy what’s happening. It’s a growth experience for the student athletes, and we need to just embrace the educational benefits that comes from high school and school based sports.”

The WIAA has seen a decline in the number of referees that want to work sporting events, and many of them cite negativity from parents as one of the reasons they don’t want to keep officiating.

Clark says berating or getting heated at refs not only discourages them from working in the future, it also reflects badly on the children of those parents.

“I don’t think the intention of a parent is to embarrass their son or daughter at an event, but nonetheless, they get the sense of what has been described as humiliation.”

Referee turnover is directly affecting the ability to field officials for some sporting events. 

“Without officials to officiate these games, we have no games. There’s games now being postponed at some points because we can’t find officials.”

Senator Baldwin seeks end to government shutdown

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The long federal shutdown is putting the squeeze on Americans, and Senator Tammy Baldwin wants it to end.

She says this sort of dysfunction can’t last forever. “There are a lot of Americans, including federal government workers that live paycheck to paycheck, and I’ve been hearing, as a Senator, from a number of those folks who are in crisis already.”

She says the shutdown hurts everyone, and not just the families of government employees. “Think if both income earners work for the federal government and aren’t getting paid. We’ve heard from families in that regard, but people who are served by these agencies may also be in crisis.”

House Democrats have passed a number of bills trying to reopen the government, but the Republican led Senate has refused to take them up for a vote.

Democrats move bills to raise federal minimum wage to $15 an hour

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Democrats are pushing for an increase in the federal minimum wage, and an end to the tipped minimum wage.

The bills introduced in both the House and Senate would increase the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour by 2024 and tie future grown of the minimum wage to inflation and other financial indexes.

Congressman Mark Pocan says the minimum wage hasn’t changed for 12 years, and in that time the type of person who is working for minimum wage has also changed.

“The average minimum wage worker is 36 years old. A majority of them, it’s their full time job, it’s not this myth of a teenager getting some extra pocket change.”

He says that someone making just $7.25 an hour full time can’t afford basic needs in most of the country. “In Dane County, you would have to work 91 hours at minimum wage in order to afford a two bedroom apartment and get by.”

Democrats also want to do away with the practice of having a lower minimum wage for waitresses and other tipped employees. “To have a minimum wage that’s actually below the unlivable $7.25 at 2 dollars and some change depending on where you live is completely impossible to survive on,” says Pocan.

 

 

Help support Closs family though official fundraisers

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If you want to help Jayme Closs and her family, there’s an official fundraiser to do so. 

People interested in supporting Jayme and her family can donate to a GoFundMe page, as well as contacting the Sterling Bank in Barron.

A previous fundraiser raised 50-thousand dollars.

Be careful about donating to other fundraising efforts on social media, because they are likely to be scams.

Donate HERE: http://gf.me/u/p3j4vi

Governor Evers promises to continue push for Medicaid expansion

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Wisconsin’s new governor says he’s going to fight for Medicaid expansion despite the protests of the Republican majority in the legislature.

Governor Tony Evers says it’s an issue that touches every community in the state. “Every small town in Wisconsin has some facility that’s healthcare related. Whether it’s a clinic, whether it’s a small hospital, whether it’s a doctor’s office.”

He says he has got the backing of both the people of the state and the medical field. “The people that are using the facilities and work in those facilities support our position on that.”

Evers says the expansion will help people across Wisconsin get the health coverage they need. “I understand that they said that it’s a non-starter. We’re not going to, you know, burn the Capital down, We’re going to disagree. If that is their position, than we will disagree.”

Evers met with all of the Legislative caucuses on Tuesday in order to present his goals for the session.

 

Criminal complaint sheds new light on Closs kidnapping

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A criminal complaint is shedding new light on how 21-year-old Jake Patterson allegedly took Jayme Closs and killed her parents.

That complaint was filed on Monday in Barron County Court. Deputies allege that that 21-year-old Jake Patterson decided to kidnap Jayme Closs after spotting her getting on a school bus on his way home from work. 

Patterson confessed to officers at the time of his arrest last week, and that he planned taking Jayme after seeing her get off a bus. He allegedly didn’t even know her name until after he took her. He also believed that he’d gotten away with it after several weeks.

He also allegedly told police he’d made several attempts at taking her before, but that there had been too many people around at the time.

Closs explained to investigators that after she was taken, Patterson allegedly kept her locked away in his house, and frequently trapped her under a bed using boxes and weights when he left. She had been trapped like that last week, when she was able to escape the house and contact a dog walker.

Patterson now faces homicide and kidnapping charges in the case.

UW-Madison police show off how a gift card scam works on Twitter

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UW-Madison police got to show the public a crash course on how a gift card scam works on their Twitter feed this week.

Community Service Officer Terry Evans responded to a fake ad saying you could work from home for big money. Scammers sent him a phony check and told him to buy them some gift cards.

“They want you to do that as fast as you can because it only takes a few days, maybe a week before that check bounces, and you realize you’ve been taken advantage of.”

The Police Department even cooked up some real looking fake iTunes gift cards for him to send to the scammers, but that was the end of the scam. It only took the crooks a few days to catch on that Evans wasn’t going to send them anything of value.

Evans says putting this sort of thing on social media helps educate people where they are and keep them from becoming victims. “We have a lot of young students who are living on their own for the first time and are susceptible to these type of things.”

“Rather than me sort of telling everyone ‘here’s how to avoid scamming and here’s what happens,’ I thought it was important to kind of show people what they’re going to do to you.”

You can follow along with the scam and the methods that the department used to waste the scammer’s time at http://twitter.com/UnivAptsUWPD

Reports: Shopko close to bankruptcy

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Shopko could file for bankruptcy as early as next week.

The Green Bay Press Gazette quotes a lawyer for a pharmaceutical company which Shopko owes money that Shopko is expected to file for bankruptcy next Tuesday. In December, Bloomberg reported that Shopko was making preparations to file bankruptcy. 

Shopko is based in Green Bay, and owns 333 different types of stores. The company did not return an Associated Press reporter’s calls for comment.