Monday 1/27/25 | Funday Phonecalls | Headlines | Discussion

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On this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the program. It is the Michael Duke show and we are ready to go. I mean, not really. I mean, I'd like to say that we are, but we're not really ready to go. It's Monday, man. And the crazy weather across the country continues here.

in uh in a in a big way i mean it is uh it is madness out there uh all weekend high winds and rain down here on the peninsula uh there was some wind and rain up in the south central area fairbanks got super warm and now it's going to be super cold and i mean it just the the the fun times with mother nature continue

We're going to talk about that here this morning, give you a little bit of a little bit of intel on the various things that are going on around the around the state and around the country with that. That's all coming up this morning as well as. Oh, we got we got a bunch of your got a bunch of your phone calls as well. In case you were in case you were had something you wanted to say.

Today is the day for you to say the things you want to say. And we're going to get all about that. And we'll continue on here this morning with that. Lots of headlines as well. But we're trying to get the phone lines working this morning. For some reason, the phone lines all of a sudden. Welcome to the conferencing service. Okay. All right. So all of a sudden, the phones start working. As soon as I say it, of course, they start working.

All right, so we're ready to go. Phones are actually up and running, and we're going to take some phone calls as well. If you guys feel like participating, you can call in and we can chit-chat today. I was trying to get some guests lined up, but, you know, it's like right at the beginning of the session.

I mean, I know they say everybody's so busy. We've got so many things going on. And then a couple legislators who I talked to, who I guess I won't name at this point. Excuse me. Were hesitant because there's still battle lines forming. You know what I mean? In the discussion.

There's of I mean, I guess I don't know if it's majorities or just power plays or what. But a couple of them said, can I come on in a week or two after things have settled down? Because we're trying to I don't know. They're trying to do something. They're trying to I don't know if it's to woo, to coddle, to whatever. But a couple of the legislators were like, I need to wait because we're I'm setting up my I'm.

setting up my bivouac, my ambush, my whatever it is. They're doing some strategizing, I guess, behind the scenes. And they don't want to come on the program because apparently legislators who come on this program are, I guess, sometimes get castigated by their fellow legislators, sometimes in their own caucus.

For coming on the program and simply having a conversation. You know, for coming on the program and simply talking to the people, answering some simple questions. I'm not a gotcha kind of guy. I'm not a guy who does ambush. I mean, I'm not a journalist, but, you know, ambush journalism or ambush commentating. That's not the kind of guy I am. And I just want to have a good...

I just want to talk about what's going on about, you know, about specific issues, usually the biggest issues that are going on out there. And I don't, you know, I don't I don't hit people with gotchas. And so I just don't understand this reaction of people not wanting to come on the program.

And I guess the implication, they don't never come out and say it, that they're afraid that I'm going to try and gotcha them. But it's the implication that if they come on and they have a conversation about some of these things, that somehow we're going to sneak something in on them, you know? And so it's a little frustrating, especially when I'm trying to set up some guests in.

The beginning of the session when things are, you know, I understand it's hectic. You're getting committee set up. You're talking about priorities. You're doing all this stuff. But come on, man. People want to know what's going on. You know, I mean, we want to know what's happening. We want some straight answers. And I don't think that that's too much.

to ask, quite honestly. I mean, I don't think it's too much to ask to go through that and talk about that. So I don't know where that came from. That's just like a beginning Monday rant. But it is a little frustrating when I hear this, because I've heard this from several people, that there have been some chastisement, not chastisement, maybe that's the wrong word.

There's been some conversations with legislators about appearing on the program too much because, you know, you're just so visible, you're so vocal. And this proves to me more than anything else that we need to pull the legislative session out of Juneau. If they are so isolated and so insular.

down there, that they are afraid of somebody going out on my show or Porcaro or Dobosky or Fagan or whoever else and answering questions or talking about just specific legislation or whatever. One, that means that somebody's not steadfast enough in their beliefs to be able to defend their position. And two, it means that they are wanting and willing to keep people

In the dark on what's going on. And that that's just that's just nutty. You know, it's just you, you folks. And I'm speaking now to the legislation legislators as a whole. You folks are supposed to be our elected leaders. And I'm obviously not talking to all of them, but to the ones that are.

you know, doing this kind of stuff. I mean, you're supposed to be our elected leaders. And just because you're, you know, 1500 miles away or whatever, and can't be reached except by telephone and, and jet airliner doesn't mean that that's what people want. We want, we want engagement. We want to talk about these things. So it's, I'm,

I'm just a little frustrated by watching this happen. And again, this has happened a lot. Some years it's worse than others. I can tell right now that this year, this is going to be a tougher year, a tougher session to get folks to come on and talk about things. Because I think with the new makeup and the more conservative members of the delegation,

Being being stuck in the minorities and still trying to be relevant, still trying to make things happen, which is I acknowledge is a difficult thing. That they're going to be a little more cautious. And it as a as a show host, it frustrates me, but also as a citizen. who wants to see this state pull back from the fiscal brink, I'm very concerned. Very, very concerned about this. And I guess I just wanted to share that with you right off the bat. We'll start there.

Um, let's see what's going on, uh, across the, uh, across the country as far across the state, I guess I should say. Um, let's, uh, let's take a look here at what's going on with schools and school closures across the state for right now. It looks like, uh, there is a, that the schools in the Kenai

are continuing. It's business as usual today on the Kenai, in Anchorage, and in Fairbanks. I don't see anything, and if somebody in the chat room wants to correct me if I missed something, but I don't see anything going on there as well. But in the Matsu, all Region 6 schools in the Matsu will be closed today, according to the school district.

The school district has cited hazardous weather conditions, and apparently there's a lot of power outages going on. So Talkeetna, Peters Creek, Eklutna, they all have power outages. 73% of folks at Denali Princess and 70% of people in Petersville are out of power right now as of late last night.

So all Region 6 schools in the Matanuska, Susitna borough will be closed this morning. So don't be sending your kids to school today because it's not going to happen. So that's what's going on there. Winter weather advisories continue across the state. Region 6, by the way, includes the Mat-Su Valley Junior Senior High School.

Trapper Creek Elementary, Talkeaton Elementary, and Willow Elementary. That's the Region 6 in the Matsu. That's the northern region. So not the main schools, but just wanted to clarify that. So not everybody was like, oh, it's school day. Other winter weather advisories are continuing right now. The Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, which includes the portions of Delta Junction.

is under a high wind warning. It blows wind in Delta? Don't tell me that. I didn't realize that. A gust up to 70 miles an hour up until noon today. 25 to 40 with gusts up to 70. And also a wind advisory. That's part of that wind advisory that's going to continue through Eielson and Salcha with gusts up to 40 miles per hour.

In Isles and Salcha, the Fairbanks area, Goldstream Valley, Neenana Hills, Tanana Flats, Two Rivers, gusty, gusty, gusty. So it's going to be the weather winter wind advisory there as well. It's supposed to be a cold snap down here on the peninsula. It was 46 degrees up here on Friday or Saturday. And now, according to the weather service, it's going to be two below on Wednesday night, I guess.

Uh, it's going to be two below and there's a dusting of snow. I mean, we had a million gallons of rainfall from the sky over the last four days. And I got up this morning and there's a fresh dusting of snow as well. So it's just, it can't make up its mind right now. Uh, but that's, that's, I guess that's this life in the tundra. Life is tough in the tundra sometimes.

All right, we're up against the brakes, so we will continue here. Oh, before I go, weather also impacting driving conditions. DOT had, they've got Thompson Pass is closed as of last night at 8 p.m. from milepost 12 to 46 because of avalanche hazards and severe weather.

Parks Highway will be closed from 5 p.m. last night till about 8 a.m. this morning on mile 219 just north of Cantwell as they're doing more avalanche mitigation. And then Hatcher Pass continues to close right after the Ski Talk entrance because of avalanche concerns.

There was also was an avalanche across Palmer Fish Hook and Archangel Roads. They also said an avalanche had damned the Little Susitna, which is now flowing through Government Peak Campground. So, I mean, again, weather, man. It's got some it's got some weird stuff going on. All right. We're going to continue. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense Liberty based free thinking radio. We'll return with more in just a moment.

Phone lines are open at 319-527-3864. If you want to talk about anything, we're game for that today. 319-527-3864. We'll return. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thicket Radio. If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Dukes On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay. Oh, my gosh. What a day. What a day. I mean, oof.

Anything. Sure. Harold, do you want to talk about your biscuit recipe? We'll talk about your biscuit recipe. If that's what you really want to talk about, bring it on. We'll talk about it here. Gusts up to 35 knots on the Kenai, says Chris. I didn't see that in the weather. I mean, it could be there. Maybe I just missed it. And it looks like, says Brian, the Wasilla fish hook is fixing to peel off into the little Susitna. We're doomed. We're doomed. Repent. Repent. Yeah, it's. Yeah. All right.

Let me be scrolling backwards here. Anyone have an appropriate response for people all over the country that are asking why Alaskans voted for Murkowski? People seem pretty irritated by her continued votes against anything Republican, particularly SecDef Hegseth. And, you know, you want to know why people all over the country? You want to know why Alaskans voted for Murkowski? Because she's not counting on the Republicans to elect her.

She's counting on the moderates and the Democrats. That's why. Because she is a Democratic candidate. She may say she's Republican, but she's a Democrat. That's who she identifies with. That's who she mostly caucuses with. And, you know, this is no surprise to anybody who followed her voting record when she was in the state legislature. I said it at the time after her dad nominated her. I said, wait a second. He's a Republican and he was a pretty.

He wasn't a full-on conservative Republican, but he was pretty staunch. But his daughter was not cut from the same cloth. I mean, come on. This is just... Oh, it just started raining in Houston? Awesome. Awesome. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Good morning, Dad. My dad hanging out in the chat room. Hey, Dad.

All right. Let's see. On the positive note, said Brian, the wind took away a lot of puddles and his gravel came back. No, man, it was pretty nice out yesterday. I looked outside. I was like, man, there's like no snow. And then I got up this morning. I'm like, oh, I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't have said anything. Absolutely.

All right. Fat Ray says, talking to the people, talking about when I was talking about the politicians not wanting to appear on the show, but the people are dirty and drink beer like wine. Some of them, even though they do their own research, can you imagine?

Kathleen says, I tell everyone about this show. I write it down for them. This is the best place to find out what's really going on in Alaska. Thank you, Kathleen. We try. We try. We try to do our best, you know. All right. I'm just kind of scrolling through for some of this stuff.

Uh, Harold's all doom and gloom about the ice raids and everything else that we're going to be short on food and we're going to be dying and drying up in the streets because we don't have illegal folks here to help us. Um, Greg asks, are the rolling blackouts already starting? Oh, wait till we get to that. Wait till we get to some of this. Um, Rick says temperature's dropping pretty hard. 39 and a half.

It was 39 degrees a half hour ago, 35 now. Yeah, there's a bit of a cold spat coming in. It's going to be interesting. Jerrica says Houston City Council scheduled a last-minute airport committee meeting on Saturday. Apparently the mayor there wants to get an airport in there and nobody wants it. Then they waited until a resident posted that there was a meeting on the schedule with no info before they posted the required agenda for the meeting. Jerrica, if you want to call in and talk about that, I mean, I would find that to be...

Very interesting to discuss as well. All right, we're going to jump into this. Here we go. We're five seconds out. I'm not all caught up, but that just doesn't matter. Can't. It just doesn't matter. The Michael Duke Show. Covent Sense. Liberty-based. Free thinking radio. Like, share, subscribe, ring the bell. The Michael Duke Show. Proudly splitting the left versus right dichotomy. Yeah, I had to look that word up too.

I don't think it means what he thinks it means. There he is, though. That guy. Michael Dukes. The one with the show. All right. Welcome back to the program. Oh, man. Stoom and gloom in the chat room, man. Phone lines are open this morning. Where are you?

How come you didn't call? 319-527-3864. If you want to sound off this morning, we'd love to hear what, if you want to sound off on anything, now's the time to do it. Apparently, there's a lot of stuff going on out there, and I'd love to hear what your guys' thoughts on it are.

This morning. All right. Where do we where do we where do we where do we where do we go here? Where do we get started? There's so many things that we could talk about. We've got the latest from the Alaska House on Friday. There's education funding.

which I kind of want to wait until hour two to talk about that, because once I get on that bandwagon, I doubt I'm going to want to get off, because there's some crazy stuff on there. I guess we could talk a little bit about Lisa Murkowski, who continues to just...

I guess never surprised. I'm not surprised by her actions, but apparently a lot of people outside are surprised by their actions. She continues to call herself a Republican, yet she gal pals around with Mary Peltola. She stands. She stands against a lot of the stuff that I think average Republicans want. She.

You know, she continued on and voted to impeach Trump even after he wasn't in office. I mean, it was just like this never ending saga of pain. She's been sanctioned by the party so many times, starting all the way back in 2010, when she wrote that when she did that writing campaign against Joe Miller. And I mean, I think at this point, she just kind of kind of feel like she's bulletproof. Right.

I mean, that's I think I think it's a lot of people are getting to that point. The chairman of the Republican chairwoman of the Republican Party. Or sorry, I just totally forgot her name. Orfield Camilla Orfield. She put out a letter earlier this week. Basically asking Murkowski to get on board.

that the president was elected and that she, as a Republican, should vote for her nominees. And, of course, this was all about Pete Hegseth's nomination. Now, spoiler alert, Pete Hegseth made it, okay? So he is the Secretary of Defense. But at the time, she, you know,

Murkowski is actively voting against all this stuff. Now, Carmilla Warfield sent out a letter, basically said, Alaskans have voted for Trump. Please confirm his nominees. And, I mean, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. But Murkowski just doesn't seem to be getting the memo. And, you know, quite honestly, why should she?

She keeps getting elected. Why should she care whether she gets censured or the Republican Party chair or anybody? And so this is something that this is a question for Republicans, which, again, I'm not a Republican. I'm a libertarian. Everybody hates me. I mean, Republicans, Democrats, everybody hates something I have to say. And I'm OK with that. I'm totally OK with that. But this is a question for Republicans.

Why don't you kick her out? I mean, is there not a mechanism to eject somebody from the party? I mean, sure, she could probably still put the R next to her name because, you know, whatever. But you are essentially a club. Can't you just yoink her out? I just, you know, I just don't know.

Well, and so the parade starts all over again because this is the same thing that we went through over the last 24 months. The Valley Republican women on Saturday passed a resolution condemning Lisa Murkowski. It calls her out for her opposition to President Trump, her failure to support the Alaska Republican platform, calls her out for not voting to confirm Heg Seth.

for active support of ranked choice voting as well. All of those things. They call for an immediate sanctioning of Murkowski by the party as a whole. And what good is that going to do? Again, she was sanctioned back in 2021 when she voted to impeach Trump, even though he wasn't in office anymore. Then in March of 21, they voted to censure her.

and announced that they would recruit a Republican challenger for the 22 cycle. She was also sanctioned in 2010 for Joe Miller. You know, she's not welcome at most Republican events. She hasn't been invited to speak at the convention as a party she's held. I haven't talked to her in 15 years, like, on the show. She just does.

what she wants to do, and she knows that she has the support of moderates and Democrats, and so she feels emboldened to do whatever the hell she wants. Why is this a big surprise? And what do we think that, again, and I'm not criticizing the Valley Republican women, but what do we think is going to happen if we sanction her or condemn her? You know, just kick her out of the party.

At some point, can't you do that? I mean, again, I'm not a member of a party, so I don't know how that would all work. But since these parties are essentially clubs, shouldn't you get, I mean, they've got rules and bylaws and everything else. Shouldn't you be able to, you know, call a meeting and say, should we yoink them?

But here we are. I mean, I think at this point, she's in it until she dies. I think at this point, unless we get our poop in a group and we figure this out and find some way to leverage rank choice voting against her, I just don't see how you do it.

Maybe you can talk a moderate Democrat into running against her and then a good staunch stalwart Republican candidate. And then we can have a good three way race between Murkowski, a moderate Democrat and a good, solid conservative. And maybe we'd have a chance with ranked choice voting. I don't know. But this idea that somehow we're all shocked and surprised that she did it again. Why are you? Why are you shocked? Literally.

When her dad nominated her, I said, well, that doesn't make much sense. I mean, he was, again, a moderate conservative, a moderate Republican. Wasn't super conservative. I mean, yes, somebody mentioned earlier he hung out with Mitch McConnell. That doesn't. Well, back then, McConnell wasn't quite so rhino ish as he is today. But regardless, she didn't even measure up to her dad at that point. And he was no stalwart conservative. He was a middle of the rotor.

This should not surprise anyone. And I quite honestly feel like every time I see something like this from the Republican Party, I come back and go, you guys, you want to know why you continue to have a hard time in the state of Alaska? Stuff like this. You don't take a strong enough stand. You're supposed to be defending your principles and you're supposed to be defending your, you know.

And we're still giving money to her and we're still doing this. We're still doing that. And, you know, until the Republican Party in the state of Alaska. Grows a pair. You can decide what pair they're growing, grows a pair and takes a staunch stand, cuts off the full money flow, ejects her from the party and puts up a, you know, puts up a dedicated, realistic candidate.

This is just going to continue to happen. That's it. It's just going to continue to happen. Should not be shocking to any of you that this is what's going on. All right. So that was the that was the first thing. And then Carmela Warfield again, her.

Her her letter, you know, again, I mean, I appreciate the fact that she took stand in her letter, but I'm looking for this new era of leadership. That's what I'm that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a new era of leadership where we actually go out there and and do something about it. All right. So normally I don't cover national stuff, but I had to laugh so hard this weekend because.

Folks were losing their mind. My wife forwarded me a Facebook post from one of her liberal friends. My wife has. Yes, my wife does have liberal friends on Facebook, mostly to share them with share the screenshots of me and say, look at this. This is crazy. One of her liberal friends was so upset and bent out of shape because because coffee was about to go up. Coffee.

A Colombian coffee was going to spike through the roof and she was going to have to pay so much more because of the orange man, the orange man bad. Why? Well, because. Two military flights from the United States that were filled with about 80 illegal Colombian immigrants who had been detained and deported.

by U.S. authorities were refused landing in Colombia after the socialist president, Gustavo Petro, turned the flights away. So the president, who, again, I don't always agree with the guy, but sometimes it's just good to see somebody who is a fighter, immediately announced retaliatory measures.

including several that may impact the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. He immediately said there's an emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the U.S. from Colombia. In one week, 25%. In the next week, it was going to be raised to a 50% tariff. There was a travel ban and an immediate revocation on the Colombian government officials, allies, supporters, directors, consuls, I mean, everybody.

Visa sanctions on all party members, family members and supporters of the Colombian government, enhanced custom and border protection inspection of all Colombian nationals and cargo at national on national security grounds and International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Treasury banking financial sanctions would be fully imposed. And he said this is just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian government to violate its legal obligations to regard to the acceptance of return of the criminals they forced into the U.S.

Now, again, social media exploded. Oh, oh, man, he's so bad. He's so. And of course, what what killed Terry and I was the fact that this woman was not upset about the fact that they would not accept their criminals.

murderers, rapists, robbers, bad guys, drug dealers. She wasn't upset that these people were getting off the street and that Columbia refused to take them. She was upset because her coffee was going to cost an extra buck or two. Well, you'll be happy to know that Columbia, within just a couple of hours, conceded to the demand. And at first,

The president of Colombia said that he would fly his own jet up there to get the immigrants. But no, no. Now they're going to take the military flights. The terms include the use of U.S. military aircraft to fly illegal immigrants from the U.S. back to Colombia. So I will say this. The president is delivering on what he promised. Now, whether you agreed with that or not, he is delivering. What I had to laugh about, though, was that he posted a picture of himself on social media.

With this, after he imposed the sanctions, he posted a picture of himself wearing a fedora, standing in a doorway with a little sign hanging in the doorway next to him that says FAFO, which is fool around and find out, although it's not fool around. You know, it's a Gen X thing, right? And he's just like, try me. Try me, bro. Come at me, bro.

You want to have a pissing contest? You want to stand? Try me, bro. I do have to admit that I kind of admire that. I mean, this is not a guy that's going to vacillate and whiffle-waffle. I mean, his decisions might not always be right, but he makes a decision now. And he did. Like, he immediately came out and was like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And like an hour and a half later, Columbia said, please don't hurt us.

I mean, these are your citizens. We're returning them to you. They don't belong here. Take them. Anyway, I just I thought that was so funny because Terry and I was talking about it. And then like an hour and a half later, she's like, oh, well, I guess that's over. That's fantastic. That is fantastic. All right. We're going to continue.

The Michael Duke Show. Phone lines are open 319-527-3864. In hour two, we're going to get into this new school funding issue. We'll talk about some of these other stories as well. Back with more right after this. Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Okay. Oh, man. All right. Let me scroll back to see where we are.

You keep saying phone lines. Why? Why? Why do I need? He said, you keep saying phone lines. You need to change that. What do you mean? It is a phone line. All right, let's see here.

Yeah, Lisa Murkowski is bulletproof. Lisa Murkowski is bulletproof. And that's kind of what my point is at this point. And she feels like it. She knows it. That's the thing. She doesn't even care. She takes a selfie shot with Mary Peltola and they're all girlfriend, girlfriend, smiles and, you know, and she doesn't care. That doesn't even, you know. Let's see.

I'm going through here. Well, Polly says she called Murkowski three times, left two messages, talked to the secretary. We want her to resign. The majority of Alaskans want. But that's not true, Polly, because she keeps getting elected and it's not Republicans that are electing her. That's the thing.

OK. I like you, says Brian. I hope you're talking about me. Kevin says, nope, no way to do that. Judge said so. Apparently eject somebody from the party is what I'm assuming based on the timestamp. That's when that's what he's talking about. What is this when I was talking about ejecting her from the party? And Harold says, just because 40.

Folks in an extremist chat room don't agree with Murkowski sounds decision doesn't mean the majority of Alaskans don't support her. I mean, the fact that Harold thinks we're extremists and continues to hang out with us each day says something, I guess. I'm going through here. We managed to dump Peltola.

Lisa can be extracted as well. No one is shocked at her nonsense. People are probably more embarrassed by it. I'm not even embarrassed anymore. I'm just like, what are you going to do? You know? Okay. Republicans are afraid the donor class will leave the party with her. Well, so? I mean, that's a possibility. Oh, the president did all that from his iPhone while on the golf course when he was two under. That's funny. That is funny. That is funny. Okay.

Trump, I mean, Harold is just full on the anti-Trump brigade wagon here. I thought you were okay with this, Harold, but apparently not. Good morning, good morning, good morning. One phone, not one phone line, not lines. No, there's multiple lines, guys. I can have five or six people on hold at a time.

I can have five or six people on the phone at a time. Oh, you have a line on that phone, you know, a wire. Okay. What's this? Are there any wires here anywhere? No. Who's being pedantic this morning? That guy. All right. It's, I mean, come on. Wires. Phone lines. Wires. Okay. There you go. Rick, what is going on this morning? It's one number with six lines, says Melissa. There you go. That's how, again.

I can't take the pedanticism so much this morning. It's just my phone line. Yes, my phone line. My phone system is through the Internet. It's not through a landline. It's through the Internet. The interwebs. That's how my phone works. It's VoIP. Voice over IP. All right. It's Manic and Pedantic Monday.

Oh, and then Frank has got to be even more pedantic. Okay. All right. I'm done using the big words for today. It's my one big word of the day. Let's get back to it. Here we go. The Michael Duke show, common sense, Liberty base. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about next. Here we go. Let's get, let's get this done.

The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. I have intellect. Just a pinch. Just a pinch. So it's all there. Oh, is it snowing now again? It's blowing. I mean, I'm surprised you guys didn't hear it here in the studio.

Last night I was working in here and it was the monitor was because it was blowing against the house. It's been crazy. It's crazy weather. And again, the big winter weather advisory for those poor people up there in Delta, 70 miles, 75 mile an hour winds up there in Delta and through parts of Fairbanks as well. Isles and Salcha, Fairbanks, Metro, Golden Valley up to 40 mile an hour winds. So the wind, she is a whipping through there.

And then it's supposed to cool off in the next couple of days. So just in case you were wondering, it's just going to cool, going to cool off. It seems to be more commonplace. I mean, especially in the Anchorage area where we're seeing more and more shootings. But even down here in the Kenai, troopers responded to reports of a man yelling and firing a gun late on Thursday night, according to Jacob Dye over in the Clarion.

And they ended up shooting and killing Mason Toloff, 32, in Kasiloff early Friday morning. They said that they were called at around 10 p.m. on Thursday to an area around Crooked Creek in Kasiloff. They said the man threatened to shoot the troopers when they arrived.

And that the SWAT team also responded and began negotiation efforts. A drone was deployed. He tried to shoot the drone down multiple times before then shooting a uniformed trooper in the leg. When he again pointed his shotgun at officers, which again, I think shows enormous restraint on the part of the officers. He shoots one officer and they didn't riddle him full of bullets at that point.

But when he pointed his gun again, he was shot by multiple SWAT officers and declared dead at the scene. This is the second time troopers have, maybe it's something in the waters at Kasilov, within the last year, there was a shooting death in July when he charged troopers while brandishing a harpoon.

So the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, as always, will be will be investigating this as a justifiable use of force. And we'll figure out probably today who the names of the officers were and what what happens from here. But I don't know. I just again, full moon. No, no, not anymore, I guess. But it just feels like it's kind of crazy. All the different things that are going on around the around.

around the country and around the state uh speaking of crazy things this whole thing about renaming mckinley denali denali to mckinley whatever this to me it has taken on a life of its own and i mean i know there's a lot of you out there that are like oh trump is playing fifth dimensional chess against everybody else who's playing checkers right

to which I usually scoff at, but sometimes I see something like this and I'm like, wow, is it really, is that maybe true? I mean, is he distracting people over something so ultimately meaningless? The Maxine Dibbert, I don't know if it's Dibbert or Dibbert, but, and so I apologize to Representative Maxine.

But Representative Maxine Divert has offered a bill that is being fast-tracked through the House Rules Committee. Because this is important. A resolution asking President Donald Trump to change his mind on the restoration of the name of the mountain back to Denali. According to Divert, it should be up to Alaskans and not the federal government or the president what the name and the geographic features are in the state, even if those features are on federal land.

But it's not, Maxine. I mean, I hate to tell you that. I mean, I hate to tell you that. President Trump's order is already signed, and even the Associated Press, not the most conservative news outlet on the planet, has acknowledged that the name change is law. So here we have an effort by a Democratic lawmaker from Fairbanks that is largely symbolic.

and intended to force legislators to take a vote on something that has very little to do with the state's economy, the budget, the infrastructure, education, gas, you know, oil and gas or anything else that's making our lives better. You're actually taking time out to rail against the machine in this case, because I just don't see the president changing his mind and going, oh, you know what? You're right. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. How about a kitten?

I just don't see him reversing his decision. But I mean, who would have thought that this would have been such a, I mean, I guess contentious issue. I mean, I could have seen it being a contentious issue. But I just, it's taken up so much ink on everything else.

And the ADN has got a piece from Mark Thiessen from the Associated Press going on and talking about all the people who are like, oh, we'll never stop calling it Denali. And it's always been Denali. And well, of course, it hasn't always been Denali. It was only until Barack Obama issued an executive order that it became Denali as part of his global climate change initiative.

Because it was a symbolic gesture to the natives to highlight climate change. But again, I mean, do you really care? I mean, are you really losing sleep over this? It's like, am I really losing sleep that now we're going to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars reprinting all the maps that say Gulf of Mexico versus Gulf of America?

Uh-huh. No. I mean, do we really need to reprint the maps, I guess, is the question. I mean, does it really matter? To me, this was another one of those things where I was just kind of chuckling like, wow, I, you know, kind of crazy this is what I want to let off with. But you know what? Maybe it is the shiny object that keeps everybody, I mean, even our own legislators can't help but get involved.

I mean, even even our legislators can't help but be like, yeah, we're going to get in on this. You can't really affect it. You can't really do anything about it. It's already law. It's a done deal. It's sealed. It's all delivered. Do you really think that he's going to look at a resolution from the legislature in the state of Alaska, which will probably only be voted on by just over half of the legislators voted in the affirmative? I mean, because it'll fall along.

It'll fall along caucus lines, it'll fall along majority lines, and it'll go through because they're fast-tracking, so they want this to get through. But why? Again, Denali or McKinley, does it change a single thing? Now, maybe, again, if I was an indigenous Alaska native, maybe I would feel more strongly about it.

But as somebody who, again, born and raised, third generation, the whole deal, who grew up the entire young adult and into my adulthood life, knowing it as Mount McKinley, I'm okay either way. I don't care. I'm not invested in it. But even our legislators, who have much better things to do than...

To create a useless resolution that's not going to go anywhere. But boy, it got fast-tracked into the... I mean, it's going to... Here we go. But I guess at least it didn't have any funding attached to it. I guess we could at least admit that. That it's not... That was the wrong one. At least we could admit we could be happy that there's no funding attached to it.

Which is not so true about our next story, which is the new educational budget. Oh, baby. Buckle up, sweetheart. It's about to be a bumpy ride. Hour two of The Michael Duke Show, dead ahead. Common Sense Radio. You know, I just, I mean, who cares? Who cares? But, you know, I could, you know, to me, it just, I don't even, you know. No one asks his Ted over on YouTube. No one asked the public to vote to change military base names. Same kind of thing.

Harold says, oh, we're talking about a mountain name. That's going to improve our day to day. That was my point, Harold. Why do we even talk to Harold sometimes? Because he's just like, Maxine's your girl, man. You were all about Maxine. Why don't you talk to her and say, hey, that's going to improve our day to day. Why are you wasting effort on this? You know? I'm just curious.

Jerrica says it's so insignificant. Just name it Denali dash McKinley and leave it alone. Yeah, I mean, OK, that's fine. You know, I think you're probably right. My friends from ADAC say 70 mile per hour winds are breezes. Yeah, it's it's it's. pretty it's pretty crazy it's pretty crazy brian says eek i or greg says eek i have snow on the ground yeah me too yeah me too um i'm scrolling down here now i'm now i'm kind of back to where i was i'm trying to scroll up um

Let's rename Anchorage. Any suggestions? Yeah, Los Anchorage. Let's see. Okay, truly, who cares what they name anything?

I mean, I'm just not invested in this. But, you know, this is something that we've been noticing again, this kind of more emotional component of it. It was like the discussion on the schools, right? I mean, why are you so invested on a specific school? As long as your child's getting a great education, it's not too far out of the way and everything else. And in fact, maybe your child's education would improve. Why would you be so emotionally tied to a single specific school building? Right. And now it's the whole thing about renaming them.

It's like we've all gotten all wrapped up in our emotions and we can't, you know, we can't think it. I mean, I just don't know. Let's see. Nope, don't care. Was there this much hoopla when it was changed from McKinley to Denali?

Not really that I recall. I mean, there were some people who were like, that's a, and I think it was more because it was Obama who did it than anything else. But most people were like, um, Michael, you, and this is Miguel. You pronounced her name the second way you stated and sadly does not matter to the majority is her in her district. So it's Dibbert, not Dibbert. It's Dibbert. Okay. All right. I just, I heard somebody else pronounce it the other way and I'm like, am I pronouncing it the wrong way? I don't know.

Let's see. I just know this. The mountain is blocking my view of Russia. Thank you, Frank. You forget. Oh, you forget my Scott Kawasaki could stuff it into it with some funding. That's true. It's true. Because Scott Kawasaki could take he could mess up a he could mess up a birthday dream. Right. I mean, that's what it is. Name it Mount Brian and move on, says Brian. There's no nepotism there. No, no self-serving there.

Cyrus says, I'm sure that Dibbard has her reasons for bringing this particular issue to the forefront, but it scores political points for later. Maybe she could address the homelessness in Fairbanks, the economic roller coaster that the North Star Boroughs become, the fact that disabled and interdistrict are largely forgotten. The list is endless. I mean, yeah, probably we should focus on some of those things, huh?

Richie says it's definitely time for the Alaska GOP to be put politely on notice. Her voting record is clear enough indicated that she's not voting for the values of people and parties she pretends to represent. This is talking about Murkowski. Yeah. Anyway, I just I just find it so interesting that people get so spun up about something like that, of all things.

Again, what is it? Because I could call it McKinley or Denali and people know exactly what I'm talking about. Either one, right? I could call it either one and people would be like, yep, I know where, you know, you know, you know, you know, Mount McKinley. Oh yeah. You know, Mount Denali. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I don't know why people are getting so spun up about it other than, and sometimes I just think that Trump loves to watch people spin.

Right. Sometimes I just think he just he gets a giggle out of watching people, you know, watching their heads explode. Gulf of America changing Denali. I mean, that's I mean, that's great. All right. I mean, I think I think that they are reacting as expected. Not necessarily. I mean, great for discourse, but there you go. There you go. All right. We got to go. The Michael Duke Show. CometSense Radio, Hour 2, dead ahead.

Put that thing back in its holster. We haven't gone anywhere. I don't understand. Check out TheMichaelDukesShow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. Welcome to the party, pal. The Michael Dukes Show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program?

This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS. It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need, and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't fathom it. The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world.

Live around the world on the Internet at MichaelDukeShow.com and across the great state of Alaska on this your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Good morning, my friends. How are you? Thank you for thanks for coming on and joining us on this beautiful Monday. The weather. The weather outside is frightful. High wind warnings, blizzard warnings, winter storm warnings, winter weather advisories. They're everywhere. They're everywhere across the state.

Temperature is now dropping in the Mat-Su back down towards below freezing, although it was raining earlier. It's raining and snowing on the peninsula. Up in Fairbanks, it was warm last week. Now it's supposed to drop the hammer on them and get down to 40 below. In fact, it's supposed to be two below here in Homer, of all places. That'll be the coldest I've seen it since we've gotten here. But gotten since we got here, since we arrived.

I'm looking for my where's your English. But, yeah, it's pretty crazy. Fairbanks area in the southeast Fairbanks area down near Delta Junction expecting wind gusts up to 70 miles an hour. I mean, I feel like 25 to 40 miles per hour in Delta is probably like just a Tuesday. But 70, maybe that's getting their attention. And there's a wind advisory for the Fairbanks North Star Borough as well.

15 to 25 with gusts up to 40 for Ielson and Salcha, Fairbanks, Goldstream, Ninana Hills, Ninana, Tanana Flats, Two Rivers, until 6 p.m. this evening with gusty winds blowing unsecured objects. And there may be a few power outages because, you know, your life's not interesting enough. Crazy enough. School closures in the Mat-Su. District 6 in the Mat-Su is now closed. That includes, that's mostly Talkeetna.

the Talkeetna area, Sioux Valley, Junior Senior High, Talkeetna, Trapper Creek, and Willow Elementary Schools are the schools that are affected. The rest of the schools are open, but those ones, because of icy weather conditions and the power's out, a big chunk of the power's out in the Talkeetna area as well. So it's a little rough, a little rough out there right now with the power going on and off, on and off, on and off.

So those schools are closed, but pretty much everywhere else things are open and we're rocking and rolling and we're doing okay. So we're just going to continue on and we will go on through. What else is happening? Well, I want to get into it here in just a second. We've got the latest proposal from the legislature on the school funding. And it was going to be a big ask. I told you.

It was going to be a big ask, and it's here. We're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about the fact, and I'm sure Brad Keithley and I will get into this tomorrow when Brad Keithley from Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets comes on to talk with us about the weekly top three. NSTAR is now suing Hillcorp in a dispute over the supply contract. Now, I tried to peel through this.

early this morning because i didn't see the story until early this morning um but it is uh apparently the the whole thing is over the fact that nstar has been i guess i would say stockpiling gas as part of their plan they have to store some to try and make up for peak demand right

So NSTAR argued in the complaint, which was filed Wednesday, that Hillcorp has failed to deliver gas under their current contract. It says if NSTAR is unable to meet its customers' demands for gas because of Hillcorp's failure to supply the gas volumes it's contractually required to supply, the result would be catastrophic for South Central. To which Hillcorp responded and said,

They didn't want to deliver the gas because of, how do they put it? Inappropriate storage. Basically, they didn't like the fact that, I mean, the way I read it, and again, this is just my spin on it, but the way I read it is that because they didn't like the way that Hillcorp was basically bogarting this gas. They were demanding this extra.

And then they were storing it for peak demand. After a cold snap last year, John Sims, the president of Instar, told lawmakers the utility was extremely close to being unable to deliver gas with its system under unprecedented strain. This is all from Sean McGuire at the ADN, by the way. Under its current conditions, Instar says by December, it will have half its target level of gas stored for winter. So only half.

And in early December, Hillcorp requested suspending delivery of the additional gas that was in the contract with a pledge that two parties would devise a delivery schedule in January. And NSTAR told Hillcorp that it was requesting that the extra gas be stored in Singsa, which is the Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage Facility, essentially. And so then that.

continued, and that little battle degraded. And then on January 8th, NSTAR said that Hillcorp expressed a new position that said the additional gas supply would not be delivered if the utility continued its storage practices, which means they were putting gas away for the peak season. So I guess my question is, if it's in the contract and it's available on demand by NSTAR,

Even if they're I mean, whether they're burning it or whether they're storing it or anything else, why would it matter? Why are you deciding all of a sudden? You know, the senior VP of Hillcorp said that NSTAR was effectively violating its contract by improperly storing gas. If we deviate from these procedures, it can lead to supply imbalances, causing shortages for other customers, he said in a letter.

Which, again, to me, sounds like you're accusing NSTAR of bogarting the gas. Is it in the contract or not? Can they demand it be there or not? Once their reservoir or their gas storage is full, they can't. They got nowhere else to put. I mean. NSTAR, for its part, said that the storage protocols that.

would now being criticized by Hillcorp, were heavily negotiated with Hillcorp, and those protocols did not change gas volumes that Hillcorp was obligated to deliver. In fact, it submitted emails in its filing with Hillcorp in its complaint that shows volumes of emails going back and forth, showing that storage plans were part of the amended gas delivery agreement. So again,

I don't know. Now, the legislature knew nothing about this. When they were talking about it all of a sudden, they were like, Friday, they knew nothing about it. Ironically, that was when John Sims was sitting in front of Senate Resources talking about plans to import gas, which I haven't had a chance to watch yet, but I'm very interested to see what he had to say about the plans to import LNG. But no mentions of this lawsuit were brought up.

Sims didn't bring it up. None of the lawmakers brought it up. Kathy Giesel said she was totally unaware of it. I mean, this is like as the world turns, man. This is like the craziest stuff you'll ever... I mean, you're going to... We're already on the verge of crisis. And now you're going to get into a piddling match with each other over this. I don't know what's...

What's going to go? So we'll see what happens. But as of right now, this dispute is still ongoing. And again, NSTAR only has about half the gas that it had targeted for storage in case there's a cold snap. And of course, the National Weather Service says this week is going to be a bit of a cold snap. I don't know how cold it's going to get, but...

We'll have to see. Well, I'm not filled with confidence by the behavior of all these folks. I'll be honest with you. I'm not filled with confidence. Well, especially NSTAR at this point. I'm not really filled with confidence that NSTAR is taking a lot of this seriously. MEA, they seem to be taking a little bit of a different tack. They've already said that importing natural gas is the way to go, and they're already working on contracts for that.

I don't know what that means, but they're at least admitting it. Sims and company have been very reticent to even talk about anything. But I mean, they've been putting it off. They've been waiting for the legislature to do something. So. It's it's it's interesting. It's a it's an interesting setup to see where this goes and.

Where this comes. But again, the gas saga continues. And I'm sure, like I said, I'm sure Brad Keithley will have more insight, both as a commentator, but also as a former oil and gas attorney. He probably will have some insight into exactly what's going on on this contract and why, you know, does this matter? You know, does this matter one way or the other? So we'll we'll get into a discussion on that with with him tomorrow for the weekly top three.

We talked a little bit about the Denali McKinley Mountain name change. And do you care? I mean, I should do a poll, I guess. Although, do you? No, I don't care. One way or the other, I don't care. I'll tell you what. Phone lines are open. The phones are open. So 319-527-3864 if you want to call. Do you care? Are you invested one way or the other? Does it make you mad? Does it make you happy? Does it?

Does it matter? Again, I could say McKinley or Denali and you know where I'm talking about, regardless of what's going on. I don't think I don't think it matters one way or the other. But some people are so bent out of shape about it that they're out there. We were just talking about Maxine Dibbert actually spending time creating a resolution to try and get Trump to change it. Although it's already law, it's already done.

OK, so the big story for the day is the House is going to expedite consideration for an education funding increase. They're going to expedite it. They're going to fast track it. They want to get it in there. Mo money, more M-O-A-R, more money for education with no strings attached. How much? Well, a lot. Let's just put it that way.

A lot. And we're going to talk about that when we get back. I know I teased you over two segments. That wasn't very nice of me. But that's fine. I didn't want to get... Because I know once I get on this topic, I don't think we're going to get off of the rest of the show. Because I'm so agitated about this. All right. Let's continue on. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense. Liberty Bay's free thing at radio. Like, share, subscribe. Come out and join us on Facebook and YouTube and Rumble.

Or listen on your radio. If you just want to listen on your radio, you can do that. Oh, one final announcement. For those of you listening, I know, folks in Fairbanks, close your ears. For those of you who are listening to us on KPEN and its various translators across the state, starting tomorrow, I will be followed by two hours of Charlie Kirk. The listeners have spoken.

And we're returning Charlie Kirk to KPEN for those two hours in the morning. So I guess you can rejoice and unite for those of you who are wanting that. All right, we'll be back with more right after this. Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Okay. It's mostly the left and liberals.

who get whipped up because their existence depends on trying to memory hole and redefine things and use rebranding to do it. Uh, I E men can put on a dress and all of a sudden it's a woman. A mountain is a mountain and a body of water is a body of water who cares. I'm with you. Um, Michael, your podcast is about facts and logic, which some persons can or may understand, but a good portion of persons are motivated by symbols and Trump.

and Trump must appeal to both groups. Okay. I could see that. I mean, I mean, I guess I could say I, to me, it really doesn't make no nevermind, but I finally, you know, finally got there. Uh, Michael, you read a story last week about a state that got rid of the rhinos. Last week was like a millennia ago, Jeannie. I don't remember what story it was. Um, usually

I try, if I read a story or if I usually try and tell people where it's coming from, I try and give attribution. Um, if not the actual, you know, URL, at least I used to tell, I tell them where it's in. So I don't, I don't recall Jeannie. Sorry. Um, let's see. Uh, what the temperature is going to drop in Fairbanks. Never seen that coming.

Let's see. Ron says, the increase in funding is very important. How else will the administration get their 17% raise and $10,000 bonuses while the teachers get a 1% to 2% raise and a pittance of a bonus, if anything? Yeah. Yep. What?

What? The Yakutak Klingit tribe are in fear by their leaders of being deported by ICE. My question to this is where would they send the Yakutak Klingit? This is sarcasm? It's got to be sarcasm. I mean, what? Just what? I just, what? I don't. And Melissa just said I said dirty, dirty words. I don't know what I said that was dirty, but I'll do it again.

28 degrees in salt. Okay. All right. So I think I'm all caught up now. I'm all caught up. Although I'm not sure what dirty words that I used, but I'd like to use them again, whatever they were. I'm all about that. All about that. It's not sarcasm. It's true, says Kevin.

Why would the Yakutak Tlingit tribe be in fear? What? Oh, you told Fairbanks to close our ears. Yeah, sorry about that. Okay, yeah. Why would the, I just, I mean, that feels like a, that feels like a, it feels like a story from The Onion, right? Or The Sacramento Bee or something. I mean, it just feels like.

That feels like somebody saying, you know, Navajos afraid of being deported. I mean, right. Or Apaches, Comanches, Comancheros, you know, Crows, Blackfeet. I mean, they feel they're afraid of being deported. Where would you deport them back? I mean, that makes that makes no sense whatsoever. It's a must read story. OK.

I guess I missed that story over there. This is what I get for not turning on. This is what I get for not reading. Oh, here he goes. Yep. Okay. I see it right here. President of the Yakutat Klingit tribe has sent a letter to members warning of possible arrest and deportation. Should carry travel identification cards. Their discussion include potential deportation of Alaskan natives under the troubling assumption that no one can tell the difference between illegal aliens and Alaskan natives.

The Navajo Nation. I said Navajo. Isn't that ironic? Okay. I mean, I just don't even know what to say at that point. I have no words. I have no words for you on that. Public enema number one. Oh, wait, sorry. Enemy. Public enemy number one, which makes more sense. On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. Okay, fine. Welcome back to the program. Sorry. I want to get to this story about the education funding, but during the break, somebody...

said something that I thought was sarcasm. And I said, well, that's sarcasm. I mean, that's like, that's a story from the onion of the Sacramento Bee, right? Turns out it's not. The president of the Yakutat Klingit tribe had sent a letter to members warning of possible arrest and deportation due to President Trump's recent executive orders. She said tribal members should carry tribal identification cards and

that there's a certificate of degree of Indian blood card, and they should keep this ID on them at all times. There's discussion about include the potential of deportation of Native Americans under the assumption that you can't tell the difference. It just feels like, really? I mean, really? You guys are so worried about it? Apparently, the Navajo Nation Deputy Attorney General Chris Breacher,

said the same thing last week. Since the Trump administration is acting quickly to deport illegals, the mistakes could be made. Are there a bunch of illegals on the reservations down south or up in the villages up here? Are there a bunch of illegals? I thought it was a joke, man. I thought it was a joke. All right. I want to get to this story about the expedited education. I just got a phone call.

So I guess we'll take the phone call real quick, and then we'll get back to it. I'll turn the phones off afterwards, but I did say call in. But I want to get to this education funding issue, so let's go over here and see what you have to say. Good morning, Randy. What's on your mind? Hi there, Michael. I just wanted to put my two cents in about the Mount McKinley versus Mount Denali. I think it's perfectly okay for a mountain to have two names.

like a main name and a nickname. For instance, Mount Everest has several names. In fact, it's Mount Everest, but it's also called Chomolungma, which is the Tibetan way of saying it. And another name is Sagarmatha, which is the Nepali, the Nepal name of saying it. So that's okay. And I kind of prefer Mount McKinley.

Because the M and M go together, you know, Mount McKinley. And also the name sounds a little more rugged. It sounds kind of higher to me. The steeper soaring cliffs going into the rarefied air. Whereas the Denali, to me anyway, has a softer, gentler sound. So anyway, I prefer Mount McKinley. But on the issue of Gulf of Mexico, I prefer Gulf of Mexico. Easier to say. Easier to say.

easier to say. Okay. Well, thank you, Randy. I mean, I appreciate you sounding off on that. I did ask for people's opinion on that. I always thought that the one thing about calling it Denali was that Mount Denali always sounded weird. You just call it Denali, right? You didn't call it Denali mountain. You didn't call it Mount Denali. You called it Denali. Whereas Mount McKinley, like you said, it's alliterative and it rolls off the top. But again,

I don't care either way. I just, I just, it does not affect me. Denali National Park, still going to be Denali National Park and it'll be Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. Okay. I mean, I just, but thank you for your call, Randy. I appreciate that. All right. I'm going to turn the phones off now because, uh, uh, because I want to, uh, goodbye. I want to get into this. I want to get into this, uh, discussion here about the plans in the house to expedite.

So on Friday, according to Iris Samuels over at the ADN, legislation was introduced that would increase public school funding by $464 million. That's a 35% increase. Now, they already spend, just for those of you counting at home,

They already spend $1.2 billion on education. $1.2 billion on education, which we did the math last week on the number of actual raw kids in brick and mortar and in correspondence schools. And it's somewhere in the neighborhood of about $11,000 per pupil on average across the whole state. $1.2 billion.

They want to increase that by 35 percent. Now, again, maybe this is one of those things where it's a negotiation and you always ask for more. But 35 percent, half a billion dollars. Now, of course, many of the lawmakers who got up and ran for election this last go around, that's what they ran on. They ran on education funding, education funding. We need to increase regardless of what else is happening.

Regardless of our finances, regardless of what's going on anywhere else, we need to increase it. But they are looking to get this, try and get this pushed through ASAP. Both members of the House and the Senate majority have said education is their priority. Education funding is their priority.

Governor Dunleavy last year, of course, vetoed that education funding bill that would have increased school spending by around $175 million annually. He said last month that he could support increasing the state education's budget by about $200 million annually in perpetuity, as long as it was tied to education policy reforms that he sought, including ones.

that were meant to make it easier to get charter schools approved because, you know, everybody's been saying charter schools are the way to go, right? I mean, they've got the highest thing. It's a negotiation, right? This is what he needs. Bryce Edgeman said the funding bill could serve as a vehicle to work with the Dunleavy administration, but he said, you know, but he's not sure. It could be.

Now, him shoot when she was asked whether she would consider tying the school funding entries to other provisions like the charter schools or maybe even to metrics on how they do with the students. She was reticent. That's what I was saying was reticent. I recognize it's completely politically naive to say no, but I'm going to say no, because in my mind, we have an obligation simply to fund.

And every time we put something else in there, we're bargaining on the backs of our children. OK, so I want you to substitute education funding with any other kind of funding. I mean, any other kind of funding. And if a legislator just said, no, we have an obligation to fund and not ask questions and not demand results and not demand metrics on how this is being delivered or anything else, you would be laughed out of the room. But because this is about.

Because it's about, I mean, but is it really? Is it really about the children? Or is it about just making sure that the, because we know, we know for a fact that in most cases, half or less of the money actually makes it into the classroom. The rest is all sucked up by overhead. Administrators, facilities, maintenance, all these other kind of things.

So is it really bargaining on the backs of our children? Is it really about the children? But she's going to say no, because we simply we have an obligation simply to fund. That's it. That's our obligation. No other discussion. Now, of course, it's ironic that she's a school teacher. And maybe she just doesn't want any kind of other.

discussions or metrics or anything else. But we've heard this kind of language before. We heard it from Willikowski and from Andy Josephson when we were talking about those articles last week, when they were both saying, no, no, they should be totally distinct and separate. We just should fund and then we'll worry about the rest of the stuff later. The money's already out the door. If you do not tie metrics to...

You just, you can't, you can't do that. It will be ineffective. Leaders of the Senate majority also said earlier this week that they would seek an education funding increase without tying it to other policy goals sought by the governor or the law. That was, again, Josephson and Willikowski and others.

Bryce Edgeman said Friday that Dunleavy had yet to meet with the leaders of the House since the beginning of the session, but he is expected to deliver his annual address to the legislature tomorrow. Now, some details. Under Hemshoot's proposal, the base student allocation, which is used to calculate the state's per-district spending on schools, would increase by $1,808. Almost that full $1,900 that...

that Loki Tobin was talking about. That would take the current BSA from $59.60 to $77.68. Hemshoot said she chose to boost it by $1,800 to match the formula to inflation since 2011. Now again, they completely ignore that there's been one-time funding pretty much every year since then.

That makes up for a big chunk of that. And the thing about the one time funding is, no, it's not as convenient. No, it doesn't make for easy budget planning when it's when it's not a sure thing. We know all I mean, those are all realities, but it also doesn't encumber us in case we have an economic downturn and we just don't have the money. That's that's the trade off, the trade off. is that we're not encumbering this money in perpetuity forever, regardless of what's happening financially.

Lawmakers have increasingly raised concern that without the additional funding, they could face a lawsuit from groups contending that the state is not meeting its constitutional requirement to maintain the school system. I think they'd have a hard time proving that. I'll be honest with you. We heard that. We heard that last year that there could be a lawsuit if the state doesn't pony up the funds because we're not fulfilling our constitutional mandate. But you look at what we're spending on education across the state.

And you look at that compared to the rest of the country. And again, we're in, I think, the top five states of spending on per pupil spending. I think they would have a hard time arguing that we're not meeting our constitutional obligation. I really, now again, I'm not a lawyer, but to me, it doesn't pass the common sense smell test.

But again, not that that necessarily would mean anything, I guess, in a court of law. Now, I guess if there's any piece of good news on this is that it all wouldn't take place at once. I don't know if that's easing the pain or just slowing the inevitable demise, but Hemshoot's proposal calls for staggering the increase over three years. The first increase would be $1,000 this year. And then in 26 and 27,

it would be boosted by $404 per year. And then every year after that, the formula would also change depending on the CPI, the Consumer Price Index. But it would peg the funding formula to inflation beginning in the upcoming fiscal year, which means the state spending on schools would automatically rise in conjunction with the cost.

So not only are they going to peg a massive increase into it in a one time jump over three years, then they're going to tie it to the inflationary measure so they don't have to do one time funding anymore. Everything's going to be automatically baked in. But don't you think for a second that they won't be asking for that one time funding on top of all that? I mean, wow.

According to the approving, the spending required under the bill could be challenging. The article finishes up amid declining oil prices and revenue. The state is expected to have less money at its disposal this year than last. Dunleavy's budget draft called for drawing one point five billion from savings. But budget crafters say they want to avoid a savings draw altogether. And here's the final quote from him. Shoot. We're not looking to circumvent the process here.

which immediately tells me they're looking to circumvent the process. But we're talking about this specific issue a lot over the last two years, so I think to say we're trying to expedite this bill is not an understatement. We're not looking to circumvent the process, but we're looking to circumvent the process. We don't want to have a debate. We don't want to have to bring people from... See, because the problem is, is that when they...

When they have to draw from savings, when they have to draw from the CBR, they have to acquire the cooperation of the minority to do it because it requires a supermajority vote. See, they don't want to do that. They want to do everything along party lines. They want to find ways to pay for this where they don't have to go to the savings because then they would be required to give consideration and concessions.

To the minority in both bodies. And of course, the minority members have all said we're not opposed to educational increases, but we want some we want some some metrics and some accountability in there. And they don't want that. They just want a blank check. So when they any time any any time you start off a sentence with a phrase followed by but.

That's really what you're trying. I mean, right? I mean, this is like rhetorical linguistics 101, right? We're not looking to circumvent the process here, but you are looking to circumvent the process is what you're saying. You are looking to circumvent the process because you do not want to include the minority from either chamber in the discussion. That's what you're looking to do.

To tack on a half a billion dollars in spending every year in perpetuity. Oh, and put a ratchet on there so it automatically increases every year on top of that. Oh, and don't forget, I guarantee you, they'll still be asking for that one-time funding because it just won't be enough. We're going to continue. Back with more of The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. We're broadcasting live through a series of tubes.

All of these entities to provide streaming stuff going on the internet. Well, it's kind of hard to explain. Sorry. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Shh, I'm counting. I'm counting. Okay. Is that right? That's right. Okay.

I'm sorry. I was counting, counting commercials. It was like counting crows, but not, it's not a band. Um, I'm sorry. I just, I just, uh, I just, I heard the Gulf of America changes so we can drill something about biting saying no drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. That's true. It's true.

Oh, man. Babylon Bee. I'm sorry. It's right. Not Sacramento Bee. I apologize. The Babylon Bee. Thank you, Gordon. Becky Schwenke is in the chat room. She says, you want better education outcomes with new funding? Call the House Education Committee 8 to 10 a.m. this morning or 5 to 6.30 this Wednesday and bring facts. Thank you, Becky.

Let's see. Fair assessment. Yeah, they can't tell the difference, so you better have identification and proof. They can't tell the difference. Yeah, Richie says, I think Richie summates kind of my whole feeling here. I'd rather be able to afford gas and groceries instead of fixating on a feel-good title for a rock.

Yeah. Miguel says, my question is how and who will pay for this increase? Will Alaskans be forced into not having a PFD? Word is a PFD may be used to pay for this since there isn't any new revenue for this. They admitted it last week in the article talking about the Senate's priorities. They admitted that that means that the PFD, they're just going to come from the PFD. They said it. Like I said, they're going to submarine the PFD.

All in an effort to avoid any kind of bipartisanship or working with a minority to call from the CBR. PFD is dead. PFD is downward spiral right now. We'll be lucky if we have it in three years at this point. That's my prediction at this point.

The Alaska Constitution says the state must fund schools. There is no amount it must spend. Right. And if you show that you're in the top five out of 50. Right. So you're in the top 10 percent of spending on schools. That should be pretty. It should be done at that point. See, it's the threat of the of the exposure and of the embarrassment. That's what it's all about. Jeannie says.

Why over three years paying praying that the student population is going to increase? They're just guaranteeing your balloon funding is secured. And Lisa says, so what is the legislature going to cut the PFD? That's, you know, they are more interested in pushing the state into collapse. Then they will cry. Why are people leaving?

Harold says, can't take Alaska seriously. Hold on a second here, David. David's just calling in here. Hold on a second, David. Harold says, can't take Alaska serious. The legislature follows the advice of a nurse to saddle the state with billions of defined benefit liability instead of the advice of an experienced Duke-educated economist with a proven track record. And I agree with that.

David Boyle is on the phone. Can you hear me, David? Hold on a second. Let me dial you back, David, because this thing is not connecting. I'm going to dial David back here. Let's see if we can get him back on the phone here. Nope. Oh, hold on, David. This thing is not working. I didn't have it set up, so hold on. I'll call you right back.

How embarrassing. I'm trying to get it. He called me on the phone here. Let me see if I can get this. Why is this not cooperating? Why are you not cooperating with me? Technical issues here on this. There we go. Okay, let me try this real quick here. All right. There we go. Let us try this one more time. Let's see if we can get David Boyle on this time.

Should not be that hard to get technology to work. Should not be. David. I'm going to try one more time, David. I'm going to try one more time, David, and we're going to see what we can get to here. That's all I got. I got one more time. I got one more time in me. Come on. There we go. Dang it. All right.

I got it to work. I'm here. I got it to work this time. All right. All right. We're 15 seconds out here. Hold on the line, David. I'll be right back to you. David Boyle just called in. And we'll see. We'll see. We'll see what it says. Let's jump back into it. The Michael Duke show. Common sense. Liberty based. Free thinking radio. Like, share, subscribe. The Michael Duke show. Not your daddy.

Wait, sorry, not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew, I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show. Okay, we're back. Welcome back to the program. I just had David Boyle call on the bat phone here. David Boyle, education analyst, advocate, and writer for Must Read Alaska.

Looking over this numbers, we predicted this, David, last week. We were just talking about this, how they were going to push for a half a billion dollar increase. And yet and here we are. Here we are. What are your thoughts on this right now? Well, it may have a difficult time getting through the House, but it'll pass quickly through the Senate if it gets over even in its original form.

I think there'll be some amendments to reduce it. Hopefully there's some amendments to put on there to increase accountability to ensure it goes into the classroom versus into the overhead. But if I were there and in the committee or on the floor, I'd offer a friendly amendment to double it just to make them come out against it because this is utterly ridiculous. I mean, Michael, I looked at the unassigned.

Unassigned fund balances as of last year, October 31st, all the school districts in the state of Alaska, the unreserved fund balance, they have $125 million in their piggy bank. How much? You broke up. How much do they have in them? $125 million. Between all the schools? Yeah, totaling all the schools. That's the money in there.

banks that they can spend down to well the state limits them they must maintain five percent of their operating budget in their piggy banks for emergencies such as that um then so you know there was a document if on on the on basis for house bill 69 which is the bill we're discussing there was a document put on there by the kenai superintendent of the kenai school district

And he's also the president of the Alaska School Superintendent Association. And it's not on there anymore. Very interesting. Oh, wow, this guy, he's on fire. He's going to have to, if he doesn't get any increase in funding in the BSA, he says the fund balance is currently less than $300,000. Well, let me tell you what. The document he sent to the state has it at $11 million.

So somebody's not telling the truth here. The numbers are all over everywhere. So they took that document down, but I saved it. He says, we're going to have to cut more than 85 teachers. But he's going to fire 85 teachers if he doesn't get a BSA increase, he says. But guess what? The staff. He's not going to fire any staff. He's just going to reduce their salaries by 10%.

I don't know where his priorities are. He's going to cut swimming pools, theaters, and all that other stuff that we usually get. And where is this? He says, if he doesn't get it, the pupil to teacher ratio, there'll be over 100 students in every classroom. What? What? Yeah. Yeah. In this briefing, I will send it to you. It's unbelievable. And I know that's why they took it down.

And in the Connections Home School, there's going to be one teacher for every 200 students. Rather interesting. But, you know, we got it. I guess my take on it is, hey, let's go ahead with this. Let's see what happens. And, you know, three years from now, let's see if students have gotten any better at reading by third grade. Let's see if their math scores have increased and their science scores have increased. They probably won't, so they'll come back and ask for even more.

It's pretty disgusting. Well, that's my question, David. I mean, this has been their whole argument the whole time. We haven't been keeping up with the Joneses. We haven't been keeping up with inflation. The BSA has been flat funded. It's been, you know, all these other things. Again, ignoring all the one-time funding that's going on. So again, just hypothetically.

You know, let's say they get the eighteen hundred dollar increase and they and they peg it to the CPI. So it goes up every year. Do you think that's going to stop the one time funding asks? Do you think that they're going to stop asking for one time funding requests on top of that? No, this is if this were to pass in its current form or if it's not even substantially reduced, it incentivizes their behavior and they say, wow, we won last time.

Let's go for even more next time. And that's what happens. This is not the way a business operates. You know, you look around and you cut the fat until you get down to, you know, quote the bone, let's say. They're not doing that. They still, in the Anchorage School District, they still have a department with the DEI in it. I'm kind of wondering how long that's going to last. And then they talk about, you know, teacher retention. Well, those numbers are so. How many?

How many teacher vacancies are there? Anchorage said they had like 400 teacher vacancies, but that's about the total for the entire state, according to the Department of Education. Then you can look at teacher salaries and benefits. Like I mentioned the other day on the show, in the Kenai, the average salary with all the benefits is over $110,000. That's the average. For nine months. Yeah, for nine months.

As you know, that's the problem. We cannot distinguish between effective classroom teachers and those that are not effective and shouldn't be in the classroom. Maybe they should be in administration for all that goes. There's another issue. When you look at the number of teachers in a district, they don't discriminate between those that are in the classroom and those that are in other jobs, such as in the administration areas.

annual comprehensive financial report. It's not near as detailed. They don't have pupil-teacher ratios in it, which that would be fine. Interesting to find out. I guess I could ask him and hope I get an answer. But people pay attention. Your PFD, total, all your PFD is at stake. And testimony is on Wednesday. I don't remember the time, but it's Wednesday. It's Wednesday and it's this morning, apparently. Rebecca in the chat room mentioned that...

8 to 10 a.m. this morning and on Wednesday at, there we go, House Education Committee, 8 to 10 a.m. this morning or 5 to 6.30 p.m. this Wednesday. This morning's only invited testimony. Okay, this morning's only invited testimony. Okay. That's what it says, yes. Rebecca, they may have changed that, but it's a good idea to listen in on that and read some of those documents. So if you want to testify.

and push back against this tremendous increase, you'll have your talking points together for your three minutes of freedom. Yeah, well, I mean, and that's about all you get, because you're right. If this goes through, and they've already said, again, the quiet part out loud, we're not trying to circumvent the system, but they want to get this passed without having to go to the minority to get any concessions. They want to do it all. Right. Now, I looked at Representative Hemshoot's

PowerPoint presentation she has in documents and she has a chart there that shows the increase dollar increase from the prior year for fiscal year 10, all the way through 25. They can't even add correctly. They're off a hundred dollars. So maybe they all went to, well, she's a former school teacher. So hopefully she wasn't a math teacher. You can only get all the help. Yes. Yes. Anyway, I'm going to pay a lot of attention to it and I'll get.

Back to you later. Yeah. Yeah. Let me know. Just keep us in the loop on that. Thank you. Thank you, David, for calling in and joining us this morning and talking about that. David Boyle from Must Read Alaska. Yeah, this this whole thing is is going to be I mean, they're going to put it on rails. They want to get it in. They want to get it through. Then it's going to be the question of whether or not the governor. Will veto it.

Does the governor have the intestinal fortitude to stick to his guns and say, without the concessions that I've asked for or others have asked for, we're going to veto it? I mean, I would hope that he has the chutzpah to do that. I would hope if that's what it is. But we'll see. We'll see what happens. All right.

Again, for you listeners on KPEN and its various translators around the state down here on the peninsula and Delta and Unalaska, Unalaska and Kodiak, starting tomorrow, I'll be followed by Charlie Kirk. So just FYI. But we're out of time for today, my friends. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the weekly top three, Chris Story and more.

The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. We'll see you tomorrow, my friends. Have a good day. Harold says call 1-800-BRICK-WALLS. You'd have better luck.

than trying to talk to the edge. No, their minds are already made up. I mean, we could flood the airways, but it'd be another Andy Josephson. Well, that's all great. Or another Paul Seton. Well, you know, that's all nice that it was 90% against what we're doing, but we're going to do it anyway. You know, it's just, it's crazy. Roads out there are pretty greasy, says Cindy. If you don't need to travel, stay put. Roads are stupid. Yes, they are. All right, my friends, out of time.

We got to get out of here. We will see you guys tomorrow. Be kind. Love one another. Live well. Radio Skin. And now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.