Welcome to the party, pal. show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS. It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need, and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't.
The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the interwebs at MichaelDukesShow.com and across the state of Alaska on this. your favorite radio station and or fm translator hello my friends and welcome to the program for this beautiful Thursday edition of the show. I mean, wow, what an awesome day, right? I mean, it is nice.
We're currently sitting at 26 degrees here on top of the world in beautiful Homer, Alaska. We hope you're enjoying a similar mild weather across the state. I mean... Hey, bring on the global warming, right? I mean, this is what we... I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Man, I just heard somebody scream at their radio. It's amazing. Anyway, we're ready to go here and we are diving into it. It's just you and me.
And a bunch of headlines from around the state today. I probably should turn on the phones as well just to give you a chance to sound off on things. And I will probably do that here a little bit later on in the program. But I got a lot of things to talk about. Now, I told my wife last night, I said, man, I just I don't I don't want to rant. Because it just feels like the last few weeks, especially in regards to the education thing, I just I have been feeling very ranty.
That every time we get into a discussion on it, I just end up getting agitated. And for that, I apologize. But it's it you know, the frustration for me is the fact that. I've seen, you know, we've seen this, we've seen this coming, right? We've seen this coming for so long. And just now, in fact, I was just there was an article that I was reading right before we came on the program and one of the.
What what are the comments? And this was specifically talking about the new oil tax structure, which we're going to get into here in just a few moments. But there was a quote in there from Kathy Giesel. who is the Republican senator from Anchorage, who said, let's see, she stressed the dire fiscal outlook facing legislators.
And she said, quote, it's a huge challenge we've talked about, the approaching fiscal cliff. Well, now we're standing on the edge. You know, the problem is, is that they're acting like this thing just came out of nowhere. They're acting like this was just, we just didn't see it. We just didn't, we, you know, but you could go back. I mean, even just the last couple of years on this program and you can look at our discussions.
about the governor's fiscal outlook, his 10-year plan. I mean, I have been talking about this for years. And specifically, we brought it into deep and tight focus in just the last couple of years alone on where we were going. And now, all of a sudden, the legislature is acting like, oh, well, we didn't see that. We didn't see that cliff approaching. Look at where we're standing right now. It's unbelievable. And I think that's where a lot of my frustration and rantiness comes from.
Because this was a preventable problem. And it was a problem that could have been prevented, not without pain. There's no doubt about it. There's not without pain. but with less pain than where we're at right now. You know, if we had slowed, if we'd coasted to a stop at the top of the fiscal cliff, it would have, you know, we would have experienced some challenges and some, you know, ickiness and some pain, but not like if you throw the brakes on the last, you know, 25 yards ahead of the cliff.
you may not even spilled your tea on that train you know you would have just been slow downward pressure holding it up until we got there but instead we threw the brakes on and you know spun the wheel to reverse and and And here we are. Everything comes flying off the shelves and people are on the floor and, you know, whatever other metaphor you want to you want to portray in your mind of what happens when you slam the brakes on a train that's heading towards a fiscal cliff.
But I think that's where my frustration lies, is that this is something that we have talked about on this program for a long time. And all of a sudden now they're like, you know, oh, it's. And I just feel like screaming. Welcome to the party, pal. That's what I just I mean, I just, you know. I, what I feel like, I feel like, you know, you just now seeing this, you're just now. And then of course, once they see it, they come up with all the wrong answers.
It's not a it's it's not a problem in their minds with, I think, little to no self-analysis. It's not a problem of of, you know, their spending habits. It's not a problem of the state wanting to be all things to all people. This is simply a problem of revenue. We just don't have enough revenue coming in because we you know, they're not asking themselves, should we be providing all that we're providing? That's not a again, that's not a.
A self-analysis question that anybody at the state seems to be asking themselves. The majority of legislators are all like, well, we just need more need more revenue, even members of the minority. I mean. Jubilee Underwood said it yesterday. Well, you know, we just need more resource revenue. Okay. I mean, I don't disagree in principle that we need more revenue and we need more resource revenue.
But the problem is, one, resource revenue doesn't happen overnight. And two, if we just give them more money, what will they do? What has been, you know. Past performance is indicative of future results. What have you done in the past? What are you going to do in the future? Well, if we give them more, this is Godwin's law for the.
No, Godwin's law is the one that references Nazis. Parkinson's principle. It's Parkinson's principle where basically, you know, all the work fills up all the available hours. And this is a subset where it's basically all of the spending. basically consumes all of the available money. Where if you give them more money, they will continue to spend that money at the same rate that they did prior to that.
We had an opportunity in the early teens in this state to take a hard look at what we were doing. We I mean, it was coming out of the coming out of the early aughts and it was boy, it was high cotton season. You know, what was it? 2007, 2008, 2009, when oil was sky high. And, you know, the state was $150 a barrel or something. And that was the year that was at 2007, 2008 when Palin gave out that big, big energy rebate.
Because the state was raking in money hand over fist. They were pouring money into the CBR, you know, billions of dollars. In fact, at one point, the CBR had something like 15, 16 billion dollars in it at one time. And they were just pouring money into it. And, you know, we were just doing great. And, of course, as the state of Alaska is wont to do, we expanded our spending.
We expanded our programs. We expanded the dependency state to match that kind of revenue generation. But again, the problem is, is that. That stuff is finite. That stuff is cyclical. And generally speaking, we don't remain at the top for very long. Now, conversely, generally speaking, we don't always remain at the bottom for very long, but we're always somewhere in the middle, vacillating between plus and minus as far as doing great or doing poor.
But instead of acting like we should be husbanding our resources and we should be, you know, planning for the long term. We should be planning for the peaks and valleys. We should be planning for the highs and the lows. We seem to always think and act like it's always going to be high cotton season. Again, the one that really stuck out with me was the first year that Sean Parnell as governor, you know, produced his budget.
And they factored the budget on, I think it was $105 or $115 a barrel per oil. That's what they factored their budget on. But even by the time they released their, from the time they start to the time they released their budget, oil had dropped from over $100 a barrel down to something like $79 or $80 a barrel. So we were already deficit spending from the very beginning. And over the course of the next three, four years, we never stopped.
And over the course of those years in the early teens, we went through billions of dollars in savings. spending somewhere between $16 and $18 billion out of our various savings account, mostly the CBR, which, by the way, is still owed a big chunk of money. I mean, by the Constitution, the CBR is supposed to have $10 billion in it. And we drain that thing down to less, I think it was less than half a billion dollars at one point. It's back up now. It's like one point.
I think it's $1.2 or $1.3 billion in the CBR right now, but we've never repaid it. So not only were we spending our savings, technically... The savings threshold at zero should have been $10 billion. That should have been like, well, we really can't go below that unless it's an absolute emergency. And yet we drained it all. So we're literally we're borrowing from the future.
Once we spent that first $6 billion, $7 billion, and we hit the $10 billion mark, we were already borrowing from the future. And yet there was no slowing down. There was no analysis by legislators as to, hmm, I wonder how we got here. I wonder what we're doing. I wonder what we should be doing to make this work. I mean, I wonder what I want to know about. long-term fiscal sustainability. You know, I mean, there was just none of those discussions came out.
And it wasn't until, you know, the fiscal policy working group got together, which I mean, what came out of the fiscal policy working group, I thought was some pretty good stuff. But really what it was, was that they were just. They were just shining them on.
The fiscal policy working group was created because the minority at the time stood fast and said, we're not going to vote out of the CB. We're not going to give you the full vote out of the CBR. I mean, it was it was threatening for a government shutdown. That's how they got this. Fiscal Policy Working Group put together and they they came out with some good stuff. But there was no teeth once the threat was over of the shutdown and everything else.
They just placated them with the fiscal policy working group and then patted them on the heads and sent them on their way. People like Ben Carpenter, who believed in that and who really, I mean, put it forward. were basically, you know, treated like, you know, they were treated like, oh, there's a cute little kid who wants to talk about physical, oh, just, and then they'd never do it.
There is no analysis as to how we got here. Well, let me help you with that. Let me help you with this. We got here because we have an unending appetite for spending in this state. And it's not just this batch of legislators. It's not just this legislature. It has been this way since 1969. Five years. We got that first royalty check in late 69, early 70. It was nearly a billion dollars and the state had never seen that kind of money.
The entirety of the state budget, when they received that first royalty check, was right in the neighborhood of $162 million. That was... That was the state budget. Right? That was everything. $162 million. I mean, that's barely a tenth or a twelfth of just education funding now. In fact, they gave more one-time funding last year than the entirety of the state budget.
in that first year when we received that first royalty check. And they got that billion-dollar royalty check, baby, and they went through it like a house of fire. Like you doused that thing in gasoline, naphtha, and I mean, MEK, and you just, you lit a match. That's how fast they went through it. And quite honestly, it's never slowed down.
And you can even see the legacy of that today in the discussions of things like this Medicaid cut that's potentially coming on from Doge and the Trump administration, the federal government and more. You could see the danger. We talked about the dangers of Medicaid expansion when it happened under Governor Walker. On this program specifically. And today.
Those birds are about to come home to roost, and we're going to talk about this. But this, here's the good, is it the good news or the bad news? The good news, the news is. This was fully preventable. The bad news is, is that nobody wanted to... take it on. Nobody wanted to pay the price. And so instead of a little pain over a period of years, we're now facing major surgery.
I'm mixing my metaphors here. The medical metaphors, the train metaphors. Maybe we should operate on the train. I don't know. We got to go. We're going to be back with more of The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. 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. Good morning, my friends.
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Let's see. Let's see what you guys got going on this morning. Anthony said the upside of global warming, think of all the money we'll save on heating oil and natural gas. And the fact that we won't burn it, right? To stay, I mean, that's part of, that's good. That's good.
Terry says, talking about Kathy Giesel, saying we're standing at the edge of this fiscal, the edge she created. She didn't create it alone. This has been going on for years. They're just. participants. They're just, you know, rantiness said Kevin. Yeah. Rantiness. I mean, I don't know if that's a word, but it is now I made it. I just, I put it in the lexicon.
Kevin also said, remember the glide path to a soft landing? Yeah, well, I mean, good luck. We could have created a glide path, but we failed to do the requisite self-analysis. That's part of the problem. Anthony always painting the picture that we wish we could paint together. He said the pain could have been chopping off a pinky toe while on morphine, but now we're sawing off the leg with a tube of aura gel for the pain. That's what's going to have to happen.
Because we refuse to take a look at it early on and from the beginning. All right. going through here um constitution what is that says ron tracer said alaska has a long reputation as a boom and bust economy well and there's a reason for that Part of it is the nature of how we do things because it is a resource-driven economy. So there's going to be...
Boom and bust is kind of baked into that to begin with. But we've made it worse because we have a legislature that has no forward vision and can't see beyond the next boom. In fact, they're stuck in boom mode. And it only becomes a crisis when things are in the bust mode and then they don't know how to deal with it. Chris says Alaska voters are really the ones to blame. There is a... There is a... a a truth to that for certain
Rob Myers says if our budget from 1968 had followed inflation and population growth, it would be two point two billion in UGF spend. So roughly about half of where we're at right now. Yeah. I'm just scrolling through some of the comments. Let's see. Bradley says, I think the problem.
is a deeper societal problem with the way that most Americans have maxed out credit and only pay the minimum payment. We have a problem with immediate gratification. I mean, I would agree with that, that we have bought into this. idea that somehow there will always be more, that there are no consequences to our actions. I mean, coming out of the Great Depression, we had people who had a real, true, visceral understanding.
of what doing things financially wrong could entail. And we're just not there anymore. We seem to have forgotten all that. I think there must be some serious sarcasm funk going on here. Some poor Alaskans desperately need Medicaid to survive, said Tracer. Well. Maybe some do. The problem is when you have one third of your state on a dependency program like that, that's a sure sign that we've got something going wrong right there.
All right. And Brian quotes the classic, please, God, let there be one more boom. I promise I won't piss this one away. That has been the battle cry, the human battle cry of everybody in this state for years, decades, 100%, 100%. All right, let's get to it. We're going to continue The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty Based, Freethinking Radio. Like, share, subscribe, ring the bell. Let's do this thing. 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. Yep, that's me. I am. I am the walrus. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. All right. So let's let's let's I guess we need to break this down. I guess we need to break this down and talk about it. Somebody just pointed me to Rob Myers.
new piece in the uh alaska watchman which i'm gonna have to take a look at during the next break and we probably come back to it because rob has always got some thoughtful points to make he did make a point actually in the chat room rob is actually in the chat room here this morning uh monitoring the show and he did mention that you know when i was talking about that 68 69 70 you know that 160 million dollars or so
in state budget when we got our first big royalty check from the oil companies you know he he made the point to say that if our budget from 1968 had followed inflation and population growth we would be looking at about $2.2 billion in UGF spending, which is roughly about half of what we're spending right now. So we obviously have grown. The size and scope of government well beyond what I think many of us would consider to be sustainable levels. All right. So let's talk about some of the.
stories that are going on around the state and how this is going to affect us. Of course, we've ad nauseum, we've gone over the whole education funding boost. And how literally this is, you know, if you're looking for a true path to sustainability, this is the opposite path going in the other direction. You know, we're talking about, you know, six hundred and forty four million dollars per year just in the first three years. And then it goes up about 50.
million dollars 50 to 60 million dollars every year thereafter because it's pegged to inflation and that's where it goes from there and yet we have no way to pay for it. By not saying anything, they're saying something big. By not giving you another option as to how they're going to pay for it, they basically are saying quietly out loud that they're just going to take the PFD to pay for it. And then we'll figure the rest of it out later, which is great. I mean.
in quotes air quotes which is great until you figure out that within just a handful of years that the entirety of the PFD is consumed at that point and then it still goes up in the future. It still continues to ratchet up. So how do you pay for that? And of course, that's not a conversation that... many people are willing to have. And so now they have proposed a new PFD formula. And this is really...
Well, I mean, I would say it's much ado about nothing because they've already been following this 75-25 split. Members of the Senate have supported that 75-25 split since the first year that Bill Walker basically vetoed the permanent fund. And they've been setting it by fiat pretty much over the whole time. That's always been kind of their yardstick was the 75-25 split.
But now they've now they brought this out and brought it forward. Interestingly enough, I thought it was interesting that even members of the Senate majority didn't know about this bill before it came out of the Finance Committee. He didn't. Lyman Hoffman is quoted in this article from James Brooks over at the Alaska Beacon saying that the. Excuse me, that he didn't he didn't inform.
all the members of the Senate Majority Caucus before introducing it, but that he had support from all seven members of the committee, including two members who were part of the minority. They all came out and sponsored it and co-sponsored it. Members of the Senate minority that I talked to said that they didn't know that this was coming. And so it's a little disappointing.
Now, again, I have said many times that if you don't like the formula, then change it. So this is their attempt to go ahead and change it. But again, at this point... To quote a famous politician, what difference does it make? Because they've already decided, I mean, they don't have to follow the statutes anyway, so this is just another statute.
that they can ignore at their whim, although it would take away some of the language that they say runs contrary to the POMV statute. So at least I guess they wouldn't be in conflict for now. But, you know, again, this is just more of that self same. This is more is a bigger example of kind of that self same lack of self analysis.
To say, what have we done to get us here? Any business or any household budget, I guess, by anything outside of government, any budgetary process outside of actual government. would look at where they're at and go how did we get here what what happened what did we do and what do we need to you know what what brought us to this position
They would look at that and go, OK, we can see that this was a problem and that was a problem and we need to start reversing it. But in the state and in government in general. I mean, the federal government is a prime example of this. And again, this is what I've said for years, that it's monkey see, monkey do at the federal level.
The state legislators are all jealous of this, the amount of epic freedom that the national legislature has in just passing whatever budget they feel like and they'll find the money somewhere. But. This is, I mean, again, trying to be all things to all people and just passing a budget no matter what, there is no reflection on what's causing this. It's always, always. A revenue problem. Never a spending problem.
And now that's going to be exacerbated by many other factors. I want to talk here in just a few minutes about the potential for federal employees and the fact that they that we can have a bunch of federal employees. be fired and where they're going for there. But before we get to that, let's talk for a minute here about the latest boogeyman in the room. And that is the proposed Medicaid cuts. Now, there's two different components of this problem right now.
One is the fact that there is a lawsuit that 17 states, including Alaska, have joined together to sue the federal government. Over regulations that were enacted by the Biden administration last year that gave an update to the disability discrimination law that was that's kind of baked into and works hand in glove with Medicaid. And so that is the first part of it. The second part of it is the new budget resolution that was just passed in the Congress.
that was supported by Nick Begich and more. It was a tight budget resolution. It was 217 to 215 votes. And it's going to cut a significant amount of money out of the Medicaid program. $880 billion were the cuts that they were looking for on the congressional side. And according to some of the folks in the legislature who've been talking about this, this could translate to a loss of about a billion dollars in federal funding for Alaska's Medicaid program. Now, Alaska's Medicaid program.
Because it was expanded in the mid-teens, 2016, 2017, in the final years of the Walker administration, Medicaid... spending in the state just absolutely skyrocketed. In fact, Alaska's Medicaid budget is about $2.6 billion. $2.6 billion, and it covers roughly one-third, 30%, 270%. Thousands, a thousand Alaskans. Out of the 740 or 50,000 people that are here in the state, 270,000 Alaskans are participating.
At one level or another with Medicaid. Which just think about that for a minute. Just tell me that that's not like one of the biggest red flags. that you could have. And that number has remained fairly consistent over the last eight, nine years. Right at the end of the Walker administration, it was 274,000 Alaskans were participating in the Medicaid program at one level or another. I mean, that should have been a red flag right from the beginning.
Because the expansion and how large the program became and the number of people that it started to glom onto, I mean, it's all well and good for the first couple of years, right? But the problem is, what happens when the federal government stops paying for it? And we talked about this at the time, that there are many states, there's many programs.
that have been started in the past, many programs that the state decided to participate in or programs they decided to create themselves that were nearly fully funded at the very beginning by federal dollars. And they would tell people, oh, it's free money. Oh, don't worry. We're not going to have to pay for this. This is good. And then some of us would go, well, yeah, that's good for this year. But what about five years from now?
Or 10 years from now, when the money, oh, don't worry about it, it'll be fine. And yet, what's happening today? What is the caterwauling today? We're going to get into that here in just a second. We'll continue The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. We're going to open up the phone lines an hour or two to get your thoughts on this and other things. Meanwhile, we're going to talk about this Medicaid and the two different components, the lawsuit and the cuts.
and we'll see where we go from here. Back with more in just a minute on your Home for Common Sense Radio. Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Okay. Let me go over here. I'm going to stand here. Right over there. And I'm going to do this right here. I'm going to put that right there. Don't mind me. I'm just over here banging the drum on stuff. Okay. Let me go back. Randy is asking a question.
It's always interesting when Randy asks a question. So he says, Michael Dukes, if the entirety of the PFD went away, would you then be in favor of a secondary 1980 style PFD in order to preserve the PFD concept? Well, the question then becomes, Randy, how, even if it was, even if I was in favor of a secondary PFD, a 1980 stuff, which by the way, I don't believe would pass.
legal muster because that was the whole sobel decision and all that i don't think you could have a pfd secondary pfd style but even if it could how do you pay for it if the entirety of the pfd went away How would you pay for your secondary PFD? Because now they would have consumed all the money, which is the flaw in your logic.
Where you continue to go on about, well, a true dividend should only be if we have surplus. But the problem is, if they're spending every available dime, you'll never have a surplus. Again, that's like trying to give a shopaholic a credit card and say, here, here's your credit card, you know, control yourself now. And they just keep spending and spending and spending. I mean, that's always been part of the problem.
And I know, Rob, Rob said it was less than half. We're closer to six billion. I was trying to be conservative when I said it's, you know. for some reason said, Ron, Rob isn't showing up in my chat. That's because you could see on your, where it says your name, you see the little Facebook icon. And then you see under Rob's, you see the little YouTube icon. That's why you can't see him.
because he's on YouTube and you're on Facebook. I can see everybody because I have unlimited godlike powers. All right. Let me see. Yeah, told Walker not to do that. Nobody listens. Costs the state millions and millions of dollars. Yeah, exactly. Rob says, as a portion of the whole country, we have about 72 million on Medicaid out of a population of 340 million. So about a quarter. By just under a quarter of people. Anthony said.
A third of the state being on Medicaid implies two things. One, the criteria to qualify is too loose and is allowing for abuse, or the average Alaskan simply can't afford health care due to their pockets being previously emptied by the government for other things. Remember that whole doom loop economy? might be an indicator we're already on track. I mean, this is what we're talking about here.
let's see at the end of the day dedicated funding prohibition is a problem time to remove it said david um I'm sorry. I'm trying to get caught up here. Lila says, I used to work in the Alaskan social work field and among those and chase medical and disability benefits. And among those. I don't know what that word is, Layla. I'm sorry, you're auto-correct. Boogered it up.
Medicaid and disability. Alaska 15-year agenda is considered the best state in terms of coverage. Then they expanded it in the mid-2010s, so it's even more attractive and expensive. And the problem is that Medicaid regs require states to continue to cover it pretty much the same. same level even after the federal funding is withdrawn. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it.
Yeah, people being told by their doctor that they should be on a pill that costs $700 a month doesn't help either. Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. That's it, you know. And Ron says the government doesn't have a revenue problem. Their problem is getting the money out of your accounts without us knowing about it. Well, and they're trying to hide the taxation. That's going to be the next big thing we're going to talk about here is the taxation that's coming.
Not surprising. Not surprising at all that that's coming right now. Okay, getting ready to jump back into this here. Please like and share, like and follow. There's about 70 of you watching on the various channels and only 12 people have liked it. Only 12 of you. What the heck, man? I feel like you don't like me, man. I feel like you don't. So like and share. Well, you can share it from whatever platform you're watching on. YouTube, Rumble, Facebook.
But all of you can like it with a thumbs up. Let's get to it. Ten seconds now. Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio, The Michael Duke Show. Let's do this thing right now. OK, let's get to this. So we're talking about the Medicaid expansion and we're talking about the two different components right now that are being. factored in. I guess we'll get this one out of the way first.
So ADN and Sean McGuire write about this new, this lawsuit that's going on right now. 17 states, including Alaska. have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in northern Texas challenging the regulations that were made by the Biden administration last year about Medicaid. And it's an update to the disability discrimination law.
The regulations amended Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that was signed into law by Nixon back in 73, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating. Man, against people with disabilities. What happened was the Biden administration regulation change stated that gender dysphoria. could be considered its disability for discrimination protections. That's what the lawsuit contends.
That by including gender dysphoria in there, you were putting millions of federal dollars at risk if the states did not basically toe the line on this. But according to Treg Taylor, the attorney general of the state. That was not the reason that the state of Alaska joined the lawsuit. The State Department of Law in September said that the administration's new regulations would impose unfunded mandates on the state, particularly.
in Medicaid services to Alaska. Taylor said the state risked losing federal funding if it failed to comply with the law, and he said substantial costs could be borne by the state. This was part of the problem with the whole Medicaid expansion thing to begin with, because you have to realize that once you take once you start down that road. with the Medicaid expansion and things like that, you are committing yourself to continuing down the road, whether the federal government funded it or not.
That is part of the problem. The article goes on to talk about how there's lots of disability advocates who are just so outraged that this could be going on. that there's and again while i understand that individuals will be harmed always there will always be individuals who will be harmed by
cuts to government programs in one way or another. There's always somebody who's going to feel the pinch on that. But I think Taylor basically lines it out when he says, It is not fiscally feasible for its system of care to provide all the services across the state in the final rules definition of the most integrated setting in every instance, which has to do with whether or not.
When they say integrated system, people who have disabilities need to have that most integrated setting. That's an actual phrase, meaning they have to be put in places where disabled people can interact with other people as much as possible.
basically what trick taylor is saying is that it's not we don't have the money we don't have the money to do this And this was all before this whole thing and this lawsuit, this has all been working and percolating back in the wings before we got to this new vote from the Congress. Just Tuesday. That would put a tremendous cut on Medicaid, 880 billion in cuts. to the Medicaid program across the country. And lawmakers are already upset. It could cost a billion dollars in federal funding.
But again, they're not they're not even saying that they're Kathy Giesel got up and spoke in front of the legislature. And I mean, she said she even mentions the biggest problem here. Part of the biggest problem again is the number of Alaskans who are on Medicaid. This is on gavel to gavel. This is what she said. For Alaska, Medicaid makes up over $1 billion annually of our budget, Mr. President. One third of Alaskans receive.
Medicaid benefits, including our seniors who are often dual beneficiaries. That means they get Medicaid and Medicare benefits to assist with their health care. I mean, it's a billion. We spend 700 million in state funds. The overall portion is two point two point something billion dollars with the federal monies. For 270,000 people. roughly. And what's happening now is what we warned about when Governor Walker put those expansions in place.
The article quotes Genevieve Mina, who's the Democrat from Anchorage. She said it's not an exaggeration to say that these cuts would cut a lot of people and push them into medical bankruptcy. It will destroy our own state budget and it will cause a collapse in our health care system.
Now, I don't know if it'll collapse the healthcare system, but it could destroy the state budget. If you're currently spending, and the article quotes, was it 2.2? I think it was the other article. It's quoting $2.2 billion. No, I'm sorry. Andy Josephson said Alaska's Medicaid budget is roughly $2.6 billion, of which $700 million comes from the state. And the rest comes from the federal government.
So if they cut a billion dollars out of the federal funding, which is what this article is reporting, that means the $700 million. Less 2.6 means that the federal government is currently spending $1.9 billion. We would have to come up with that additional. Now we would be spending $1.7 billion on Medicaid. And this is what we warned about. We warned the fact that if you expanded Medicaid.
And you're talking about how this is all free federal money. We all need this right now. This is good. But they're never going to pay for it forever. They were never going to pay for it at the same level that they did at the beginning. I challenged at the time when we were talking about this, I challenged people, find me a single program that was started in the state. That was initially funded by the federal government that had gone to this day was still funded at that level or more.
And the problem with the Medicaid expansion is that you were mandated once you created the constituency, unless there was some really... broad overarching problems like maybe they had a whole classification thing that could be changed and maybe that can still help these days. But for the most part, you were on the hook for it. So right now, basing the spending on what we did last year, which included $170 million one-time funding for education and everything else.
We are five, you know, with the same size PFD that we had last year and $170 million in one-time funding for the school. We are $540 million underwater. Where do we find the extra billion dollars to pay for Medicaid? For one third of our, for one third of our. Deal. Now, in my mind, the best case scenario is that we would be able to trim a significant portion of people off the books because then we wouldn't be on the hook for it.
I mean, it's bad. It puts some people in a tough position. But I will tell you right now, there are people out there who have been doing very well. with the marketplace and other things. They've got an advocate. You can find health care insurance out there. You can find it. but it requires some work and some effort and some other things and most people just be like just give me that free stuff
Andy Josephson is quoted saying that he believes that cuts if they go forward as laid out in the budget resolution would ultimately reduce the federal Medicaid spending in Alaska by $1.15 billion, causing at least 60,000 Alaskans to lose coverage. Okay. if they lose their coverage that is a tragedy for many of these people it's very difficult i'm not saying that there's not a human face on this whole thing but can we afford to do it Can we afford to be all things to all people? The answer is no.
And anyway, this goes on and on and on. And again, this is just all part and parcel of me going back to what I've been talking about this whole hour, which is the lack of self-analysis, the lack of... Of of looking back and seeing how did we get to this spot? The analysis of do we have a revenue problem in this state or do we have.
A spending problem. And again, my argument is we've had a spending problem for decades. Now it has become both a spending and a revenue problem. But it'll never stop. Never stop. unless we get a handle on the spending component of it. All right, hour two is dead ahead. I'm going to open up the phone lines and we'll get started from there. We'll return the Michael Duke show. If you got to go to work, be kind, love one another, live well. We'll be back.
Alright, hold on a second. I'm trying to launch the phones. Okay. When I launch the phones, it always maxes out the volume on the system and screws things up for the podcast. So I wanted to have a moment of silence there while we did that. All right. It would kill people, you fool. That's what Miracle Max says. Miracle, Miracle Max. He says, it would kill people, you fool. No, no more tax cuts. Would kill people. Are you fine with that? No, I'm not fine with people dying.
But again, you can't be all things to all people. Max, how do you propose you pay for that? Just curious. I mean... If everything was free, a lot more people would be alive. Right. A lot more people would be healthier. A lot more people would be if everything was free, that would be great. But it's not. So how do you pay for it? That's the question.
No more welfare for the rich. The rich already pay a significant portion. In fact, they're like 27 to 30 percent of all that they're already doing all that. They're already they're already doing that. Medicine is not affordable. What? Heather said, whoa, man, everything got real slow all of a sudden. Come on. I'm waiting for it to pop back up. I got too many windows open, I think, at this point. There we go. Medicine is not affordable. The Tomb of Cream for my son is sold for $3,000.
You know, that's part and parcel of it. Don says, my artiferitis medication is $7,000 a month. Oh, man. David Gray says tax the rich. Well, they're already being taxed. How much more? I mean, I'm not rich. I'm being taxed. You're being taxed unless you're in the lower 50 percentile, in which case you're not being taxed. You're probably actually getting money back. but i mean it's uh it's anyway what are you gonna do um it's always a spending problem says melody do not live beyond your means
I mean, that's words that we can live by for sure. But nobody, you know, it just seems like we need to do all these things. Doesn't matter how much it costs. Well, how do we pay for it? Nobody knows. Let's see. Too bad. Let's see. Scrolling backwards here. But the collective good, something, something, something. Yeah. Walker was hellbent on increasing Medicaid expansion. I think because that was one of the primary... That was one of the primary goals and talking points of...
of the Democrats at the time, and that's how they got Byron Mallott. That's how they got that unity ticket that they put together. He had to give up some of the things, and that was one of the things that he had to kowtow on. I'm still scrolling backwards here. See what else is going on. All right. Okay. I think, I think. I'm scrolling. I think I got all caught up.
Providence and Alaska's regional will be doing major support service layoffs, and the professional ranks will be closing their doors and headed out of Alaska. I mean, there will be an effect there. Of course, there'll be a trickle down effect. I've said that anytime you make a cut or do anything like that, you're going to have there's going to be a trickle down effect on any of that. How about taxing everyone equally and getting rid of all the deductions, said Bradley. I mean, again.
When you have the bottom 50 percent are not paying any income taxes and the top are paying 30, you know, between depending on where they're at, 27 to 37 percent. OK, I mean, maybe a flat tax, you know, that Stephen Forbes talked about all those years ago. Maybe that does make a lot more sense. David is just like, David is like, no, no, they are not taxed at the same rate as average folks. I just told you how to pay for it. Very simple. Okay. I mean.
I'm glad to see that you have no idea how economics work as far as, you know, what people do with their money and malinvestment and everything else. But that's OK. I mean, you know, you do you, boo. Where do people actually get the notion that the rich are not paying taxes, says Tyler? Well, mainstream media, that's a big talking point. That's for sure. Let me see what else. I fully expect to see.
an amendment from the Senate Republicans for a constitutional vote on Hoffman 7525. Make everyone put a vote on the demise, then the people have the last say on the PFD. Yeah, I mean, that might be a good way to do it. All right, we got to go. I'm doom scrolling. Yeah, for sure. Here we go. The Michael Duke show. Common Sense Radio. Hour two is right now.
Oh, buddy, put that thing back in its holster. We haven't gone anywhere. I don't understand. Check out themichaeldukesshow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. Welcome to the party, pal. The Michael Duke Show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS.
It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need, and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't. The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the state of Alaska on this. your favorite radio station and or fm translator hello and good morning to you welcome to hour two of the big radio show
We are continuing on. I have now opened up the phone lines. If you would like to sound off, we'd love to hear what you have to say. 319-527-3864. 319. 527-3864. We've got a, you know, folks in the chat room are just saying, well, just tax the rich. That'll make it easy. Just tax the, like the rich are not being taxed.
right now um you know that we could what was the stat that that came out last year that if you text i can't remember i don't want to quote it but the paraphrase of it was essentially If they paid all the taxes, there still wouldn't be enough money. If they paid all their income, there still wouldn't be enough money to deal with all that. I mean, it's just crazy. But I mean, if you disagree with me...
If you think that, no, we need to pay for all this Medicaid, we need to pay for all this, that whatever it is, we need to pay for it, tell me why. I mean, at what point... do you know how how is how is this fixed now anthony in the chat room makes a valid point he says so the ugly truth we've been talking about medicaid right government sponsored health care the whole deal
The ugly truth is you can't solve the problem with health insurance and Medicaid without reforming the health for profit model American health care as a standard operates under. There is zero incentive for the health care system to actually fix you just to keep you alive and broken enough to extract money from you ad infinitum. There is something to that. I mean, there there's this look. There is a lot of crony capitalism going on between the pharmaceutical companies, the medical industry.
the fda the government you know the there's a big problem you know we've got these silos where you can't sell health insurance across state borders and a lot of these other things there's a ton of problems That could go a long way to fixing a lot. Quite honestly, I think that's why RFK had such a following.
Prior to his joining the Trump team, I think that there was a lot of people out there who were seeing a lot of these things. And he was talking a lot about this, how there was a lot of, you know, backroom deals to keep us unhealthy. to help, you know, kind of milk the money out of us. And I think that there is a problem there. This is not just a problem of just government spending.
This is not just a problem of government dependency, people being dependent on the government instead of self-reliant. This is a problem of infinite complexity. Like I said, from the crony capitalism to the backdoor deals to the revolving doors of some of these industries, you know, people going to work. You know, working at the FDA, then going to work at pharma or in the medical industry and then revolving back into the FDA. And, you know, we've seen this for years. So this is not just.
This is this is not just a single solution kind of problem. But the bottom line is this. We as a people cannot afford to pay for government that is all things to all people. I mean, that's really the bottom line. It would consume every available dollar and then some. And again, the worst part was... This is exactly what I predicted in 2017 would happen. Is that we would get this expansion. A bunch of people would go on the rolls. They would create a constituency.
And then the federal government would yoink the rug out from underneath of us and say, okay, now you're on the hook for it. It's unsustainable. It's, you know, it's unsustainable in the long run. That's the biggest problem. I was glancing through this article from Rob Myers over at the Alaska Watchmen, and it is an excellent article that talks about...
The problem in Alaska, you know, with the fact that, you know, we keep hearing the fact that fact he says in here, where is it? They keep saying that, you know, we keep hearing that we've got. You know, two Republicans, two two Republicans for every Democrat and therefore were a red state. And he disabuses you of that of that notion.
And he goes through it. This is an excellent piece, Rob. And I wish we could get you on. I guess maybe we'll try and get you on next week to talk about this, because this is an excellent issue, an excellent analysis, rather, of the issue. And I mean, I think this is brilliant. And it explains a lot of the problems. Why are we having a lot of the problems that we're having? Why are we having... Why are we having this issue of. Of Alaska becoming this dependency state. And, you know.
This is and this is a problem that we've had in Alaska for decades where people are more and more dependent. You know, we like to we like to envision ourselves as rugged individualists. Right. Oh, we're so, we're so live free, you know. Live free or die. That's who we are. We like to think of ourselves in the state of Alaska kind of that way, but we are more dependent on government spending than almost any other state in the nation.
Look at the hullabaloo that's coming up right now. There's an article from Corrine Smith over at the Alaska Beacon. Talking about from a week ago or so, talking about the fact that 1,400 Alaska federal employees could be fired. Because they're probationary employees. And what is that going to do to the economy? And what is that going to do to, you know, what are we going to, how are we going to, you know, and again, it doesn't matter if it.
This goes back to what we're seeing right now in the whole argument against Doge. Well, we know that there's government abuse and fraud and everything else, but this is not the right way to do it. Well, what is the right way? You know, we could have done it with a scalpel years ago. We could have done it a little bit at a time, but it never happens. And so now we have to take the axe to it instead of the scalpel. That's what's happened.
We've had every opportunity to do these things, and we haven't taken those opportunities. And this goes back to the whole slow roll in Washington and the impetus and everything else. That's why things are going so fast and furious in the White House. from the Trump administration right now because they've got a finite amount of time to do this before the midterms, before anything else happens, and they've got to get it done before, essentially, there's enough pushback.
In battle, momentum is everything, right? So you've got to keep the momentum going. The second the momentum stops, that's when you have bigger issues. But again, here we're going to see there's going to be an effect, folks. There is no way that you're going to cut. federal funding that you're going to cut state funding that you're going to cut any of the there's no way that you're going to make these cuts and that there's going to be no pain felt anywhere that's unrealistic
In fact, I had to chuckle because one of the headlines, where was it? Was it the ADN? Yeah. One of the headlines from the, it was a story, a repost of a story from the Los Angeles Times. And the headline reads, they voted for Trump, but now they're losing their U.S. government jobs. You voted for him and now you're come up and payback is a bit. I mean, you know, really?
Yes. Everybody's going to feel the pain in one way or another. Somebody is going to. But here's here's the bottom line. Here is the bottom line. We can't afford to continue to do what we've been doing because what we get is what you'll always got, right? The definition of insanity is... The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Just like we can't try this slow roll method that, oh, we know that there's waste and fraud and abuse, but we need to take it slow. Well, you've had the opportunity for decades to do something and you've done nothing. And we know that bureaucracy, they love the slow roll. Because they'll just outlive any administration or any short-term or politicians or appointed people. The entrenched bureaucracy, they love that slow roll because nothing ever changes.
Yeah, I mean, it's not like we live in a bureaucratocracy at this point. At many levels, in the state level, in the national level. We're living where basically you're and part of this is because Congress has abdicated their responsibility in writing laws. They used to write laws that had all the details in it. And over the years, they just slowly and slowly pass. They just pass a framework and they give it to some governmental bureaucracy to say, you guys fill in the blanks.
And that's I mean, that's where we're at right now. We cannot continue at the same level. You cannot continue to borrow billions and trillions of dollars. And at the national level, it's trillions of dollars. At the state level, it's billions of dollars. We've been taking money out of our constitutional budget reserve and everything else over the years and basically borrowing it from future generations.
You can't continue to do that and expect that it's all going to work out. There's this little thing called arithmetic. I mean, that's the thing. There's the thing. You can't you can't work into the zero into the negative forever and expect it's all going to be OK. It's like trying to divide by zero. Right. I mean, it's just you can't do it. But that's what all of our politicians left and right.
Left and right are doing the same thing. We got a call. I guess we'll go over here to the phone call here to see what they have to say. Let's go over here. Good morning. Who's this? Where are you calling from? It's John Galt. I'm in the Fairbanks area. Hello, John. What's on your mind? Well, the University of Alaska.
President's Day on Channel 9 in the Fairbanks area 360 they had just one word across the screen for over 12 hours there violence that's what the University of Alaska is calling for they're calling for violence You mean actually on the TV screen, the word violence was on the screen? Yes, and large black letters all the way across the screen. No other programming.
just the word violence. Now, why is the state of Alaska supporting the University of Alaska when they're calling for violence? Doesn't that make the state... party to violence? Anyway. It's a good question. Well, thank you, John. I didn't know about that.
Channel 9 is KUAC, which is a national public radio. It's a national public broadcaster's funded station. If they just had a simple screen that just said violence for... five or six or 12 or however many hours you're saying i have questions why what were they trying to say on president's day were they saying yeah that's that's my question maybe uh i was going to contact rob myers uh
He's my senator there, so maybe I'll follow through with that. But that university, it's a land-grant college. It needs to support itself. They've got a mind. the silver fox mine where they mine anemone and to a lesser extent silver what have you but they could be funding themselves especially for You know, I listened to a lot of people call in begging the government, begging the state for this new agriculture.
program, a new government entity. So anyway, I think the university, it's time for those folks to grow up and start supporting themselves. Thank you. all right well thank you for your call i appreciate it i hadn't heard about this i would have assumed that if this uh
I would have assumed if they had the word violence across the screen for umpteen hours, I would assume that would have been picked up somewhere. But this is the first time hearing about it. I mean, if it did happen, I have questions. I have questions about it for sure. What? I mean, I think we should all have questions if that's what actually happened out there. All right. We're coming up on the break. We got to go. Don't go anywhere. We will continue.
the michael duke show chris in the chat room says i think his tv was hacked i didn't see that on pbs maybe uh but again i think if something like that had happened maybe That probably would have made national news, I would have thought. But who knows? It is Alaska. All right. We've got to continue in just a moment. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense. Liberty-based. Free thinking radio.
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. I'm sorry. David is... You don't know what violence means? Well, of course I know what violence means. Does it mean something different to you? I mean, I'm just, you know.
What battle are we in, says David? The battle against the poor people? No, the battle for the very soul of our country. Financially. The financial battle is what I'm talking about. You know, that's what I'm actually talking about. Of course, the height of his argument is, are you related to David Dukes? Boy, I've never heard that before. Ever. Really? I've never heard that before.
That's the height of his argument at this point. Now Michael's feeding the troll. I mean, I just, I love it. I think it's great. Give me the counterpoint. Give me the counterpoint. How quickly everyone forgets that Clinton got rid of over 377 federal workers to get the budget back then. I'm a federal worker, and you must always be prepared for anything, which is why the fact that prepping is always important.
Yeah. No, I got you, you know. Leela said, I Googled it and couldn't find a report of such a Chiron. But there were national protests of Trump's policies on President's Day, some of them resulting in minor violence, which no violence is minor if you're a victim of it. Yeah, no, I mean, again, I this was on President's Day, he said. So, again, I don't know. I don't.
I can't see Channel 9 from here, but I would think that if that was the, if that was the, if that's what was happening, you would think that that would, again, be national news. How about all the federal workers, said Jennifer's, that were dismissed for not taking the jab? I know they weren't upset about that. But they were they're upset now that other people could lose their job. I just it's interesting. It's it's it's it's interesting to watch, to say the least.
Yeah, to go back to, I want to go back now here. I just read it, but I want to go back to it because I just thought about something. You know, Miguel saying how quickly everyone forgets that Clinton got rid of 377,000 workers. And and then and they also forget, like on the deportation side, they forget that Barack Obama deported more people than any other president in U.S. history at the time.
But that was OK, because, again, it was their guy doing it. See, this is where we get into the politics of this is where we get into the politics of. of polarization and, you know, us versus them and this, you know, there's no good ideas except for our side's ideas. This is why I don't belong to a side. This is why I'm not a Republican or a Democrat.
Because a lot of times they're both idiots. I mean, that's the problem. I mean, this problem that we're reaching that we have right now, this fiscal problem in the country and here in the state of Alaska. It's both. It's not a Republican or a Democratic problem. It is a politician problem. But I am. I am.
entertained by the people who were like, oh, that's outrageous. I can't believe that Trump was doing that. And yet you can go back and find other presidents who did exactly the same thing that they were all OK with at the time. That's the interesting thing. This is not, again, a left versus right problem. This is not a Democrat versus Republican problem. This is a...
politician problem. This is a bureaucracy problem. This is a, you know, kind of the big government spend versus kind of more rugged individualist problem. Because, again, there are people out there who believe that the only way we can move forward is with a direct benevolent intervention of government. And there are those of us here that also feel like.
The government needs to get out of the way and allow us to live our lives and do the things that we need to do. And they should not be all things to all people. That's the that's the thing. Tyler said, I'm just glad I came to the realization years ago that the Trumps, the Bidens, the Obamas, and the Ellens of the world don't really care about me. I can enjoy watching people slobber the knobs of these clowns in life. I mean, exactly.
It's one of the reasons why, generally speaking, I don't cover national politics, because what difference does it, we can't necessarily affect those things. What we can affect is what's going on right here. The Michael Dukes Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry. Not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew. I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show.
Okay, continuing on, phone lines are open at 319-527-3864. I was just saying in the chat room that, look, this is, you know, again, not a... a democrat or republican problem not a left versus right problem this is a big government versus more rugged individualism problem in my mind And I said, that's why I don't belong to either team. And then Frank says, and libertarians are never idiots. Huh? Are you kidding me? Libertarians could be some of the biggest idiots out there.
I mean, I've been a libertarian my entire life, and I've seen some libertarians where I'm going, oh, God, man, get the boot off your head. Really? I mean, you're not helping. Let me take a chewable gummy, you know, marijuana gummy before I get up on a national stage and talk about being president. I mean, come on. Are you kidding me? We can all be idiots from time to time.
What I get tired of is people going, well, my guy is the savior and he will fix everything. He's the solution. And your guy is the devil. And it doesn't matter which side you're on because it's always the other side you're talking about, right? This is a politician problem, folks. That's what this is.
This is not a you versus me and us versus them, a left versus right. This is a political elites versus the rest of the world. And they always want to give you what you want because that's how they retain power. You know, that's that's what it is. And what you're getting right now is exactly what you voted for. It's what I voted for. I voted for Trump. I held my nose and voted for Trump.
hoping that maybe he would do some of the things that he's talking about. And I've been pleasantly surprised that he's doing what he said he was going to do, try and reduce the size and scope of government, make things more efficient, do those kind of things. I mean, that's a good thing.
You can't be surprised, you know, well, maybe you can be because politicians always say stuff and then never deliver. But you shouldn't be surprised when you get what you actually, you know, what he actually said he was going to bring. All right, let's go back over to the phones. I see Randy is on the phone from Fairbanks. Let's see what Randy has to say. Good morning. What's on your mind? Hi there, Michael. I just wanted to answer that question.
You had posed to me because in response to a chat that I wrote in the first hour there, you know how I was talking about always advocating this secondary PFD idea, the Hammond bot, I call it. But you were asking a good question. You said, well, how can we afford a secondary PFD if we can't supposedly even afford the current PFD that we have right now? And my answer simply is that... My idea, the Hammond bond, is so much cheaper to the state, it would only be 1% of the current cost of the...
current PFD program, the current, you could say, is like a billion dollars a year. Of course, it varies, you know, but we call it a billion dollars per year. My idea is only $10 million per year, and the reason I come up with that is because... If you had 200,000 people, adults only, because the original 1980 PFD program was only for adults, not for anyone less than 18 years old, and if you had 200,000 people signed up for this,
that had bought a Hammond bond, that I call it, and it paid the next following year only $50. $50 times 200,000 people is only $10 million, and $10 million is only 1%. of $1 billion. However, I must admit that every year, the next year, if they bought another Hammond bond, they'd get $100.
And so instead of $10 million, it would go up to $20 million. It would slowly climb. And after like 20 years, when people have accumulated all these bonds over a period of 20 years, each year's payout would be $1,000. And so... That would be $200 million that it would cost, but even that is only one-fifth of $1 billion. But here's my question, Randy.
Because the fact that the state is right now, based on current spending, just on current spending, $554 million in the hole for next year, next fiscal year, based on just... Status quo spending. We do exactly the same spending we're doing now. We do the same $170 million one-time funding. We pay the 14, whatever. Just based on it now, we are $500 million in the hole now.
Do you not think that even the $10 million would not be a juicy target? Because, I mean, you've advocated that we should just let them do what they're going to do with the monies, and they'll eventually...
Learn some fiscal discipline. That's essentially what you said here. I don't know, it was 10 years ago or something. You said something along those lines that we shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't take the money out of their hands because I said starve the beast. We should take the money out of their hands because that way they'd be forced.
to have some fiscal discipline and you're like, no, no, no, they need the money because it should just be a leftover. It should be whatever the surplus is, but there's never any surplus, Randy. That's the problem. So if you don't think that your $10 million nest egg of this new Hammond bond would not be, oh, look, hey, there's $10 million we could take right now because it's statutory and it's not constitutional. We could take that.
Do you think that it would not be just sucked right up along with every other available nickel in the state? Well, when I said $10 million, that's $10 million from the state. to us to you and me if we bought a hammond bond you're missing my point you're missing my point it's money that is state money right uh-huh so
But there's nothing stopping them from taking it and spending it on something else, right? You mean spending it on a Hammond bond? What million are you talking about? You're talking about a state-funded program. Right. A state funded program where we buy a bond and they pay us they pay they pay, you know, 50 bucks on a bond or whatever. Right. This is what you're saying right now. Well, they're obligated to pay...
the owner of the bond of $50 per year. They're obligated to pay people a PFD. That hasn't stopped them. The courts have said that they have the power of appropriation. Unless it's in the Constitution, they can decide not to pay it, Randy. Well, the trick of the Hammond bond is that... It has the contract written right on the certificate, and you can see a picture of that certificate and the contract if you go to my website, pfdbudget.com, and it's a quid...
Pro quo contract. It even says so right on the contract. Okay. All right. Well, they have to pay. Okay. Well, again, the courts have already decided that they don't have to pay. unless it's constitutionally mandated they have the power of appropriation and can decide to pay or not that's my whole point randy these people are never going to gain fiscal discipline on their own that's the problem They will see every available dollar and they will suck it up.
Just like they've pulled dollars out of other programs that I'm sure had plenty of contracts attached to them. They pulled other monies out of different programs and paid for things out of different pockets and buckets of money and done all this other stuff. There's nothing stopping them from spending every... available dollar that is the problem well when you say the courts have already decided about regarding the current pfp program that's because the
Current PFD program is not a quid pro quo contract. No, it's not just the PFD program. The state does have to pay a state worker. That court, that, well, because again, they have to pay a state worker because a state worker is covered under a contract that... is enshrined in the constitution that's the difference randy because state compensation and and and retirement plans those are covered by constitutional provisions once you enter into a contract with the state as an employee
Then that's under the Constitution. Everything else. See, the court decision was not simply about the PFD. That was the subject of the case. But the ramifications of the precedent go far beyond that. It essentially said that the legislature is the appropriating body and they can decide whether or not to.
uh whether or not to see those to to pay those things well and because it's totally up to them they can basically ignore the law if it's in statute and not constitutional they can ignore it that was the farther reading reaching ramifications of that And again, here's my big question to you, Randy, and this will be the final question. I'll let you go. Do you think that they are going to find fiscal discipline?
If we just continue to allow them to have all those monies and do whatever they want with them, or would it be better to pull some of that money off the table and put it into the hands of private citizens? Well, I think it's better if we enact a Hammond bond, which is a quid pro quo contract, which will yank that money. And if they try to break this contract, we'll go to court, small claims court. Okay. All right.
Well, again, I think your naivete is showing in some of this stuff. But you know what? Good for you for coming up with a solution. And people can go out and take a look at your stuff out there on the Internet and take a look at the Hammond Bond. If you want to see what that's all about and see, take a look at it. I mean, I don't think it'll make a hell. First of all, I don't know. I don't think it'll pass the smell test as far. Well, maybe it will because you have to purchase it. I don't know.
You know what? I still don't think it matters because, again, they will suck up every available dollar to them and then some. We've seen that time and time and time again. Again, 10-year forecast for the state right now. multi-million dollar deficits every year moving forward. And a lot of those assumptions, by the way, based on very, very rosy projections about what our spending is going to be. Very rosy.
Very rosy. Sourdough Steel over on YouTube says it's like the difference between a handshake agreement and a court order in regards to Randy's bond thing. I agree. All right, we're coming up on the break. We got one more segment dead ahead. Phone lines are open. If you want to disagree with me or, you know, I'm down to discuss it. But here's the problem. We're all going to have to feel the pain at some point because this cannot continue. And the edge of the fiscal cliff is rapidly approaching.
I mean, it's been coming for a long time. I've been yelling about it. I've been warning about it. I've been like, the bridge is out. We're on the tracks and the bridge is out. You probably should stop throwing coal into the locomotive box. And instead of easing on the brakes, they've been shoveling the coal in the box. We've got to go. Back with more of the Michael Duke Show.
Listened to by more staffers in Juneau than any other show. Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're going to be pissed. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show. Okay, we're in the break right now. Continuing on with our discussions here. Frank makes a good point.
The legislature used to make a contract to pay a percentage of borough bonds. Remember that with school bonds and stuff like that? How does that work? How did that work out for bondholders? Because there was a time when the state just said, oh, sorry. Can't pay that. Sorry. Can't pay that. I mean, that's exactly it. We can't pay that. Yeah, I saw that, Harold. Gene Hackman and his wife, Gene Hackman, who is what, 89? 95.
He and his wife were both found dead in their New Mexico home. They said that there's no signs of foul play, but when both of them end up, he said, check your CO detector. He could be right. The carbon monoxide is a silent killer. Maybe that's what happened. I don't know. 95, though. What a good run. Man, I love me some Gene Hackman.
Let's see. I'm scrolling down here. What else have we got here? John asks, is there a way to get a constitutional edition via the state vote of the people? Yes, John. That's what Ben Carpenter tried to do last year with the enshrining the PFD. The problem is, is that you can't put a constitutional amendment on the ballot by by a citizen's initiative.
The legislature has to put that vote up to do it. So you've got to convince all the people who are in charge, the lunatics who are in charge of the asylum, you've got to convince them to give the people a say in something on the Constitution. That's part of the problem. TR says, I think we need a good news day next week for our mental health, for your mental health and ours.
Maybe we should just do a good news, maybe a whole hour of good news in that regard. Kevin says, trying to decide what to wear to work today. Could someone ask Harold what he wants me to wear for me? Because Harold was giving fashion advice yesterday when all those legislators appeared on the program. You know, he was talking about all their, oh man, he was given fashion advice for sure. um cnj alaska adventures how come i i and and i apologize uh uh cnj
It says, how come the border tax is never an idea? And I don't know what you're trying to say there. You're, you're auto correct is how come better tax is never an idea and higher rate for non-resident. Could you. Could you clarify that for me, please, CNJ? And I'll come back to your question. Jeannie says, Jesse Bjorkman, Senator Jesse Bjorkman, will be in Moose Pass on Friday, then Nikiski, and then on Sildata on Saturday.
A techie nerd segment would be great, said Sourdough Steel. I used to do a tech segment all in all. B and O tax. A B and O tax is never an idea. I don't. That's a good that's a good question. Probably. I don't know if I would be favor of business and operations, you know, I don't know if I would be in favor of that, because, again. I mean, we've already got a stressed private economy. Do you want to stress it even more by putting a BNO tax in? Yeah.
Flex Pedro. I think he meant Felix Pedro. Is that what you're talking about? Felix Pedro? Frank? There you go. Felix Pedro. One of the first gold miners there in... in fairbanks um let's see uh everyone including this older white guy preach it md i don't know what i was saying exactly when he said that but there you go
Oh, man, we've already drove off the edge of the fiscal cliff. We're currently in freefall attempting to remember how to operate our parachute properly, only to discover that we don't have any parachutes. We thought we packed them, but boy, howdy. Or those parachutes were made by the lowest bidder. One of the two. One of the two.
How about a show on different ongoing community activities and groups people can participate in during the winter months to keep them from going stir crazy? That's true. That's true. Terry says B&O tax is a big no. Washington State has one, and it's a nightmare. Yeah. I think adding new taxes is not the solution, in my opinion. quite honestly. And attacks on businesses, especially in light of what's going on in the private economy in the state right now, probably not a good idea.
I mean, and I can say as a business owner, I would be philosophically opposed. Absolutely. All right. We got to we got to get back into this here. The Michael Duke show. Please like and share 70 something of you in the chat rooms. Only 28 have liked it. You can hate it too. If you want to hate it, you can hate it. Hate it, like it, love it. Leave it. Don't leave it.
The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. That guy is so mean. I'm just, you know, so mean. All right. Welcome back to the program. Final segment. Final segment for today's show. Tomorrow is Firearms Friday. I'm working on some gas, but I don't have anything locked in right now. I'm working on it.
Working on it. I've got all day to get it finalized. So I just, I hate to even say anything at this point because half the time I say something and then it never materializes. So we're just going to say I'm working on it. Working on it. A final segment for today, phone lines are open at 319-527-3864. So he here, I guess, is and everybody's giving because I said somebody said we need a we need a good news show next week to make up for all the madness that we.
You know, Terry said, I think we need a good news day next week for mental health purposes. And then Sourdough Steel said, oh, a techie nerd segment would be great. I mean, you know, I've been I need to get back to Rod Pyle. Because we were going to do that space segment and then the time zone thing screwed us up and he thought it was at night and it was in the day and yada, yada, yada. So I'm going to try and get Rod Pyle back on the program. He is my space nerd.
That guy is amazing. Worked for NASA, JPL. He was a consultant on the History Channel and a bunch of other shows. He was a frequent guest of my show there for a couple of years. And I haven't talked to him in... probably two or three years. We need to get him back on the program to talk about space. It should be fun. And yeah, maybe a tech nerdy segment. That would not be a bad idea. And then somebody else said, Richie said, how about a show?
on different ongoing community activities and groups people can participate in during the winter months to keep to keep from going stir crazy we do something we'll do something i mean i know that everybody is tired of politics Everybody's tired of politics at this point. I feel you, man. I feel you. It is frustrating.
To watch what's going on and to kind of be an observer and then not to really have any say. And that's been part of the problem with national politics for a long time. You know, is that. You get so spun up about it, but we really cannot affect things that are happening at the national level. And that's why I have been advocating for years that this is why we need to pay close attention to what's going on.
in our local communities. What's happening in your city? I mean, right down to maybe your road service area or your community council, your neighborhood, your city, your borough, and the state. That's about as high as you can go and really make any kind of, you know, have a real effect is at the state level. So while it's important to pay attention to a lot of the things that are happening outside and at least be informed.
Don't be so engaged and spun up by it that it just, it wears you out. Wears you out. It's going to be it's going to be it's going to be, you know, interesting when the politics drop off and things slow down, which I mean. We can talk about some of this other stuff. But I agree with some of the listeners in here. We need to kind of change things up. We need to change things up occasionally. We'll do some lighter side stuff and things like that. But this is important.
And I think it's important right now because, ironically, what's happening at the national level? This national conversation on what we should be doing, what the federal government should be spending its money on. And that's had a trickle-down effect. here in the state of Alaska. Because now we're going to see that trickle-down effect when, you know, if we lose government employees, we lose federal employees, if we lose federal funding, we're going to get a real wake-up call on how...
ruggedly independent the state of Alaska really is. Here's a sneak peek. Not really. We are so dependent on the federal teat that we can't, I mean, we... We take so much money in from the federal government and many of our programs are backstopped by all that federal lucre that we just can't, you know, we'd like to think of ourselves.
Again, as rugged individualists, we like to think of ourselves, Alaska, the great land, we're the last of the pioneers. Yet at the same time, we are taking in money hand over fist from Uncle Sugar. And the second that it starts to dry up, all of a sudden the pucker factor gets high and people will be like, whoa, wait a second. I'm all for limited government, but you're going to take away my sugar and my cheese? What am I going to do now?
That's the thing. No more free cheese. Somebody just said, hey, fatso, get to work. Stop crying. No more free cheese. I've been advocating for no more free cheese for a long time. I mean, I've been advocating for no more free cheese. That's the thing. In the state of Alaska, it's unfortunate, but we have created a dependency state. In 69, when the 69, when the when the state budget was 162 or 164 million dollars. We did not have nearly the dependency that we have now.
Again, if you adjusted that $164 million for inflation and population, it'd be about $2.2 billion in unrestricted general fund spending. But we're spending... Almost 6 billion. The state has become too big. It's trying to be all things to all people. Just like the federal government has.
And there's you can see state after state after state has done this same thing. They're seeing what the federal government's doing and they're like, oh, we'd like to spend as much money as we can, too. I mean, that's look at California. What are they? They got us. 50 something billion dollar deficit. And there's other states that are and yet some states, the ones that seem to have people flocking to them, are understanding that.
They have to live within their means. They have to have a low tax threshold. They have to make it attractive for people to live. They can't have onerous regulations. And that's why people are flocking to places like... Texas and Florida and some of these other places because there are not these continuing problems that we have right now. So. Where do we go from here? Well, we need to be telling our politicians who pays. That needs to be the question that is on everybody's lips. Who pays?
And no, the PFD is not an answer because the PFD is a short-term answer. See, because once they've consumed the PFD, government, the budgets are still going to increase. The budgets are still going to go up. And the PFD is kind of a finite amount of money. I mean, it's based, it has a percentage value in it, but it's not going up commensurate with the rate of spending.
The increase in the rate of spending, the spending is outstripping it. So when you ask who pays and they say the PFD, you're like, OK, great. Well, then what happens two years from now? If you're paying it with the PFD this year and maybe next year, what happens in year three or year four when all of that is consumed and they still have a hole?
Why aren't we lauding the efforts of people like Ben Carpenter, who was trying to bring us onto a fiscal, a sustainable fiscal track? Instead, we sandbag them. And then we besmirch them and then we get them out of office. Remember, that was the big thing with Ben was that, oh, he suggested a tax. The tax was part of an overarching plan. You understand that, right?
And the tax was brought forward by the by the working group. He was just extrapolating everything out of the points that the working group made and said this would have to be part of something larger. But instead, they beat the hell out of him with it. And now what are they talking about? Oh, a new tax. And by the way, they've got these new taxes now that they're talking about, these brand new taxes that they're coming up, which would include the tax that we talked about with Rob Yount.
a new tax that would reduce the maximum oil credits from $8 to $5 a barrel, and another one that would impose a corporate income tax on some of the out-of-state businesses that operate online, an online business tax. You know what they're trying to do? They're trying to keep the taxes hidden from the average Alaskan so they don't get any pushback on the spending.
That's the point. All the taxes as they're suggesting right now are not a broad based in your face tax. They're quiet. They're behind the scenes. They're an oil tax or, you know, the corporate tax or this online tax for out of state businesses. They're making all those people pay, which, by the way, you. still pay for because you buy the products. But for the most part, they're trying to keep these taxes hidden so that there's no pushback on spending. The bottom line is this.
We have a spending problem. We've had a spending problem. And unless we address that, the doom loop is inevitable. The doom loop of... More people moving out, leaving fewer people left to pick up the pieces, et cetera, et cetera. That is inevitable unless we are able to get this spending under control and create a long-term fiscal plan.
including a spending cap and everything else oh i just got i got a new call on hold caller i'm 40 seconds away from the top of the hour i'm going to put you on hold here we're going to talk to you Right off the air here. Don't go anywhere. We'll be back. Tomorrow is Firearms Friday. We'll get a chance to talk about guns, firearms law, Second Amendment rights, and so much more. Be kind. Love one another. Live well.
the michael duke show continues then just think about that who pays who pays we'll see you guys tomorrow have a great day you Okay, we got one caller on hold. And so before we go to break, because they called in right at the end of the show, but I feel obligated to take that call. So let's go over here. Good morning. 9 4 3 9. Thank you and have a great day. Okay. I don't know what's going on there. Let's see. I think somebody is.
spamming my spamming my uh my call letter okay we gotta go that leaves us uh for the remainder of the day you guys be kind love one another live well we'll see you guys tomorrow Have a good one. Radio Skin. And now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.