Wednesday 1/22/25 | Headlines, The Open Session, McKinley? Phonecalls

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

The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Oh, yeah. Live around the world on the Internet at MichaelDukesShow.com and across the great state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or. FM translator. Hello, my friends. How are you doing? Are you ready for this hump day? Wow. Wednesday already. It's, uh, it's, uh, the day's just like,

Just flying by. Here we are. 22 days into January already. We are cooking right on through the brand new year. And I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you're getting a lot done. And I hope you... are having a good morning, are ready to be educated, entertained, and enlightened. Is that what I wanted to do? All the E's?

That's what we're all about here. We're about educating you. We're about enlightening you. And we are also about entertaining you. Hopefully having something, see some good stuff here this morning on the program. All right. What do we got going on? Well, first and foremost, there are no guests today. It's just you and me. Everybody that I talked to yesterday.

was because I was trying to get some legislators on for the first day of the session to kind of get some reaction. But apparently there was a lot going on yesterday. They were busy. They were busy. They just can't be bothered. Can't be bothered. No, I mean, I've just given them a hard time. It looked like they had a lot of stuff going on yesterday, but they did get the session open and organized. And now we're getting a little bit of a...

clearer picture of what's going on. We kind of knew the broad framework and the outlines of what was happening, but now they're starting to say some of the quiet part out loud. And we're going to get into that here in just a little bit when we start talking about what the priorities are, but also how they're planning to pay for it.

how they're planning to pay for it. Because that's the multi-million dollar question, multi-the billion dollar question. All these things that these legislators all seem to want. I mean, it's all well and good. Don't get me wrong. But how do we pay for it? That is the biggest question here. And what do we offset it with? So if it's paid for, you know, what do we have to take away or lose to pay for it? Now, unfortunately.

We know that the first thing that's going to happen is they're going to tap into the div net. And that's going to cause some heartache across the state. But I think we will look back on this January of 2025, the opening of the session. We will look back at this as probably the beginning of the end. the beginning of the end for the permanent fund dividend. I think we'll look at this and realize that this was the year.

that things i mean it's let's face it the beginning of the beginning was 2016 when governor bill walker uh vetoed the statutory dividend and turned it back over to the legislature. And then the legislature failed to override the governor's veto on that dividend. And that was the beginning of the beginning. Because that was the first time ever that a governor or legislature had even dared to...

touch the dividend. The dividend at that point had kind of been the third rail of Alaskan politics. And, you know, it had consequences. I mean, Bill Walker was summarily never elected again. So there were political consequences, but not to the extent that I expected. I'll be honest with you. When that first happened, I remember I was sitting in the... remember i was sitting in the studio uh that i was working at in anchorage and that was announced and i was just i was just blown away by the

Well, by the arrogance of Bill Walker, whom at one point I had supported as governor. Before he went full blown. I mean, I guess I guess full blown progressive. That was after the point that he'd had this, you know, they got this marriage. This marriage of, you know, Byron Mallott and the labor unions and the Democrats and everybody and Bill Walker had kind of done this backroom deal to get into office.

I had supported him up until that point, and it really all came to pass when we saw this go on. I mean, I was severely disappointed, and quite honestly, I was shocked. I thought, wow, this is going to be... A very difficult thing for Walker to overcome. And I fully expected the legislature to react more stridently. And instead, it was this...

It was this whimper. It was, you know, Bill Walker was still out front. He took all the slings and arrows. And and again, he ended up paying the ultimate price for that. But I was really shocked at all the legislators who we thought were of a more conservative mean and would stand up for it. Yeah, John Coghill, definitely one that was one that I thought would stand up for it, especially considering John Coghill's initial foray into the legislature and how he took a stand against.

a majority and and was really strident about a lot of things although Coghill had also supported the 1999 run on the dividend in 99 the one that had the statewide ballot where they wanted at that point they'd wanted to change it over to pomv and it was defeated by 82 percent of the citizens in the state even though they were outspent I don't know, 50 to 1 or something on the deal there. But there was just a lot of legislators that just...

I mean, I guess the imagery I want to use is they just kind of rolled over and wet on themselves like, no, I just can't do. And so that was really the beginning of the end of the permanent fund dividend. And ever since then, here we are eight years later. We've had good years. We've had bad years. We've had years where there's been some surplus and things like that.

And we've gotten a little bit of a bigger check, but we have not received a statutory check since 2016. And the way things are going now. And the way that the legislators are talking, the things that they're saying, I just do not see, I do not see a path back to. A full statutory PFD. I mean, I've been fighting for it. I've been arguing for it. I've made, you know, I've made all the logical points.

Done everything that I can do there, but there is just it does not seem that there is enough political will to even go back to have that statutory discussion as a starting point. Hence why about a year and a half, two years ago, I started talking more about, okay, let's get a 50-50 PFD. If we can't get the statutory, let's at least fall in line with Hammond's vision. and talk about a PFD where the state and the citizens at least get an equal share of the spoils, of the loot.

And now I'm looking at it and I'm realizing that that was either that was probably the first sign. Well, it was probably the biggest sign that we were going to lose. Because we just there's just no way to go back once they have acclimatized and accustomed themselves. To using the monies. that were rightfully the citizens to spend as they want. They're rightfully, it's the citizens part.

of their, of the spoils, right? And quite, what's funny is that this is not even like a direct, this is not even like a direct thing. So for those of you who don't know exactly how the permanent fund works, royalties. every year get you know the state receives oil royalties and then lease pay you know all these payments and everything else and a portion of the royalties only a portion of the royalties

goes into the permanent fund every year, is deposited into the corpus, the main body of the fund, the part that's off limits, the part that can't be touched. And then every year... There's a calculation that basically has to do with a five-year rolling average of what the fund earns. And they spin off the earnings of that into the ERA, the earnings reserve account.

Well, I mean, every year they spend the earnings off into the earnings reserve account. And then once the money's in the earnings reserve account, then there's the formula of the five-year rolling average of the fund and what it costs. And that's how they decide how much it was. And the fact now that the legislature has become so accustomed to having the keys to the kingdom, to having access to this. to this enormous pot of money with no consequences. And there, I mean...

What little consequences there were, we basically outlined. Bill Walker didn't get reelected. That was the ultimate political consequence of the fracturing and the poisoning of the PFD. I mean, this is, you know, this is like an assassination of the PFD, but it wasn't a quick bullet to the head. It was a slow, steady poisoning. And that poisoning started back in 2016. And the only casualty so far politically.

has been Bill Walker. None of the other legislators, it was not, you know, I was that first year after the reelection, there were candidates who were back up for reelection, who had the opportunity. to support a veto and didn't. A veto override, I'm sorry. They had the ability to support a veto override and they didn't. And there were no political consequences for any of those people. There was, you know, there was, I was shocked at how there was a lot of grousing. There was a lot of griping.

There was a lot of people who were, you know, I mean, I was wailing about it from the rooftops on my show that this was not right. It was wrong. These people who made this decision need to be replaced. I mean, I was but. That was it. There were really no more political ramifications to that. And then, of course, we get the Wilkowski decision. where uh bill wilikowski the senator goes to the legislature or goes to the courts in what is seemingly support of the pfd

to try and get the court to say that the statutory dividend has to be upheld. And quite honestly, at the time, I thought he was doing something heroic. And in hindsight, I look at it now and I'm not quite sure it wasn't working as intended because, of course, the courts came back and Willikowski is an attorney and he understands how a lot of this stuff works.

The courts came back and says, no, the legislature does not have to follow the law. They have the power of appropriation so they can do basically whatever they want. And that case not only did it. Not only did it continue to hobble the PFD, it also gave the legislature even more cover to ignore state statute. At their whim. And in hindsight, I believe that that was probably intentional.

which is even more discouraging. So here we are, and we can see, again, I think that this year, this January of 2025, the start of this session. We'll probably be looking back on this in five years and realize this was the time when the PFD started its death rattles. The poisoning started back in 2016. And I think we finally reached the final stages. We're laying on the bed, gasping, clutching that blood-stained handkerchief to our mouth as we cough up what's left. I think we're there.

And I just, the worst part is, my friends, I do not see a path back. And that's discouraging. It's also a little terrifying because this is a finite resource. When we get to the end, then what happens? We'll talk a little bit more about that. Phone lines are open. We also got more, including the president's executive orders and more. It's all directly ahead. The Michael Duke show. Common Sense Radio.

If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Duke's On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekly morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Well, hello, my friends. How you guys doing this morning? Chris said so-called conservatives like showers did not only fail to support the veto.

He supported Dunleavy's decision. Mike Schauer wasn't even in the legislature during that veto discussion on the PFD, Chris. Mike's only been in the legislature for four years. That happened eight years ago. Dunleavy, on the other hand, was in the legislature. And it was one of the things that I was really pissed about with him was that he didn't support that.

I saw that Kevin said something. What did Kevin say? Because I was talking about how I'd reached out to different legislators and Kevin said, well, since you dissed me in district 30, well, no, you'd just been on the program list. I didn't want to, I mean, I don't want to wear out my welcome. I could have called you, but, I mean, you were just on last, whatever it was, Thursday. Wednesday, Thursday. So, sorry, I didn't call you.

I, you know, I mean, I only reached out to four people to see if they wanted to, but that was kind of the same. It was kind of the same answer for everybody. You know, I knew it was going to be tough, but anyway. We'll see what's going on. And what just happened? Wow. Didn't need that. Just had a pop-up. Okay, good morning, good morning, good morning. Good morning to all you. Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom. I love you guys. I hope you're staying warm. Man, the weather down here is just so crazy right now.

It is 34 degrees and the wind was howling last night. Oh, baby. Wind was howling. Oh, thank you for bringing that up. Somebody just messaged me and said, for the first time, and I hadn't been tracking this, Willikowski didn't put his PFD constitutional amendment in this year. Well, maybe he doesn't need the political cover anymore. Maybe now he's at that point where he can again say the quiet part out loud. Like I said, I mean, I thought...

I really thought Willikowski was doing the right thing in the beginning. But again, in hindsight, I think it was all part of the same plan at that point. I really, I really do. um um edgeman is on video saying says willie keppel He's on video saying, we're going to take it with or without the public's consent. Rural native legislators are the most adamant to end the PFD of all. Hoffman said it will be gone before he retires.

Which to me makes no sense unless you're trying to create, intentionally create a dependency society. And what I mean by that is, you know, well, the money comes from the state, so what does it mean? Well... people would be able to make their own decisions with the money if it came to them in the form of the PFD.

If you want to create a controlled populace that's totally dependent on the state, you take all the PFD and then you create government services and things that they have to be dependent on, but only if they do what the government tells them to do. Right. I mean, that's. Am I wrong there? Am I seeing that incorrectly? That's interesting. How do the people feel about that, though, Willie? That's what I want to know. How do the people out there feel about that?

Or do they even care? Are they just like, oh, these are our guys and they're just going to keep electing them no matter what they say? And Randy's over here telling us how brave Bill Walker is. Let's see. Frank also said he believes it's a setup from Willikowski. And Willikowski also works for IBEW. And, you know, Anthony says the ultimate casualties for zeroing out the PFD are going to be the lower middle income families.

They rely on it as a way to offset the bloated cost of living here. Those that can will leave. Those who can't need to go to the government and benefits to survive. Again, going back to that dependency society, that's an interesting point. Here we go Let's try that again The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. All right.

Welcome back to the program. Just bringing up, I mean, the people in the chat room, there's a lot of smart folks in the chat room and it's always an interesting discussion during the commercial breaks. Because they bring up points that are either complementary or, in some cases, antithetical to what I'm talking about. But it's always good because it makes me think about it and brings it around. There's a lot of good points here.

in talking about the history of the budgeting and the states and where we're going. I was not expecting to spend that whole segment talking about the PFD specifically, but I feel good about it because I think a lot of people don't... A lot of people don't understand how the permanent fund dividend and the permanent fund, the two separate, they're combined but separate entities, right? They're conjoined but they're separate.

how they work. And so I think it's always good to be able to go back over it. And it's good to go back and look at the history and be reminded of where we came from and what's going on. Especially now that I am... more firmly convinced than ever that this, that we're on the glide path to... A hard landing, I guess I could say. Since Mike Schauer's not here, I guess I can use pilot-like analogies. I'm not a pilot, but I mean, I could use pilot-like analogies. We're on that glide slope to the...

It has the flight characteristics of a brick, and we're on that glide path down, right? But, yeah, I mean, I firmly believe that there is... a lot of problems here and two different comments have stuck out uh from the chat room this morning to me on this and i'm going to get back to them here in just a second But I want to talk a little bit about where we're going back here.

What else are we going to cover here this morning? Well, we've got all the executive orders. Well, the executive order and all it covers, I guess, which we're going to talk about, including the renaming. of Denali back to McKinley. To which I, I just want to smile because, you know, I liked the name Mount McKinley. But I also like the name Denali. And I'm just kind of like, you know, people are losing their minds.

over some of this stuff, over things that quite honestly, it just don't matter, right? It just don't matter. And in some ways I'm just giggling because I love kind of watching some of the chaos that erupts from this. I'm just like, wow, you guys are really spun up about something that, you know, I mean, what, what is it? What does it matter? What?

What does it matter? What difference does it make? Anyway, we're going to talk about some of those executive orders. We are going to get into some of the things that the legislature is currently talking about. And like I said, they're saying some of this quiet part out loud as well. We're going to talk a little bit about Kathy Giesel's reactions to some of the president's.

executive orders which i thought was interesting because we've seen you know i've seen i think we're seeing kathy giesel now in her final form For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you obviously don't have kids who have used Pokemon because it's always that final form, right? You find them and they're a cute little flying worm with wings. And then later on, they become this gargantuan monstrous.

that's you know unkillable and just you know they've reached their I think Kathy Giesel now may have reached her final form because I remember the days when Kathy Giesel was a cornerstone of conservative Republican politics. That's not today, my friends. That's not today. We might touch base on this new gambling hall in Birchwood. Did you see this? It went up over the weekend. I mean, it went up. It was literally 48 hours of nonstop 400 people working on this project.

Interesting. Interesting. We'll talk about that. And there was something else. What was the other thing that I was going to jump into? And I can't remember what it was now. OK, so we'll I got I got some stories. I got some stories. We've got some other things to talk about. And of course, we've got your phone call. So I guess let me go ahead and we'll just. We'll open up the phone lines. If you guys want to participate this morning, you can feel free to do so. 319-527-3864.

319-527-3864. Feel free to ring us up and if there's something you want to comment on that we've been talking about this morning. or maybe something we haven't gotten to yet, then feel free to smile and dial and get us up here and we'll get you involved in the conversation. Okay, so I wanted to get that kind of out of the way here. First things first.

All right. I'm trying to decide if I want to take on the executive orders or if I want to go back to my discussion on the permanent fund and education. I guess, well, let's go through the executive orders. Because yesterday, Nick Begich. who was on the program yesterday morning said that if you hadn't read the executive order, you should go back and you should go look at it because it has a lot in it.

And I'm like, OK, all right. So I did. I went back and I pulled up the I pulled up the news coverage and I pulled up everything else and I looked at it and. And then I looked at some of the other analysis and man, there is a lot in here. This is a lot. First and foremost, the title of the executive order is Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential. Which, I mean, awesome, right? Excellent. Awesome.

This is all part of this broader energy policy, which Trump followed in his first term, where he was looking for energy independence as a nation. uh and and as a bulwark against uh you know for national security which again i don't think is a bad thing it's one of the things that i thought that he did very well I think energy independence and having it as a bulwark for national security are two things that are definitely good things for the country and well within the purview.

Of what a government should be doing in that regard. But it is it. This is a pretty comprehensive piece of. Well, it's a piece of legislation, but it's not. It's an executive order. This is a pretty comprehensive document, I guess I should say. So the order aims to reshape federal policy. And I'm reading this list this morning from the ADN. Iris Samuels and Sean McGuire did a good piece that kind of concises it down. It instructs the agency heads from across.

the entirety of the federal government to revoke, rescind, or revise regulations that are inconsistent with resource development in Alaska. Now that's pretty broad when you say stuff like that. to revoke, rescind, or revise regulations that are inconsistent with resource development. I don't know exactly. I mean, depending on who you have in the, you know, depending on who's reading that.

Boy, there's a lot of latitude in that thing. Included in those regulations are most of those issued by the President Biden when he was in office. And in effect, many of the provisions in the order take federal policies right back to where they were in January of 2021 when Trump was still in office. Which, again, I think was the point.

You know, this is what that's what he promised. Right. This is what he promised on the election trail was that he was going to take us back to where we were. And we were, you know, the economy was definitely different under Trump than it was under Biden. Right. Let's get down into some of the specifics, though. The order revokes Biden's actions that halted oil and gas exploration in Anwar.

Trump had led a move to allow oil and gas exploration during his first term, only to have it reversed by Biden. So this is the tit for tat. And this is what we were talking about yesterday with Nick Baggage, where he basically said, OK. Once the president has now reversed it in executive order, now Congress needs to do its job to back that up, because otherwise all we'll ever get from here on out is dueling executive orders. Right.

Four years with their guy, four years with your guy. Four years with their guy, four years with your guy. The first thing they'll do is undo all the stuff the other guy did by executive order over the previous four years or eight years or whatever. I mean, it'll just be this, you just get whiplash like watching it.

tennis match at high speed, right? I mean, you need Congress to step up and do what they need to do because then the president, you know, if they outlined it in legislation, constitutionally bound legislation. They can't do that. Trump also ordered the denial of a request that had been considered by the Biden administration to establish a sacred indigenous site in Anwar.

It rescinds Biden's rejection of the right-of-way permit to build the 200-mile road through Ambler to Ambler. That was the Ambler Mining District Road. It again seeks to repeal the rule, the roadless rule that's meant to limit logging in the Tongass, which is what he did in his first term and which Biden reversed again.

Just whiplash back and forth, right? He reinstated his 2020 rule to increase hunting and trapping on federal preserves in Alaska, which I think that nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. He reinstated an order he issued during his first term to allow oil and gas development on 28 million acres of federal land. The lands were protected from such development during the ANCSA settlement in 71. He had initially reversed them and then Biden reversed them. And now he's reversing Biden.

Again. Let's see what happened. He ordered expedited development of a road connecting the community of King Cove to the airport in Cold Bay through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. That had been approved back in 2019, but the Biden administration again reversed it.

Trump signaled he would support Dunleavy's years-long effort to assert Alaska control over the state's navigable waterways, including those through federal land, which is good because that's how the law actually reads. Alaska should have. control of all navigable waterways. That's how the law reads, my friends. And then finally, the order also seeks to prioritize the development of Alaska's liquefied natural gas potential.

including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the U.S. and allied nations within the Pacific. This is probably one of the biggest pushes because this deals specifically with... an alaska lng project now what does that mean that last one especially first what does that mean does that mean we're looking at potentially federal help in an alaskan lng line i mentioned it the other day that i thought one of the few ways that this might make sense is if

The federal government picked up the bill and dubbed it some kind of national security issue for energy independence. I mentioned this about five, six weeks ago. And. Maybe? I don't know. Your thoughts, 319-527-3864, The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. On American Radio. Back over here to where you guys were. I apparently. If you can't motivate, you agitate. Apparently, I really agitated Melody out there.

They will blow all the value of the PFD in no time if they take it. Then they will have nothing, says Armed and AK. That's where you're wrong. I mean, they're already blowing 76% of the value of the PFD already. This next session, I guarantee it'll be 80, 80 plus probably by the time we're done. But they won't have nothing. They'll have you and me. They'll have you and me. And it'll be a case of, well, free rides die hard people. Now it's time for you Alaskans to pay your fair share. Yeah.

But, but Mike, it's free. We were talking about the, the dependent dependency state when you're creating a dependency state. Melody said, seniors will leave the state. We are on a four-year plan to leave the state as soon as we retire. There's a lot of people. Gary has been in here. He's been a listener to the show for many years. Gary.

Was talking about it the other day. They're already, they're on the glide slope out as well. That's what's going to, you know, that's what's going to happen. People will leave. Frank said, what you just said about Hoffman and making a dependency society, how is it different when the state accepts federal dollars? I agree. It's one of the most dangerous things a state could do. And you could see, you know, you could see exactly how it's done for many a state out there, for sure.

How about they talk the cost of electricity? Yeah. I think changing the name. I think changing the name from Denali to McKinley will cost us native votes in the next election. It's very possible. It is very possible because the name change under Obama, because Obama is the one that changed the name from McKinley to Denali, was after years of lobbying by many Native groups to get it changed to Denali. So, you know. Let's see.

The state needs to grow or it's going in the tubes. Well, the state doesn't need to grow. The state needs to get within its means or it's going down the tubes. It's already growing. It's already growing beyond. Okay, I'm trying to get caught up here. Give the article number. I didn't have the actual article up in front of me when I was reading it. I was reading the summary. Sorry about that, Rick.

I keep telling my kids that once that once they take the PFD, that we will all be taxed. Well, yeah. I mean, again, my argument is we're already being taxed with the taking of the PFD. But yeah, you're right. We'll be taxed on top of that. The state should have never been run so catastrophically poorly that it needed federal funding, especially a state like Alaska with freaking golden oil in abundance. Yeah.

I mean, I'll remind you that when they got that first royalty check for $900 million and change, just under a billion dollars, that the state's budget at that point back in 1968, 69. that the state budget at that point was $162 million. $162 million. And we're where today? The change will not affect Denali National Park. They said that. It will change the name to Mount McKinley, but Mount McKinley will be in Denali National Park. The park will not change. Randy continues to tell us that a...

that a cut in the PFD is not a true tax. Does it have the effect of a tax, Randy? I'm asking for a friend. Does it have the effect of a tax? I'm sorry, I'm just going through. One of the means Marxists use to promote their religion is to divide us. They do that by cultural name changes, etc., said Kevin. Well, I suppose I could see that. Okay. All right. I guess I'm all caught up. Wow. You guys had a lot of good comments there. The whole break, just going back through the comments.

People listen on the podcast are like, man, he reads a lot of comments, man. I really want to hear what people have to say. It's kind of cool to be able to engage and interact right there. All right. We are 20 seconds out. I suppose we will get back into it here. Please like and share if you haven't already. There's 70 people watching us and only 20 likes and shares. What's going on, man? Don't you like me? Don't you love me?

Really, really love me. The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry. Not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show. Okay. Phone lines are open. 319-527-3864 if you want to sound off. And maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you disagree and think that, no, it's going to be fine, fine, just fine.

It's going to be fine. Don't. Whoops. Don't worry about it. Push the wrong button. Don't worry about it. It's going to be fine. Maybe that's how you feel. Feel free to tell me all about it. I, you know, I look at all these executive, all the components of the executive order and I... I, again, am reminded what Nick Begich said yesterday. This is on Congress to do its job. And we can blame a lot of the problems that we've been having in this, well, in the country.

I guess, at the national level, which in a lot of cases trickles down into the different states. And we can see that a lot of it has to do with the fact that Congress has just abdicated a huge part of their responsibility in various areas. I mean, the fact that the Congress has not taken up actions that have been covered by all these executive orders over the last... Three administrations now for administrations between, you know, Obama and Biden and and Trump and now back to Trump.

The fact that Congress has not said, well, wait, we should actually just make a law instead of this vacillating back and forth. I mean, now Trump is reversing executive actions that were taken by Obama. I mean, it's just going to you know, again, it's going to become this massive.

I would say tennis, but maybe it's wiffle ball. I don't know. Maybe it's tennis with Super Bowls because it's, you know, you're just whipping back and forth. And that's what it's going to be like if Congress doesn't take responsibility. Congress's lack of action and inaction, I guess I should say, are also a big part of why we are where we are financially today. Because they haven't been taking up regular.

regular orders because they haven't been passing 12 separate budget bills because they've just passed a continuing resolution and raised the debt ceiling instead of actually doing the budgeting process and everything else. I mean, we had a balanced budget under Bill Clinton. That wasn't that long ago, folks. Clinton's still alive. Right? It wasn't that long ago. And yet here we are. 30 plus trillion dollars in debt. So I hope if we can learn one thing from this is that.

Congress really needs to do its job. It would fix a lot of the problems that we have there for sure. All right. What are some of the other stories that we got going on? Oh, yeah. That fiber optic cable up on the North Slope busted again. Thank you, Rick. I meant to mention that. busted again and the worst part was they said they're not oops wrong uh Wrong email. Hold on. Because I read this late, read this early yesterday and I was like, OK, this is the this is the.

This is a whole this is just seems like a repeat of yesterday's of yesterday's news. Right. I actually had to go back and look to make sure that I wasn't rereading another thing. So the subsea fiber. cut in the Beaufort Sea. Repairs are not expected. Get this. Repairs are not expected until late summer. That's like August. It's January. How are these communities supposed to keep going? I mean.

I see a whole lot of Starlinks getting shipped north right about now. I see a whole lot, you know, and the worst part is all this stuff was like federally subsidized, right? I mean, that's the only reason a lot of these companies are up there doing this stuff is because of the federal money's flowing into it. And now we see the cable gets cut again and it's not going to be fixed for eight months. People aren't going to.

In this day and age, people are not going to wait eight months. They're just going to buy a Starlink. And then they'll discover that their speeds with a Starlink are faster and they're paying one quarter of what they were paying for their... No, no, no, no. And what really killed me is to prevent future disruptions instead of.

changing the way they're doing. To prevent future disruptions, stakeholders are seeking to expedite the planned land bridge from Uktavik to Deadhorse to create a more resilient network. And the worst part is they're looking to FEMA and BLM and the new administration to prioritize that this project to swiftly restore essential services. The private sector's already got a solution on this.

It's called Starlink. And you saw what happened the last time. I mean, and the last time it was only out for what, three months? Eight months. Late summer. They said late summer, which to me is August, right? Because early summer is June, mid-July, and then August. Late summer. Repairs are not expected. So they're going to be without... I just, I don't even know what to say at this point. Other than same SSDD, same stuff, different day.

That's that's where I feel like we're at right now. Same stuff. This is exactly the same story that that. Yeah, it's crazy. All right. We're. Sorry, I got distracted by the whole I got distracted by the whole. Thanks, Rick. Rick just derailed the whole show because he mentioned that the North Slope fiber. I mean, I literally thought because I was reading it for the newscast, right for the for the stations here.

And I stopped and I'm like, OK, wait, this is not a repeat because my daughter helps me collate the news and get everything read. And I had to check with her. I'm like, this is a new story. And so she sent it over to me and I was like, oh, OK. I mean, it just seems like. Seems like a repeat. Seems like a Pete and repeat. You know?

All right. We are about two and a half minutes out from the top of the hour. What else are we going to talk about? Well, did you see what happened in Birchwood in Anchorage? Overnight. It's like a pop-up. And overnight, the Kalutna tribal village, the Kalutna native village, they put up a gambling hall. Like over, I mean, literally in like two days.

It's an ADCO unit. It's temporary. It's a double wide ADCO unit. But they literally had an army. Jeff Landfield, I don't know how I got on my Facebook page because I usually don't follow him, but there was a live Facebook live or something. And he actually drove out there. Apparently they were trying to get it all done before President Trump took office because they had gotten approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Indian Gaming Commission. I can't remember if it was one or the other.

Anyway, they had been fighting to try and be able to put up a gaming casino, right? Because casinos on Indian land is a thing across the country because of this sovereign tribal land. And so they've been trying to get this done in Iklutna for a long time. Now, the neighbors, they're not so happy. Apparently, there's been a big pushback from the neighbors. To which I go, well, I mean, it's their land as long as they...

You know, if you've got a problem, you can get them to, uh, anyway, but, um, yeah, in like 48 hours, they had pictures. They had, there must've been 30 or 40 trucks around these two ADCO units. And lights. And it was the middle of the night. And they got lights everywhere. There's guys walking all over. In like 48 hours, they had these trailers set, leveled.

set up, power, lights, heat, the whole thing. I mean, they were motivated. Now, they said it's going to employ 400 people at some point, which they ain't going to do in a double wide echo unit, right? And he said it's going to bring in $67 million in economic activity. I mean, I got some questions about those numbers, but I guess good for them. Now, again, the neighbors are a little pissed about it.

I think mostly because they're worried about, you know, the community and the quiet and everything else, to which I think, well, I mean, again, it's their land. You probably had an opportunity to do something about it before. I guess you could put up a fence. I mean, I'd like to have good neighbors. I understand there are bad neighbors out there.

but I just don't want to stop people from doing what they need to do on their land. Anyway, interesting, the fact that we could put up something like that in 48 hours. Crazy. All right, we got to go. Hour two down ahead, The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. Okay, I see there's a... Oh, there's a lot of hate in the comment section on the... Not in our comment section. But...

In the comments section of Must Read where that story had a part of the story had broken. Now it's in every paper, but there's a lot of hate out there. A lot of anger. And I don't mean hate literally. I just mean, you know, kind of thing. Did I reschedule the science guy? You're talking about Rod Pyle. No, we have not rescheduled. I'm working on next week. We'll see what we want to do. Anthony says, say what you want about Trump.

But this pile of wild executive orders is a 4D chess move on his part. He knows that 80% of them are going to get killed in court, but it's going to shine a big spotlight on so-called conservatives and Republicans that don't walk the walk for the people to see. dudes out here spotlighting hunting a spotlight hunting swamp creatures maybe maybe Senator Gary Stevens said in the Senate majority presser that the pupil to teacher ratio is exploding. Is it?

i guess i haven't really been following along on that i mean we have fewer students how could it be exploding if we have fewer students Yeah, Harold says Starlink is prevalent in rural Alaska. Most of our contacts are on Starlink. Business and government went hashtag full Starlink. Yeah. Is it an electricity hog, Kevin? Does it suck a lot of juice? AI tutors are coming. Yeah, last session they all sat and rolled their eyes about Starlink and stayed paying tons of money to GCI. Yeah.

You keep, you'll keep, y'all keep saying, y'all keep saying leave, leaving left, but some of us first Alaskans especially have nowhere else to go. This is our home. Yeah, I mean, I know, man. Some people are going to leave. not me but some people are bill you wish uh it is a temporary it was a temporary building says Rick. Yeah. It wasn't, they say it's a temporary building. They're going to build a whole new, they're going to build a whole new thing. Um, um, yeah, no water, no toilets.

I mean, they're definitely they were just trying to get it in operation to fulfill the letter of the law, folks. I mean, that's all it was about making sure that because they can only have eight people in a time at it at this point. You know. We need to call out the faux data. Pupil to teacher ratio, state workers leaving because of no retirement. Show me the data. I'm with you on that 110%. Jeannie says, because they didn't go all out, I think she's talking about the Puyallup.

reservation. Is it Tulalip or is it Puyallup? Which one is it? um reservation in washington they they got there's a documentary out about how they got messed up by the gambling thing but genie says it's because they didn't go all out little feather is an example of how native nations should washington has hundreds of native owned You know, some are flourishing, some are not. Elementary teacher here, says Kim, in our school second and fifth classes.

over ptr since covid does that mean kim that you have more than you're supposed to more students than you're supposed to or not i'm just curious um Tulalip. Tulalip. Tulalip. Tulalip. Tulalip. Hey, I just learned how to say Puyallup. Pull your pup, right? It looks like pull your pup. I just learned how to say that a few years ago. Come on. Give me a hard time.

Alaska has a NILCA, not reservations. True, but they're talking about, it's all about the sovereignty aspect of it, right? Okay, Kim says, second through fifth grade are overcrowded. What is overcrowded? I mean, what is the number? What is the magical number that makes it overcrowded? I'm just curious. I don't know for sure. Is it 20 to 1? 20 to 1 teacher? Is it 25? Is it 30?

I mean, what's the what's the standard and who sets who sets what the proper ratio is, I guess, is my other question. I don't know. So I'm literally asking who does that. I mean, I think in high school, the. student-teacher ratio should be much higher. You got to prep those kids.

you got to prep those kids in high school because they're going to jump into college and you'll walk into a college class and there's 200 students to one teacher. You probably ought to up your game somewhere in the high school area and basically say, hey. We need 50 kids in a class just to give you a feeling of what it's going to be like. All right. We are coming up on the break or the start. I guess we're in the break. I guess we're in the break. We're going to jump in here.

All right. We got to go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, three things. Phone lines are open. Nobody wants to talk to me. Apparently, I'm being entertaining enough, apparently, this morning. All right, back with more. Here we go. Welcome to the party, pal. The Michael Duke Show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS.

It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't. The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the interwebs at MichaelDukesShow.com. Good morning, my friends. How are you? We're also broadcasting live across the state of Alaska on plain old terrestrial radio. My favorite. On your favorite radio station and or FM translator.

Lots of translators, lots of stations, lots of translators across the country. Welcome to Hour 2 of The Big Radio Show. We are just getting started today. No guests for today. For those of you just joining us, no guests. We've been talking about a bunch of different stuff, including the start of the legislative session, the president's executive orders on Alaska and what they say and what they mean.

And some of the other stuff, we were just talking about this new gambling hall in Birchwood, in Eklutna, and how... Again, people are losing their minds over it. But it is kind of interesting. The one thing that nobody mentioned was that, well, that not many people mentioned, I guess, one of them.

The must-reader mentioned it, that there was a public comment period. This had all been applied for, and they've got, you know, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Gaming Commission was involved and everything else. But it said... In fact, after the public comment period ended on January 9th, the BIA gave its approval within one week.

pushing, publishing a lengthy notification that appears to have been prepared well in advance. One week, they gave the federal government, any, any element of the federal government giving approval. After a public comment period, giving approval within one week. Whoa, tell me the fix wasn't in there. Tell me that somebody wasn't waiting with a stamp. As soon as that thing hit the mail, they're like, go.

Go, go, go, go. Right. And they wanted to get it all in because they were afraid that, of course, that the Trump administration would reverse it. Although I don't know. I don't know if Trump would or not. I think he likes him. I think he likes him a good casino as much as the next guy. I mean, you know, I don't think it's a big deal. All right. So phone lines are open this morning. If you would like to sound off.

We are we're we're loving it. Feel free to give us a ring this morning. Three one nine five two seven three eight six four. What is going on for the rest of this week here? Wet weather is anticipated for much of the state. We've got snow, rain, gusty winds, mild temperatures. In Anchorage, they haven't had snow. I was talking with my engineer up there yesterday, and he's like, yeah, we haven't had snow.

And it's just rain. There's like no, like almost no snow left in Anchorage on the streets or anything else. It's just rain. But again, freezing, you know, freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw. The roads in Anchorage are very slick. We're going to see stuff down here on the Kenai Peninsula as well. We're going to see coastal rain today. Kodiak clocked winds at 55 miles an hour.

uh yesterday portage the road to portage it was like a winter they got like 8 to 14 inches of snow or something i mean it's just it's nutty nutty Anyway, it's a mild winter. They were talking about how normal snowfall in Anchorage in the south, in the basin there, is normally like 14 inches this time of year. They've gotten one and a quarter inches or one and a half inches of snow. That's all.

Last year, it was like, right? We got so much snow last year up in the Mat-Su and in the South. And now it's like, can't make up its mind. Cannot make up its mind. All right, we're going to talk a little bit about the legislative session and some of the things that are being talked about. We just finished talking about the executive orders. But Kathy Giesel, oh, she's got some things to say.

We're going to talk about that as well. But first, let's go over to the telephones. Somebody called in this morning. It's been quiet here this morning. Let's see what you guys have to say. Good morning. Who's this? Where are you calling from? Good morning, Mike. This is Mike up in Fairbanks. Hello, Mike. What's on your mind, my friend? I want to talk about the tribal gaming deal there for Klutna.

This all depends on the Klutna having tribal land that's not subject to the jurisdiction of the state to build this thing on and they did that by... leasing a native allotment. And for over 100 years, native allotments have been private property. People applied for an allotment and they got it. It was held in trust by the BIA. And then 30 or so years ago, the BIA started transferring title to the individual holders. They have always been...

private property, not tribal property. But some federal solicitor general changed the definition and said native allotments could be. tribal property. So that's what Eklutna has used to say this native allotment is tribal property not subject to the laws of the state of Alaska. And now they've got a casino there. And that's never happened before. Right. And we'll see if it stands. Hopefully it's going to go to court. And we'll see. But if this happens.

This changes the face of Native allotments to some degree across the entire state. Right, because Alaska, as somebody pointed out earlier, we don't have Indian reservations where it's sovereign land. We, through Anilka, that's where they got the tribal allotments, right? Am I remembering it correctly? I'm sorry, I didn't. I'm saying because in Alaska, we don't have reservations, right? Like down in the lower 48, there's no tribal sovereignty. That's right. We got it through Anilca.

There's actually a Supreme Court decision years ago, and they stated there is no Indian country in Alaska. Of course, you have to always say, except for Metlakatla. But otherwise... No tribal land. Right. Well, it's interesting. I mean, I am ambivalent to whether or not there's a casino there, quite honestly, or whether there's a casino anywhere.

Quite honestly, I'm kind of ambivalent to it. I have no dog in that fight and I really don't care. What are your thoughts? Are you opposed to it? Are you opposed to it because it changes the definition of? of the allotment or what's your beef here? Well, I'm not really saying I have a beef, but this is a big change.

We're not going to see casinos all across the state of Alaska in the next three weeks, but it opens the door for other tribes to do the same thing who currently have... no land, no reservation land to do this on, they can acquire a native allotment which is near their area and they can open a casino. We'll see how this plays out, but Native allotments have been purchased by non-Native people for...

the last 30 years or so, you can go to various places around the state and see native allotments advertised for sale. So they have always been treated as private property. But now they're not. Sometimes. Yeah. Do you think that if this stands this way, that somebody who buys an allotment... from an Alaska native, but who is not native themselves? Are you saying somebody would try and assert, I guess, tribal? No. No. I mean, what?

this is all because the tribe itself is renting the allotment right that's how they're that's how they're classifying this yes yeah okay yes they're saying that's tribal property it's the same as a reservation now thus they open a casino other native tribes can now purchase or possibly lease native allotments near them and open a casino or some other business not subject to state regulation. Got it.

Okay. Well, thank you, Mike. I appreciate the clarification on that. It's an interesting topic that, I mean, I don't have enough background in to really, like I said, to know a lot about it. It'll be interesting to see how this changes things specifically in the state of Alaska. So thank you, Mike. Appreciate you calling in and being part of it. Let's go over here. We've got another call this morning. Good morning. Who's this? Where are you calling from?

Oh, good morning. This is Bonnie in North Pole. Hello, Bonnie. What's on your mind this morning? Well, I have a friend who lives in Auburn, Washington, and she has... the Muckleshoot Casino Resort, right by her apartment. And guess what? Crime, prostitution, drugs, and all sorts of crime there now. In my opinion, they're not getting to be a very good thing.

Well, I mean, I think like any other, you know, like any other opportunity, sure, there could be there's but there's also good examples of I know that there's been several that have been highlighted as.

Doing good things for the community because they not only did they provide jobs and everything else, but they also took a very strong stand against any of that ancillary stuff. So, yeah, for everyone, that's probably bad. There's probably one that's good. We hope that folks like this will be taking. an example from the good ones. Well, that's true, but she lives right near there. And guess what goes on every night? Shootings. Robberies. Okay. You know.

Well, have you been to downtown Anchorage lately? I'm just wondering if it's not going to be such a wonderful thing in my opinion, but what would I know?

Yeah, well, I don't know. We'll have to see. We'll have to see how it all turns out. With only eight people allowed in at a time right now, probably not going to be a big... time crime den or anything but if it does do well if it does do 400 people in the future yeah it could be it could create some problems if they don't uh if they don't take a a stand on it okay

All right, buddy. Have a good day. Bye-bye. Thanks so much for calling in. I mean, yeah, I'm sure casinos, crime. I mean, there's, I guess somebody said that. In one of the comments, and I don't know the truth of it or not, but one of the comments said something like, somebody who worked for one of the big Vegas casinos, one of the big casino operators in Las Vegas has agreed to run the place. I don't know if that's true or not, but...

You know, we all know casinos, you know, it could be good, it could be bad. But I guess we'll have to wait and see. It's interesting how they finessed the law, though. to get this thing approved and to get this thing open and in there. We'll have to see what happens. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about Kathy Giesel and her reaction to President Trump's executive orders. And then what else is going on in the legislature? That's all coming up next. The Michael Duke show.

Common sense, liberty-based, free thinking radio. running on 100 pure beard power oh also some coffee we dip our beard in coffee nice beard The Michael Duke Show. Okay. I'm going back here. see um see what else people have been saying casino trailer open today yeah uh How will it affect the gambling hall in Juneau? Asked Timothy. I don't, I have no idea. Let's see.

Kind of weird how nobody wants to call, says Henry. Have to increase the show audience. I mean, yeah. If people want to call in, great. If not, I'm happy to just chit-chat and everything else. I never worried too much, Henry, about growing the, you know, I mean, I'm broadcasting across the state, which is enough for me. I don't need a multi gazillion audience to do what I want to do. So it's never.

Never be. All right, I'm going through here. Rick said, thank God it's not Brady. Brady from Las Vegas. Anthony, you're killing me. I feel like a casino should be held to a certain standard, though, like ladies of the night. You kind of want it to be a little expensive, but in a good order and general polish. Casino double-wide is the equivalent of snagging a lazy-eyed, maybe a dude-but-you're-not-sure, four-tooth meth monster in a truck stop parking lot named Cookie.

You know you're getting into something you're going to regret. Yeah, exactly. Oh, bad. All right. Yeah, really. Melissa said what Bonnie was going on and on about all the things that were happening. And she goes like, that all happens at bars in Fairbanks. I don't know if you heard me, but I asked Bonnie, I said, have you been to downtown Anchorage lately? Shootings and all this. I mean, see. Yeah. You can't legislate morality, says Chris. Yeah.

The other issue with casinos are they cannot be taxed. They will require more law enforcement from taxpayers once it is established road access will be an issue. They actually comment on that in one of the articles where that was one of the big concerns, and the casino will have 24-hour on-the-spot security and everything else. So they're thinking about that. There's a very classy casino, says Terry, near Spokane.

It's been a good thing for the area. No rising crime well run. If done right, it can help the local economy. Do not expect that here. Snow in Florida. Yep. Rick says, it's better when you read Anthony's comments out loud. Should I do them in a voice or something? Brian says, geographically, you have one of the biggest footprints of any U.S. radio host. That is true.

That is true. I have a I have a the footprint that we have is probably one of the largest footprints with the fewest stations in the country. So, sure. If you could legislate morality. then Juneau would be the Holy Land. Oh, they're having snowball fights on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Yeah, I saw the pictures. My daughter's laughing because, again, she was raised in Fairbanks.

And she's like, people are losing their minds down in Florida over the whole snow thing and everything else. I mean, it's just crazy. I can't wait to watch. I mean, I. I hate to say this, but one of my guilty pleasures and the algorithm knows this now because I see it a lot. If I go on Facebook, I get a lot of those.

people driving on icy highways things where they crash and it's like a 78 car pile up and people do they just don't know how to drive and it's just it's it's well it's literally like the train wreck you can't look away from Facebook is giving me a lot of those videos right now. A lot of those videos. All right. Well, I see Randy's on the line. Randy is going to be, we'll talk with Randy here in a second.

See how much Randy I can talk about before we get back over to the legislature and Kathy Giesel, et cetera, et cetera. The Michael Duke Show, CoventSense, liberty-based, everything on radio. you guys ready to uh to do this thing let's get to it here we go public enema number one oh wait sorry enemy, public enemy number one, which makes more sense. On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. Okay, welcome back to the show.

This is the morning. You ready to go? All right. We are... Just a little bit away here, we got the last two segments of the show here this morning, and I want to talk a little bit about what's going on in the legislature, what they're saying, and Kathy Giesel's comments on the executive orders from President Trump, but... First, let's go to the phones. Randy is on the line. Let's see what Randy has to say. Good morning, Randy. What's your thoughts today? Hello, Michael.

You often talk about the possible demise and extinction of the PFD, and you kind of may be right. You know, the trend seems to be going that way anyway. But I, on the other hand, have often advocated for a secondary backup PFD that I call the Hammond bond. And I think that the legislature should enact it so as to be a placeholder. for the PFD concept because the thing that I advocate is a mirror image of the original classic

1980 PFD program that Hammond originally wanted, you know, before they adopted the 1982 style. Right. But this thing would be you just pay $5, you buy this Hammond bond, as I call it. And every year thereafter, that bond will pay $50 per year as long as you're a resident. And then the next year, you can buy another one, and it would gradually increase.

so that the ultimate effect would be that long-term residents would get more of Alaska's finite money than carpetbaggers or... transients are you know newcomers and such and so I think and if people want to find out more about her to see what a Hammond bond certificate looks like all they got to do is google Hammond bond

1980 PFD, and they can see a picture of it. Well, Randy, I guess my main question is, because I know you've talked about your Hammond bond in the chat room on the program here for quite a while. But there's a reason why we had a 1980 style PFD and then ended up with a 1982 style PFD is because it went to court and the Zobel decision said that other one.

doesn't pass the smell test constitutionally. So how do you propose that your plan, which is similar but must be different somehow from the original Hammond plan, how do you propose to get that past the whole Zobel test? Well, my proposal is a mirror image. You know how everything in a mirror is exactly backwards from what you see out there in real life. The original 1981.

treated people differently. A 20-year resident could get $50 for every year of his residency, like a 20-year guy had been here 20 years, he'd get a $1,000 PFD. But someone that was only here a year, like the Zobels, who were the ones that challenged it, by the way, they were only here for about a year, and they'd only get $50. That made them mad, and so they went to court. But mine starts out at the very beginning of the program equal.

Everybody, whether you're a 20-year resident or a newcomer, you can buy a Hammond bond for $50, but then you move forward, and every year you can... buy another one and you start accumulating these Hammond bonds and they gradually every year it pays you more and more. If you've been here 20 years and you've got 20 Hammond bond certificates, you get $1,000 per year every time, every year that rolls by.

It's an interesting thought. I don't think our legislature would ever do anything like that, but it's an interesting thought. I think it would work. And I'd be interested to see what the... I'd be interested to see what if any legal challenges came out of that, because, again, it is you're right. Your change is, is that it's a purchase and it's voluntary.

uh versus being automatic so maybe that would fit i don't know but i just don't think our legislature has a force you know i know what brandy why don't we just go back to why don't we just go back to what the statute says why don't we just do that Well, the reason is because if we went back to the statute, that would cost, you know, the state about, you know, well, much more than a billion dollars. It wouldn't cost the state. Only 100,000 people signed up for the Hammond bond the first year.

it would only cost a state $5 million, which is only one-half of 1% of the billion-dollar cost of the... of a cut PFD. Now the statutory would cost like about $3 billion. There's no way we can afford it. The problem is, Randy, is it wouldn't cost the state $1.5 billion. The money is there. It already belongs to the people. That was the intent.

You go back to the language of the writing of the original PFD, of how it worked out. You look at the whereases. You look at what the debate was about. That is the people's money. They're taking money that was supposed to be given to the people as part of their payment for being resource owners. And they're taking that money. It wouldn't cost the government one and a half billion dollars. It would force the government to live within its means. That's the difference.

It would force the government to live with it. It means that's basically ill-gotten gain. They should not be getting more than 50% of the draw from the permanent fund. They should not be taking more than 50% of whatever the earnings reserve is. for any given five-year period, and they're doing it. That's the problem. That's how the government is overspending because they're taking money that doesn't belong to them.

Yeah, if you mandated the statutory amount paid, it would probably force some cuts, but I think it would also force the government to impose... an income tax on hardworking blue collar workers like myself. And I don't want to have an income tax. But Randy, that's inevitable. A tax at this point is inevitable. If you think it isn't, you're kidding yourself.

If you don't think that some form of tax, whether it's an income tax, a sales tax, a head tax, whatever, if you don't think it's inevitable based on the current trajectory, you are kidding yourself. So the question is, should people... You may be right. It may be inevitable, but I don't want to rush it. Well, but should people have access to their own money to do what they want to do with it and be able to invest it, save it, give it away, squander it, do whatever they want with it?

Doesn't that do better for the economy than having the government plan out and take it and take that money out of the economy and then inevitably build up their spending habit to the point to where they then have to have a tax?

Shouldn't we be stopping it sooner rather than later? Well, I agree. Well, I agree with you. I like to have my own money. That's why I don't want a tax. I don't want an income tax because I can use my money better than... than the government can in most cases i mean the government needs some money of course for roads and everything else you know i grant them that but i want to minimize the take if possible and uh i don't want an income tax imposed upon me and uh

And therefore, I only want the I want to keep it. But it's not going to but it's not going to stop it. Randy, Randy, it's not going to stop it. Taking the dividend is not going to stop that tax from happening. That's the thing. You are emboldening. You are feeding the beast. If they didn't have it, then they'd have to come back to the people and say, well, we need a tax. And then I think the people would be more likely to stand up and say, hey, you've got enough. And that would stop that.

Basically, what you're doing is you're putting off the inevitable. It is coming and it's happening. And you have a chance to stop it now where down the road, once it's gone, you won't have a chance. And they'll have built up such a tremendous spending habit and so much, oh, we've got to do it now. We've been doing it for years. We've got to continue to do it. So now you have to pay.

You're just emboldening them. That's the problem. By giving up on the PFD, you're emboldening them. Now, I wish I had a path forward on the PFD. I wish I could see a clear road where it's going. I wish I could see a clear road as to how to get back to that statutory. But as I said earlier, I just don't I don't see a path forward on getting back to the full statutory PFD at this point. You know. It's, you know, it's crazy. It's crazy.

Donna Arduin, in fact, in the chat room says, I believe cutting the PFD enabled the coming income tax. It did not keep the income tax from happening. Cutting the PFD created the Leviathan dependency. That's exactly the point I'm trying to make here. All right, let's get back to the legislature. So first and foremost, I just have to chuckle because I remember back in the day when Kathy Giesel, I remember when she was pro-energy, pro-PFD.

Remember that ad where she was stealing her husband's wallet across the table? Does anybody remember that ad where she promised to have a full statutory PFD? Do you remember those days? Wasn't too long ago. She was pro-mining. She was small government. And now look at her. She has never seen a program she didn't want to fund. Define benefits. She wants a... She wants to find benefits to come back. And it's going to do so great for us.

She wants to increase the educational funding. I mean, she's aligning herself with the big spending Republicans and Democrats in the legislature. Remember back in the days? And then she had this to say. about President Trump's executive order. She said, I think it's important to us to think about the fact that we're not a colony to be pillaged. Who said anything about pillaging?

She said, by throwing open all the regulations related to resource development, we could be jeopardizing our lands and our waters. I mean, she seems to forget that the vast majority of land in the state is owned by the federal government. They can do whatever they want on that land. Right. I mean, they can just do whatever they want on that land. So but it's it's just.

to poo poo the idea that resource development and to throw out the regulations and to start fresh is maybe, I don't know. I just, what happened to, what happened to who hurt you? Right. What, what did you, when did you. What changed you, Kathy? Again, I still remember that ad where you stole your husband's wallet across the table. I thought it was a great ad. And yet today, you're 180 degrees from where you were. What happened to you?

Well, the legislature is now in session and they're lining out their priorities as we knew they would. And we already knew basically what the priorities were. Right. We already knew that they were going to want to talk about increasing education. They want to reform the retirement plan to make it a defined benefits plan. They want to... You know, do something for the Cook Inlet gas, probably some form of royalty relief or maybe, God forbid, a subsidy or something like that.

They want to talk now they're talking about election reform. That's one of the this is one of the first times they've really come out and said that's one of their highlights is election reform, primarily in election reform, primarily. They want to eliminate the signature requirement on absentee. They want to make it easier to vote. And in my opinion, make some of the mail-in options less secure.

But one of the things that they said at the very end is that they want to pass a balanced budget. Now, how they can say this with a straight face is a... A little disconcerting to me. I guess it goes back to the whole Kathy Giesel used to be one way. Now she's another. Lawmakers said on Tuesday, this is from the again, Iris Samuels and. Sean McGuire of the ADN. Lawmakers said Tuesday that new revenue measures were unlikely to be considered this session.

meaning that the state's budget process will likely be shaped by the limited fund sources. New revenue measures unlikely to be considered this. Now we have a one and a half billion dollar deficit. Now it's with a full PFD. But even if you take out the full PFD and you make it the 75-25, it's still a significant, we've still got a significant problem here. But we're not going to spend savings.

They don't want to go to the Constitutional Budget Reserve, first of all, because it requires a supermajority, and that would mean the cooperation of the minorities in the House and the Senate. And they want to do everything in their power not to give the minorities any opportunity to really have a say.

Because right now they've got these bipartisan majorities on both sides. They're going to try and ramrod stuff through. We're back to where we were four years ago when the minority was treated like redheaded stepchildren. Shut up and sit down and we'll do whatever we want. But the majorities in the house are super thin. So there's some opportunities there to pull some, peel some people off.

Anyway, they said there's no new revenue measures this year, which, okay, well, that doesn't preclude them from next year. And they said it was unlikely. They didn't see it was impossible. They just said it was unlikely to talk about new revenue measures. Then they go on to talk about the permanent fund dividend. Dunleavy, of course, is calling for the $3,900 statutory PFD. And, of course, lawmakers in both bodies have basically said that it's a non-starter for them.

They go on to talk about how last session the Senate adopted the 75-25 rule. And the majority members said they would likely be back to a similar statutory change this year. But the voice of reason, Burt Stedman, the walrus. Burt Stedman said that even providing a dividend equal to 25% of the earnings, which would equate to a PFD of over $1,400, would be challenging. It's just what Brad Keithley said. 75-25? Good luck with that. More like 80-10? 82-10? 85-15?

82, 18, whatever it is. 85, 15? Even Bert Stedman said it would be challenging. He said there'll be some debate above it and below it. Andy Josephson. who's leading the operating budget process in the House, said the size of the dividend could be impacted by whether lawmakers approve a sizable increase to the state's education budget. Who pays? You pay!

A large increase in funding for schools would mean a smaller dividend. Because who pays? We all pay. That's what we're doing right now. We're going to pay for it all. All that stuff that you were so happy about voting for your favorite Democrat or big spending Republican out there. They were going to give you a moose in every pot and a chicken in every oven or whatever. Yeah. Well, you won't pay for that.

We're going to continue talking about this in the next segment. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty Bay's Free Thinking Radio. Listened to by more staffers in Juno than any other show. Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're gonna be best. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show.

Randy, I'm so tired of this. Okay, Randy, it's a faux tax. About that. It's a pseudo tax. Does that help you? When I put the word pseudo in front of it? It has the effect of a tax. Maybe it's not true to your definition. I mean, it fits Webster's definition, but maybe it's not true. But it is a pseudo tax. Does that help soothe your confidence, Randy? The effect is the same. Oh, man. Okay.

taking the PFD is a tax and people with the children are being taxed the heaviest. It's criminal. Yeah. You got three or four kids, your family's being affected the most. And they take the PFD and everything else and it's going to GCI and state workers retirements. That's a big chunk of it.

Just scrolling through here. David says, does anyone think Giesel will run for governor? Or will Lisa Murkowski resign early and appoint her son, Giesel's son, as a replacement? I don't know who Giesel's son is. Sun is. I'm scrolling through here. Brian says that her comments are a pretty damning indictment of Alaska citizens. Yeah, I mean, I think so. Like, we can't be trusted to...

You know, to do things in a clean way without Uncle Federal Uncle Sam standing over our shoulder telling her how to do it. Okay. Sorry, I'm going through here. Time for some iced coffee and broccoli after Randy's call. Iced coffee and broccoli. There's something wrong with you, man. Iced coffee and broccoli. I mean, I love broccoli. Don't get me wrong. It's probably my favorite vegetable, but...

I'm just thinking of two things that probably do not go together like peanut butter and chocolate is probably iced coffee and broccoli. Hey, Randy said pseudo tax is good. Okay, Randy. Then every time I say the PFD tax, you can say, you can in your mind say that I mean the pseudo tax. Okay. Call, call it. Bryant says, call it a trans tax. That's the correct term. All right. Wow. Going in offer by the Anchorage Teachers Union is an across-the-board 15% salary increase for one year.

Wow. I mean, I've seen a 15% increase over a three-year contract where it's like five, five, and five, or three, three, and whatever. But a 15% increase in one year? Whoa. Dude. Wow. I've just, that was their start. Now, granted, you always start high and hope you're going to get somewhere, but a 15.

Nobody is obviously reading the room on that one. No one is reading the room to be like, you know, I mean, all this stuff is going on. The economy's down. Things are failing. Inflation's high. What do we need? 15% raise. Okay, good. We'll go. We'll run with that. We'll run with that. Yeah. Yeah, it's a trans tax because it's a tax on the transfer of funds. That's what it is. It's a trans tax.

Yeah, we need an intervention for Rick. I agree. I agree with that. I think, I think, I know, I mean, Rick was trying to make a point that after that call, he needed, that was what he needed. That would have been better than the call. Is that what you're saying, Rick? I thought it was a good conversation. But, man, just trying to get over the fact that now I can taste coffee and broccoli in my mouth at the same time, and it's icking me out.

Two things I really like and definitely not together. J. Lynn says, increase in any state wages is criminal. Yeah. I just I just I don't I don't know how to I just don't. Nobody's reading the room right now. Well, they're state employees. We've got to increase their wages. Why is anybody in the private sector getting a raise?

Are we all struggling out here? Are we all trying to... Does Eddie... Why? Makes no sense whatsoever. All right, we got to jump back into it. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready already? Let's get this done. Let's do it. One final segment. If you haven't shared the show, shame on you. If you haven't liked the show, why don't you like me? Come on. Again, 60 something people here and only 34 likes or hates or whatever. Come on, people. Love me.

The Michael Dukes Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry. Not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew. I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show. You are missing out. If you are not in the chat room, and you can go back and watch the show on Facebook if you want later on and see most of the comments. But...

Man, there's some great comments in the chat room this morning when we simulcast the show on Facebook and YouTube and Rumble. You can go out there and look at it. David Boyle, who's a friend of the show, education advocate, writer for Must Read. He says there's a new offer from the Anchorage Teachers Union. The going in offer from them is basically an across the board 15% salary increase for one year. That's just year one.

15% increase for one year. Is nobody reading the room? Is nobody looking? Let me just wet my finger here and stick it up in the air and see if I can see where the wind's blowing. Is anybody... Not checking the 15% increase in a single year? Well, we've got to because, you know, they're the public employee service. Hey, look, I don't care who they are.

Can we afford it right now? That's the question. Not to mention the fact that teachers in the Anchorage School District, which is where David's talking about. Not only do they get great, you know, a decent, solid salary, the district also pays $25,000 a year in health insurance for them on top of that. That must be that new common core math. I mean, this is all right. I'm sorry. Let me get back to the legislative stuff because we're going to run out of time.

So we were talking about Andy Josephson basically saying, you know, the dividend is going to be impacted by whether or not we increase the education budget. And what's their stated goal? to increase the education budget by how much? Well, Loki Tobin's talking about, what's she talking about? A $1,900 BSA increase, which is just under $600 million. $600 million? Token. Token. Lobby. Lobby token.

Loki Tobin said that the Senate majority had yet to settle on the exact size of the funding increase, but she saw a $200 million increase, which Dunleavy said earlier this year he could support, as a starting point. The existing budget is $1.2 billion for education. Education is the largest. It's the biggest thing. That's it. $1.2 billion.

For how many students again? David, how many students in the whole state? It's 127,000, right? 127,000. Somebody with more time on their hands than I have right now. Divide 1.2 billion by 127,000. Just curious. That's the starting point. The 200 million is the starting point. Remember, she wanted nineteen hundred and sixty three dollars, I think, is what the number was.

There's almost $600 million increase. And that's not just a one-time thing, folks. That's forever. Moving forward every year. Moving forward. Now, one of the things that has been kind of a sticking point is many of the conservative members have said, well, we can talk about funding increases. They're not opposed to it, but they should also be tied to metrics and policy changes.

So we can make sure that we improve. I mean, we're at the bottom of the barrel educationally in scholastic achievement, right? We're like 48 out of 50. on like math and reading and so we came up to like 46 on one of them i mean but we're down at the bottom we spend more than almost any other state and we're at the bottom and so they're like well okay we could talk about funding increases but we also need to talk about

ways that you're going to improve this outcome we're not just going to give you the money carte blanche blank check you're going to show us how are you going to spend it what are you going to do how are we going to get to these things Well, Bill Wilkowski said, well, wait a second, the education policy debates, those should be kept separate. I know there are a number of policy bills that people want, but I think with a lack of funding, it's really critical we address that and address that first.

$1.2 billion for 127,000 students, 10 grand of students. Oh, I'm sorry. It's less than that because only 108,000 are in brick and mortar. $108,000. So we're already spending $12,000. But no, no, we can't talk about those achievements. We've got to get the money first.

Bryce Edgeman said the House could try to pass an education funding increase early in the session in an effort to provide stability to school districts across the state that are looking at shuttering buildings and cutting positions. Because this whole thing has been orchestrated. And I realized this when I served on the borough assembly in Fairbanks. This whole thing has been orchestrated so that the budgetary process for the school districts...

And that the contracts from the unions for the school districts have put a mandate in that if you don't have something in place by X number of times, then you have to issue pink slips to notify the people that they probably won't be retained unless the funding is found. I mean, it's this process where the unions know because they need to put pressure on the legislature.

Because the school districts don't have enough money on their own and that they need that state funding and that they can't get their budgets done before a specific time frame. So they put in a little addendum that said, you know, you've got to give our teachers pink slips by such and such a date, which is always before the budgets are finished and always before the legislature is usually done with their fault or all.

And then they are able to parade those pink slips around in front of the public, take them to borough meetings and go and say, look, they're laying us off. It's all theater. It's all theater. It's all carefully orchestrated and has been planned over the years. They've slowly.

pulled this whole thing together to where they can utilize it as a way to put pressure on both the local governments and on the state government to get all the funding they need, because otherwise, look at all these teachers who are going to be laid off. I mean, all those pink slips that go out, it's...

It's a fraction that actually get laid off. Why? Because they use it as a weapon, as a bludgeon to beat the public into submission. Why would you want to fire teachers? Nobody wants to fire teachers. But there's this thing called income and outgo, right? I mean, you got it. So now they're talking about trying to pass it early in the session. Oh, we'll see what happens with that. Then we get to energy.

I don't have enough time to do all this, do I? No, I don't. We're getting to energy. Here's the phrase that jumped out at me. Anchorage Republican Rep Mia Costello, the House Minority Leader, said the 19-member minority was still formulating its policy goals. But, she said, the minority Republican caucus is opposed to import natural gas.

was opposed to the likely need to import natural gas, at least for the short term. We will do everything we can to prevent that. Reid, we're going to spend whatever money we have to so we don't have to import gas. I'm sorry, ladies. I'm sorry, gentlemen. That's dumb. I would love Alaska gas. I want Alaska gas. But it's got to make economic sense. How much money...

Are we going to continue to pour into that to avoid the fact that we need gas now in 2027? I mean, we're 18 months away from needing gas. What, you know. 20 months away from... The caucus is opposed to the likely need to import natural gas, at least for the short term. I just do not understand. How much is it going to cost us? How much is it going to cost us to be emotionally tied to that mess? Then they talked about elections. Again, they want to open up.

They want to remove the witness signature from the absentee ballots. They want to expand 30 day early voting. They want to. That's a grab bag of bad stuff. And then, of course, they talked about the defined benefits program. Kathy Giesel says, hey, you know, it's going to cost us $46 million a year, but it's going to also save us $70 million a year in costs associated with staff turnover. Oh, I want to see the numbers on that.

Prove your work on that, Kathy. I want to see that. We're going to continue. We've got more coming up tomorrow. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Freethinking Radio. Be kind. Love one another. Live well. I mean. On Tuesday, Giesel foreshadowed the argument she would make in favor of the retirement system overhaul.

Though the new pension system is expected to cost the state $46 million annually in new expenses, it was simultaneously expected to save the state more than $70 million a year in costs associated with staff turnover.

and filling vacant positions now that's either one in part because you've shackled them with golden handcuffs and they can't leave right or but i mean again show me the money show show me how you get show me your work show me how you got there i i haven't seen a secondary fiscal note on any of this have you

It's not Mia's fault. Somebody just said Mia's a big disappointment. It's not Mia's fault. That's the feeling of the whole caucus. Sarah Vance echoed something similar when she was on the program here not too long ago. And we argued about it. this is not just a mia problem it's not just a single person problem there's a lot of there's a this is the majority of i mean i'm sorry it's the minority but it's most of the minority this is what we're going on

This emotional thing of, I just, I can't, I mean, I can't wrap my brain around it. I can't wrap my brain around it at all. All right, coming up on Friday, I meant to mention this earlier, David Codria from the War on Guns is going to be joining us. War on Guns and Firearms News and Guns Magazine. He's one of the guys that broke the gunwalker deal, the Fast and Furious deal. He's going to be there. All right, my friend, we got to go. We will see you guys tomorrow, 6 a.m.

Be kind, love one another, live well. The Michael Duke Show. Radio Skin. And now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.