Monday 3/31/25 | Headlines, discussions | HEA candidate Matt Bullard

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Oh, yeah. 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. Hello, my friends. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Monday. Yeah, baby. It's a great day in America, man. It's a great day. A great day this morning. What a beautiful day. beautiful weekend. It's been here down here on top of the world in Homer, Alaska. Just amazing. I had a great time.

On Saturday, emceeing the emceeing the Gatsby Gala for the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds. and got a chance to meet with a bunch of different folks. Bill was there from the chat room. We had a great time, had a chance to eat dinner and just enjoy it. And I was just saying, it's amazing. So lucky. I just anytime I drive down here off the hill up on Diamond Ridge in Homer and I look out at the bay and I'm just like pinching myself like I can't believe I can't believe it. I live here.

I mean, I live here. This is great. It's just been amazing. The sun is out. The sky, it's warm. Spring is in the air. And it's a good day to be here. in the great state of Alaska. So thanks for coming in and joining us here this morning. Are you ready for the big times, for the big deep dives and the fun stuff? We have got a full load of discussions here in hour one this morning. We're going to be diving into it and talking about all the headlines that are going on around the state.

And then in hour two this morning, we're going to be talking with Matthew Bullard, who is the District 3 candidate for HEA. The Homer Electric Association. Now, you may say, especially you folks in Fairbanks, what does that mean? I don't care. The Homer. Guys, guys, guys, you should be paying attention to this.

because you're going to be dealing with some of the same things that we are down here. We're going to talk about that here in Hour One this morning. The latest from HEA, which is, well, let's just say it's not good news. For those of us that are high electrical users, you know. like a radio station. We'll talk about this here this morning as well and go through all this. But Matthew Bullard is going to be joining us and we'll have a discussion with him about his candidacy.

And some of the things that we may need to know, we may need to be paying attention to. You know, it's interesting because the same kind of thing happens in Fairbanks, right? When I lived in Fairbanks, and I'm still a member of GVEA, right? I've still got some capital credits there. I've given them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars over the years.

But, you know, we really didn't ever really pay that close of attention to what was going on on our boards in Fairbanks. I mean, the candidate. You know, the ballots would come out or the candidate thing would come out. And I mean, how many of you in Fairbanks actually take the time to look at the candidates who are on your who are on your boards? up at gvea and uh man we actually read the bios or call the candidates or even vote in the i mean i can safely say that

I probably voted in maybe half of the GVEA elections. Maybe. Because, you know, we're busy. We've got a lot of stuff going on. We're just not, you know. This stuff's important, though. And the older I get and the more involved I get and the more affected I am by it, the more I realize, ooh, we need to be paying attention to this thing because dang, man, there is some...

There's some interesting stuff happening. So we're going to talk about that this morning, and we're going to meet with Matthew in hour two this morning. So it's going to be good. We're ready to go. Okay, that's the rundown. That's the full rundown. And there's a raft of stuff to... to talk about here this morning. So we're going to dive into that first things first, take a look at the headlines. But I will remind you, just in case you had forgotten, today is...

the last day to apply for your 2025 PFD. You guys are all set up, right? You know, you guys are, you know. You guys are all set up. You've got your PFT. You're listening. You're all done, right? You guys are all ready. No? Today's the day. I know. The PFD may only be $500 or maybe, you know, maybe it's $1,000. Maybe it's $1,400. I don't know. What is it going to be? It's your share. I do know that. It's your share.

of the state's resources. As an owner, it's what you get. So if you don't sign up, you're not going to get your share of it. That's the whole point of the permanent fund dividend. It's not free money. It's not, you know, it's not welfare. It's your share. Well, it's your share in the oil wealth that you own as part of the collective that is the state of Alaska. And as...

Jay Hammond said it is the ultimate expression of capitalism in kind of a socialistic, you know, I mean, he didn't say it quite that way, but he didn't say it was the ultimate expression of capitalism. But it really is the ultimate expression of capitalism in what is a quasi-socialistic constitutional mandate from the state of Alaska where we all own it together. We all own it together. Right?

So today is your last day to get signed up. And you just go to, I think it's pfd.alaska.gov. Anyway, go to your My Alaska account and get signed up today. Because today is the final day to get it done. So don't miss out on that. Don't miss out. And get yourself squared away.

And Jeffrey points out in the chat room that there's only five more days to get your Neenana Ice Classic tickets, which, I mean, holy cow. I mean, it could go out before the tickets are done being sold, right? I mean, I hear that it's... I hear that the ice is pretty thin and punchy up there. So, yeah, if you haven't got your Neenana Ice Classic tickets, now is the time to do it.

And then Bill says, today's the last day to spring check a 2026 kiddo as well. Bill's out here always working it. Always working it. Come on, today's the last day to get your 2026 kiddo on your spring check. All right. So that's it. Oh, and Kevin says, happy Seward's Day. Boy, everybody's just so chipper this morning. It's just, it's just, it's great. It's great. All right. So where do we want to start today? Well, we just did the dividend. That was the first thing I wanted to start with.

Let me, uh, I'm checking, I'm checking all my headlines here because I was going through them this morning saying, wow, there's a lot of stuff to go out here. Um, oh, uh, the, the. OK, I knew about this bill because Representative Will Stapp reached out and told me about it. And I thought, well, that's. That's interesting. But now there's some hand-wringing going on from Must Read About It. Representative Will Stapp had put a bill in to...

To make the governor's mansion available during periods of non-use, make it available for like a VRBO thing, right? For like an Airbnb. So when the governor wasn't in residence and the legislature was not in session, they would be able to rent out the governor's mansion for, you know, weddings or, I mean, you know.

whatever. And, uh, and I thought, okay, I mean, you know, it's a, is it going to really generate, I mean, if they got it passed, would it generate any revenue? Would it really do? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's an interesting it's an interesting thought. But the but Suzanne Downing over at Must Read is writing an article talking about all the.

the all the bad so all the bats she she does a what if kind of thing which is i mean you know okay good for her she's kind of planning ahead prepare for the worst hope for the best kind of thing And, you know, she she lauds him for trying to generate revenue to allow short term rentals of the residents when the governor is not present. But she goes on to talk about how the primary concerns are security.

for the governor and for his family, and that it could also compromise the security of the facility itself. that even with thorough background checks, the transient nature of short-term rentals increases the risks of unauthorized individuals gaining intimate knowledge of the property's layout and security measures.

And she goes on to say, okay, there could be bad. So surveillance and intelligent gatherings. Individuals with malicious intent could... use a state to gather sensitive information about the security systems, to place a bug in the mansion that, you know... You know, micro cameras and microphones to hear all the secret planning that the governor does in the mansions or whatever. Unauthorized access, theft and vandalism. They might attempt to access restricted areas within the mansions.

leading to potential theft or damage to property. There's artwork or something in there. They could do something like that. Illicit substances, poisons, hallucinogens, or bedbugs. Persons with the intent to harm could leave behind substances like cocaine or meth or fentanyl or even anthrax or cyanide. They could smear LSD on flatware or silverware.

A bad actor could bring cockroaches, fleas, ticks, rodents, and... What? I mean, I understand you're painting a worst-case scenario here, but this... I mean, you know... I mean, okay. And then she went on to say, The possibilities of renters engaging in inappropriate behavior or conducting illegal activities could tarnish the reputation of the sitting governor. A person might rent the house out for a wedding when in fact the person intends to film a porno.

Or you... I mean, could you... Live from the governor's mansion. I mean... Okay, I mean, you know, I'm laughing here, but she's not wrong, right? She's not wrong. And I understand what Will's trying to do. He's like, oh, we'll just try to get some more revenue. He's trying to make a point here. How do you pay for all this stuff that you've got going on? Well, let's rent out the governor's mansion. I mean, he's making a point.

I mean, I don't think he's really serious about it. I think he's making a point. But it's funny that this is the... This is... Because I think Suzanne... Quite honestly, I think she's missed because she says while the intent behind Rep Stapp's bill is to monetize an underutilized asset and the bill may get amended by others. It's you know, it's you know, it's just she's.

I don't think he's trying to monetize an underutilized asset. I think he's trying to make a point. The same point that he does when he tries to reduce the PFD by whatever it is that you're spending. He's trying to say, how do we pay for it all? We got it. OK, so we'll just raise money any way we can. You want to pimp out the governor's mansion? OK, we'll do it. You know, we'll do it.

But she put a lot of thought into all the things that could potentially go wrong in the... All I could think of is... You know, and the governor's, hello, governor. I mean, you know, I just had to chuckle when I read that. Renting out the governor's manor for a wedding. And it turns out they were shooting up. a movie. Uh, anyway, it's, um, the whole point is how do you, how do you pay for all this? How?

Do you pay for all this? That's the question that we should all be asking. And I think it's what Will is, I think it's the whole point of his contention here. And I think it's being missed by a lot of people, quite honestly. I think it's being missed by a lot of folks. So we'll see what goes on here. All right, we got... We've got to move forward. The Michael Duke Show, common sense, liberty-based, free-thinking radio. Back with more right after this.

If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Duke's 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, man, it just cracks me up. It just cracks me up. Have you guys heard the Goose Watcher song? I'm a goose watcher. I'm a goose watcher. Watching those geese go by. My oh my. I'm a goose watcher. Yeah, I've heard it. Yeah, I've heard it.

Let's see. I'm scrolling through here. Let's go says. Do you think maybe you're distracted with a stupid story on purpose? I'm not distracted. I mean, it's, you know. When called by anyone in the legislature, you should ask about auditing the fund and raising revenue to fix SB 21. We do. Are you not paying attention? Instead, you eat up this stupidity and repeat it for 15 minutes.

Lesko, you're welcome to listen to some other show, man. I mean, if you're so angry this morning, you're welcome to listen to somewhere else if you don't like what we're doing. I mean, Mr. Anonymous with no picture and a fake pseudonym. You're welcome to, you know, it's okay, man. It's okay. I know you can't stand it when somebody has fun, but just relax. We are talking about all those things, okay? It is what it is.

Barbara says, well, I have been to some weddings that could have been pornos. Barbara, boy, I mean, I need to hang out with Barbara more, apparently. McCabe says, the point is, why did we get a budget from the governor that was $1.2 billion underwater? Well, because he failed at his job. I mean, that's just it. We know that's what's going on. You know?

That's just, we got somebody who failed at their job. That's the thing. No, no fiscal discipline anywhere in Juneau, not just the legislature, but the governor's as well, you know. Rick says some rooms for beer pong and some rooms for leg wrestling. That wouldn't be a bad. You know, you're right. You're right. That's not a bad idea. Oh. Anyway. Can't be cranky after all that sun yesterday, said Greg. No, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. It's way too nice.

to be so grumpy about everything. I mean, you know, we're going to do what we can do here, folks. We're going to fight the fight that we can fight, but we're not going to get... You know, I refuse to just get all upset about it. You know. How about a Mount Spur contest instead of Frank's talking about in Fairbanks, they have a contest called Goose Watch where they wait for the geese to.

come in and as soon as the geese come in whoever reports it first wins a prize and all that kind of stuff so frank is uh he's talking about whoops how about a mount spur contest i'm a mount spur watcher a mount spur watcher counting the days till it blows up we're gonna we're gonna you know we're gonna talk about it

They're already rented out during the session, the legislative chambers. So why not rent out the, you know, why not just rent the whole thing out to people and hold the session somewhere else? That's what I'm asking. Why not just do that? That would make more sense to me. Right? All right.

Brian, you're right, Brian. That's exactly it. Fight what we can fight and laugh at everything else. If you can't laugh at everything that's going on, the madness that's happening out there, you might need a checkup from the neck up. But he says, yeah, you can rent out the governor's mansion for one and a half million dollars per night. And after 100 years, we can wipe out the state debt. Yay. I mean, you know.

It's the whole point here is paying for all of our stuff. Just paying for all our stuff. That's what we need to do. All right. You guys ready? You ready to do this thing? Okay, let's jump back into it. We're about 10 seconds out. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. Like, share, subscribe, ring the bell, do the stuff. Let's go.

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. It's a smoke show. That's right. Fight what you could fight and laugh at the rest. I think Brian just encapsulated my... Whole philosophy.

for right now, for this week and for everything else. I mean, you got to laugh at it, folks. Otherwise, you'll weep uncontrollably and be frustrated and lash out and be mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Right? You know, it's just one of those things. You know, look, I think Greg says it best this morning. The entire world is a rolling dumpster fire right now.

I mean, it's not wrong, right? I mean, there's highs and there's lows and there's everything else and there's all the bad things in the world. But it is what it is. You can. You can be as upset as you want about it. We had a listener in the chat room who was chastising me for going on about that story about the governor's mansion. You eat up this stupidity and repeat it. And I'm like, dude, you know, if...

Look, life is too short Okay? Life is too short To To dance with ugly women Life is too short I mean, life is just too short Not to embrace it and laugh at it I mean, we could get down and wallow in the mud with all the people out there who are crying and the triggered butterflies and the people who are so...

you know, wrapped up about how this is the only time we're going to save the Republican. I mean, we can only do what we can do, right? I mean, there are certain things, you know, what's the old Irish proverb? Lord, grant me the intelligence to understand the things that I can change and understand the things that I can't change and the wisdom to know the difference.

Something along those lines. I mean, that's kind of where we're at. I mean, we can get all spun up about everything and we could be mad and we could do. You know, some talk shows are about that. They're all about the mad. And I get upset sometimes. There's no doubt about it. But, you know, if you can't affect it, then, you know, sometimes you just got to laugh at it because otherwise you'll go mad.

You know, we do talk about some of the things we could fix around here. We focus on that, but here's where we are. You know, you know. All right. So what are some of the other stories that are coming out and about right now? Well, the Mount Spur thing is still, I mean, will it or won't it? I mean, is it going to pop or is it going to not?

Everybody. I mean, I'm seeing it on social media. I don't even spend that much time on social media. Like, I think once this weekend I was scrolling through something and people are like, is it going to go? Is it going to go? Is it going to not? Is it going to go? Is it going to? My daughter's upset about it.

She's worried, oh, the cats and the dogs and the, you know, it is what it is. Prepare as best you can and move on. Although I did look to just, I'm just like, okay, what, you know, because we've got dogs. And, you know, the ash, if there is ash fall, the dogs are susceptible on their little feet and on their eyeballs. Right. And the breathing.

And so I was like, OK, well, what's it cost for a pair of these doggy goggle things that there's like 90 bucks a pair for the big name brand ones? And I'm like, well, I suppose I could buy the off brands from China. But dang, I mean, 90 bucks for the. For three, you know. And they got the little doggy snout masks and everything else. And you're like, OK, I will, you know. Is it or is it not?

Well, we'll see what happens. Now, what should you do to prepare for the volcanoes if it's going to happen? But there you go. You know, first and foremost, if you have pets. If you have pets, then you probably want to make sure you take care of your pets first, you know, because they're the ones that have to go outside probably more than you. Unless you got them trained for a pee pad or something. So.

Goggles, masks, and booties. That's what they recommend. Goggles, masks, and booties for your puppy. Because the ash is essentially... pulverized rock and glass mineral glass so you don't want to be breathing it and you don't want to drive so if you can do remote work and if if the if the thing does go off Then, yeah, then you'll want to stay home as much as you can. You know, if you go outside, you probably should have some N95 masks.

so that you're not breathing in all the particulates, that glass particulates yourself. You know, maybe you want to put on, if you've got a pair of goggles, maybe you want to put on a pair of goggles to keep it off your eyeballs. You know, wear a baseball hat to keep it down so it doesn't fall on your face. And then, of course, your vehicle. You don't want to be driving around.

sucking in all that particulate matter into your engine. So they recommend, you know, new air filters and new things like that. Or just don't drive. Which would remind me, because... You know, you want to be prepared for it. You know, just make sure you get enough food on hand that for a day or two, you don't drive around anywhere. And if it does lay a layer of ash on there, don't.

Don't go wiping it off your car because it'll scratch the hell out of your car. I mean, it's essentially glass, right? Crushed rock and glass. So wait for the asphalt to stop and then spray the car off with water. you know um and don't uh and same thing for your windshield they said don't even just spray your windshield off and you have to drive in it make sure that you never turn your wipers on

without wetting the windshield first because it will scratch the glass in your windshield. That's how abrasive it is. You know, but again, the best thing is to just, you know, don't go anywhere. for a couple days. Usually it doesn't take, but a couple, couple, three days for most of it to go down. And then if you get any kind of rainfall or wind and it blows it away, I mean, that's, you know, this is what you want to do.

And for your homes, you know, maybe you want to slap a, if you've got a ventilation or air conditioning system, you may want to slap an extra filter on the outside of it, just a temporary, you know. filter duct tape it to the outside and then go change it once or twice to to prevent your main filters from clogging up you can do that as well some people in the last earthquake have been using they were using pantyhose on

different systems for engines and generators and buildings, you know, just to filter out a big chunk of it. But I mean, whatever. Again, if it is, it is or it isn't one or the other. To me, the biggest challenge. would be again making sure because the pets have got to go out more than you do making sure the pets are taken care of and of course for me i've got to go check all the filters on the different transmitter sites to make sure that they're not plugged up

But other than that, you know, it's going to be what it's going to be. So prepare as best you can and then just wait. People get so spun up about things. They really do. Will it? Won't it? I don't know. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But if you prepare for the worst and hope for the best, all your surprises will be happy ones. Some entrepreneur, enterprising young person, entrepreneur, had put together a, they put together the Spur Classic, kind of like the Nenana Ice Classic, but will it erupt?

Will it or won't it? And they put together, you know, enter, give me a buck and we'll do it. It was a house party thing. Somebody snapped a picture of it. I thought it was funny. But there you go. I mean, maybe that's how you get through it. Maybe that's how you get through it, but it's fine. So just be prepared. That's kind of the bottom line here is always be prepared.

And I never thought about putting some of these things on my preparedness list for my pets. I've got some other things for my pets for in my preparedness list, but I never thought about goggles and booties and face masks. Well, I already looked at the cheapy goggles and the face masks for them, the breathing masks, just to get them used to it. And you want to try them out? You want to put them on your dogs and cats before? Well, not your cats. I mean...

I mean, I don't really care about the cat, but I mean, your dogs, you want to put them on the dogs ahead of time to make sure that they get used to them. The booties and the masks and the goggles just to keep them safe. So there you go. That's the other thing that everybody was, I was really surprised how many people were commenting on some of these. I saw one post or something. It was 300 and something comments. And I'm like, wow, you guys are really, maybe they were just sharing.

tips and tricks on how to get through it i don't know but it was uh one of those things anyway be prepared be ready and uh you'll be you'll be just fine okay so what else do we got here going on. Well, Carmela Warfield, who is the chair of the Alaska GOP. has sent out a letter to Gary Stevens and House Speaker Bryce Edgeman. And she expressed frustration over the lack of the legislature's movement on following up on Donald Trump's executive order.

She's like, he put these orders in the executive order titled unleashing Alaska's extraordinary resource potential. And she's like, why hasn't anything in Alaska changed? Why aren't there hearings on the executive order? Why aren't we finding ways to unleash Alaska's extraordinary resource potential? Why are we talking about it by in the state Senate, in the state house now? Of course, we know why, because neither one of those leaderships in those bodies are fans of what the president is doing.

They, you know, no, you know, if Dunleavy, if they didn't want to give Dunleavy a win, they certainly weren't going to try and give Trump any positive press for sure. And they want to just continue to do what they're doing, which is just spend the money that they've got going on right now. They're worried about their own little petty affairs, Carmela. That's what's going on. She criticized the legislature for focusing on bills.

that she deems less impactful, such as addressing climate change commissions and bans on disposable food service items. And, you know, the bill that was renting out the governor's mansion like a VRBO. We're back to that story already. You know, this is what she's lining out here in the story.

And I understand that she's just trying to take a stand and stake out some ground here and say, hey, look, why aren't we paying attention to anything closer? Because they don't want to. Because they don't have to be held accountable to this. This is Carmela's attempt to try and hold him accountable. I understand that, but they don't care. I mean, do you really think that anybody in the legislature cares?

I mean, what we say from the outside, especially those who are in the leadership positions. Do you really think that they care what us average Alaskans have to say about any of this? Obviously not. They're too busy divvying up the spoils and spending our money, telling us to shut up and sit down and do what we're told and be happy with the amount of money that they're going to give us. That's what they're, I mean, they should just be happy with that. That's what it's all about.

Anyway, it's an interesting letter. If you haven't had a chance to read it, you should go out there and read it as well. But anyway, Must Read's got a story up on it. You could hear about it. But I want to get Carmelo on the program to talk about this. I mean, I know she wasn't trying to solve any problem here. She's just trying to stake out some ground and take a stand. But, yeah, what did you think was going to happen? You think Gary Stevens was going to go, oh, you're right.

You're right. We should be focusing on that. You're right, Carmella. And Bryce Edgeman, of course, was going to do the same. But good for her to try to stake out some ground, at least. and make a point all right we gotta go the michael duke show common sense liberty based free thinking radio will return in just a moment don't go anywhere

Listened to by more staffers in Juno than any other show. Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're gonna be best. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show. okay all right let's go back up here and see what's going on it's gonna raise hell with contact lens wearer says brian yeah no i i don't think you want to be i don't think you want to be walking around outside with your contacts looking up at the sky

And then getting that, letting that, you know, ash fall into your eye. That's, that's, that's, that's the thing. All right. I'm scrolling backwards up here. See what you guys are talking about. We need to doge all the nonprofits. We've been talking about that for years. Absolutely. You know, we've been talking about that for years. Does no good to stay mad all the time. You have to step back and literally laugh at some of the stupidity. I am. Yeah, absolutely.

Lesko says you have the power to inform and rally them to people and rally them to action. Yes, we do. We talk about things all the time, Lesko. Sometimes we like to do a little bit of lighter side stuff. We should all just give up on demanding the legislature follow the state constitution. Why bother? Can't change anything. That's not what I said. Wow. Man, you're an angry person, man. Just, you know.

You obviously have not listened to the show enough. That's okay. That's okay. We'll let it ride right now. Keep your pets inside, says Chris. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you could train your dogs to work on a pee pad, that's a good to do. you know, um, uh, want to go study, study the study to study the study that we studied before. Absolutely. Absolutely. Don't run your wipers. Can't brush it off, said J. Lynn. No, you can wash it off. You don't want to brush it off.

Rick says the volcano can blow. I just don't want a 7.7 earthquake like they had in Myanmar. I know that was. Did you see the video from. was it from thailand it was the skyscrapers the two skyscrapers that had the sky bridge connected at the top and the bridge shattered and then one of the big buildings had a like a rooftop pool and the water was it was crazy The pictures are just, you know, crazy. Okay, let's go, man.

The state is falling apart. Everyone's suffering due to incompetence of our state government, but we want to be happy, so stop talking about negative things. Nothing we can do you? Do you think this is the attitude that caused the problem in the first place? Have you listened to this thing longer than five minutes?

dude it it's okay you know what you just be angry it's fine don't worry about it um use a pair of pantyhose to cover your air filter in your car it saves having to buy those expensive air filters yeah it's it's great um What? David says, here's a great idea. If you find yourself always heating water to cook spaghetti, cook lots of H2O up and freeze it for later use. It saves time. Okay. That's great. That's great. Can update your water storage. Try putting a mask on a cat.

Wasn't that thing supposed to blow already? Yeah, even the natural disasters dragged their feet in this state. Let's see. uh good morning good morning good morning good morning um

If the wind blows, if the wind is southeast when Spur blows, then it won't be a challenge for the peninsula, but it will change our weather patterns for a while. Yeah, I mean, things will change, that's for sure. But again, all we can do is... just you know fingers crossed and hope you know prepare for the worst that's what we do prepare for the worst and hope for the best um

Kevin says there are 36 of us in here. Did any of us write a letter or call or email the Senate president or speaker and reinforce what Carmela said? I don't know, Kevin. Did you? You'd be better off to answer that than I would. I mean, I just saw the story this morning that she'd actually written the letter. But we'll see. Okay. Me, incessantly, says Kevin. He, incessantly.

battery says i'm getting real call me elf one more time energy from lesko yeah call me up come on buddy you feel lucky call me elf one more time I mean, it is what it is. Yeah, we'll see what's going on here. Okay. We're up against it. We're ready to go. You guys all ready this morning? You ready to get it going on? All right, let's do it. 10 seconds out. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, everything on radio. Let's do this thing.

Here we go. 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. Good morning. Welcome back to the program. It is the Michael Duke show, the Monday edition of the show, and we are just wrapping up our one.

All the fun and frivolous stories that are fit to print out there. I mean, we talked about the, you know, we talked about the renting out of the governor's mansion and will the. Will the Mount Spur explode and Carmela's letter to the legislature and more? What more should we talk about it? Well, let's let's talk about these two things first and foremost. The Alaska Supreme Court has now asked a lower court to weigh in on the legality of using public funds to cover private school tuition.

They issued the opinion on Friday and it asked the lower court to consider, quote, whether it is constitutional to use allotment funds to pay for private school tuition. Now, this has been an ongoing argument because some people, especially in the Anchorage area, were utilizing their allotment as a partial payment for private schooling.

And Treg Taylor and his family was most well known for this, the attorney general. They'd been using their allotment to cover a big chunk of their, I can't remember what the name of the school was in Anchorage, but they were there doing their thing. But, of course, the court case on this thing got into some murky waters when Judge Adolph Zemond basically put a hold.

on all the allotment systems now about a third of alaskans 27 or something of alaskan kids are homeschooled in one form or another so it would have affected a ton of kids And luckily, they got to stay on it. But now the court is asking the lower courts. To interpret the statutes, the superior court must interpret the statutes to determine if they allow allotment funds to be used for private school tuition before addressing the stats, the statutes constitutionality.

said Justice Dario Borgeshin. Now, the Constitution says that, quote, no money shall be paid for public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private education institution, unquote. But that also they were making it a very, a very narrow reading on this. And they were basically saying you couldn't use it for anything outside of a school system. Music lessons.

You know, a bookstore, you couldn't buy books from a bookstore. In fact, Borgeson wrote in the opinion that the term education institution used in the Constitution clearly included schools. but its plain meaning does not include every entity that provides some kind of service related to education, such as a bookstore. Right. And if you're just giving music lessons, is that a full educational institution? There's a lot of questions here.

So they're going to be asking those questions. And the Superior Court case, it's been basically handed back to the Superior Court. And Judge Adolph Zeman has now been replaced. At the request of the Matsu, Denali, and Galena school districts, their attorneys declined to explain the reason for the request. I think it's pretty obvious why. Zeman's been replaced with Superior Court Judge Josie Garten. But again, there are more than 24,000 correspondent students across the state of Alaska.

with a vast majority of them living in Anchorage, the Mat-Su, Fairbanks, and the Kenai, the big on-the-rail system, on-the-road system. With IDEA having the lion's share. IDEA enrolls almost 8,000 students across the state. So they're a big chunk out there. But this is good news. I mean, they were going to come back and we're going to duke it out a little more.

We'll see. We'll see where it goes. We'll see what happens. Treg Taylor, the attorney general, said that the Supreme Court's decision to reverse the lower court ruling and send it back was a huge win. He said it further bolsters the win last summer and lays the groundwork for supporting the correspondence school program more broadly. I hope, I mean, I hope so. That would be nice, but we'll see. We'll see what happens on that.

I think, again, they made a major mistake. And this is what, remember, there was a little bit of an oopsie on that because they were fighting over something very narrow, those on the left who brought this court case initially. And when Judge Zeman basically shut down all correspondence, they were like, oh, my God, what have we done? Oops, what do we do now? What do we do? Anyway, they poked the bear.

And that was a Fafo moment right there for some of those folks on that side. A fool around and find out moment, that's for sure. Big news for those of us who live on the Kenai Peninsula and are now looking at your electric bill. Are you ready? I know Greg was in the chat room. I saw his comment the other day about his electric bill.

Boy, I should show you my electric bill. But HEA has now announced that it's going to increase its base rates by 3% tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. They put out a press release on Friday. saying that the Regulatory Commission of Alaska had approved a request for their rate increase. So it's going to go from just over 16.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 17 cents per kilowatt hour.

at the base rate. Now, the base cost is only one of the charges that's on your HEA bill, plus you get the cost of power adjustment, the regulatory cost. the surcharge, the borough tax. They increased the rate by three and a half percent back in January of last year, but it's going to continue. And I knew it was. What did I tell you? Because their gas contract expires this week. Yes, this last week it expired. Their contract with Hillcorp.

And that was one of the reasons they said the change is motivated by inflation, supply chain challenges, investment and system upgrades, and increased outage response due to the infestation of the spruce bark beetle. So another 3% and it goes up. Well, just think if it goes up 3% a year for the next five, I mean, you know, it's good. Now.

This also comes at a time when the HEA elections began on Friday, and there are seven candidates running for seats representing three different voting districts in HEA. And it just so happens... that we're going to have one of those candidates, Matt Bullard, on in just a few moments to discuss this after the top of the hour. But folks, I mean, this is a huge deal.

And this is what I've been talking about since before I moved down here. You know, when HEA's board president was asked by the RCA here, was it three months ago, two months ago? He was asked, doesn't this keep you up at night? Because they were talking about the gas supply shortage. And he's like, no, not really. And I'm like, what? This should keep. Yeah, the HEA is the first utility.

whose gas contract is expired. I think Chugach is next year, and I think N-Star is the final one in like two and a half years. But all their current contracts with Hillcorp, HEA was the first one to run out. And he's like, no, not really. It doesn't keep me up at night. And I'm thinking, wow. I mean, I would be.

I would be a little concerned if I'm in charge of this whole deal and, you know, our sure supply of gas at a fixed price is going to go away. I think I'd be, you know, maybe I wouldn't be. up at night pacing the room, but I'd be a little concerned about it. I'm just throwing it out there. Just throwing it out there. Maybe I'd be a little upset about it. You know, and if you had to write a check like I had to write for my HEA bill, I'll be honest, I paid the bill twice now. I paid the bill twice.

And since the first of the year, because when we took over the first of the year and every time I wince a little bit like, wow, it's thousands of dollars. Just so you know, when you're running a radio station and you're putting that juice out into the airwaves. Thousands of dollars a month in just electricity alone. I'm watching this very closely. Let's just put it that way. Very closely. I'd like it to go the other way. Can we get the...

Can we get a 3% decrease? I mean, I know that's probably not possible, but I mean, I'm just asking for a friend. All right, we got to go. Coming up next, Matthew Bullard is going to be joining us, and we will talk with him about his candidacy for GVEA and his thoughts on it. That's all dead ahead.

The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. If you've got to go, be kind, love one another, live well. We'll see you back here when you can come back. Other than that, we'll be back with Hour 2 right after this. 22.3 cents per kilowatt hour in Fairbanks. Woof. And then Willie's like, hold my beer. 70 cents a kilowatt hour out in Quintahawk. I'll buy Bethel.

yeah i mean look i'm not look i'm not complaining don't get me wrong i'm not complaining because i know there's plenty of places out there that are you know it's uh oof yeah Chris says, in Seldovia, we also pay for fuel and maintenance for our generator every month. Our monthly bill for two people is $200. Oh, and we heat with wood. I get it. I mean, I know.

Maybe I'm just a little salty because, you know, when you have to write a check for $6,000 or $7,000 in a month and you're like, ow. Ow. Okay. Maybe that's why I'm a little salty about it. Possibly. Possibly. But yeah, could you imagine trying to do this somewhere else where it was $0.25, $0.30, $0.35, $0.40 a kilowatt hour? Yikes! Anyway. Um, uh, okay.

I don't even want to imagine the power bill for a whole ass radio station. Just my teenage boys gaming PCs lead me to believe I have several Frankenstein style Jacob's ladders and open arcs flashing, hiding somewhere in my home. Yeah, it's kind of crazy when you look at it that way. You're like, how many? When you look outside and the meter's going like a helicopter, you're like, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Turn that down. Turn that down.

Uh, okay. I think we're all, I think I'm caught up here on the comments. Let me go back up here and make sure that I didn't miss anything that was, uh, um, uh, Let's see. Facebook blocking. Getting jiggy with it, MD. I'm getting jiggy with it. Carmela needs to censure and cut campaign. campaign funds that might get some rhino's attention uh maybe i doubt it but you know i mean at this point the gop is the alaska gop is just pretty toothless at this point i mean i

I would hope that they would work on it, but I just don't see it. I guess. I guess I'm all caught up. Today is the last data file for PFD. We did talk about that. Fat Ray says, pretty sure Fairbanks, GVEA, recently raised its rates, citing insufficient consumer demand. Yeah, that's a problem. That's a problem. If you're depopulating the interior and the load is spread on a smaller group of people, you're going to see the rate go up. That's what's going to happen, unfortunately.

All right. I see that Matt is in the green room here. He's eating all my virtual donuts and drinking my virtual coffee. So... let's uh let's test that let's test our connection shall we see how that see how everything's going audio and everything else good morning matt how are you good morning i'm doing well how are you good oh look at that your your audio video it's all it works it's amazing

Might as well take advantage of it when we still can. Yeah, hell, all that technology is. I know, you know how much electricity it costs to run this show for you to get this video to me? I know.

I thought about turning out the lights before this. Yeah, make a point. You should. You should. You should turn out. We're going to do everything in the dark from now on. So it's going to be fun. All right, Matt. Well, we're going to pull you back in here in just a second. I just wanted to test the video. sure we're all good to go and we'll get started here in a minute okay sounds good all right we'll uh pull matt back there uh on that and we'll go from there

Senator Rob Myers says the ARP did a bunch of censuring and recruiting opposing candidates back in 2022. How'd that work out? That's my, that's my, that's my point. That's my point. You guys are like, so are those Raycon earpieces? Is Matt using Raycons? I don't know. Do you really want to know? I mean, yes, he's using Raycons. I'm sure he is. They're great.

factory says get this man in office stat he's in an office it's just not as plush and lush as mine i mean you know with all the fancy what geez you guys so judgmental um Um, yeah, the upside is that you can use your meter at the station as an HVAC appliance and air conditioner. Yeah. It's like a fan just keeps me, keeps me cool going on.

I'm not complaining guys. It's just, I mean, it's a cost of doing business, but it sure would be nice if we could find a way to make it a little bit cheaper. Don't you think? I mean, oof. All right. I think. I think that's it. I'm all caught up. That's great. That's great. And. And. We are 60 seconds, 90 seconds away from rejoining the radio. See how that works out? That worked out good. All right. We're going to, oh, well, remember, we have to pay the CEO salaries of GVEA. Well, and HEA.

I found out what the CEO of HEA makes as a salary. It's a lot. $390,000 or something. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot. I'm like, I am in the wrong business. I should have been a CEO of an electrical cooperative. Oh, man, that would have been a good way to, you know. I was saying I was trying to figure out how to make a living if I came to Homer. That's what I should have done. All right, we got to go. Back with more. Hour 2, The Michael Duke Show, Combat Sense Radio.

Check out TheMichaelDukesShow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. 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 steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't fathom it. The Michael Dukes.

show streaming live across the world oh yeah live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the state of alaska on this your favorite radio station and or fem translator that's fm translator for those of you who are wondering at home Welcome back to the program, hour two of the big radio show for this Monday. I hope you had a great weekend. Looking like it's so beautiful down here on top of the world in Homer, Alaska. You guys wish you were here.

I don't mean to rub it in guys, but I was trying for so long to get down to Homer. You have no, I, I still drive off the hill and go, my God, I live here. I can't believe it. I mean, I can't, I mean, I, I'm not just visiting. I live. It's amazing. Now, I do have to get used to the whole small town thing. That's been a little weird. I'll be honest with you. That's been a little weird. Anyway.

But we're loving it. So I hope you had a great weekend. Went up, did the Gatsby Gala for the Kenai Fair Board. That was amazing on Saturday night. Good food, lots of great people, dancing, fun, music. It was great. Raised a lot of money for them. Very happy with that. Got a chance to say hi to Bill and have dinner with Bill. He came out. One of the listeners in the chat room came out and hung out with me. Anyway, it was a great time. But we're back to Monday. Now we're business as usual.

We're ready to do it. We spent the last hour going over headlines. And now we're going to pick up with our last headline, which is about the rate increase from HEA. For those of you who didn't hear about it on Friday, 3% rate increase from HEA starting tomorrow. Have a nice day. Matthew Bullard is a candidate for the HEA District 3. Not only did they make the announcement on Friday that they were raising the rates, they also, that's the day that the, that the.

Voting for the new board for HEA started. Seven different candidates for three different positions. Matthew Bullard is one of them. He is... Got a background. He was a U.S. merchant marine, also a U.S. Navy flight officer, worked in the Naval Operations Center. He and his wife purchased Homer Dental Center and they're running out their businesses there. But he has got, he's got a plan.

He's got a plan implementing an all of the above strategy, which we're going to talk with him about right now. Let's bring him on the program. Matthew Bollard joins us again, candidate for HEA District 3. And before we get into this, I know all you. folks in other fairbanks and like well what do i care you know look i probably only ever voted in half of the elections for gvea when i was in fairbanks why because who's paying attention to that

That's what we need to be paying attention to because that's what kills us in our day-to-day grind is what's going on locally. We should be paying attention to that. Let's welcome Matt Buller to the program. Good morning, Matt. How are you? i'm doing pretty well michael how are you good good thanks for coming on board and uh joining us this morning uh so matt i was just you know i was talking about this i mean

We fight so hard to vote for our president, for our legislators and for our local city council or for our borough assembly members or whatever. But it's like. You know, these other various boards and things that have a real impact on us. And I'm talking about things like the hospital board or our electric utility board or things like that. That's the thing that affects us. most on a day-to-day basis. And yet those are the ones that we...

I mean, again, I probably only voted on half the elections and it was easy, right? It was a mail in. It wasn't like I had to go anywhere. I could just fill out the box and drop it back in the mailbox. But this is what we seem to miss. What what made you decide to run for this position?

and get in on it. Well, well, just to, just to kind of piggyback off your point there, Michael, the, this one's even easier. You know, you, you open up a little email, comes straight to you. If you're an HGA member, you can just. put it in and you don't even have to show up to voting day um but for me just to kind of bring it back to um what you were discussing earlier

Energy is kind of one of those things that is the base layer of society. You know, it's it's I got a friend of mine that says energy is life. You know, it's it's basically your standard of living is. uh defined by how much energy you and your family get to use on a daily basis especially up here in alaska you know we're in the cold we're in the dark um and The amount of energy that you get to use allows you to impose a certain amount of order in this chaotic and otherwise disorderly environment.

and i just kind of saw um some policies coming to alaska um you know in general a a energy powerhouse or at least it could be um that you know we've seen time and time again kind of fail, for lack of a better word, across the world. You look at Texas, you look at California, you can look at Germany, you can look at Australia, the list goes on and on and on. And it's just, you know, my personal belief that and just kind of general readings of how grids across the world have done that.

You kind of have to not double down on what's working, but... do what uh continue with what's working um and we've got we've got find what availability find what's working and emulate it right i mean we don't have to reinvent the wheel find what's actually working and being successful and emulated Yeah, of course. There's a lot going on with the discussion over natural gas and the shortfalls there.

To me, that kind of seems like a self-imposed problem. A lot of people love to bash oil and gas and then get them out of here and all this stuff. But we've got this massive reserve right here off the inlet. We almost just kind of need to allow those guys to do their jobs. And this will... This will kind of point us in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I mean, let's face it. The cornerstone of a civilization, especially an advanced civilization, is cheap and affordable energy.

Right. I mean, that's what allows us to do the things that we do from everything from innovation and technology to arts and everything else. The only thing that gives us the ability, the freedom to do those things is cheap, reliable energy.

And in Alaska, obviously, and I mean, I was crying about the fact that HEA is raising their rates to 17 cents a kilowatt hour until somebody in Fairbanks said, hey, we're paying almost 21 cents a kilowatt hour in Fairbanks. And Willie, who's out in Quintahawk, out by Beth.

says he's paying 70 cents a kilo so i'm not complaining this is i mean i am complaining but at the same time we've got to find a way to do it and part of our problem is is that we've been reliant on just the one issue now we've got 17 trillion cubic feet of gas on the north slope can we get it down here can we import our own gas can we import gas from somewhere else would that be cheaper in the short term maybe

But you talk about this all-inclusive approach, this all-in-one approach, which I think is important because it includes one of the big things, which is... Nuclear energy, which is, I mean, the government's looking at this. They're going to be putting up a nuclear battery plant up in Ileson. There's a pilot project going on right now. We've talked about nuclear batteries from Toshiba. We've been talking about that for 20 years.

reactor batteries there's all kinds of things going on we've got to we've got to be thinking outside the box here so tell us about your plan for you know as you look at it this hea this increase first comment on the increase Tell me about where you think that they what they've been doing so far critique what's going on and then what you would bring to the table here. Yeah, I. So this issue, as far as I can tell.

really came into focus about 2022, you know, when the broad discussion came into the community and it seems to me that since then what we've done uh has we installed some really expensive batteries and then we thought that we were going to get offset some amount of electricity to save some gas via this you know 62 000 solar panels and um you know i've got a lot of issues with that we can talk about later but to me we really need to focus on things that that provide energy

all day every day regardless of regardless of the wind the weather anything like that and and to me you know we've got proven proven energies we've got we've got natural gas we've got tons of it here we've got tons of it up in the north slope We've got hydro, which we're doing really well out of Bradley Lake, which I'm very glad to see that we're expanding. And then we've got the other two, which I think we really need to seriously look into.

intermediate and long-term solutions, which is, like you said, nuclear and geothermal. I mean, you've got, you know, as you discussed, there's tons of companies now, lots of private ones. One of my favorite ones is Oklo. They're kind of focusing on the small modular reactors. They're kind of working with utility companies to implement kind of plug and play natural gas turbines with later on.

just dropping in their their nuclear plants uh right there and to me that kind of sounds like a no-brainer i guess some people would have some issues with that and then you've got um Things like down in Utah, you've got Navarro, which is, you know, they've drilled down to three miles. They basically pressurize a bunch of water.

shoot it down into the subsurface. That water superheats, goes through a bunch of fissures, and then comes back up. So not only do you get... electric electrical excuse me electrical power by turning a generator but you also get industrial heat you know a lot of people forget that industrial heat and steam is what drives a lot of industrial products and if we want to you know attract any

businesses here we need to provide them low-cost industrial heat and electricity you know this isn't just a hey what's what's my electricity bill you know we need business and industry here as well

And that's the only way to do it. Yeah. And especially when we start talking about businesses, I mean, there's been a lot of talk about AI. There's been a lot of talk about server farms. You know, Alaska is a great place for a server farm because of the cool weather and everything else. But they're energy hogs.

They require a tremendous amount of energy and they're not going to build a plant up here if they're paying, you know, 20 cents a kilowatt hour for energy. They need cheap, reliable, affordable energy. And while I admire people who want to do things like wind and solar, those. are not core energy producers those are supplemental energy producers you know things like nuclear

like hydro, like geothermal, like tidal. I mean, those are all things that are constant in and out all the time. They're never, you know, it's not going to stop. It's not the vagaries of the winds or whether it's a sunny day or not. Those are base loads. states that we need to be looking at and talking about and finding a way to make it much more affordable. And I think that is the key to, again,

cheap, reliable energy for the state. And if we could stabilize that, we probably could go a long way towards solving any kind of outflow of people, right?

Yeah, and I think what Alaskans kind of forget is we're very far away from shipping hubs. You know, we are at the end of the road as people... usually know when they go to the grocery store but people forget if we want to get businesses here if we want to attract any manufacturing if we want to attract data centers you know we need to match or or you know in

Best case scenario, we need to be lower than the average cost down in the lower 48 because, you know, there's no way that that a massive data farm is going to come up here or any manufacturer is going to come up here with the additional cost of shipping. um back to anybody else and say hey i'm going to invest in alaska well why well you know they don't really know where their energy is coming from they don't they kind of have high costs and um

By the way, I'm really far away from my distributors. That business case doesn't, you know, that dog don't hunt, as they say. Right. No, I agree. I mean, I think that's a huge problem, and it's one of the reasons why we have such a hard time attracting those kind of add-on businesses, manufacturing, et cetera, up here, because that is just the icing on the cake of being at the end of the supply chain.

the extra shipping costs, being away from the distribution hubs and everything else. Although geographically, Alaska is a great place for the rest of the world. We're centralized when it comes to international shipping and around the rest of the world. Nobody is looking at it because, again, the cost of energy and living and everything else is so much higher here than any place else. Matt Bullard is our guest. He is a candidate for District 3 of the HEA board. Voting started on Friday.

And so we're going to talk with Matt a little bit more, but we are up against the break right now. So we're going to continue here in just a minute. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke Show continues. Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. We continue with Matt Bullard right after these messages. Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show.

Okay, we're in the break right now. Matthew Bullard is our guest. So, I mean, Matt, what's your take on this? I mean, kind of a weird coincidence that they... announced the rate hike on the same day that the voting started. I thought that was...

It's a little appropriate. Like, wow, you really want to get people spun up, huh? They're going to really, I mean, maybe, maybe it's a genius move to get more people to participate in the voting on the HEA board. If they could say, hey, by the way, we just upped your rate 3% and now you get to vote for the board. members what's your what's your take on this uh on this rate increase here yeah i i i definitely like to uh talk about that the it was very almost serendipitous

It's one of those things that, you know, last board election, they had 16% of the population actually getting involved. And utilities is supposed to be one of those things that people Back of your mind. It should not be front of the newspaper. It should not be something that people worry about. It should not be an issue that is discussed really at all.

just be sitting there chugging away, continuing to provide people low cost electricity and power. But this is going to be kind of the norm until we figure out a sustainable path forward. I think that there is a way for the peninsula to massively benefit from exporting natural gas, from exploiting Cook Inlet. and for continuing to explore the next generation of renewable energies with nuclear and geo and hydro.

But until that long-term strategic plan is put in place and it's agreed upon and say, this is the direction we're going, the uncertainty is going to continue to increase rates. Yeah, I mean, that's part of the problem is we just, without that certainty...

We just don't know. And we're not going to attract any business until it is. I mean, I knew going in, eyes wide open. I mean, full disclosure to folks out there who think that I'm bitching about my electric bill. I knew what my electric bill was going to be. Okay. But knowing that, you know, that and I'll do some behind the scenes stuff here, knowing that a radio station has to make at least 80 or 90 thousand dollars in a year just to pay the electricity. OK.

That's a significant chunk. Right. And so anything that we can do to stabilize that those kind of costs and bring them down is I mean, I'm all for it. Let's let's get it done. Let's let's let's make that happen. And we seem to have missed this boat. This is the same fight we were having when I lived in Fairbanks with GVEA.

This is the same kind of fight. Oh, we don't have natural gas. Oh, now we've got oil. Maybe we're getting some natural gas, but maybe we can split off. We were burning oil off the pipeline. But now that I mean. Look, we've got to find a way to do it. And we've had every stumbling block that we could possibly have. We got the inner tie, which was great because that helped equalize power costs across the state. And now we've got an inner tie that runs pretty much from, you know, north to south.

We need to find a way to create an anchor, not an anchor tenant, but I guess an anchor generation. where we can say we can produce X amount of power for a relatively low cost. And whether that is a combination, I think it's got to be a combination of hydro. I think geo is a great idea. And nuclear, we've got to look at the nuclear.

And that is, especially with the way technologies are today, why we're not embracing this even harder, I just don't even know. Other than there's a lot of angst about it, I guess, Matt, in the long run. Yeah, and I think people have a lot of concerns, which I do understand. There are some very noteworthy things to consider in the past, but just in general, you look at...

The global trends, you know, the U.S. at COP29, along with 30 other 31 other countries joined the triple nuclear by 2050 plan. You've got Chris Wright, the. current energy director, writing a white paper on... On nuclear, you've got private companies investing in nuclear. You've got them buying baseload power. You're starting Three Mile Island. Japan's restarting all of their nuclear reactors. Germany, which has shut down all of their reactors. Hold on a second.

The ding means we're going to return to the radio here. So let's jump back into it. Here we go. The Michael Duke show, common sense, Liberty based free ticket radio. Let's do this thing. Here we go. 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.

That's right. Not your daddy, nor do I play him on TV and not your daddy's talk radio. It is the Michael Duke show. long-form discussions of a statewide nature it's what we do every day here on the program we're joined by matt bullard who is the hea district 3 board candidate and i'm a little remiss here i i should have i should have asked matt for a little bit

I mentioned his background, but I, you know, for candidates, I usually ask, you know, kind of where they come from and everything else. So maybe we'll reverse for just a second. And Matt, give us a little bit of your background here. I'll.

I'll do better next time, I promise. Let's get a little bit of your background, you know, who you are, where you are, where you came from, a little bit of your backing, and then we'll jump back into the discussion on where you think HEA should go. Yeah, of course.

name is matt bullard um originally from a kind of a small fishing town on the east coast of massachusetts um went to had no idea what i was going to do when i was 18 went to u.s merchant marine academy to give me a little bit of direction i thought i come kind of from a sailing background with my family

I thought I was going to do shipping for the rest of my life. You know, I went out with oil tankers, got my Tankerman's endorsement. Loved the LNG and oil shipping business. Still maintained my license, but I never ended up going out to sea.

uh because i got accepted as a naval flight officer and to fly the e2d advanced hawkeye for the navy for nine years did deployments all over uh the pacific up and down was deployed to japan uh did a middle east tour came back and uh ran acquisitions for the navy which was uh

a frustrating um eye-opening experience so you were the guy that was buying the 600 toilet seats i see what i was i was merely a middleman middleman and believe me i let my thoughts be known uh but there was nothing i could do i was simply a cog I tried every way I could, but I was writing contracts that infuriated me on a daily basis. And then I met my beautiful wife. She was a naval dentist in Guam.

as as kind of life would have it my plane broke down i got stuck there for a month waiting for extra parts and i met her um we got married during covet and then we were kind of looking for a small town to raise kids in. And we kind of decided to do a kind of family business thing. And we searched around and found Vicki Hodnick, who's a phenomenal person. uh purchased her practice and moved to homer and we've got two great kids three rolled and a one-year-old daughter

And that brings us up to today. That brings you up to up to speed, up to date. And so, yeah, 37 years. That's that's great. That's great. That's good stuff. I mean, you know, you and I both looking for the ultimate hometown and we both found it. So it's good to know that great minds think alike. Look.

The biggest problem that we're going to have is, again, stabilizing our electricity generation across the state. Not just HEA, but every utility is facing the same problem. You know, we've got this shortage of gas. in the Cook Inlet. Now, it could be an exploration problem. It could be a development problem. I think that there's a variety of issues there. We've got 17 trillion cubic feet on the North Slope, which is stranded. We can't get to it. You know, a pipeline is 10 years away.

Even if we had the $80 billion that it would take to fund it right now, it's still 10 years away. So we've got short-term issues. We've got long-term issues. Chugach has decided they're just going to import at this point in the short run, and maybe later on they'll export. I mean, who knows? knows but we've got to do something in the short term so what is your short term plan and uh you know do you embrace the idea of what they're doing right now with chugach in getting it in the short term

And then expanding Cook Inlet and then, you know, finding a way to get this gas line in. And then what is your long-term plan? So let's start off with the short-term and the shortage that we have right now. Yeah, I think first of all, you know, we do have gas producers, you know, Alaska companies and non-Alaska companies that are willing to explore.

continue to drill and provide in cooking. People throw around these numbers all the time, but there's still a ton of gas in cooking. And I don't know if it's creative financing with NSTAR or HEA, but we need to support those guys as much as we can. can to get them out there and explore and continue to drill and see what we can find. As for the import terminal,

I can understand it as a short-term fix as long as the long-term plan is to turn it into an export facility. If you look at the case study of Germany. uh i don't want to do the german experiment um germany nordstrom 2 we're not going to get into the political part of it but the facts are they had low-cost natural gas supplying their massive industry base. That was cut off. In 194 days, they built and ran

all of the infrastructure, so it's possible to do this, which means it's a decision slash political issue to rather get it done. And their price to do business skyrocketed. I mean, if you look at their prices today compared to what we pay, it's almost at least on average double, if not triple. And that's no way to do business in the long run. Not to mention you're going to have to get natural gas from somewhere, whether we do it.

from ourselves which you know then we can at least say hey you know jones act we're doing you know california or you know whatever to alaska cool great for us but if not then we have to get from mexico which adds distance to the voyage, or if not, we have to do it from Australia, Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Canada. You know, those, those are our closest choices. Australia. Yeah. But they're going through their own problems. And they're.

running into electricity grid issues as well, mostly because they kind of went down the wind and solar all in plan. Right, right. No, I mean, it's a challenge. And of course, the big, you know, look, I'm a lifelong Alaskan. I've been here my whole life. And I remember them talking about gas lines ever since I was a kid. I mean, I remember seeing Jim Whitaker, the mayor of Fairbanks. He had a framed.

He had a framed newspaper on his wall that was like, gas line next year. And the date on the paper was 1958. OK, so we've been fighting this for a long time. And the economics are part of the problem. Right. The economics of building. I mean, the forty four billion dollar number they keep throwing out. That was from Bill Walker. And things have gone up since then. Steel and tariffs and inflation. So, I mean, we're talking about probably a 60 to 80 billion dollar deal.

president's behind it great i'm excited about it maybe it's a national infrastructure issue and it becomes something that the federal government has to do and then turn over okay great but again it's a timing issue Right. That you're right. In some places you can turn. I mean, they built the Alaska pipeline in three years. But, you know, during World War Two, they were building five airports a month across the country.

Today, how long does it take to build an airport, right, with all the regulatory hurdles and everything else? So realistically, could we do it in a year? Maybe. But all the stars would have to align, right? I mean, realistically.

We're talking about five, probably five to 10 years to build out an 800-mile pipeline from the North Slope to Tidewater, right? I mean, am I stretching it, you think? No, I think realistically, unless... people get involved and actually you know i i guess i think again it's a uh it's a messaging issue and it's something that where people just need to get behind and yeah

We'll find the creative funding somewhere. I do think whether, again, like you said, that's federal government or state or international investment. But people need to realize that also there's a massive worldwide demand for natural gas. China's shipping all of its big trucks to LNG. They're building natural gas plants like crazy. You know, they've got a massive pollution problem and it's becoming a real political issue over there and they don't do so well with political issues.

um same thing with japan you know they are restarting they are restarting their nuclear power plants are still a net importer of everything. We can be the people to sign these long-term contracts, Vietnam, China, everywhere down to India. I realize that people want to deal with the regional issues, but people also need to realize that there is a massive business case worldwide and there's massive demand for this product. Right.

Well, and Senator Rob Myers from North Pole has got a resolution up right now. I don't know if you've seen it. It basically asks Congress to give us a Jones Act exemption like they did for Puerto Rico. Crowley. Re-flagged a, I think it was a French tanker. They re-flagged a French ship under the Jones Act under an exemption. And now they're tanking LNG to Puerto Rico from the Gulf Coast on what is now.

U.S. flagged and U.S. run and U.S. owned ship. It's the only LNG ship in the entire U.S. fleet. It wasn't even built in America. They got the exemption and they are years away from having an LNG American built tanker. So he's asking for the same kind of exemption where we could take our own gas off the North Slope and bring it to ourselves. Was that something that you would support? Is that something that you would be behind?

Yeah, I think we've gotten to the point, you know, for some reason in a lot of these political issues, no one likes to think forward. Everybody likes to wait to the last minute and create this massive crisis. And then we have to do things that. exorbitant prices um you know i'm willing i'm more than happy to come up with creative solutions at the moment you know i i do think the jones act in general you know coming from the merchant marine background has has not done us any favors um

If you look at Jones Act ships, it's been dwindling basically since the end of World War II. And you're right. The only LNG anything that the U.S. makes are barges. And a lot of those are going to... uh, basically sit out there and lighter, um, for, for the new re and repowered LNG cargo ships, you know, you're, you're right. There there's nothing there. There's right. We got, we got nothing.

Right. No, we need to do something. And even if it's just a reforming of the Jones Act, because I don't think there's a political will to revoke it. But the reforming of it and making, you know, doing that, that's a whole show. We talked to Sal Mercogliano last week who runs the YouTube channel, What's Going On With Shipping. Fascinating discussion on the Jones Act there. And he made some great points. But we need to be able to.

take care of our needs now and that's the thing when Americans when Americans in New England are having to buy gas from Russia and have them ice break it all the way across the top of Canada and come down because there's not enough pipelines to get gas to New England That's a problem. Right. And same thing here in Alaska. All right. We're talking with Matt Bullard. He's the HEA District 3 board candidate. We're talking about, you know, what should the plan be to try and bring affordable.

cheap affordable sustainable and stable energy to alaska and uh and to hea specifically um and we're on the bleeding edge here right matt i mean our contract with hillcorp just ran out for HEA. They had a contract, a fixed certain supply contract. That's now gone. So do you know what we're doing now? Are we just buying it on SPAC? Are we buying it at market rates? What are we doing here? Give us your taste of that.

My understanding is that Fury has just recently signed a long-term contract with NSTAR allowing us, you know, again, those rates will probably go up because we haven't done the long-term planning. So natural gas prices are going to unfortunately increase. I don't know. I'm not sure if that's a $12, $11. I'm not sure quite what that looks like. I haven't been able to see any of those contracts.

But again, this is more of a supply-demand issue. We've got a certain demand, and we're not increasing supply to meet that demand. I know those guys. That's their bread and butter. That's their job. These guys go out there and drink every day.

you know people don't you know oil and gas is not a spigot that you just turn on you know you need to explore you need to develop there's a lead time massive amounts of assets and yeah and then on top of that you know you have still very onerous environmental regulations right you know these guys are spending massive you know millions of dollars to comply with um our our environmental regulations and i think that's great you know if we're gonna if we're gonna exploit oil and gas

Do it in Alaska. Do it clean. Do it right. And before we go, we're coming up on the break here. But before you go, again, the RCA board had the HEA president, executive director up. in front of them here a couple months ago and they asked him since hea was the first utility that was their contract was going to expire they asked him

Does this keep you up at night? This idea of a shortage in the Cook Inlet, all these kind of problems, your contract's about to run out. Does this keep you up at night? And he's like, oh, no, it's no big deal. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that's kind of what it's like. No, it doesn't keep me up at night.

As a utility member and as a potential board candidate, is that concerning to you when you see the HEA president, you know, whose sole job is to make sure that everything is running smoothly, say... no that's not a big worry that's no big deal it doesn't keep him up at night does that what's your what's your thought on that i'm just curious your your take yeah my my general thought is um if you're trying to provide people with

low cost energy and that's your sole duty and you've not been fulfilling that goal, something needs to change. Either your attitude, your investment strategy. or just in general, some sort of direction. I think, again, I would give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably understands the total amount of assets that are actually in Cook Inlet. and that it probably, when push comes to shove, we will do the right thing and continue to exploit that asset.

You know, it's probably not a great messaging thing to the public. Say, hey, you know, you used to be getting APCF. Now you're getting it 12. You know. I know you're living paycheck to paycheck, but that's not really my concern. It's kind of your only concern. I mean, maybe it's not affecting you making $380,000, $390,000 a year. Maybe you're not feeling it. But those of us out there. who are making a quarter of that are like, ow.

Ow, ow, right? So it, yeah, maybe from a messaging standpoint, not a great message to be slapping around out there as well. Matt Bullard's our guest, HEA District 3 board candidate. We're going to continue here. In just a moment, don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. When we return, we're going to ask Matt, okay, we've talked about kind of the all-in thing. What would his plan be? What would he like to see?

as a member of the HEA board. And what does that look like for all of us? We'll continue in just a moment. The Michael Duke show. Common sense, Liberty based free thinking radio. We're broadcasting live through a series of tubes. Allowing 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. It's a series of tubes. It's a series of tubes.

I got to be honest, it makes me smile every time I hear the greed and entitlement thing. Oh, the greed. Again, I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller kind of thing. The greed and entitlement thing really gets me every time I hear it. Oh, come on, Matt. The greed. That was so funny. And the entitlement is astounding to me. I just don't fathom it. Yeah.

I mean, I do miss Natasha. I miss her because she was a soundbite machine. I mean, she could just she'd lay something down there and I'd be like, oh, yeah, I remember that. That's good stuff. You know, Matt, it sounds like that you have a suspicion that I have, which is that a lot of this crisis in the Cook Inlet is... I mean, I've said manufactured, maybe manufactured is a too big a word, but maybe.

It's misleading, let's put it that way, that we put it off long enough that maybe that this is it. I mean, we've really got one major player in the Cook Inlet. Fury and Hex are out there, but Hillcorp is the main player. And maybe they've just been kind of... juggling things to their advantage to say hey maybe they're using it as leverage to get a little bit of a better deal or anything else because i mean i've heard from other people that no there's there's gas there

They just have to go get it. And, you know, maybe that's I don't know. Do you think that this is just more leverage? Is it a real crisis or is it just being leveraged in that way? What what's your take on it? No, I. I don't think it's being leveraged on purpose. I assign no malintent. I don't guess at the assets there.

i go and i read the usgs um you know i'm one of those weird guys uh read the usgs surveys you know even if you cut the survey in half from 2011 you know 19 trillion cubic feet of natural gas i mean that's a lot of natural gas um so it's an asset issue probably not um but if you're a producer of natural gas and say there's a lot of people that want you out of business and are creating legislation, regulations to do so. And then they're telling you,

Hey, by the way, we're going to supplement your revenue with wind, with solar. We're going to do everything we can to get you out of there. We don't like the ugly things in the water. What's your plan to remove them? If I'm a business and people hate me, but then they complain on a daily basis when prices go up.

you know that's that's a little bit of a hostile business environment and do i want to invest in that business environment um or do i want to go maybe to argentina or egypt or you know somewhere where people appreciate my business um You know, I think it's a self-imposed issue. I think people have gotten so used to having cheap, reliable gas and energy that they forgot. how much it takes and what it takes to provide that on a daily basis. And people take it for granted. And it's a big deal.

billions of dollars out there that fly around all day every day chasing these molecules this is the this is the hamburger in the pink tray syndrome right like they don't know where the meat comes from they don't want to see those they don't want to see the slaughterhouse and everything else and they They clutch their pearls when they see what's going on, but they like having that hamburger and the hamburger helper at the end of the day. You know, you've got to get there.

And I mean, I agree with that. And part of this also has to do with and somebody early on in the chat room, and I don't remember who it was. I think it was Barbara, but said something about.

You know, the boards of these utilities a lot of times, they're the playground of these big environmental groups. They get a lot of money, they get a lot of support, and they put environmentalists on these boards. And they are the stumbling block to... again a lot of times cheap affordable energy they they go off on these daisy trails of you know solar and wind and all these other things that can only be built affordably with huge subsidies

from state and federal governments. And when those subsidies drop and blow away, the economics of it don't work out anymore. And people are like shocked. Shocked, I tell you, that it's not working out. And, I mean, that's a huge problem because you've tied your wagon to something that's not sustainable in the long run, whereas hydro.

uh geothermal potentially nuclear those things that's a one-time investment it doesn't require you know the payback is much easier and we've just been avoiding the the elephant in the room this whole time is that we need that cheap affordable energy Yeah, I mean, not to mention those assets are assets that you can produce energy from for the next hundred years.

well and great i'm all on top of you know get energy however you can but you know let's do it incrementally when it makes sense if you know if i've got an asset that you know one-time investment payback is 100 years great yeah as opposed to a very expensive asset that you know i have to replace every 25 years like yeah it also declines

In the case of wind, it's not even 25 years. You know what the maintenance are on those big turbines and everything? I mean, it's insane what the maintenance is on some of those things. Well, not only that, but you look at the Nantucket.

and Martha's Vineyard Project, that's on indefinite hold. You know, you've got these billions of dollars of money just sitting there in offshore wind and it's on indefinite hold because, you know, they start blowing apart and nobody knows why. And now they've got a stress fracture.

And it's a, it's a, it's a mess. Yeah, it is a mess. All right. We are about 10 seconds out. I didn't hear the ding this time because I forgot to start the timer, but we're all good. We're going to continue here. Don't go anywhere. Matt Bullard's our guest, the Michael Duke show, common sense, Liberty base, free. Naked Radio, let's do this. The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect.

Sorry, that is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. That guy is so mean, man. I don't know what I did to him. But anyway, we're back. We're talking with Matt Bullard, who is a board candidate for the HEA board in District 3. And he joins us this morning to talk about the future of HEA and what he envisions on the board. Matt, you talk about in your...

And your candidate statement, I guess, on the board, which I will post up in the chat room for folks who want to see it there. If you want to go look at Matt's, his bona fides and everything else, I posted a link up in the chat room. But you talk in there about this. uh, What you call all of the above plan. And you've kind of touched on that, you know, cost of active gas and then also hydroelectric. You've talked about geothermal. You've talked about nuclear. What does this look like for Matt?

get on the board and you get your way and you you know you you're king for a day what to you does the future of hea's portfolio look like to provide us with that a reliable affordable read cheap energy for the foreseeable future so that we can thrive as a state. Yeah. Thank you for that question. I guess in general, we'll do short term, medium term.

long-term investments and kind of what that looks like. So I think short-term, again, we have to go back to supporting Hillcorp, Fury, Hex, all those guys in the cooking. I think we need to get them. understand their business models, understand what it takes for them. You know, a large portion of their exploration is cost of capital. So we need to understand kind of what drives that price and then.

help them along the road to supply us with the natural gas that we have sitting right offshore. And I think that solves a lot of short term. angst and issues uh medium term i still would like to see that that natural gas pipeline come down from the north slope um you know I think exports, driving revenues, growing business, you know, these are all things, especially with Kenai-Soldatna area, being able to export that to all over Avisia and having all the...

cooking natural gas guys join in that would be a massive windfall for the state in general, not just for us. And then long term, I think we need to go back to, I think, you know, Bradley Lake.

Phenomenal investment. Geothermal, I think that's something, you know, take the Utah case again, you know, drill three miles down, pressurize water, throw it through there. You get electricity and uh industrial heat from that and then again nuclear you know it's not just me i'm not some crackpot that sits off and reads uh weird stuff in the dark um you know we the us federally is on the triple triple nuclear deal

Every country, every developed country that I can think of has a nuclear plan. And this is just the direction with which the world is going. There's tons of... There's tons of small countries out there or small companies out there that are providing great solutions. And so, again, I think short term cooking the natural gas, medium term, continue cooking with natural gas pipeline for exports.

Long term, we need to have hydro. We need to have geothermal. Well, I mean, hydro, I mean, I keep every time people talk about hydro, all I can think of is the Hoover Dam. The thing's 100 years old and it still produces some of the cheapest power in the U.S.

Right. For for a huge swath of the of the Western United States is being produced by Hoover. And that that was a one time investment over 100 years ago that's still producing. We should be looking at this in every way that we can. Hydro. I mean, where can we find more?

Again, the environmental stumbling blocks are the biggest concern, and this has been part of the problem with the boards in the past is that many of these utility boards have been seeded with a lot of... fairly radical environmental folks who basically want to stand in the stumbling block all they want to talk about is

renewables which i find that's an ironic name for things like uh solar and wind which requires so much from the petrochemical and technology industry uh and are so element and resource rich to try and create but they're So focused on renewables that they're ignoring all the other stuff. Again, go back to, you can also not only use the Diablo Canyon, sorry, the Hoover Dam, but you can also look at Diablo Canyon. They're extending net...

Nuclear power plants out past 80 years, you know, looking at 100 year life cycles for these things. You know, these are these are assets which continue to produce power day in and day out. And I also think people. think that electricity is like this easy thing that just kind of there's power out there and you flip it on. It's like, no, you know, AGA and these guys, they do a very delicate balancing act between supply and demand of power.

on a second by second basis you flip on the light switch you drop frequency they need to increase power you know so when you have overload and under load situations these are These are big deals. You're leading to blackouts. You're leading to low shedding, losses of power. And again, I think it's one of those things that it's just been easy. I've just flipped on the switch for the past hundred years and everything's worked and people just forgot how complex some of these issues are.

Right. Well, again, again, it's the we mentioned it during the commercial break. It's the pink. It's the pink styrofoam tray with the meat on it. People know the meats there at the store. They they forget how it gets there, though. We've got to remember how we get these things and how we make it happen. And, you know.

it's the old proverb of the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second time to plant a tree is today. And we need to be doing this because most of the stuff that we're talking about has a very long tail.

Whether it's a pipeline or a nuclear plant or hydroelectric, those are all long tail solutions. And we need something in the short term, which is why they've talked about import and more exploration in the Cook Inlet and everything else, because they're trying to find a solution for now. So it's a difficult proposition. And I imagine, again, since most people aren't really paying attention to what's going on in the board, you said, what, 16 percent?

Ratepayer participation in the last election. I mean, we should be seeing participations in the 20 and 30 percentile, at least for these kind of things. People have got to be paying attention to what's going on in their local utilities. Yeah, especially with how easy they make it. It's the 21st century. Whether you agree with it or not, the ability to submit your selection via email. And or actually on voter day, it just it makes things so much easier. And again.

you know my long-term goal here is to make utilities boring again you know i don't want this to be an issue i don't want this to be a thing that people think about i don't want it to be a problem We need to create a long-term plan that puts this issue at the back of people's minds so they can go on with their life and worry about other things like raising kids or doing groceries or starting businesses.

This really shouldn't be an issue that we should be talking about on a daily basis. But yes, we need more people to understand the actual issues and we need people to get out. and actually get involved like i'm sorry but you know there is now at a point where you need to get involved and people need to pay attention and you need to go out and you need to be a informed voter and you need to understand the issues and

That's just how it is. That's how the US was set up. It was set up on an informed voter basis. And if you want to be a part of the voting population, You got to be informed. I'm sorry that you have to pay attention to what's going on. I'm sorry that you have to participate. I don't want to do this either. I got tons of stuff to do. I got two kids to raise. I want to go fishing. I want to go hunting. I'm leaving on Thursday for a brown bear hunt. I got stuff to do. I don't want to be doing this.

This is a participatory story. But we need some people on there that have an actual vision that makes sense and that will actually deliver what people have been doing.

kind of pontificating about for 20 years with the new renewable energy stuff which just hasn't worked out nope we need to move on figure out what doesn't work and then move on to something new uh 60 seconds matt final thoughts here your final exhortation of people on the voting hea board yeah again i kind of just went through it but i i think people just need to do their own individual research you know you can go in there's there's you don't even have to google things anymore

There's AI. You can ask it any questions you want. You don't have to listen to me. You don't have to listen to Michael. Get out there and look into it for yourself. And the last thing I will say is... Platitudes are 100% defeated over physics. These ideas are great until they run up against physics. And at the end of the day,

It's always going to win. I'm sorry. Yeah, facts don't care about your feelings, I think, is one way to put that right now. Facts don't care about your feelings. Matt Bullard, HEA District 3 board candidate. Thank you, Matt. Hold the line for just a second. out of time for today. Tomorrow, it'll be me and you. Have a good day. We'll see you tomorrow. Be kind, love one another, live well.

All right, Matt, I want to give you, we're done with the radio, so we'll give you one final bite at the apple here this morning. Before you have to go take care of the kids, I can hear them in the background. They're enjoying them. It's my daughter. She's not happy about something. Not happy about dad not being there. But let's.

Let's, you know, final thoughts here. I give you the final bite of the apple. Anything we didn't cover or anything that, you know, you thought should have been brought up that I didn't bring up, now's the time to do it. No. I don't really think so. I'm kind of trying to be.

provocative without being polarizing if you will you know i want people to think i want people to actually get involved and and if it takes me just kind of jiggering the cage a little bit to get real to get people to go out and actually look into the issues and

come to an informed decision on themselves great um and if it's not me and if i'm not the guy hey you know i'll take a crack at it next time right uh but um but i i think it More importantly than anything, I think it's important for people to at least have an idea and an opinion on the issue. Well, I mean, again, it's the old adage of if you can't motivate, then you irritate, right? Because if you can shake the cage a little bit and get people up off their rusty dusties to go do something.

That's what they need to do. And I'm glad to see you're doing it. And I support you. I think this is a great call. We need some of this forward thinking out there for sure, 100%. I appreciate you taking the time to run for the board and to come on board and talk about it, to reach out to me and things like that. I think this is good stuff.

Yeah. Well, thanks again for everything that you do. And I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity. No problem. You know, I'm reaching out to you now though, to talk with you about your business for advertising, right? You know, you know, anytime. Okay. Well, I'll send you your teeth cleaned. I know a guy. Hey.

I was just saying, I need a good dentist, too. Now I'm slowing down enough. Now I get a chance to say, well, wait, we don't have a dentist. We don't have an optician. We don't have it. So now we've got to find the local folks. So now I know who to talk to. I'll reach out to you via email and we'll talk real quick here. But anyway, Matt, thanks for coming on. And again, just thanks for running because, again, this is going to be a thankless job, right? And you're going to be fighting the fight.

People are not paying attention to it. So good for you. Good on you for rattling cages a little bit, because that's what we need. We need somebody who will say, hey, look. If you don't pay attention to this, you're going to get run over, you know, and we got to stop being in the middle of the road. We need to pick a side and get on it and get going on.

All right, Matt. Well, thank you so much, Matt Bullard. Again, I put a link up in the chat room. I'll post it one more time right now for those of you who want to go out and read Matt's little thing. And if you're an HEA member, you got an email last week. I know I did that said, here's your.

ballot to go vote go vote where you got to go and uh i think i'm in matt's district i hope i'm in matt's district so i know i know where i need to go vote here uh but matt thank you so much for coming on board and joining us this morning Yep. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of your morning. All right. We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks so much. And we probably could bring Matt back on to talk about other energy issues, even if he doesn't win, but we're hoping he's going to win.

And if he does win, we'll bring him back. You know what? We'll just bring him back on because that was good stuff. All right, my friends. Well, that pretty much wraps us up for today. We are out of time. And we need to get things going on. We've got a full day ahead of us here today at the radio station. So tomorrow, no Brad Keithley.

Brad, he's out doing his thing. So he's not here for the next two weeks. So any of you who have been like, I can't take Brad, well, tomorrow will be fun. I don't know who we're going to have on, but we're going to do something. And it'll be fun. And we'll get it going. And maybe we'll make Lesko happier tomorrow. Maybe we'll be mad enough about something tomorrow.

that uh he'll be happy with the response on that we can we can go from there all right well that does it for me i am uh i'm out of here i got i got gonna go make coffee Make some more coffee. Get things rolling. Thank you, my friends. Yeah. Rick says, holy smokes, I'll be turning in for sure. Yeah, there will be no Brad tomorrow. Maybe I'll do my own weekly top three.

That should just frost your cookies, shouldn't it? All right. Thank you, my friends. Appreciate you coming on board and joining us. We will see you tomorrow. Be kind. Love one another. and live well, The Michael Duke Show. Radio Skin. And now we are slimy lizard internet people.