I'm here with Dr. Bruce Kiesling, and we certainly apologize for our technical problems, et cetera. And we appreciate your patience and your good wishes. Bunch of calls coming into the station. And, yes, we knew we weren't on the air. So now we are. Is that correct, Errol? That is 100% and plus 10% we're on the air. So we're on the air. Okay, good.
All right, well, so that means that the doc is going to be with us a little longer today than normal because we started late. So let me ask a question to do a little housekeeping here. Absolutely, boss. We had a half an hour basically blocked out. Yes. When we get to the bottom of the hour, which is going to be in about six minutes. Yes.
What are we doing? Well, let us do this. When we hit the bottom of the hour, we'll take a short break, and then let us dedicate the rest of the hour to the doc up to 4 o'clock. Up to 5 o'clock. Up to 5 o'clock, excuse me. All right. Well, we can see if that works out. That's generous. Okay, let's go ahead. Doc, welcome. Thank you. It's nice. It's nice that we're here. And I want to thank Jesse Kelly for filling in. He didn't realize it, but he was. Okay.
We've got a bunch of questions today, and let's start out. Vic says, I read an article from the BBC that reported findings from the University of Cambridge. that regular aspirin may have positive benefits to people diagnosed with cancer. Can you tell us if this research is truly promising? Vic, thanks for the question, and I'm impressed always.
And I think you've done this to me before, Vic. You're obviously very eclectic, and you're very current in your reading. This article and this revelation is pretty recent. Good for you. And it won't be most brief. This research is truly promising, and let me talk about it. And it seems like I've been talking about aspirin since I first went on the radio, and it's been now 38 years ago. It's a fascinating compound.
It's been around since 1897. It's one of the oldest pharmaceutical agents that we have, and it continues to be a mainstay therapy for a variety of indications. Like all drugs, it can be toxic at high doses. We can actually consider it a kind of a wonder drug because it's been shown to be useful in a treatment of a variety of conditions beyond fever and pain and inflammation, including the prevention of coronary artery disease, heart attack, and stroke.
The effect of long-term use of aspirin on the development of colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. Actually, Vic, this goes back to 2010. Now we're talking about prevention. What you were asking about was what's going on with people who already have diagnosed with colon cancer and what can be done with aspirin. But the effect, first of all,
Let's go back to 2010. The analysis of four randomized trials designed actually to study the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular events with aspirin use discovered that... People that were on at least 75 milligrams per day of aspirin, it was associated with a 24% reduction of incidence and 35% reduction in mortality from colon cancer. The study was about heart.
attack and stroke prevention, but they discovered disassociation with colon cancer. In a subsequent study, the authors analyzed the association between aspirin intake and other forms of cancer. And while the association was found between aspirin use and cancer risk and individuals using aspirin, it has to be at least for five years. The use has to be a significant association was found between aspirin use and the risk for all cancers in long-term aspirin users. So that's where we kind of...
It makes sense that researchers knowing that this was the case might look at aspirin, but we didn't know why this was.
And what's unique about this study and what was reported, Vic, is that the why is there. We can see correlation. Okay, there's less colon cancer if you take aspirin, but didn't understand the mechanism. And this particular study was... really cool about discovering the mechanism so the article you mentioned alludes to a better understanding of how it works and scientists have uncovered the mechanism how aspirin could reduce
the metastasis of some cancers by stimulating the immune system and what does that mean what what potential is that well aspirin has a potential to be a lot less expensive than antibody-based therapies and therefore would be more accessible. Globally and discovering the mechanism will support ongoing trials. It will lead to targeted use of aspirin to prevent the spread of susceptible type of cancers. So this this professor.
Reading this study, it's really quite good. He said, despite advances in cancer treatment, many patients with early stage cancers receive treatments, such as surgical removal of the tumor, which has the potential to be curative. but later relapsed due to the eventual growth of micrometastases, in other words, cancer cells that are seeded, that have seeded other parts of the body, but remain in a latent state. Now, most...
Immunotherapies are developed to treat patients with established metastatic cancer. But when cancer first spreads, Vic, there's a unique therapeutic window of opportunity. when cancer cells are particularly vulnerable to immune attack. And the hope is that therapies that target this window of vulnerability will have tremendous scope in preventing recurrence.
in patients with early cancer at risk of recurrence they discovered and it was serendipitous it's a fascinating article they discovered in the process they were actually It was an unexpected revelation because they discovered a chemical in the blood, TXA2, which is produced by platelets. We know that the...
Aspirin helps to keep platelets from being overaggressive. And aspirin reduces the production of TXA2, which leads to the anticlotting effect. But by doing that, it also... increases it suppresses things that that allow the metastasis to thrive so it was a Eureka moment when they found that there was a signal a molecular signal that activates the suppression
effect on T cells so that they were no longer suppressed that immunologic response and before that they hadn't been aware of the implication of the findings and understanding the anti-metastatic activity. of aspirin it was an entirely unexpected finding uh which sent them down a whole nother path it was very promising let me just summarize though the business about because we could talk a long time about aspirin and i could review
the guidelines for cardiovascular disease and prevention and the like. But I'm going to just say that patients who took daily aspirin had a 55% lower risk of cancer recurrence and a 45% Improvement in disease-free survival. Aspirin checks all the boxes. It's effective. It's low risk. It's inexpensive. And it's easy to administer. Thanks for the question.
So, Bruce, the question is how much dosage should you be taking? Okay, well, what they found, it really wasn't that high a dosage. At least 75 milligrams a day. So that's less than a little baby aspirin. Well, that's a baby aspirin, yeah. And some of the studies, though, included 200 milligrams. We're going to get more information, Mike, about this, but folks that are on it. And actually, you want to have your risk for cardiovascular disease assessed because...
We've talked about primary versus secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. And if you're on the aspirin, don't stop it. You get along with it just fine. And if you aren't, you can talk to your doctor about your risk for cardiovascular disease. And also, you know, if you have a lot of polyps in your colon, if you have a history of colon cancer. I mean, I...
I don't apologize for taking aspirin on a regular basis myself because I don't have any problem with it. And I think this is very promising research. Thanks, Vic. All right. Let's do this. Let's take our quick break now. We'll come back, and the doc will be with us to the top of the hour. We'll be right back. 522-0650, that's our phone number.
And Dr. Bruce Kiesling is with us. So Christine writes in and she says HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that vitamin A can reduce the severity of measles symptoms. in those children who are vitamin A deficient. Can this treatment work with a measles vaccine, which I believe is the gold standard? Christine, good question. And I want to go on record that I sent my...
opinion to the congressional delegation about Mr. Kennedy and ask that they not approve him, but we've got to work with him. And I think he's very inappropriate. for this responsibility. So a lot of people have raised concerns about this new CDC advisory and because he's head of the CDC. then he's approved this advisory, and it recommends vitamin A supplements as a therapy for measles. And then also noting that vitamin A can be used as a treatment for some cases.
So he has not explicitly recommended the measles vaccine, but supports the use of alternative treatments like vitamin A and cod liver oil. It's true that measles can cause vitamin A deficiency in some people, but supplementation only eases the condition to some extent, does not treat measles in active process.
The best way, first of all, to prevent serious illness from measles is to be vaccinated. The nuance to your question was the treatment, can this treatment work with the measles vaccine? Well, the measles vaccine prevents it. And it is the gold standard. So there is no treatment for measles. It's all supportive therapy. Now, you can't identify if, in fact, somebody is vitamin A deficient. A child is desperately ill.
They can get the vitamin A, but it isn't going to prevent the incredible complications that can develop, such as encephalitis, deafness, you know, a constellation. of problems that you can totally avoid with the vaccination vitamin a alone cannot prevent measles and the and the difficulty with this particular uh you know and you know, the announcement is it does not reduce the disease's more serious symptoms. It cannot prevent it. Prevention requires vaccination. And the...
You know, there's some people out there that are organizing in Texas measles parties to expose children to the disease so they can build immunity to it. This is unbelievably ignorant. And dangerous. They're playing roulette with their kids' lives, Christine. So, you know, there is true that careful supplementation of vitamin A can be a recommended part of, you know, trying to give.
desperately ill children hospitalized with measles uh but because measles can deplete the body stores of vitamin a but you know back in my training early in my training 50 years ago Vitamin A is fat soluble. It's not a benign thing. So people shouldn't go out there and, oh, well, I'm going to protect my child by supplementing my child.
nutrition with vitamin A, it causes the people that I saw that got into that vitamin A cold back in the late 60s, early 70s develop liver failure as a result of it. So you don't want to depend on that. It's something that a doctor can potentially give you if you have measles and are hospitalized, but it is not a treatment. The treatment is only supportive, and that's why prevention is so...
So that's the misunderstanding of the role of vitamin A. And this CDC announcement is, I think, I don't know, whether it's negligence or just carelessness. Or is it actually trying to be anti-vaccination? I can't tell, but it's really, really a bad deal. Measles is very dangerous. Even if you don't die of it, it can cause permanent disability. And the risk of getting the vaccine is infinitely lower than getting the actual disease. So what's the takeaway here, Christine? We are.
I mean those of us who understand what's at stake, we have concerns about the CDC advisory that mentions vitamin A supplements can be a therapy for measles. What we don't want is for, you know, people that want to always depend on alternative type medications, natural sort of cures, to think, well, I can let my, because most kids who have measles, they get over it. So now that I know I can.
quote-unquote treat it with vitamin a i'll let them get it and then i'll just sprinkle some vitamin a uh to treat it and so i won't have to get the measles vaccination i don't think that um It is true, measles can cause some vitamin A deficiency in some people, but these supplements cannot treat the severe symptoms or complications that arise from the disease. And so, again, the alarm that we're...
We have over reports that some people on social media are discussing these measles parties to expose children to disease so they can build immunity. Well, we had chickenpox parties back in the day. Well, that shouldn't be done either. But the best prevention against measles and its potentially serious consequences is to be vaccinated against the disease. So, Christine, I'm glad you brought up the issue.
I think that we're probably going to have to head off a lot of things coming out of the CDC as long as Kennedy is directing the messages. All right. Lynn. Writes, my 14-year-old daughter Madison is trying to convince me that applying Neosporin to the inside of her nostrils will fend off germs on our flight home from spring break. She got this idea from the Internet.
I have told her it will not work for colds and flu, but I'm only her mother. Can you tell us the real story? We listen to the podcast. Well, thank you for listening, and thank you for your... daughter for listening and because you're both listening i think it's great this is a great question uh because uh you know when my boys were 14 i didn't have these kind of uh heavy duty discussions sometimes
Because, you know, when you're 14, you kind of do know it all, pretty much. And so, you know, having this discussion about something that's important, that I think is great. So, thanks for the question. I want to... Just clear up a few things. Neosporin and other antibiotic ointments are well known for their use on cuts that need to help healing. Typically, finger, leg, what have you. And these ointments can also be applied around your nose.
for a variety of purposes not for the purpose that your daughter brings up it can help reduce bacterial buildup in or near the nose but you know But it's never used preventatively. It cannot be used to prevent flus or other viral illnesses, including COVID-19. Period. That's it. your daughter was talking about were viruses but she actually she mentioned germs okay that's kind of a generic umbrella term what is a germ
It's a small organism that causes disease. So we have to be specific what we're trying to avoid or what we're trying to prevent or what we're trying to treat. So neosporin is three types of antibiotics, neomycin, polymyxin, and bacitracin. It's available over-the-counter. Now, I will mention that, you know, when somebody has recurrent nosebleeds, I'll encourage people to use vasotracin or vaseline or neosporin to paint the inside of their nose.
to keep it moist, to reduce the risk for this fragile tissue there on your septum to re-bleed. Okay, that's safe to do. And if you... And actually, if you read the product labels carefully, the labels mention not to put the ointment in the nose as well as keeping it out of your eyes and mouth. So generally speaking, we use it around the outside to prevent.
You know, cuts on the nose or crusting in the nose or after surgery or areas around the nose. But with any illness, there are a lot of rumors that circulate on the Internet regarding the treatment and prevention. One example is that putting an antibiotic ointment like Neosporin in your nose can prevent illnesses like the flu and COVID, and that will not work. And for the very simple reason, antibiotic ointments kill bacteria.
not viruses. COVID-19 and the flu are caused by viruses. And that's the same reason why antibiotics can't treat COVID-19. So the study that the internet is alluding to And if your daughter is so motivated, she can Google this, Neosporin and antiviral activity. It is a complex study, which I waded through, and it is out of Yale, I believe.
It's several pages long. The bottom line is that obviously the media has picked up on is that it showed in hamsters, especially, that there was an increase in some. products in the bloodstream that are antiviral if they use the neosporin. And so then they tried it on 12 people, 12. Now understand, and your daughter, when you do a study,
Anything less than 400 is, I call it a boutique study because you can't get statistical relevance. You have to study this enough. Two problems with it is 12 people isn't enough. And more importantly. It showed that it increased some antiviral activity in the blood, but it did not show that it actually killed the virus.
And so you'd have to expose somebody to the flu or expose them to COVID, or you'd have to do a very complicated study in order to prove efficacy of Neosporin. Finally, though, Lynette, I think it's fantastic. daughter are having these kind of discussions and i would recommend that don't don't die on this hill because it's not that important if your daughter wants to paint her nose with neosporin there's not really any downside to it
It's just that it isn't going to do any good. Okay. Harry writes in, he says, I'm 74 years old and I'm determined to get fit and break bad habits. I suffer from insomnia. My trainer says. weight-bearing exercises will help is this some new therapy my doctor says I'm cleared to do a fitness program again this is interesting because there's a very recent article
came out in March 3rd in the British Medical Journal, bringing the latest findings on this particular issue. A team of researchers looked at data from 24 different studies and included over 2,000 participants, 60 or older. all of whom were medically diagnosed with insomnia. And they analyzed the data.
from participants cardio and resistance workouts which were found to be mild to moderate and an average of about 50 minutes per session three times a week and the results of the study show that participants and there's a measurement called global for sleep quality index which gives an idea of how well you're sleeping, something you fill out. And those who did strength and resistance training improved that index, improved their sleep twice as much as everybody improved.
aerobic exercise and combination of aerobic and mild strength but the biggest improvement was among those who were doing strength and resistance training and so why would that be beneficial The researchers, because I'm enjoying that some of these people are instead of just correlation, they're actually looking for causation. Why would this be beneficial for sleep? Sleep is essentially recovery from wear and tear on the body.
you know, restoration and, you know, kind of cleansing out, flushing out the brain, but wear and tear on the body that has occurred during the day. Resistance training puts literal wear and tear on your muscles, so sleep is needed to repair and grow those muscles. learning new movements and also builds new pathways in the brain. And that encourages sleep because we rehearse new things and we learn during certain stages of sleep. And in short, resistance training very effectively earns.
sleep but the other reason why you want resistance exercise and the number one reason it's going to help your insomnia but it's going to help you because your age my age we don't want to lose any more lean body mass and you're going to preserve it with resistance exercise you won't preserve it nearly as much if at all with aerobics you need the resistance exercise so your trainer is actually pretty savvy guy he's pretty current on this
And so the takeaway is that adding resistance training to your regimen will improve sleep quality. And activities like weightlifting and body weight doesn't have to be, you know. strictly dumbbells and that stuff, but body weight training improved participants' quality of sleep better than aerobic. So particularly strengthening exercise, including when aerobic has other benefits.
It's beneficial for enhancing subjective sleep quality at clinically significant level compared to folks that don't do it. All right. Finally, Jake. Every year we hear that daylight savings time is bad for our health, yet we continue to engage in this practice. Is there anything that medical professionals can do to wake up our politicians to the danger of DST?
Well, Jake, there were a lot of medical professionals, including myself, that couldn't get the politicians to wake up to not allow Mr. Kennedy become secretary of HHS. So your question is really a political one. So I guess we can just kind of, Mike, you and I go into a free forum about what's bad about daylight savings time and what is...
A lot of folks, okay? The surveys at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine have found that about 63% of Americans would prefer to eliminate daylight savings time. And over... 55% or 60% of folks experience tiredness following the switch. But it does more than just inspire mixed opinions, grogginess, and foul moods. The researchers say...
that the change has long-term negative consequences. And there's several things to that. Mood disturbances, hospital admissions, inflammatory markers, all that are affected by this. a switch to daylight savings time and the reasoning behind it even though you know benjamin franklin came up with the idea in 1784 that rising earlier would economize on candle usage and save people money
And then I think it was in World War I, it wasn't a mic, that they decided that it was going to be a good idea. And so it came to pass. You know, they argued that it's advantageous to have more time for outdoor activities in the evening. Well, all of this discussion is moot to an Alaskan because we've got our own issues with the light.
And the syndrome, we talk about seasonal affective disorder when it's so dark. And then my neologism, acronym, HASSLE, period and sleepless summers leading to exhaustion. So we have to do what we can to create a circadian rhythm that will work for us to ensure a quality sleep, you know, darkening the room, getting it cooler, all of those sort of things. Sometimes even running a fan or something too. Yeah, exactly.
But what I would be leery of is this argument that, okay, we get rid of daylight savings time and we make daylight savings time permanent. Because some people say, let's get rid of daylight savings time and then... But actually, the folks that I think know a little bit more about it, sleep medicine folks, said it favors abolishing daylight savings time in favor of permanent standard time.
And I think from an Alaskan point of view, that makes the most sense. What do you think? Absolutely. In fact, I'd like to see us go back to the real standard time that we have, because as you remember. We went from, you know, when we were looking at Juneau as the capital, and Juneau decided, well, wait a minute, let's see what we can do. Because the real problem was we were two hours behind Juneau.
Well, when I came in Alaska in 73, 74, didn't we have three time zones? We had four. Four. Four time zones. Juneau was on Pacific. Then it was Yukon. Then it was Alaska, which is where we were. And then there was Nome. time and so basically if you wanted to go to juno uh you basically were already lost two hours of the day so juno said why don't we do this
Why don't we move back an hour and you move forward an hour and then we'll all be on the same time zone. And we now have two time zones in Alaska. Which, you know, essentially we are right now, when we're in standard time, we were on daylight time. Because we moved ahead an hour. I didn't know that. So we need to go back two hours.
What if to make this thing work? Well, I would be fine with that. But is it going to happen? And Jake's question is, what can we do to convince people that this was a great idea, but it was wrong? Yeah, it was wrong. It was wrong. And we need to change it back. Just like a lot of things they do down there.
Yeah, well, we got a late start. I'm glad we got through the questions. The questions were great. Keep them coming, folks. Thanks, Bruce. And we apologize for our technical difficulties today, but we got it done, and I appreciate it. you're hanging in oh absolutely enjoy it Mike I'll see you next week we'll see you next week we'll be back stay with us Back to the Mike Procaro Show with Crash on News Radio 650 KENI. Welcome back. It is 519. Let's go to Craig. Hi, Craig.
Yes, go ahead, Greg. Yeah. Well, you don't know where the money's going to come from to fund this? No, I don't. Mike, I'm disappointed. Well, from the permanent fund, but I mean, other than that, where is it going to come from? Mike, the great Robert Yount is going to come up with more taxes from somewhere, somehow, someway. He'll come up with all the answers. You know, the smooth talkers.
the golden tongue that he is, he'll come up with something somewhere somehow. Okay, well, that's yet to be seen. Right now, there's a huge... There's a huge gap here. And what's interesting to me is that the legislature, at least the House, has not identified a funding source. But yet they passed this bill. That's exactly right. And then the earlier column in Must Read Alaska concerning some of the stuff that Mr. Yunt has done.
is just kind of not setting well with some other folks and kind of going against some of the things in the best interest for the state. And so there again, what he's doing is kind of more of a negative. But anyway, I'm just curious to see what he'll dream up and what he'll go forward with. Anyways, that's my three cents worth. All right. Well, thank you, Craig. Appreciate your phone call. All right. It is 521. Let's go to Bob Griffin. Hi, Bob. Hey, Mike. How are you doing?
I've mentioned this many times, but it bears repeating. Of course, Rutgers came out with a study last year that pointed out that Alaska has the second most adequately funded K-12 system. in the United States, and their metric for measuring it was the percentage of your state GDP that you dedicate to K-12. It's funny how those folks in New Jersey don't have any agenda to make Alaska look good or bad, but the legislature seems to have ignored that study.
pointing to a study that was created by ICER here in Alaska that shows that we desperately need to increase our K-12 funding. When it's there, it's very suspicious that... You know, when you get a source that has an agenda inside of the state that has one opinion and there's a disinterested party from the outside that has a completely different... conclusion, you know, you really have to start to wonder how they could ignore the disinterested party and take the opinion of the party that...
May or may not, but has reason to have an agenda. Yeah. Well, you know, you look at this thing, and I think we've discussed this before. I have never seen a dime cut from education. Never. Never has. No, it's gone up every year. And as a matter of fact, over between 2002 and 2022 in that time frame.
Alaska increased per student spending 79% while inflation was 59%. So we beat inflation on our per student spending by 20%. And that doesn't even include the... the efficiency that we've created because the per student spending has actually gone up much faster than that for kids in brick and mortar schools because of the 24,000 kids we now have in correspondence programs that are only...
consuming $5,900 a year where we're paying a little over $20,000 a year per student in brick-and-mortar schools. So that average of 20,000 includes those 24,000 kids that are in correspondence programs. So that pushes the kids in brick-and-mortar schools probably above 21,000. Because of those resources that are being saved, it's about $180 million a year our correspondence kids are saving us over what it would cost.
if those kids were pulled back into brick-and-mortar schools. You know, it's one of these things where I'm seeing the writing on the wall here, and it's your permanent fund or the school budget. And the Democrats have pushed it this way. And it's really unfortunate because... We really do need to have some sort of metrics on what it is we're spending the money on and how effectively the money is being spent. But that doesn't seem to be what this legislature wants to do.
And I got to say, it is absolutely irresponsible for the legislature to essentially pass a bill with this kind of money and have no source of revenue for it. Yeah, of course the permanent fund is the revenue. I am longing for the good old days where spending PFP resources on government used to be a third rail that would immediately get you electrocuted and tossed out of office. Ever since Governor Walker, we've kind of turned that paradigm around, and I wish we could kind of get back to it.
that I desperately need a permanent fund dividend in my situation right now, but there's probably some single mothers in Western Alaska that could use $3,300 instead of $1,000 or whatever pittance they'll end up getting. In the long run. Yeah, that's exactly right, Bob. It's just awful. Well, what do you think is going to happen? Now, the Senate's going to get this, and the Senate, I think, is going to...
Say, look, there's hardly any money here. Bert Stedman is chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Bert, you know, whether I agree with Bert a lot or not, Bert is a fiscal guy, and he's going to look and say, where's the money coming from? Yeah, I agree with you completely there. I'm happy that Burt's in that position because he will ask, you know, where the money is going to come from to figure it out.
Even though they're not – I disagree pretty frequently with the people who are in charge in the Senate. They're a much, I think, a more deliberative body in figuring out that this is not paid for. We've got to figure out what the – what the pay for is. Uh, but I, I think because of the nature of the body, it'll, it'll, it'll, uh, progress in a very similar, um, uh, form and what we have, maybe a little bit less.
but there won't be any meaningful reforms that will be attached to it, and that will probably trigger another veto battle, and hopefully at least we'll get some reforms to get a moderate... pay for it and get some reforms along the way. But overall, the system really needs to learn to adapt with the resources and reallocate the resources that we have.
Again, in the Rutgers study, we're second in the nation in the percentage of our state GDP that we dedicate to K-12 education, which there's a few other states. that dedicate more per student, but they're much wealthier economies than we are. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. My prediction is the governor will veto, if this came to his desk tomorrow, that he would veto it.
But we'll see. I would guess that he probably will because he understands education and he understands the system and he understands that the funding is not the problem. It's the focus of the funding. And his proposals also call for increases in K-12 spending that aren't funded, but they're much more moderate than what the House has been asking.
Yeah, I think he's trying to target certain things and trying to improve things, and that's what I'm seeing. Basically what this is is let's just throw a bunch of money at something. and hope that it does what it's supposed to do, which never is the case. It doesn't work that way. Right. It's the old definition of insanity. Just continue to do the same thing.
Expect a different result. That's kind of how I feel every day when I do this show, Bob. You know? Yeah. Hey, thanks for allowing me to do some more input there, Mike. You bet. Always appreciate it. Take care. Bob Griffin, it's 529. We'll be right back. Use Radio 650, KENI. Welcome back, it is 534-522-0650. We're talking about the, basically the school issue, the...
Education bill. House Bill 69. It's a monster. But there's no funding mechanism for it. The Department of Revenue came out with its spring 2025 revenue forecast. And it's flat. And this is what's interesting. Unrestricted general fund revenue, this is prior to a transfer of revenue from the permanent fund earnings reserve account, is about $2.6 billion. for fiscal year 2025. $2.3 billion for FY2026. Now, the good news is that it's stable.
The bad news is that when you start looking at some of the things the legislature is doing, such as this massive education bill, and they're looking at a defined benefits package and some other things, Somebody mentioned the permanent fund. Are you in the first row there? Permanent fund? Permanent fund? Do we get one? No, you won't get one. You won't get one. The permanent fund is expected to transfer $3.7 billion into the general fund in FY 2025 and 3.8 in FY 2026.
These transfers remain the largest source of funding for the government and the annual dividends paid to Alaska residents. Permanent fund revenue makes up about 59%. of the unrestricted general fund for this fiscal year, 2025. Over the next decade, the permanent fund's contribution is anticipated to range from 62% to 65%.
of the unrestricted general fund revenues. So as you can see, without any increase in oil production or any sort of economic... to our resources, such as the gas line, etc., we are going to be essentially depending on the permanent fund to kick money out so that we can continue to spend it. and drain it down. And eventually, here's my prediction. Eventually, the legislature will come to us and say, we need to invade the corpus.
They've already threatened that, Mike. Grow the permanent fund. And we're using that without the word G-R-O-W. We're using a different spelling of grow. That was put out there already. What kills me about this whole thing for...
35 years. I think I was right about the right range. 35, 40 years. The PFD was based on you get the set amount of money that is the... profits from the pfd we do all the calculations to inflation proof it whatever puddle of money is left we break down to the city the citizens of alaska get their individual portions now whatever's left over and there's a formula for that it's not just like we take the whole thing it's a
five-year plan. They had this whole thing literally worked out to the T and it worked perfectly. We, our permanent fund, gained money. The citizens gained money. Everybody was happy. And so, like I said, we had the set formula. It gave it all to us. And then the extra. Okay, legislators, here's your bonus money. Do with it as you will. With the Walker deal, all of a sudden, it became a let's pay state resources first. We need the money for this. Okay, citizens.
Here's the extra. We're going to give it to you. Then they went to this 5% POMV, which honestly, that is going to kill it. If we're taking 5% of the percentage market value of the fund, that's no longer. covering our butts, so to speak, for the future. If we have bad years, that's going to start eating into everything going on. No more budget reserves going on. So they're literally shooting us in the foot.
and letting us bleed out over the next 10 years. Well, I mean, the permanent fund isn't going to be around. I mean, the permanent fund dividend is not going to be around. Well, the dividend is going to go first, but I'm telling you that the fund itself, if they do the plan they've got for it...
is going to be gone too because they're going to get into the corpus well they have to get a vote of the people to get into the corpus and that's the only thing that's saving us at this point at this point right so if they don't get a vote of the people To get into the corpus, they don't get into the corpus. See, and I know that's what the Constitution says, but these guys have been playing so much with their regulations and laws. I think that one, there's no question.
Our Supreme Court will have no choice but to say no. This is pretty clear. See, I know you have faith in them. I don't. The Supreme Court, when it was brought to them and it was a... our legislators choice on how to spend it when well they said it was they said it was an appropriation not right and seeing that to me that goes against exactly what yeah but but this is this is very specific language i mean
You can't play with this. And I think that the justices on the Supreme Court understand that, and they're not dumb people. They're smart people, and they can read, and just the way the rest of us can read. You cannot get into the permanent fund corpus without a vote of the people, period. And, you know, I mean, it's okay if you don't trust them. There's certainly evidence of that. I know you have much more faith, and I appreciate that, Mike.
But, you know, it's like at some point there's the line. There's the bright red line. You can't cross it. If you get a vote of the people that say go ahead and do it, then go ahead and do it. But they're going to have to get our permission.
Now, will they get our permission? That's a good question. That's a good question. Because the reason why Governor Hammond was so adamant about having a PFD is he wanted people... to have skin in the game to protect it that's why and he also wanted to get the benefit from the resources that we own in common so his idea was a good one
He also had the idea of saying the people should get the money and the legislature should get down on bended knee. He said that right here in this studio. I was sitting across from him. And he said they should get down on bended knee and try to claw back money from the people for things that the people want. That was his plan, along with some other pretty smart folks.
Hume alone, certainly one of them, and a lot of others that helped to put the permanent fund and the permanent fund dividend into our law. Now. Does the Supreme Court err in my opinion? Yeah, I think they did. Bill Wilkowski took the case to court when Walker decided to cut the PFD. Remember, that's what he did. He said, I'm going to cut it in half.
Right. And Wolakowski said you can't do that because that's a transfer. Well, the court said no, it's an appropriation. And that changed everything. Everything. So... The only fail safe we have at this point is the fact that we have to vote on it. And I'll bet there will be a campaign like you've never seen.
Oh, I'm sure you're right, and they'll use education, our children, retirement, all of that. I guess where I have the problem with it, and you have a lot more faith in this, and I guess I'm more gun-shy of it, is that... My analogy would be is we've been standing in front of our bully now for the last 10 years, basically, and our bully keeps slapping us, okay? And people are saying, well, don't worry. The bully can't slap you that hard because, you know, we've got rules against this.
The bully doesn't seem to care about the rules. He just keeps slapping me. Well, at some point, somebody's going to have to slap back. And that's the people, if they try to take the corpus, because they can't. I think the best, quote, slapback that we can get out of this whole deal is if we kind of do the...
Who was it? One major billionaire said that if they don't meet a certain marker, we just get rid of them all. Literally put into law, if you cannot make these budgets match, if you cannot balance budgets, you're all gone. We start from fresh again. Maybe we'll get people who can. Well, that's up to us. And it's up to us to get involved. And the problem in Alaska, and I see it in this very city, we have changed. We have become complacent. We have become whiners.
We have become essentially, I don't want to get involved. I don't know what happened to us. I think you hit a nail on the head, Mike. I literally, that is hitting the nail directly on the head. Oh, I don't want to get involved. Or, oh, that's somebody else's thing. Or, oh, they won't do it. Everybody else will protect it. Or there's nothing I can do. Bingo. The defeatist attitude.
And it's there. It's there. It's not easy. It's hard. It's very hard to move the ship of state. I mean, it really is. But you've got to do it. I mean, look at our town. It's not the same town I came up to. It's not the same town that I know and love. It's different. It's not what I... It's not what I like. So am I going to try to do something? Yes, I try to do something every day about it. But I'm one guy. And, you know, if enough of us...
get together, we can maybe move some mountains. But that's what it's going to take. The legislature, you're going to have groups of people just like in this country. You had Joe Biden. You had the progressive left. And they were taking this country down a pathway that I think was disastrous. What happened? We put Trump in there against all...
Odds. Oh, no. There's no way Trump could possibly win. He's a felon. He's this. He's that. He won. You know why? Because people had enough. And what I'm saying is if you've had enough, it's time to do something about it. And the only person that can do something about it is you. We'll be right back. All right, it's 548-522-0650. That's the phone number here.
With us, talking about money, talking about the permanent fund, talking about the school bill that just went out of the House. It's on its way to the Senate. I have a feeling that's going to get vetoed by the governor. No matter what happens in the Senate, they're going to have to... The Senate will come up with its own version, and then they'll have some sort of conference committee on it, and they will try to rectify it into one bill, pass it.
which they will because they have the votes, and then send it to the governor. And I don't know when that's going to be, but it'll certainly be sometime in April, I would think, unless they really get moving on it. and then the governor will undoubtedly veto it. There will be enough time left in the session, and the legislature will have a chance to override it. I think that's what's going to happen. Unless...
I'm wrong, and there's some epiphany that shows up, and people actually understand where the money's coming from. I think your crystal ball is spot on, Mike. And you're seeing me grinning because I just had the dumbest thought in the world. You know how we've gone green? Basically, the world's gone green, right? We've gone from oil and gas to electricity. We're going back. We're going back, but they're that large crew that's still embedded in.
is still in that i realized something why nobody ever touched the permanent fund was because it was the third rail which meant it was electrified it would shock you well if we've got all these green legislators in there who now run on electricity and hate oil and gas, they don't mind that third rail. They're grabbing a hold of it and it's energizing them, you know? So it's just kind of one of these, it went from defeating them to where they...
They live on it. I mean, they're also talking about what this defined benefits. That's another $3 to $6 billion. There's just no money there. I mean, I don't understand what they're thinking. We have a flat revenue forecast. I mean, that's it. There's only so much money that the permanent fund is going to spin off to pay our bills. That's it. Unless the oil industry booms big time and we get a gas line and we get some other stuff.
our revenue is pretty flat. And it's not like we're broke. We're not. We have a spending problem. There's plenty of money. It's just where we choose to spend it. So, but... But add to that this. Mount Spur. It's across the inlet. It's active. It is the closest active volcano to Anchorage. And it has erupted. 1953. My lovely sweet wife was here for that. In 1992. I was here for that. I was here for that too.
I remember this black cloud blowing across the inlet. And then a quarter of an inch of this ash covered everything. It is toxic. It'll get into your engine and ruin it. It will cut your windshield. It'll cause all kinds of problems. In fact, there was a plane, it was a KLM plane, that got stuck in a volcano. put all four engines out, and fortunately the captain was able to restart the aircraft engines and save the aircraft from a terrible fate.
What a horrible thing that would have been. Anyway, you know, great for the crew and everything, and we're all happy that that plane made it and everybody got off, and we're all happy about that. But this is what happens. This is very dangerous stuff. So what's going on at Mount Spur? And if you were here in 1992 or in 1953 and 1992, you know. what goes on these clouds they circulate thousands and thousands of feet in the air they disrupt all sorts of air transportation
Flights get canceled. Engines get fouled. It gets into everything. I mean everything. If you've got gutters on your home, well, guess what? You've got to clean that stuff out. And when it gets wet, it's like heavy sand. So it looks, you know, light and all that. It looks like snow coming at you, dark snow. And it covers everything. But when it gets wet, it gets very heavy. Now, is it good for the soil? Yeah, it seems to do a good job. Had great lawns after that. But we're looking at...
possibility now of an eruption of Mount Spur. The likelihood that Mount Spur will erupt is increasing. And the scientists are now looking at this because of the activity in the volcano. It could be weeks, it could be months, but there has been definitely elevated activity. Now, Mount Spur, just to kind of give you an idea, it's only 75 miles away. It's just right there. You can see it.
They've got seismic activities. They've got gas emissions. It sounds like crash. They've got all this stuff going on, and it looks like this thing's ready to... to blow When? Who knows? Well, I know. When I first heard it, I put new pantyhose into my car. That's kind of one of the old tricks I actually learned. I do believe it was 92's eruption that we learned that you need to get an extra layer of filter in there on air filters. Throw some pantyhose.
on there it's not a a solution but it's a stop gap and so don't drive if you don't have if you don't have to absolutely and you just made me realize something I wonder if Japan is starting to wonder where all this extra gas emissions came from on their island because, you know, they keep track of that really tightly. So they're like just going, what's going on? It's crash. Mount crash. It has to be.
So this is what, I mean, this is what's going on. So, you know, gee, just what we don't need is this thing happening. Think of what it's going to do to the airport out there with all the transport. I mean, we're now the major hub for the world for all these planes coming in. Well, they're not going to fly. They won't fly. Exactly. That is going to put the giant stopper.
On transport. I mean, it's basically a safety thing. You don't want to have anybody flying into that stuff. So I remember when it erupted. And I was sitting, and I actually could see it. I was watching. And all of a sudden, it was a decent-looking day, and this black cloud was basically blowing across the inlet. And I'm thinking, okay, well, there it is. There's the eruption. And it wasn't long when we were plunged into a state of darkness.
Oh, yeah, it got super gray black. And then, like you said, that snow coming down was so creepy. It was creepy. And, you know, a quarter of an inch of that, we got dusted pretty good. And you know what I got sent out to do? Go scrape it into a baby food jar off of my car and all the family's cars. Because you've got to have that ash on the shelf, you know, for each of the volcanoes that's gone off. At least my family does. All right. Time to go.
We'll be back tomorrow. Same time, same place, same everything. In the meantime, have a great evening, everyone. We'll see you then.