Tuesday 1/28/25 | Keithley's Weekly Top3 | KPB Initiative | Story Time

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The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Oh, live around the world on the Internet at MichaelDukesShow.com and across the state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Good morning, my friends, and welcome back to the big radio program for this Tuesday edition of The Michael Dukes Show.

It was a long night. I've just got to say, put some new programming on KGTL last night, and it was a little bit problematic. Let's just say that. When you're up at 1.45 in the morning trying to fix stuff, it's...

Four o'clock rolls around pretty quick in the morning, I got to say. Anyway, here we are getting things ready to rock and roll. It is Tuesday, and that means it's the weekly top three, and we have got a slew of stuff to deal with. To my friends on the peninsula, please be careful, especially if you're driving to Anchorage. I have not received word yet. If the Seward Highway is back open, there was a two-vehicle collision last night about 5 p.m., and the highway was closed.

At about 10 o'clock, it was still closed. It was closed for hours last night. I still don't have word as to whether or not it's open at milepost 83. But it's nasty out there. It's nasty out there. So be cautious as you're driving back and forth on the highways. Folks up in Fairbanks, I hope you're staying warm. And, of course, those of you in Anchorage, you're dead to me. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's a little slick out there. It's a little slick. Be careful. Snow has returned.

It's all good. All right. So that was my housekeeping measures for this morning. Let's jump into it and get ready. It is, again, the weekly top three. Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets, joins us. And we're going to get started right now. Good morning, Bradley. How are you, my friend? How's life treating you?

Michael, I'm doing great today. It sounds like you're Superman. I mean, you're owning, you're programming, you're managing, you're producing. Hey, it's not all sexy. I'm the janitor too, okay? So it is what it is. That toilet blockage, yeah, I took care of that on Friday. No, it's a little bit everything. I guess that's what happens when you have to be chief cook and bottle washer and everything works.

Brad, let's get started. We've got quite a bit to go over today, and there's a lot of stuff that I want to touch on here. So first things first, we saw the thing about the lawsuit with NSTAR and Hillcorp and everything else, but somebody at least seems to be asking the right questions of Chugach Electric, MEA, and I guess maybe NSTAR. Let's start with that. So it's NSTAR they're asking the right questions of.

NSTAR presented at Senate Resources last week NSTAR's presentation about where things are and their pitch for why their deal, their new deal with Glenfarn, is a great thing and will solve all of the Cook Inland's problems. During the course of the presentation, Senator Giesel asked a question of John Sims, who was presenting for NSTAR.

That was sort of a puff question. The question was, do you perceive any conflicts between Glenn Farn doing the deal with NSTAR and Glenn Farn also being the one in the contractual relationship with AGDC to do the big line down from the North Slope? And Sims sort of swatted that one away and said, no, there's no conflicts. I mean, Glenn Farn's got a separate deal with us.

And we're convinced they're going to go through with our deal separate apart from whatever happens with the pipeline coming down from the slope, their deal with AGDC on the pipeline coming down from the slope. And then Senator Dunbar asked the question that I think is one of the key questions that we need to keep asking in the course of looking at what NSTAR is proposing to do and looking at what, in the course of what AGDC is proposed to do.

Senator Dunbar said, let's go back to this question that Senator Giesel asked. And he said, last year, he laid the foundation this way. He said, last year, we got into this deal with Hillcorp, where members of the Senate proposed a bill that would levelize Hillcorp's corporate income tax, that would bring it up to the level that BP paid and the level that the other producers on the North Slope are...

paying essentially close the hillcorp loophole all related to essentially north slope operations um and and but hillcorp responded said senator dunbar continuing hillcorp responded by saying hey you tax me uh you close that loophole and you make me pay what everybody else is paying and and guess what i'll probably retaliate said hillcorp i'll probably retaliate the cook inlet by lowering my investment in the cook inlet

And if you guys go high and dry down in the Cook Inlet, you have only yourselves to blame because you took that money out of my hide on the North Slope. That surplus, that windfall that we were getting on the North Slope, you took it out of my hide. And so I took it out of your hide out of by reducing investment in the Cook Inlet. And then Dunbar continues. So what's to prevent since we have this?

dual relationship with glenfarn now between the cook inlet and the north slope what's to prevent glenfarn at some point from coming to the legislature and saying hey i need an extra 100 million dollars or 500 million dollars or whatever the whatever the amount might might be or i need this waiver or that waiver or i need this exception or that exception or i need this reduction in property tax or i need that reduction in property tax to make my to make my project economic

And if you don't do that, maybe I don't have the money to go forward with the Cook Inlet facility I've promised to do with NSTAR. Maybe I have to reduce my investment there. What's to prevent Glenfarn from doing the very same thing that Hillcorp did with us last year? And Sims' answer was, you know, as you would expect when you're not expecting the question, it was a little bit of a stumble. And then, oh, well, we have...

a direct contractual relationship with Glenfar and they've committed to go through with it. And, you know, I don't, we don't have to worry about that. It's all separate and apart. What, me worrying? Yeah, me worrying. But here's the deal. The NSTAR contract with Hillcorp and with the Cook Inlet Utilities are all separate and apart. And Hillcorp has an obligation under those contractual, under those contracts, in good faith and fair dealing, to make investments when it, when it,

when it needs to do so in order to make deliveries under those contracts. Yet Hillcorp was threatening that contract, those contracts essentially, unrelated contracts by saying we'd underinvest and maybe delay our investment or delay whatever we would do. It's exactly the same thing. Dunbar hit on a key question about these inner ties that we're developing with Glenfarm, this low cap.

small cap, inexperienced company we've got out of New York that we've entered into these various relationships with, Dunbar hit on the key question. And it's a question that we need to probe a lot. So for example, Glenn Farn, the deal with AGDC and Glenn Farn is dependent on the legislature appropriating $50 million to

ada so ada can underwrite the the the initial uh fid work that that needs to be done to to bring uh the the ag the big line project up to the point where you can make the the fid decision and aid and ada has agreed to underwrite that by 50 million dollars but they need the legislature to appropriate 50 million dollars so what's to prevent one farm from saying hey you know you want us to go forward with mstar your cook inlet

Life now depends on this deal we've got with NSTAR. Hmm, you know, we need that $50 million appropriated to ADA so that we have, you know, we have the amount underwritten for us. What's to prevent Glenfarn down the road from saying, you know, that dock that we've got to build both for our facility, both for the big line facility and for NSTAR's.

in-state facility, maybe we don't have the money to go forward with that dock unless you do X, Y, and Z. There's shared facilities contemplated in this deal between Glenfarn and NSTAR and Glenfarn AGDC. And those shared facilities have got to be built in order for NSTAR's deal to go forward. So I think Senator Dunbar just hit on it, hit a huge question.

that I think really, you know, the RCA and others need to dig into to really understand, you know, what we're doing, what Alaska is doing by tying its future, both its Cook Inlet future and its North Slope future.

Well, there's a history of this, right, Brad? I mean, there's been a history over the years, over the decades of oil companies kind of at some point or another kind of holding the state over the barrel and say, well, you could do that, but it'd be a shame if something like this happened. And we've seen it. Arco, BP, Conoco, they've all at one point or another kind of done a little bit of corporate blackmail.

on some of those things, simply because we are in a stranded position. We are in a kind of a weak negotiating position at some time for certain things. And so this is something that's happened before. Yep, exactly right. I mean, ACES, we had, when ACES was, and I think this was an appropriate market response, but when ACES was the tax structure, the big three on the North Slope essentially said, we're not going to invest.

under the under the economic structure of aces you want you want additional production you want additional exploration then you need to change the tax structure right in order to do that and and the state ultimately did that and we got the additional investment but but we can be held over a barrel and the problem is we're tying again just like has happened with hillcorp we're tying the north slope to the cook inlet and alaska is very feels very vulnerable with respect to the cook inlet right now so um we're giving

right glenfarn a tremendous amount of leverage uh go ahead well this raises one other question and maybe maybe i don't have enough time for it but but there's a question of of n star presented but where's chugach where's mea and where's marathon chugach and mea have contracts that expire before n stars the the glenfarn deal the n star glenfarn deal is timed to meet n stars obligations and needs

But where's MEA and Shugach in all this? Are we leaving them behind? And Marathon, the final question on Marathon. Marathon has an existing LNG facility that is certificated by the FERC to receive gas, to act as an import facility, separate and apart from Glenfarn. Don't need it. We've got an existing facility. So where are they in this equation? Why aren't we pursuing that opportunity instead of trying to do this new?

this new deal on on with new builds with uh that are intertwined with agdc's pro project why are we why aren't we pursuing the existing facility as opposed to because we're already halfway there with that facility we don't have to to wait on stuff there uh final question here we got only got about two minutes left we saw that article yesterday talking about now this new lawsuit between n star and um

N-Star and Hillcorp. And so, I mean, you are more familiar with gas contracts and deliveries and storage and everything else. I read into this like Hillcorp was basically saying, we don't like the fact that you're Bogart and gas, even though it's part of the contract and even though it was negotiated. But is this just more flexing on the same or what is this? Yeah, it's flexing by Hillcorp. I mean, it's the timing of N-Star wants to be able to.

take gas and buy gas from Hillcorp and stick it into storage. Hillcorp, which runs its own storage facilities, doesn't want NSTAR to do that. If NSTAR needs gas over and above storage, then Hillcorp is willing to sell it, but it doesn't want to sell Hillcorp additional gas just to be stuck in storage. And essentially, they're trying to, I mean, it is Hillcorp again, trying to hold NSTAR hostage to...

modify NSTAR's behavior in a way that maximizes Hillcorp's flexibility and Hillcorp's profits. The contract's not entirely clear on the issue. It'll be an interesting lawsuit as it plays out. But it is Hillcorp, again, trying to exert its control over the gas supply side of the Cook Inlet.

to extract additional concessions out of, out of the purchasers. All these players trying to maximize their yield and to make somebody else pay. That's essentially, I mean, I think I can summate it that way. NSTAR is looking for the state to pay. Hillcorp's looking for NSTAR and the state to pay. Everybody's looking for the state to pay in the long run. And we're the ones that are going to pay. I just want to, I just want to, that's spoiler alert, foreshadowing. We're the ones that are going to pay in the end, right, Brad? That's the end.

Yeah, that seems to be the case. All right. We're coming up on the break. We got more coming up. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke show, Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. Brad Keithley is our guest. We continue with more in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. Back 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.

America used to be. Streaming live every weekly morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay, Brad Keithley is our guest, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets. Oh, man, what a day, what a night, what a day and a night. Don't ever try and do everything all at once, Brad. Just don't try.

You know, I was like, I'm going to phase this in one little piece at a time. And then once I got started, I realized I couldn't really do that. So I said, okay, I guess I'm all in. Wow. Okay. So that was. Yeah. You, you even got Terry working. I mean, I've seen. Oh, I've got Terry. Yeah. Classes on and sitting at a desk and. Oh yeah. I got the whole, oh, I got the whole fam family working. I mean, they are, they are like my son, he's over there whittling away. My daughter was on the phone all day yesterday. My other daughter's collating news and doing social media. And it's like.

You guys, crack the whip. You like to eat, get to work, you know? That's great. That's great, Michael. Yeah. That's great. It's like Jerry Jones and the Cowboys. You're making a family. It is. You're making a family business. It's the family business. Right? You know, it's just like that. But, you know, laying in bed last night, and I had the radio set to go off when it was supposed to make the change, and I'm listening, and I'm like, okay, it's all great. It's all great.

Oh God, it's not all great. And running out to the, you know, running in here to make it, to fix it. Anyway, it's entertaining.

It's entertaining. So, Brad, yeah, I saw this thing yesterday and I just like, man, this saga is just I can tell that the gloves are about to come off because they know that the legislature is in session. And if they put enough pressure on them, they're going to have to do something. And this is going to tie in a little bit to your last one with number three and the and the, you know, stop digging the hole or the deep pockets or whatever. But I mean, this is they're just going to they're going to spend. You could see it already.

Yeah, everybody's going for leverage on everybody else. I mean, Dunbar is exactly right to raise the question of whether we're recreating with Glenfarn exactly the same leverage over the Cook Inlet that Hillcorp has been able to develop through its acquisitions in the Cook Inlet and then a BP up on the North Slope. Dunbar raises exactly the right question. And I don't think we want to go down that road again.

I don't think we want to put the state Cook Inlet in the position where it's dependent on somebody who can then leverage, you know, leverage up their position in the Cook Inlet for, you know, benefits that relate to their that relate to their slope project. And this is why I raise the question, where's Marathon? It's not like it's not like we don't have alternatives out there. Sims, they previously talked about a floating LNG plant. And during his presentation, Sims.

said that that didn't look like it was going to work out because of the tides in the Cook Inlet, because of ice in the Cook Inlet, the concerns about depending upon a floating barge that was regasifying the plant was too great. Those concerns were too great. So we needed an onshore facility. But we're not dependent on Glen Farm for the only onshore facility we possibly can have. I went back in the records and keen eyes.

Kenai, the LNG plant is certificated for imports through 2025. If they, if certificated to make the changes necessary to do it, and then once they do it, they have a longer term certificate to operate it, they would have to add the imports for others in addition to Marathon's needs. But that shouldn't be a great big, that shouldn't be a big deal before the FERC. That's an existing facility. We need to make some changes in, not huge, but we need to make some changes in.

Why aren't we pursuing that instead of this whole new structure out here on land that neither Glenn Farm nor NSTAR own and involving new facilities that are joint facilities that would give Glenn Farm leverage over Alaska on the Cook Inlet. So I just, Dunbar raised the right question.

We need to continue going down that track and make sure we aren't recreating the Hillcourt problem. That's something you'll hear on this program. Even a stop clock is right twice a day. Even then, Dunbar at least did ask. We try and give praise where praise is due, and I guess that is a good question, and I'm glad that somebody out there at least asked it. We'll have to see where it goes from here.

All right. We've got more here in just a minute. Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets. The weekly top three continues. Number two is dead ahead, which is the Alaska legislature should just stop digging. The answer is a hole. Get out. Stop digging. That's the first thing. Here we go. Jumping back into it. The Michael Duke Show. Covent Sense. Liberty-based. Free thinking. Radio. Like, share, subscribe. 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. Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets, the weekly top three. This is number two of the top three. What do you do when you find yourself in a hole?

Right. What do you do? You look up and you're like, man, there's daylight is way up there. What's the first thing you do? Well, you stop digging and you find a ladder. The Alaska legislature apparently is not not figuring that out. Brad, they have not stopped digging. In fact, they got a bigger shovel. They did get a bigger shovel. They're trying to get a bigger shovel. All right. Let's go back to last week. Last week, we did a segment on Ledge Fin's overview, Ledge Finance's overview.

of the governor's budget, in which Ledge Finance analyzed the governor's budget, looked at revenues, looked at projected spending levels, and reached the following conclusion. Listeners last week or listeners that go back and listen to the show will remember this. There was a chart that said 75-25 PFD alone won't balance the budget. That even at 75-25 PFD, 25-75,

25 to Alaska citizens, 75% to the government of the POMV draw to government. That alone wouldn't balance the budget. And in the concluding paragraph on that issue said, adding those items, certain items to reflect the K-12 match, just sort of bringing K-12 back up to where it was last year, Medicaid, adding those items which represent costs necessary.

to maintain state services at the same level as FY25, just holding FY26 equal to FY25 in terms of services, would result in a substantial deficit in FY26, even with a 75-25 PFD appropriation. To balance the budget, this is just a hold equal to FY25 service levels.

To balance the budget, the legislature will need to reduce spending, pass legislation to increase revenue, further reduce the PFD, or draw from savings, just to hold equal to FY25 levels. Even POMB 2575 isn't enough to do it. The line in the sand that Burt and Lyman and others have drawn in the Senate said, we're not going to go below.

POMB 2575, that wouldn't be enough to balance the budget. On the heels of that, what are the headlines this week? Headlines this week is Alaska House to expedite consideration of education funding increase. The increase would increase Alaska public school funding by more than 35%.

the bill would add roughly $464 million, half a billion dollars, to the state's annual education spending, which currently hovers around $1.2 billion per year to Alaska schools. It would increase it by more than a third. So last week, we have Ledgevin come out with the overview that says, we can't even afford...

In the boundaries of what the legislature has said before, we can't even afford to fund FY25 spending levels. On the heels of that, the House comes out with this great announcement that they have a bill that they're going to give expedited consideration to that would add roughly a half a billion dollars to the state's education spending.

And there's no mention in any of the discussion that the House did of how the hell they're going to pay for it long term. Yeah, the House didn't talk about it, but the Senate previewed this here the week before when Josephson was quoted, well, yeah, we're probably going to have to pay for this out of the PFD. There's going to be more PFD cuts. I mean, you know it's coming. You know that's where it's going.

But the Senate has drawn the line. I mean, Lyman and Burt have told us that it's 25-75. That's where they're drawing. It's not the right line. The right line either ought to be current statutory or it ought to be POMV 50-50. But they've told us they're going to draw the line at 75-25. Can't even pay for FY26 spending levels that are necessary to equal FY25 service levels. Can't even pay at that level. And now the House is throwing a half a billion.

dollars on top of it look there's a there's a fiscal rule there are fiscal rules out there uh it's sort of like gap it's sort of like you know generally accepted accounting principles well there are generally accepted fiscal rules and generally accepted fiscal rules are that when you propose a massive increase in spending you also you propose at the same time how you're going to pay for it you and you discuss how you're going to pay for it and you put in the legislation necessary a necessary companion legislation necessary to pay for it

House has gone completely rogue in terms of that fiscal rule. They're just out there on their own proposing these increases. When you are in a hole, you stop and you figure out how you're going to get yourself out of the hole. You're going to figure out how you're going to fill in the hole. You figure out how you're going to get a ladder. You figure out where you are and what it takes to correct.

Right. The situation you put yourself in. The Alaska House is saying, oh, hell no. We're not doing that. We're just going to go deeper. And this is just the beginning, Brad. This is just the education component. Then we have the defined benefits component, which is another 50, 60, 80 million dollars a year. Then we have whatever they're going to do with the gas and the Cook Inlet, which we were just talking about in segment one, which could be.

I don't know, you know, millions of dollars in the long run. Oh, and we've got the new negotiations for the new contracts, which are coming up for the employees as well. I mean, this is just, you know, this like one more feather, all a one thin wafer before we just, you know, explode everywhere because they just don't care. At this point, it's just like the, you know, the rules are made up and the facts don't count. Yeah. Well, the rules are ignored. I mean.

I have a lot of respect for Alexi Painter, who's the director of legislative finance. I'm not quite sure how he's going to address the issue when someone asks him, as surely someone's going to. How do you square up the fact we can't even afford FY26 with the fact that some in the legislature are wanting to pour more and more and more and more money into things without proposing offsetting revenues to pay-fors?

It's what they're called at the federal level without proposing pay-fors to offset it, to pay for it. And I don't know what Alexi's going to say. I mean, Alexi's going to have to repeat essentially what he said in the overview, which is to balance the budget, to balance an even greater budget, the legislature will need to reduce spending even further, pass legislation to increase revenue even more.

further reduce the PFD even further or draw from savings, except we don't have savings. So Alaska needs to stop and take a breath and say, look, we've gotten ourselves in a hole. We need to figure out how to get ourselves out of this hole equitably and with low impact on the Alaska economy.

And we just need to devote a session or we need to devote a committee or we need to devote something to getting ourselves back out of the hole. The Ledgefin summary, Ledgefinance summary ought to be taken as a wake up call of how deep a hole we've now gotten ourselves into. And we ought to devote a session to getting ourselves out of that hole. Instead of that.

We got the House just wanting to make it worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. So it's a hugely concerning situation that the House is proposing something like this. It's a hugely concerning situation. They're not following generally accepted fiscal rules of offering what the pay-fors are going to be, explaining what the pay-fors are going to be to offset the spending that they're proposing.

So, I mean, you're saying that the House is run amok, but you said the Senate wants to hold the line. But again, going back to what they had said just last week, maybe Burt, maybe Burt, maybe Lyman, but that's not everybody. Again, Josephson was quoted as saying, you know, we're going to take it out of the PFD. And who's running the Senate right now?

I mean, it's a bipartisan coalition, but the Democrats outnumber the Republicans by a significant amount. And a lot of those Republicans seem to be real cozy with the Democratic ideology as far as spend, spend, spend. Do you think they're going to be able to hold the line? You know, the answer is I don't know. And here's a very subtle thing that happened in the Senate organization, the significance of which.

you know, may become more apparent as we go along. Burt has historically been, for the last several sessions, last several legislatures, has been the co-chairman of Senate Finance for the operating budget, for the big spend side. Before he got exiled. That's right. And in this legislature, he's been pushed over to co-chair for the capital budget.

Lyman has become co-chair of Senate Finance for the operating budget. Burt has, you know, they both have round heels in terms of they'll rock back and give and give and give and give. But Burt tends to draw the line at a point before Lyman. Lyman tends to have rounder heels than Burt does. Burt last year drew the line at the defined benefits.

And that's one of the reasons he's been moved over to the capital budget. So as these things start to play out, the person setting the agenda on the Senate side is not going to be Burt. He's on the committee. He will have a voice. He will articulate his concerns. But it's not going to be Burt setting the agenda. It's going to be Lyman setting the agenda. And another moderating factor in Senate finance is Donnie Olson.

Donnie is co-chair for bills, the running bills that don't relate directly to the operating budget or the capital budget. And Donnie's been somewhat of a voice for the PFD. I mean, he represents a district that has lower economics than other parts of Alaska and has been more sensitive to the PFD. But Donnie's now in the hospital.

an unknown period, possibly an extended period. So you have Donnie off the committee. You have Burt pushed down to capital budgets or pushed over to capital budgets. You have Lyman running the committee. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out, if that has an effect. Lyman in the past has been one of those who talked about 75-25 being the line in the sand. But Lyman's been known to erase lines in the sand.

as as he goes so that little that little detail that little organizational change may uh may play a factor in this as well yeah no it's uh it's interesting to watch and the fact that they've been kind of sidelined shows you the direction they're going i mean i'm not i'm not confident that they're going to be able to hold back uh you know what i mean again we'll we'll we'll give praise where praise is due

Stedman did. He held back the defined benefits package last year. He was the big major stumbling block in the Senate to get it out of there, although it did end up actually coming out and then dying in the House. But he at least tried to do that and spoke very, very strongly against it. And now he's just not going to have that. He's not going to have that horsepower. And so.

75, 25. No problem. What do you did the math on this? What is it like 80, 81, 19, something like that this year, something like that. Yeah. And that's before adding $400 million. I mean, $400 million is going to take it to like, I'm doing this week's column on it, but I haven't done the calculations yet. So it's going to take it to something like 92, eight.

92.8. Yeah. So, I mean, again, I was predicting this earlier. Everybody was saying earlier last year, people were saying doom and gloom. I said it'll be 24 to 36 months before they exhaust the permanent fund. And people were like, oh, no, that's too soon. I think it'll be five or six years. But if they add a half a billion dollars in spending.

Yeah, it's pretty much going to be gone in 24 to 36 months because that increase just continues, especially if they lock that education increase into the BSA where it's in perpetuity. That's it. It's in perpetuity. And they peg it to the consumer price index.

working alaska families you know we're not concerned about higher income families we want to raise the for the 80 percent of working alaska families well who are they who are they hurting to pay for this if they if they if they cut the pfd they're taking it out of the very out of the pockets of the very people they claim to be helping they're not spreading it across across a broad base they're not including there there was a there was an op-ed that just blew my mind there was an op-ed

in the ADN by two people in the oil industry saying how important education was to the oil industry, retaining the oil industry in Alaska, and how important it was that we have an increased K-12 funding to help out the oil industry in Alaska. Well, the oil industry isn't paying for any of the increased costs. So they claim a benefit, they claim it's important to them, but I guess it's only important if somebody else pays for it, if middle and lower income Alaskans pay for it.

it the irony of this is just huge we're trying we want to help you we're from the government we want to help you here give us your money out of your pocket yeah so we can spend it to help you i mean we've been talking about that the icer the initial icer report that it was the worst thing that they could possibly do for 10 years 2014 is when we first started talking about it and here we are 10 going on 11 years now

Still watching the same thing happen over and over and over again. Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets. Our guest, the weekly top three continues. Number three is dead ahead. Don't go anywhere. Come back. Don't forget, you can come out and check us out on Facebook and YouTube and Rumble if you want to share the show. It's also available on podcast. Why don't you share it with more people? Let's get more people involved in this conversation. Back with more right after this.

Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Okay, Brad Keithley. Alaskans for sustainable budgets. The weekly top three continues. I mean, um...

Wait, let me go back and answer this question. So John says, so just to be clear, of all revenues, the state gets 75% off the top, 25 goes to the PFD. The PFD pays a dividend of about 5%. It's supposed to be 50-50. No, you have it wrong, John. So what happens is 25% of the royalty revenues goes into the permanent fund right off the top. And then it rolls in there and the earnings spin off every year.

And then what was supposed to happen was that we were supposed to be paid on a five-year rolling average of those earnings. But they stopped that with the POMV, which means the government takes 5% of the earnings every year and then was supposed to, according to Hammond, split those 5% that they roll out every year 50-50 with us, the people, and split it out for the PFD for 50% and state spending for the 50%. But what's happened is they're now taking 75% of that money.

And it's going towards 90% of that money, leaving us with whatever crumbs we can pick up with our sticky little fingers on the plate, because that's all that's going to be left over is the crumbs at this point. So that's how it works. And we're just talking about the POMV revenue. We're not talking, I mean, the state gets all of the production tax revenue. It's all of the...

Of the of the additional fees and taxes and 75 percent of the royalty right off the top. It's only the 25 percent that gets deposited and they want that and more. So it's basically like they handed you a plate that's with a full cake and then said and you go to take a piece and they're like, no, no, wait. And then they eat all of the cake except for that one bite left. And they say, OK, you can have that. But we're still kind of hungry. So maybe we'll take that, too.

I mean, that's that's what it is. That's I mean, you know, and again, no thoughts, no look at fiscal discipline, no look at anything else. I mean, their own reports from their own people at Ledge Finance say you just can't do that even to get to this spending level. And their first reaction is to, well, let's increase it half a billion dollars a year. Right. I mean, let's let's increase it half a billion dollars a year. The greed.

And the entitlement is astounding to me. I just don't fathom it. I mean, they said that was us, by the way. She was talking about us, not about the legislature. She was talking about how greedy we were that we dared to want our PFD. Which, again, I don't think it's going anywhere, man. I don't know about you guys, but I think the PFD will be gone.

And then what will happen, Brad? They'll come back to us and go, free rides die hard, sweetheart. Right? Well, no, Michael. No, Michael. We may hit this in the next segment. What they will come back and say is we need to combine the earnings reserve and the corpus of the permanent fund so we can continue to draw even though the permanent fund isn't earning the return that it needs.

to pay for the draw we need to to combine the two and continue to draw and and in that fashion through that step open the door to starting to drain the permanent fund to continue to fund government uh without without going to uh without the top 20 or non-resident industries or the oil companies uh having to pay a dime toward the toward the additional costs so the next the next attack

really is, is being set up now through this, through this proposal to consolidate the earnings reserve and the, and the corporate. Which we saw last year and we warned about last year. We said, this is, this is the danger zone. Danger zone. This is what's happening right there. You're going to drop us into the danger zone where you're going to eat the seed corn out of a PFD or out of the permanent fund itself. And there will, of course there will be no PFD and they'll just start tapping into the permanent fund harder and harder. And next thing you know,

there is no more permanent fund either. And what's the constituency? What's going to be the constituency to save the permanent fund at that point? People talk about, well, it's there for future generations and we shouldn't have it for future generations. But we've seen with the PFD, we've seen with the CBR, we've seen with the SBR, we've seen how far that argument goes. It's no, no, I need it now. I need it now for my spending and I don't want to tax the top 40%.

And the and non-residents, the old companies, because they might say, no, they wouldn't pay that stuff. They'd push back on it. I need it now for my spending. So, you know, I'll just take it. I'll just start, you know, making these rules about how I get into the permanent fund to start taking it down. And it's there, you know, it's there for future generations. We're a future generation now. Right. You know, and so and so we're going to start covering it that way. That's where we're going to go. That's the direction that they're trying to set up. Well.

And I mean, there's just no there's no fiscal discipline in sight. There's very few people who are even asking the question about who pays and how does this get done and what happens to the future. Nobody seems to be thinking about that or talking about that in any of the discussions. As long as the government employees are taken care of, we're OK. Just calm down. As long as the government employees are taken care of, it'll all be fine. Don't worry about it. Forget about everybody else. So, yeah.

All right, Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets, the weekly top three. Please like and share. Only 17 of you have liked this. Do you not like Brad? Is it him? Is it not me? Is it Brad? You should like this right now. Let's get to it. Here we go. That was too early.

The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. Well, Brad, I don't know. Sometimes these Tuesday meetings between you and me, I mean, I got to be honest. I come away just a little bit depressed, more depressed than I started out because I would.

I just can't believe that this is the direction we're still going with all these warning signs and everything else. And and and like you said, it looks like this is all a setup for number three, which is the real danger to not just the PFD, the permanent fund dividend, but to the permanent fund itself. We've talked about this, but this.

All the things that are lining up right now, this extra spending, the disregard for where the PFD goes, the disregard for how we pay for it, it all seems like it's setting it up for one big final throw of the dice when it comes to the real permanent fund crisis. Yeah. So there was a forum, a conference, a seminar.

held earlier earlier this month jointly sponsored by alaska common ground the institute of the north and commonwealth north all of the all of the so-called thought leaders uh at least top 20 thought leaders uh in the state um and the the subject of it was excuse me the subject of it was protecting the permanent fund a rules-based permanent fund endowment model

And I listened to it. I watched it. And basically, it was a pep rally for this proposal to consolidate the earnings reserve into the corpus and have the draw, the POMV draw, come from that single fund. The reason they're doing it is because the earnings reserve is running down. And they're concerned that there's not going to be enough in the earnings reserve.

to cover the POMV draw. So they want to consolidate the two funds together in order to continue the draw sort of regardless of how the earnings are coming out. And if necessary or not, just as a matter, they can take money from the corpus in order to cover the POMV draw. The conference turned in to be a pep rally for that proposal. The claim is that there's a crisis.

that not having the two funds consolidated is a crisis because we won't have enough money to cover the POMB draw. But it's a self-created crisis. We've been through this on previous segments. I've written columns about it. The reason the earnings reserve is low is because the legislature took $8 billion out of the earnings reserve. And that's about a three-year, about a three-year, two or three-year.

piece of or coverage of the POMB draw. It took $8 billion out of the earnings reserve and moved it over to the corpus. And at the time, they said this was a prepayment for inflation proofing. So we don't need to inflation proof in subsequent years. We've already prepaid enough for the inflation proofing. Well, the Permanent Fund Corporation accounted for it that way for about a year.

And then the Permanent Fund Corporation dropped the footnote that said it's a prepayment for inflation proofing and just took it and said it's part of the corpus now. And, you know, it's not in the earnings reserve anymore. It's not a prepayment for anything that should come out of the earnings reserve. It's just ours now. And they've created this crisis, this so-called crisis in the earnings reserve by draining the earnings reserve through that $8 billion transfer. And now all of a sudden people are saying,

oh my gosh there's not enough of the earnings reserve well that's because it was supposed to be a prepayment it was supposed to be so you didn't have to pay as much out of the earnings reserve going forward but now now that they've forgotten that all of a sudden yeah we have to pay inflation proofing out of the earnings reserve and now we're we're draining the earnings reserve so it's a it's a it's a self-created crisis but it's being used as a justification for merging the two funds together in order to

Get access. Allow the clawback or the breakdown of the permanent fund corpus. I went in at the urging of some others. I went in and spent quite a bit of time understanding the earnings side of the permanent fund and how we're earning and the level at which we're earning and what the investments are producing. And I discovered something.

that i that i wrote in last week's column we aren't earning anything off the permanent fund after you take into account the the the difference between there we've got a we've got a benchmark that we call a passive index benchmark and and the permanent fund is is an actively managed fund that means we've got advisors and we got people that work on it we got people that decide to make investments they make investments in private funds rather than follow an index

like the S&P 500 index or the NASDAQ or the Dow Jones or one of the common indices out there. Rather than do that, we got a bunch of people who are working on deciding where these investments go. And you realize after you run the numbers that the level of money we're spending on the fees for this active management, which is about $800 million a year, about 1% of the fund,

the level of money we're spending on the fees is greater than the amount of additional benefit we're getting out of actively managing the fund as opposed to just relying on the benchmark. Yeah, you've got to chart up. The yellow, the column in yellow is the amount of additional benefit that the

permanent fund has earned through this active management, the amount of benefit over the amount of benefit we've gotten through active management over what we would have got if we just would have invested it in the passive index. And it shows that for the years from 2017 through 2022, we got some benefit of it. But then we look at the fees.

that we've paid for that benefit. And the value added after fees is relatively small. We got about 2% in 2017, about 2% again in 2018, negative 0.1% in 2019 after fees for this active management, negative 2.1, 1.3%, 13%. But the last three years, we've lost money in terms of

the fees we've paid, the difference in the return that the fees have produced compared to what we would have gotten if we just would have stuck them in indices. The problem with the fund is not this whole mishmash that's going, this contrived mishmash that's going on in the earnings reserve. The problem with the fund is it's not earning enough. It's not earning what it would earn, even if we just put it

Stop the fees, stop the payments, stop the $800 million a year and put the money into the passive indices, into the index benchmarks that are out there. If we just invested the money that way, just put the money into these indices, we would make more than we're making by trying to actively manage the fund and paying all these fees. We're underwater. We're losing money.

by not using the passive indices and trying to actively manage the fund. Basically, what we're doing is for a while, we were making enough to pay the fees, just to pay the fees, to continue to fund the bureaucracy that the Permanent Fund Corporation has become. But in the last three years, we haven't even done that. We haven't even made enough out of the earnings, out of the Permanent Fund investments to cover the fees.

The problem here is not the lack of combination of the accounts. The problem here is the lack of earnings. And the lack of fiscal discipline, right? I mean, that's really the core problem here is the lack of fiscal discipline, which has led us to this, which I've been saying since 1999. The goal is to get their hands on the corpus of the permanent fund.

And I'd be interested to see if they use some Bill Walker math in that big meeting with all the think tank people, because that was his argument, too, back in the day. There's just not enough money. Of course, they didn't account for any of the money they got added in. Anyway, we're out of time. Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets, the weekly top three. Brad, thanks so much for coming on board. Michael, as always, thanks for having me. Folks, we're out of time. Coming up next, Dwayne Edelman is going to be joining us from Liberty Action Alaska, talking about the petition in the KPB.

I mean, that's really, Brad, remember, that was the Bill Walker thing. Look, there's not enough money in the earnings reserve. Here's what we're going to keep drawing it down and we're going to zero it out. Of course, the math that they put up on the big chart did not account for any of the money that would be deposited over the next, you know, however many number of years it was. It was just as if that account was static and they just kept drawing from it and there was no more deposits. I mean, that was Bill Walker math. It was just totally fallacious. But I mean, it was true.

But again, only if you didn't account for the deposits that would go in each year. And so it was totally misleading. Yeah, and here's the problem now, Michael. They aren't even making enough in the earnings. They aren't even making enough off the permanent fund. Even if they accounted for those numbers, even if they accounted for their earnings, they aren't making enough to fund the earnings, the POMV draw that the legislature is making. The real problem, the real reason.

That the legislature wants to consolidate the two accounts in part is because of that $8 billion. But it's also because they look down the road and they see the permanent fund is not producing enough earnings even to generate the 5% take that the POMV statute calls for. The permanent fund is not generating enough earnings to cover that 5% draw, particularly after you take into account the management fees.

i mean the management fees are double as a percent of the fund they're double what the what the you know the bellwether norway fund pays norway pays about you know a half a percent uh in fees or four four four tenths of a percent in fees we're paying eight tenths nine tenths a percent uh in fees and after the fees we're not earning enough to be able to cover those pomv draws so the real problem here the long-term problem is the permanent fund corporation

has become a bureaucracy that is just earning enough to pay itself, to pay all the management fees it's incurring. It's not producing the level of returns the state needs to continue to fund the POMV drop. So those who think long-term are saying, great, okay, we need to consolidate the accounts so we can start pulling from the corpus. We can start funding current operations from the corpus. Which is a self-licking ice cream cone. I mean, can't they see the danger in that?

Not care. They just don't care. They just don't care. This is all about funding my spending now, funding my government unions, funding the programs that make me look like a giant in the legislature, make me look like God because I can fund these programs. All they care about is funding their programs now. They don't care about the long term. Bert will tell you he cares. Bert, who's a proponent.

of consolidating the two accounts they'll tell you that that they are you know concerned about the future but they're not if they were concerned about the future they'd keep the earnings reserve as what one of my friends calls a speed bump a way a barrier that you can't get to the corpus because you have to go through the earnings reserve and if the earrings reserve doesn't have enough money in it then you got to figure out what you're going to do right opposed to being able to attack the corpus um now

They're trying to do away with that speed bump. They're trying to do away with that barrier and say, look, we don't earn enough. If the Permanent Fund Corporation gives away all this money in management fees, $800 million a year in management fees, the earnings return, if the PFD gives away or the Permanent Fund gives away all that money, okay, fine. They've got their own bureaucracy they need to fund. We'll just go attack the corpus. Set us up.

We can go attack the corporates. Well, we've talked about for years how the legislature has always been good about kicking the can down the road. And we were talking about eventually you run out of road and you have to face the hard facts. But what they've done here is they're going to try and murder Alaska's financial future and pave it with its dead body and put it out there to give themselves just a little bit more road to kick the can down before they completely run it out of money. Yeah, it's it's I mean.

First, they came for the SBR, the statutory budget reserve. Then they came for the CBR. Then they came for the PFD, started cutting the PFD. And now as the PFD is winding down, they're saying, wait, we got to go someplace else. We can't tax the top 20% non-resident industries and the oil companies. We got to go someplace else. So we'll merge these two accounts and open the door in that way, open the door to going after the corpus. That's exactly.

What's going on here? So when we when we say what's going to happen when the PFD runs out, there are people thinking about that. And they're thinking about, great, we'll set up the ability to raid the to raid the the permanent fund corpus at that point. And we have been screaming about this for years and and saying this is where they were going. This is the direction they're going. And nobody's listening. People just keep electing them. Oh, we're going to put a chicken in every pot.

That's because people are electing them based upon their current chickens. I want my spending now. Alaska turns over a third of its population every whatever number of years. They want it in their pot now. They're not concerned about the future because in the future they're going to be in Texas or Florida or South Carolina or wherever they're going to be. We want it in our pot now. We want Johnny educated now.

This goes back to the early 20-teens when we talked about the AstroTurf football fields all over the state. I want my Johnny to play on an AstroTurf football field just like he would play off and play on in Texas if he was down there. Yeah, it takes money out of the budget to do that, but that's what I want. I think Bill speaks for us all, Brad. He says, thank you, Brad. Another Tuesday that I'm mad as hell and can't do anything about it.

And it's kind of it's frustrating, but that's where we're at. We know we can see where it's going. And it's it's it's a painful, painful thing. In Alaska, says Senator Myers, politicians are elected based on what they can spend, not what they can save. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's been proven over and over and over again. All right, Brad, we are out of time. We got to go. Thank you so much. I see Dwayne is in the green room getting ready to join us here for our two.

Thanks, I think, Brad, for coming on board. Michael, thanks for having me. It's always good to talk with you, my friend. Thank you so much. All right, folks. That does it for hour one. Hour two is dead ahead. Dwayne Edelman is going to be joining us. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense Radio.

Put that thing back in its holster. We haven't gone anywhere. I don't understand. Check out TheMichaelDukesShow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. Welcome to the party, pal. The Michael Dukes Show. The greed and the entitlement.

is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS. It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't fathom it.

The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world, on the internet, at MichaelDukesShow.com and across the state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Thank you for coming in and joining us. Man, last hour was just, it was a whirlwind, but it was also super painful because, again, we can all see the brick wall coming and nobody wants to take their foot off the accelerator.

That's the problem. It's like we can see the bridge is out and everybody's like, don't worry, it'll be fine. Hold my beer. And that's where we're going right now. And it's just painful, painful to watch. If you miss our discussion with Brad Keithley from Alaskans for Sustainable Budget, you can go back and listen to it on the podcast, which is available on Spotify.

or wherever you find podcasts, or you can go back and watch it on Facebook or YouTube or Rumble. Any one of those would be a good destination for that. Hour two, normally I recap some of the stuff we talked about with Brad.

But we've got a guest here on the program this morning to talk about a brand new petition that's been circulating in the Kenai Peninsula borough. This is a petition similar to what they did up in the Mat-Su, where they were looking to eliminate some of the electronic counting machines for the ballots. That's the Dominion machines that everybody has been concerned about. And joining us this morning to discuss it.

from Liberty Action Alaska is Dwayne Edelman, who's been putting this petition together, who's been working on it. They submitted the petitions to the borough and the borough said, well, that's all fine, but these don't work. We're still short. And so now they've got three days to collect 190 more signatures for this. And I've invited Dwayne on the program to talk about it. And we're bringing him on the program right now. Good morning, Dwayne. How are you?

Good morning, Michael. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate you coming on and joining us this morning to talk about this. So, Dwayne, let's talk for a minute here, I guess, first about the substance of the petition. I know you sent me a copy of it. Basically, it would remove any use of electronic voting equipment.

in the kpb for the purposes of counting the ballots and instead it would return them to the hand count status that they used for many years um do i have that right is that how that is that the the gist of this whole situation uh that is correct michael so what we started here was

We originally went to a borough meeting to talk about electronic machines and their use in the borough at an assembly meeting, nine members on the assembly plus the borough mayor. And they listened to our presentation. We had a group in the audience. We had a guest speaker. And then we each were allowed three minutes to make a presentation.

assembly members and a borough mayor about electronic machine use in the Kenai Peninsula borough elections. And so the mayor himself said, well, if you want to make a change, there's an initiative process that you can use and you can go through that to submit this and then bring it before the voters. So we did a little research on that, read the borough code.

and then started that process so it takes a small group of 10 borough registered voters to sponsor an initiative and i originally then when we decided we were going to do that we made contact with matt sue burrow and edmund de vries was very helpful in forwarding on some information of the language that they used

But a different process was used in the MATSU. There was two assembly members that sponsored it, and it went through the assembly process with the members and the mayor. Ours is a little different because we had no support here locally in the assembly or the mayor. So we're relying on the citizens in the Kenai Peninsula borough to help us get this on the ballot for next October so that...

the citizens have the opportunity to say yes or no to electronic machine use in the Kenai Peninsula borough elections. Now this would only be in the borough elections. It would not affect the state and federal elections yet.

But that process will be coming soon after we deal with this. And so you guys are short some signatures, 190. We can talk about how that happened, but 190 signatures. So first things first, we want people to know that they can go to Ammo Can Coffee in Soldotna on the Kenai Spur Highway there. And they can sign that petition all day today, tomorrow, and then till like 1 p.m. on Thursday, right?

That's correct, yeah. End of business on Thursday is when I have to resubmit the supplemental paperwork to gather the 190 signatures. So I need, before 5 o'clock on Thursday, have that paperwork submitted to the borough clerk. We originally needed 954 votes, I mean signatures.

in order to get it on the ballot. And we had some problems with some of the signatures. We had 35 people that signed more than once. We had 17 signed that were not registered voters. There's a process in the borough code that says you cannot disassemble any of the petition booklets.

and reassemble them and three booklets had been disassembled reassembled and 258 signatures were disallowed for technicalities some of those technicalities would have been you didn't sign the same name that is on the state voter roll so if your vote voter roll says jonathan wesley smith

and you signed it John Smith or J.W. Smith or Wes Smith or Bubba Smith, it was disallowed. So we haven't had a chance to look through those individually with the administration yet, but I did file an appeal, which we'll be working this process through. But if we can get these 190 guaranteed registered voters signatures submitted by Thursday,

We'll be golden and this will be pushed on to a ballot in October then. And do you feel like the process, and again, all you need is 190 signatures. Are you also signing up anywhere else on the peninsula besides Amokan there in Soldotna? Not at a direct location.

We have 23 supplemental booklets out circulating. So we have patriots that are out there going door to door, businesses, going to meetings, taking it with them, getting signatures. So we're out and about throughout the peninsula. We have some books down around Happy Valley that are covering the lower peninsula area.

No, we just have the ammo can. We have people dedicated to being there over the next three and a half days. And please make your way there and we'll keep going door to door throughout the community. We're talking with Dwayne Edelman from Liberty Action Alaska. Their petition is to try and remove the electronic counting machines from the borough elections, borough counting and elections.

Dwayne, do you feel like you kind of got short shrift from the borough here on this counting and on these signature checks? Do you feel like it's punitive, or is this just the way the game is played? Yeah, I learned a long time ago, especially dealing with other things in the state, technicalities is what's going to trip you up.

you know when you're in a flurry of of getting uh people say like i was stood outside the grocery store there one day and my daughter was helping me and you got several people walking by to go do their business with the grocery store and back out trying to get them to sign and then also trying to clarify that oh you need to sign it in this manner pretty difficult as you're trying to express why you're there in the first place so i

we had some people i'm sure that put down bubba smith and that that just isn't going to work uh if they their signatures had to be clearly legible um some of the technicalities were they didn't put the date next to their signature well uh in the appeal process if i get to that uh myself and the assembly and the borough are going to talk about that because i think i think it's being too technical

When you look at the voter rolls and compare the person's names and residence address and mailing address. So I don't believe there was anything punitive, but I believe that there's technicalities and maybe the process needs to be cleaned up a little bit better to reduce this problem. And if folks want to reach out to you now, again, people can go to Ammo Can Coffee today, tomorrow and Thursday.

throughout the day. Thursday they're going to knock off a little early because they have to have all the petitions over to the borough by 5 p.m.

But is there a way for people to reach out to you? If these folks that have books in the Lower Peninsula, I mean, the way the roads have been and the flooding and everything else, a lot of people don't want to take that trip from, you know, Homer or East End or someplace and go all the way up there. Is there a way to reach out to you to find out who may have a petition book in your area or in our area down here? Yeah, they can call my phone and we'll get somebody.

connected with them. If it's all right for me to give my phone number. Yeah, it's my cell number. It's 907-255-7624. And give a call and we'll see if we connect somebody up with you. And we'll see if we can connect up with the Lower Peninsula if there's somebody down there yet wants to sign.

And how far what's the reaction been so far, Dwayne, from folks that have been signing? And has it been was it was it pretty easy to collect the signatures or was that I mean, did you think you had it all done and you were in like Flynn or was it been an education process? It has been an education, that's for sure. We started this back in May when we had the conversation with the assembly at the assembly meeting.

The whole process was presented to the borough in August. It took a few 10 days for them to respond that it was acceptable or not. And so we then got into full swing there in October. So we had 90 days to collect signatures. And it's easier to do this stuff through the warmer weather.

Not quite so easy to be out there in this type of weather we've been doing. And the response has been good. We have a good amount of conservatives throughout our state, that's for sure. It's unfortunate that as we're talking with individuals to tell them what we're doing, to see the amount of people that are not engaged in their government, that are not registered voters.

I'm hoping that we build on this. I'm hoping that ourselves, the Mat-Su borough, this grows and spreads throughout the other areas of the state. So we're going to give it a try here, and I appreciate everybody's help, but there is a lot of patriots out there. You said that this is just for borough elections at this time, but you have bigger designs, bigger aspirations to see something like this happen at a state level?

We have been talking about that. I have been in contact with Phil Eyes on a regular basis, and there is that desire to put the language together and in the warmer weather, early spring, start the process for statewide removal of electronic equipment on a petition, yes.

And what is your heartburn with the electronic equipment? Could you articulate that for me? What is the problem that you are trying to fix with this petition? Yep. My whole process here started when we had Dr. Douglas G. Frank come to the peninsula, and he's come three times now, talking about voter integrity, election integrity.

So we started connecting with him through Cause of America, Mike Lindell's group, and Cause of America, Alaska, Dave Johnson's group. So we have been attending Zoom meetings over the electronic equipment. And there had been some FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act requests to Dominion. We had that submitted.

And I got access to the thousands of pages of Dominion emails. And pouring through those, one of the emails was from the CEO to the rest of the email chain in his company, bragging about how they sent out Dominion machines to Alaska with Wi-Fi in them.

And another email said that we will finally get this effing Trump. I have a way to do that. And we, in the state of Alaska, unlike other areas throughout the United States, we actually have paper ballots, which is a good thing. You take your ink pen and art.

as they do, the marking plans, which I'm not a fan of because it doesn't make an indent in the paper. But anyway, you mark the ovals and then you feed it into what they call a tabulator. And the tabulator, they say, scans the page, tabulates the vote, drops the ballot into the bottom in a secure area. And then at the end of the day,

You can press a function and it will spit out like a grocery store receipt of ballots counted. It does not audit the ballots. It does not break it down on that receipt. It's telling you exactly what the count was other than the count. It doesn't say there were so many for Trump. There were so many for Biden. There were so many for Nick. And that process then.

goes through an electronic signal and is dispersed. And I just do not like the idea that logarithms or what is fed into the electronic equipment behind the scene can give me a false feeling that is secure and a false feeling of actual count.

All right, well, Dwayne Edelman, thank you so much. If you want to get your petition down on the Lower Peninsula, you can call Dwayne, 907-255-7624. Otherwise, you can swing by Ammo Can Coffee today, tomorrow, and Thursday. They'll be leaving early on Thursday because they've got to get them all turned in by Thursday evening. Dwayne Edelman, Liberty Action Alaska, thank you so much. All right, folks. Thank you, Michael. We're out of time. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense 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. All right. Dwayne Edelman, our guest here in this final little footprint in between here on the commercial break.

Dwayne, so your main heartache is that it's just you feel like it's not secure enough on those things. And you said that the Dominion CEO was saying that they were sending machines to us with Wi-Fi in their own emails. That's correct. Yeah. Well.

What does it do for us time-wise? How much more time does it take to hand count versus electronic counting with the paper backup? Because like you said, at least we've got paper ballots. If we need to go back and hand count them after the machines are done, we could still do that, right? That's correct, yeah. And because you have a group of people, so it wouldn't be just a person. It wouldn't be just two people. You would have several people in a lineup of having been trained.

of the process and they have a spreadsheet before them so each ballot would they would fill in dots across each ballot on this spreadsheet and slide the ballot to the next person and they would do that so it would not be just an individual person counting the ballot there might be five or six or seven people and those numbers have to be verified or you go back through those ballots and do it again but the process

is pretty fast and uh the borough the mat su borough has shown that it can be done and it can be done pretty rapidly and uh we're we're willing to do it we've actually been using videos down here going through the process ourselves being ready to be trained for that

All right, so if folks are concerned about this and they care about it and they want to sign up on this petition, and again, it's just for the Kenai Peninsula Borough, you go to Ammo Can Coffee on the Kenai Spur Highway today and tomorrow before 5, that's when Ammo Can closes, and then tomorrow by about 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, somewhere in there, because you have to take them all then and then go to the borough and get it done. You only need 190 more signatures. That's correct.

Yeah. All right. Well, Dwayne, thank you so much for coming on board. We appreciate you being part of it today and sharing the information and good luck. You'll have to report back to us. Send me a text and let me know if you got them all or not. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate the opportunity. All right. Thank you, Dwayne, for coming on board and joining us this morning. Dwayne Edelman, our guest there. Again, if you want to get a you want to find somebody who's got a petition booklet down on the lower peninsula.

907-255-7624. 907-255-7624. You can call Dwayne or send him a text and he will get you hooked up with somebody down on the lower. He said there's 20, I think he said 25 books down on the, that are supplemental books that are out on the lower peninsula. So send Dwayne a text or give him a call and find out how to hook up with somebody down here.

on the lower peninsula. So you don't have to take that trip. Even I'm dreading the trip to Soldotna based on the way the roads have been the last few days. I'm like, oof, man. Anyway, so go check it out. Again, 907-255-7624 if you want to get a message over to Duane to talk about these things.

OK, we are still in the break right now. We're getting ready to come back and rejoin the radio. We've got Chris Story. He's going to be joining us at the end of the hour for us to to talk about, you know, life coaching and positivity and so much more. We'll talk about that. We may even also talk. We probably should have him back on next week. He just wrote an op ed.

that got published this last week, or the first part of this week. Anyway, 3,000 Years a Slave, talking about his fair tax issue. Chris may want to talk to Dwayne because Chris is trying to get a citizen's initiative together to do this. He may want to talk to Dwayne and pick his brain about that because that's going to be an interesting thing as well. I see Bill said he already sent a text to Dwayne, so folks are already texting and trying to reach out.

And, of course, if you're in the Soldotna area, you can just go to Ammo Can Coffee and sign up there. But you've got to sign up properly. Proper name, thing, date it, cross the T's, dot all the I's, do all that. All right, my friends, well, let's get back to it. Here we go, The Michael Duke Show, common sense, liberty-based, free-thinking radio. Let's do it. 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. All right, welcome back to the program. The Michael Dukes Show continues.

Just finished up with Dwayne Edelman, who's trying to gather those last 190 signatures. It'd be something if they got 200 or more, wouldn't it? If you want to sign that petition, again, by the way, you can go over to Ammo Can Coffee in Soldotna. If you want to sign it there, or you can call Dwayne at 255-7624, 255-7624, or send him a text message, area code 907.

And you can find somebody who's somewhere else on the peninsula that may have a petition book for you to sign. And I know that there's been several people in Fairbanks who've been talking about doing something similar in Fairbanks and moving the municipal election into November with a general election, trying to make things easier. So we'll see.

We'll see where it goes from here. It should be interesting to watch. Representative Ben Carpenter is going to say former. It is former now because it's the legislative. Former Representative Ben Carpenter is in the chat room. And he just mentioned that the governor's House Bill 63 and Senate Bill 70 would require absentee ballots to be received by Election Day. Currently, absentee ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day. And I think they have to be.

in hand 15 days afterwards, I think, is the current language. And Ben Carpenter points out that this causes a lot of those delays in releasing the results and tabulations of the election. Not to mention the fact that we've got the whole ranked choice voting tabulation and everything else. So it's a tough situation. Let's get back to what Brad was talking about earlier.

Brad Keithley, Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets. And he, in his final point, the final topic of the weekly top three was talking about where the permanent fund is going from here. And this piece that he wrote over in the Alaska landmine is super interesting because it gets down into why the permanent fund, in part,

is not making any money. We've talked about it on this program before. We've talked about why the permanent fund is not growing at the rate of other funds, of the general indices, I guess, of the regular markets. Why is it not growing by leaps and bounds? And I think he stumbled onto something.

I think he stumbled onto something here that points this out. It's basically the mismanagement, the fund costs, and everything else. And it just shows that we are having a difficult time in making money, which again just goes back to kind of solidify that point of this is why they want to combine the earnings reserve.

and the corpus of the fund so they can have access to the corpus. Now, again, this is a very short-sighted, this is a very short-sighted solution. And I asked Brad during the top of the hour break before we let him go right after that, when we went to commercial break at the top of the hour, I asked Brad, I said, don't they, don't they see it?

Don't they see that that is a self-licking ice cream cone that that when you eat the seed corn, there's nothing to plant the next season? And I think he summated it brilliantly when he said they don't care. As long as their pet project and their pet program gets funded this year and they can go back to their districts and say, look what I did for you. He said they're not planning on being here in five or 10 or 15 years.

Many of them, they're going to be somewhere else, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, wherever. It just doesn't matter. And all this is doing is delaying the inevitable. This is delaying the inevitable that this legislature or future legislature is going to have to face, which is we can't live beyond our means.

Now, they can keep kicking the can down the road all they want. But and even though, like I said, I told Brad, I said, this feels like because we've said that for a year, they're kicking the can down the road. Eventually, they'll run out of road. Well, just when we think that they're about to run out of road, they murder Alaska's future and lay the corpse down as a road and move. That's what they if you take if you combine the earnings reserve and the corpus of the fund, you are putting a nail in the coffin of Alaska's fiscal future.

Because what will happen is they'll drain that fund completely over the course of the next decade. And then they will come back to us again with a tax or something else. But we're eventually going to have to face the fact that we can't pay for what we have right now. I don't understand why that is so hard. Brad's weekly top three last week.

showed the actual, we actually talked about and read from the actual report and summary from Alexi Painter of the legislative finance office, where they said, we cannot fund 26 at 25 levels. On the 75-25, you're going to have to cut expenditures, generate new revenue, and probably cut the permanent fund. 75-25 is not going to work.

And even before, even before we started adding new spending, they were saying that it would probably be somewhere closer. Instead of 75-25 where government gets 75% of the money and we get 25%, it was probably going to be 81-19, right in that range.

But then you add all this new spending they're talking about, this Rebecca Hemshoot and Loki Tobin talking about an $1,800, $1,900 BSA with an additional half a billion dollars in spending forever moving forward and pegging it to the CPI so that it automatically ratchets up every year. Then you're talking about 90%. Now, remember, this is not...

75% of all revenues and we get 25% of all revenues. This is they've already gotten the lion's share of everything. They've gotten all the taxes, all the fees, and they've gotten 75% of the royalty right out of the gate. They already got all that money. Now they want to take the earnings off that 25% royalty that gets deposited. Now they want to take all those earnings and they want to take it all.

They're already getting the lion's share. Probably 90-something percent of all revenues are already going straight to government, and now they want everything else. Like I said, it's like we have a big plate with a brand new cake on it, and we're like, oh, we'd like just a little piece, and they slice you off the thinnest little piece, take the rest of it, leave you with that little piece on your plate, and then come back with their fork and say, well, we're going to take some more of that.

thin wafer. That's all you get. And pretty soon, even that's going to be gone. I mean, when the average person can take a look at this and realize that that's not sustainable, you have to acknowledge that at some point, it's just willful blindness on the part of the legislature. It's just, it's just selfishness. It's just greed. The greed.

And the entitlement is astounding to me. I just don't fathom it. Now, remember, she was talking about us because we wanted, we dared to want our PFD. But that summates everything that's going on in the legislature right now with every politician who wants to spend more. The greed, the entitlement.

There is, and the worst part is, of course, now they're trying to avoid drawing from the CBR because they don't want to include the minorities in the discussion. They've got the tiller. They're going to, it's ramming speed, full speed ahead. Ramming speed, damn the torpedoes. Doesn't matter what it costs next year or five years from now or 10 years from now, because most of them are like, well, I probably won't even be here anyway.

I'll get my program this year. I'll get mine while the getting's good. Everybody else can just suck it. Suck it. That's what's going on right now. All right, we got to go. Chris Story is going to be joining us here in just a moment. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. Back with more in just a mo. 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 going to be best. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show. All right. Well, let me get caught up here. Frank says, though, most states do not live within their means. I mean, there are a lot of states out there. You're right. They're not living within their means. I mean, it's, you know.

They're not living within their means. Doesn't mean that they shouldn't. It doesn't mean that the people shouldn't hold them accountable for it. Absolutely. The people should hold them account and they should be beholden to the people in that. But instead we got people voting for everybody who's promising them a chicken in every pot. Oh, you'll get your spending. Oh, you'll get your spending. And nobody's asking the question. Okay, great. That sounds fantastic. But who pays for it? How?

Do we pay for it? That's the million dollar or in this case, the several billion dollar question. How do we pay for it? It's crazy. It's crazy. What else is going on here? Google Maps says they're changing the names of Mount McKinley in the Gulf of America. I saw that, Timmy. They've acceded and said, yep, OK, we're going to do it.

So Google Maps is now changing it to Mount McKinley and the Gulf of America. Good, good, good for them. Good for them. Harold says there are no Dominion machines with wireless, even though through a FOIA request, Dwayne said that he got an email that states that they do have machines with wireless and that they sent them to Alaska. But, you know, don't worry.

Harold knows he's going to keep us, he's going to keep us on the straight and narrow. He's going to keep us, you know, he's going to keep us going to keep us on track. Um, the state ransacked the PFD. That's exactly what they did. Says Chris. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is. No.

Frank says, it's not willful blindness. It's full intent. Keep voting for Republicans. They have the answers. Yeah, I mean, they have the answers except for the Democrats have answers. I mean, you know, that's the problem. I mean, who do you vote for at this point? I mean, unless you're doing your homework, you can't even really tell by what they're wearing on the lapel whether or not they're, I mean, who they are or what they're doing. That's the problem. That is the problem right there.

all right let's uh let's let's get mr story on the line here hey look at that it worked first time it's what happens when i'm prepared i guess yeah you're always you're a boy scout you're always prepared i'm always prepared always prepared always ready how you doing my friend how are things going

doing well another day here on top of the world no complaints i can't lord that over you anymore at all see that yeah that's true because i lost something because now i'm i'm on top of the world i'm higher than you i'm on top of i'm looking down on you which is exactly it was really no different than before i'm just now looking that's true and you've always been higher than me that's always yes that's about that that's true that is also 100 true

All right, my friend, what is today's, what's today's message? What are you, what are we working on today? The price of negativity. The price of negativity. There is a price to be paid for sure on that. All right. I'm looking, I'm looking forward to that. What's the response been from your, what is the response been from your opinion piece in the paper?

I understand that you are raising some controversy around here. I haven't had any negative response. But of course, I'm not on social media anymore, so I don't know what the response has been there. But positive from everybody that I actually speak to relative to altering the way we assess property taxes, or I should say tax.

our property. The assessment can go on just as it is, but I'm talking strictly about the taxable value, which is to no longer tax unrealized gains. And that's positive. Almost everybody I speak to, they might have a concern here or there when it comes to how do we fund certain things. But if we just separate and silo those conversations and discuss the taxation process, I've not found anybody that really disagrees with what I'm saying.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm just trying to spark a movement amongst us and then take it to the assembly. Your prior guest, I'm afraid that if I take it straight to the assembly and the mayor, I can guess where this is going to go. And it's going to be just like he said, maybe in this case, only eight, because I do know one assemblyman that is in favor of this, but maybe eight against me and this idea. So I really want to start a groundswell movement of us people.

and then take it to them. Well, yeah, because the government is not going to want to, they're not going to want to defund themselves. They're not going to want to take any hit on the funding mechanism, even if it's only a few thousand dollars. They're not interested in that.

Interesting stuff. All right, Chris Story, the man from Homer. We're getting ready to jump back in and get things done. Fairbanks just joined us a minute early. I don't know why, but hello, Fairbanks. We're about to restart the radio show, so thanks for coming on board and joining us. Chris Story is our guest. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. Don't forget, you can always come out and join us here on Facebook or YouTube or Rumble or whatever else we're doing here. We'd love to see you.

Come on down. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. All right. One final segment for the show here today. Chris Story, the man from Homer. He's an author.

He's a darn good author, in fact. He's a realtor. He's a pretty good realtor. And he's a potter. Excellent potter. Excellent potter. Plus, he's a radio show host. We don't talk about that. But you can hear him every Tuesday and Thursday down here on the peninsula on KPN, KGTL. He's got a podcast. He podcasts afterwards. Oh, he's actually playing on Saturdays and Sundays as well.

um for repeats of his weekly show and uh he's just an all-around cool cat we all wish we were chris story at this point you can find him at ilovehomeralaska.com today his topic for our weekly uplift and positive mental attitude segment is the price of negativity negativity hello my friend what's up michael i'm

I'm kind of obsessed with a few different authors, one of which is his name is Price Pritchett. He's a PhD, so I call him Dr. Pritchett. But he wrote a little pamphlet called U Squared. It's a phenomenal 35-page handbook, as he calls it. It's a great little book about what's possible for you in your life and probably beyond what you think is possible.

is available to you and probably in a lot less time with fewer steps in between you and what it is you want. But I digress. It led me as I'm rereading the book as I normally do. I will read this handbook probably two, three times a year just as a refresher. But I always read it in January because I want to kind of reset the year. Look, where do I want to go this year? Is it going to really take the whole year to accomplish X, Y, or Z or what have you?

It led me to a video that he had done a couple years ago, and he asks a question of his audience. What do you think is more powerful, more impactful, positive thinking or less negative thinking? So I'll ask you, Michael, what do you think is more impactful in your life, more positive thinking or less negative thinking? What say you? Well, based on the title of your subject for today, I'm going to go with less negative thinking. Yes. And studies.

back you up, actual scientific studies, measuring results in people's lives. When you cut out negative thinking to the best of your ability, we all have it. But when you reduce it in your life, you have more positive impact than just trying to turn up the temperature on positive thinking. And we talk about, you know, the power of positive thinking a lot.

You and I, and as a focal point on my Tuesday shows, a lot of times is positive thinking. But in stopping the negative thinking the best you can will allow you to see what's possible or at least attempt to it, to take a leap, if you will. For example, we have this negativity bias built into our brain. It's there as a friend. It's there to protect you from.

uh saber-toothed tigers are there to protect you from maybe jumping from a cliff that's too high or you have this negativity bias built into your brain on purpose the challenge for you and i is how do we how do we drown it out when it's actually stopping us from doing something that would otherwise be beneficial or positive because we have hypothy syndrome nobody really wants to stand out from the tribe you don't want to be

you know, set aside and look at as different. Now, some people like yourself love to get to the stage and be noticed, but more often than not, people, we want to sort of blend in and not stand out. And so our negativity bias helps us to kind of be more part of the crowd, which is to say, we cut out some of the things we might otherwise do because of this negativity bias. So I suggest we go on a 30-day diet.

And we just look for that negativity. When it starts to crop up, either open an app on your phone, note page, or an actual physical journal, take notice of it. And I would start out by saying, hello, darkness, my old friend. There's that negativity again. And just embrace it and say, ah, what are you trying to tell me? Are you actually trying to protect me right now? And if so, from what? Or is this just...

you know, sort of a vestigial tale of protection for long ago, and I can ignore it. We don't want to walk face first into a wall, dive into a pool with no water, break our neck. We want to have a certain negativity bias that's left over, but I suggest that we take a diet and we start monitoring this negativity and really just try to eliminate as much as possible over the next 30 days and see where you end up.

I mean, I like that because you're right. Negativity can affect us in so many ways. And a lot of times we don't even realize we're doing it. I've caught my kids doing this occasionally. We have a conversation. I try and have a conversation about it whenever it comes up. I try and be like, okay, listen to what you just said. And is that positive or negative? Does it help you or does it hurt you? But it's just, it's gotten to be, like I said, it's almost a habit at some point where you're like, oh, that doesn't.

that doesn't work. What, what, what is, you know, what, what is the, what is the deal here? How do we, how do we address that? How do we find those things that are the negative and how do, how do we weed them out? What's your, what's your process? It's becoming conscious to it and asking a question, what else could this mean? I do this a lot with, with relationships too. If, you know, you find yourself frustrated with one person or two or 10 suddenly, wait a minute, what else is going on here?

I think there's something with me. It can't be all of them. It's got to be me. What am I going through? What's going on here? But I think just being conscious and aware and recognizing that negativity bias is there as a friend. It's there to help you, but yet you can control it. It's a little bit like a bodyguard for people like Michael Dukes. You may not be aware of this, but Michael Dukes does travel with a bodyguard. Sometimes they get a little aggressive and somebody just wants to come up and get a picture taken with him and the bodyguard will suddenly deck him.

Well, that guy's there to protect you. He didn't mean to actually hurt a fan. He didn't mean to push the little guy to the ground. He was just looking for an autograph from Michael Dukes. And so if you look at the negativity bias as that bodyguard that's there to protect you and surround you when danger's nearby and warn you away from it, it's okay. So you know what? I get it. But what else could this mean? And then ask this question. Is there really danger ahead?

Is this really a black diamond trail that I shouldn't venture down with my novice skiing abilities? Of course, I would say I'm an expert skier, Michael, but I'm trying to relate. You understand. Right, right, right. So is this really a black diamond trail or has this been mismarked? Did somebody just put this up here to sort of ward me off of this and scooby-doo the situation?

Which of these paths ahead is really dangerous, or which is just that negativity bias kicked in to protect you from yourself? And you could just say, stand down, I got this. Well, and how many times has the negativity, I mean, how many times are we letting negativity kind of rule our life? But in a way, it is protecting us, right? It's telling us, oh, don't worry, you could never do that.

Don't worry, you could never achieve this or achieve that. It's like trying to prevent us from, you know, I guess from hurting ourselves, protecting us from disappointment. But if we let it rule our lives, we'll never do anything. Right. I mean, it's there as a self-protective mechanism to downplay our traits or to, you know, but again, it's it's not it's negative, but it's not necessarily a mean negative.

prevent us from being hurt in the future. We've got to be stronger, though, and overcome that. I just submitted a new manuscript for a short parable I wrote called The Millionaire Code, and it's a parable that's really just based upon the millionaire creed, the backyard millionaire creed, of which one plank of that creed is honor your instincts. Promise yourself to honor your instincts. But how do you then...

differentiate between an instinct that is there in the form of a negativity bias versus an instinct towards, yeah, I got this. I can do this. I was meant for more. I can accomplish what it is I was put here for. I was born on purpose and with a purpose versus that negativity bias. Both are instinctual. Both are warranted of some time and attention, but which will you listen to? Will it be the master of your life?

Or will you be a slave to your negativity? Will you be the master that controls what you're going to do and say and become? Or will you follow a lesser instinct and towards a path of protection from your negativity bias? It's a choice. And again, I would just come back to if we're conscious that it exists, we might start to recognize it and go, oh, there is. OK, I recognize you. I see you in the crowd. You're there to protect me, but you can stand down.

I'm going to go forward. Chris' story is at ilovehomeralaska.com. It's where you can find everything about him, podcasts, books, everything else. Chris, down to the last two minutes here or so. And like I always do, I like you to break this down to the basics for people who maybe are just listening, just getting started. How do they analyze that negativity? How do they get started in getting a handle?

on their own stinking thinking, right? That's really what we're talking about here is your own personal negativity, not negativity from outside. That's pretty easy to cut out. You just stop associating with those people or you move away or ignore them or whatever. But we're talking about your own personal negativity that you're carrying around with us. So what's the process? Break it down for us. I'd say become conscious in any default thinking. It might be good or beneficial or it might not be, but you've got to start taking.

time to pay attention to it. And then I say document it. Like any study, do your own personal study and find out for yourself, was Dr. Pritchett right? Is more positive thinking enough to counterbalance its negative thinking? Or, excuse me, or was he wrong? Do you need more positive thinking? Maybe you do, but you have to determine for yourself. Do your own personal study.

Take the diet for 30 days. Eliminate as much negative thinking as possible. Document it. Be conscious of it. Say, hello, darkness, my old friend. I see you there again. Are you there to help? Or are you there to hold me back? Start acknowledging it, but be conscious. We've got to stop some of the default thinking and start critically thinking about all things that are presented to us in life, including a negative choice.

or a positive reinforcement you get to choose but you got to balance them correctly because i agree with dr pritchett in his studies that less negative thinking will be more beneficial overall positive thinking is great but it'll only take you so far uh less than 60 seconds what are you covering today on your program

Some of this also just a whole lot of positive, ironically, positive things. I've got a whole slate of stuff ahead. Paul Huber is going to be a guest coming up pretty quick, but I don't know that that'll be until next Tuesday. I want to know, was he exonerated? Was he pardoned by the president? I don't know. Or is the FBI still coming after him?

All right. Chris Story, you can hear him today at 1 p.m. and Thursday at 1 p.m. down here on the peninsula. You can also get his podcast and listen afterwards wherever you are at ilovehomeralaska.com. Chris, thank you so much, my friend. Appreciate you coming on board and being part of it. My pleasure, Michael. Thank you. All right, folks. We're out of time for today. Tomorrow is another one. We will see you then.

All right, my friends. Well, we're out of time for today. I got to go. Got lots of stuff to do today. We're going to be all kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff. And tomorrow, we'll hopefully bring you some more insight, education, entertainment, enlightenment. It's all right here. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty-based, free thinking radio. We will see you tomorrow. Have a good day. you Radio Skin. And now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.