Wednesday 1/29/25 | Sen Robb Myers | Former Rep Ben Carpenter

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.

Live around the world on the Internet at MichaelDukeShow.com. And across the state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Good morning, my friends, and welcome back to the... Big radio program. Oh, man. A little bit of cold. There's cold going around everywhere, even here in the studio. I got a bit of a cold, apparently. I woke up this morning.

with a head full of stuff and uh ready to go uh here for our discussions today we're gonna be joined in just a moment um by uh rob myers who is uh oh balderdash i just realized that i i screwed something up uh okay Hi, how are you? It's me. Have you met me before? I'm a hot mess sometimes. I just realized that I thought Rob was coming on at six and Ben Carpenter is coming on at seven. And now I just realized.

that uh i've got them both scheduled uh uh for seven so uh you know hey it uh yeah yeah i'm i'm just just realizing that uh I'm not perfect. You know how that is? I'm just realizing that. I'm just realizing that I have done stuffed up the goose. All right. Well, we're going to be talking with either or maybe both Ben Carpenter. And Rob Myers today to discuss all the situations that's going on in the legislature.

I'm going to see if I can get Ben to come on a little bit early. Otherwise, maybe we'll do a round robin. I don't know. I don't know. It is what it is. Let me see. This is the worst part. I don't have a producer, so I have to type and talk at the same time. We'll see if I can continue to do that. And apparently, no. The answer is no. The answer is no. I can't talk and type at the same time, especially when I'm thinking about something else. Okay.

Excuse me. All right. So today our discussions are going to be about our discussions are going to be about the legislature. And what they're planning and what they're focused on here in this early part of the session and what the overall goal will be.

for this entire session. We might also, since we've got a little bit of time here in the morning, before we get our guest because again this is what happens when you try and schedule stuff while you're while you're driving um and uh so i apologize But we will talk a little bit about the complete and total meltdown of, well, I guess everybody.

in the state of alaska over this reduction in federal grant funding now yesterday a judge issued a stay President Trump's executive action to put a brief halt on grant and federal spending. for grants and other, what do we call it? Sorry, man, the cold medicine has not kicked in yet. At least then I would have an excuse. And other... funds that he can decide where they go essentially and so uh

I mean, people just started losing their minds. Even here in the chat room, one of our perennial naysayers, Harold, got in here and said, this is going to gut the whole world. And it's going to be horrific. And, you know, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. The world is going to end. That, I mean, that was kind of, and that was kind of a. That was kind of a, you know, a mild version of what some people were saying out there. I mean, it was pretty horrific.

So here we go. We're watching what's happening and we're taking a look at it and we're like, OK, the federal judge has stayed that for until Monday. So. Nothing is happening now until Monday, and I'm sure that they're going to be working hard around the scenes, behind the scenes, around the country to try and... put some kind of permanent stay on this. Now here's my first question and this is the same question that I have asked in the past when it comes to federal shutdowns.

Because this is the same kind of argument that we're seeing when it comes to the, you know, Congress doesn't do its job. The federal government will shut down. Oh, you know, the pain, the Murgatroyd, Murgatroyd. Right. I mean, it's a it's a whole it's a whole. If we have become so dependent on the federal government for everything that we do, for... every aspect of our daily life as some of these people are are saying um then uh if this is what we're gonna then

We've got a federal government that's too large. In fact, I heard a statistic yesterday. There was some discussion on impact of. It was a discussion on the impact of illegal workers and some other things, but it had an interesting statistic and it talked about. In the 1900s, early 1900s, when we still had a large immigration push in this country in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the federal government's spending made up about 3% of GDP.

overall and so there wasn't a welfare state there wasn't a lot of things because they were trying to compare they were trying to compare immigration from then till now And somebody was trying to compare the influx of illegal immigrants to the influx of legal immigrants. from the late 1800s early 1900s and one of the points was well is that at that point the federal government's spend was about three percent of gdp today it's 36 almost 37% of GDP. When the federal government...

When the federal government is so large that it accounts for one third of your overall spending, you know you've got a problem. You know. You know you have a problem. When a state like the state of Alaska has become so dependent, slavishly so, so dependent on the federal government. that every aspect of the state is called into question, we have a problem. We have a dollars and cents problem, and I've said this many, many times.

We are, you know, and I used to say we were becoming a dependency state. It's not, we are a dependency state. Article in the ADN from Michelle Theriault Boots talking about the. The the the the freak outery that's going on around the state of Alaska. The headline reads catastrophic for a state like ours. Catastrophic. That's the kind of words they're using. One of the most interesting. sentences, and it's a standalone sentence all by itself. Because again,

When I first started looking at this, OK, I'm like, all right, so it's grants and federal funds and for nonprofits and everything else. But I mean, it's just, you know, and it's temporary. So how, you know. Well, even I didn't understand. The nonprofit sector in the state of Alaska is one of the largest industries in this. When you have nonprofits as an industry, those are two words that you'd never thought you'd slap together in a sentence.

Nonprofits and industries. The nonprofit sector employs 35,302 people in the state directly. That's just the direct employment. making it one of the largest industries in the state. I'm sure if you tacked on all the people who are getting paid indirectly, through contracts or anything else. It probably is the largest industry in the state. And then there's another gem in here. It says in 2023, about $32 billion in federal funding went to Alaska recipients. That's according to...

Foraker Group, which is a nonprofit association. The largest share of that $32 billion goes to the state and local governments and private companies. Now, nonprofits only receive about 2% of it, which is about just over $579 million, over half a billion. But $32 billion in funding. The state's GDP is about $65 billion. So half of the state's GDP is funded. By federal grants and that kind of, I mean, I mean, surely nothing could go wrong with that, right? Absolutely nothing.

And then remember the statistic we were talking about with Brad Keithley here a couple weeks ago? where we were talking about how much of a deficit spend it is. And, you know, the federal government, which we cry about and complain about all the time, their deficit spend is somewhere in the mid-20s. Right. 20 percentiles. Yet in Alaska, based on the budgets and that one and a half billion dollar, we've got like a 30, 35, 36 percent deficit spend. So.

First of all, the federal government is on the hook for half of our GDP, and on the other half, we're deficit spending? I mean, can you? Wake up and smell the coffee from where you're at. If we are so, there is something basically flawed. If we are so dependent on federal dollars at every level, and this is just, again, the grants and stuff like that, this is madness. Absolute, but nobody sees it. Nobody cares. I mean, we care. Obviously, we're a very small group. This show is not, you know.

mainstream. Not everybody in the state of Alaska is listening to my ranting, but I mean, we've been seeing it and I've been warning about it for years, but it just keeps getting worse. And yet here we go. Half of the state's GDP. Is federal funding. When the largest, you know, the largest employers, the largest industries in the state is the nonprofit industry. Might that be because.

You've created such a dependency state that you've got to have more and more nonprofits to take care of the dependency state. I mean, I will remind you, as I am oft to do. I will remind you that when the state got its first royalty check back in 69, 70, That was it was a billion, nearly a billion dollars in royalties that at that time, the state budget, the just the state spending, the overall state budget was about a hundred.

Roughly $160 million. $160 million. Today we're in the $5.5 billion range. And again, it doesn't account for all the federal spending. The federal spending is another half of that. It's another six or seven or eight billion dollars, about 13 billion dollars. And. And we don't think that that was going to be a problem. We don't think, you know. And now everybody's everybody's having a freak out. Everybody's having a freak out. Now, again, the judge has.

The judge has put a stay in until Monday. We'll see. I will say this. I will say this. I'm pretty impressed. with what the trump administration has done so far i mean again you all know that I have my concerns about the president and I have everything else. But I think that this guy has been sitting around for the last four years being really pissed off about seeing whatever legacy he'd put up get torn down, being besmirched.

being shot at being prosecuted and i think he's like you know what the gloves are off I'm just going to go ahead and do what he had promised to do in the first go around. Last time he surrounded himself with a bunch of yes men and some swamp people and everything else. But I think that. He just spent the last four years being agitated by this. And he is moving so fast on so many things that the media doesn't even have a chance to try and spin it. I mean, that whole Columbia thing. I mean.

You know, it was over in a couple hours. The news media didn't even have time to gen up its outrage yet before it had moved on to another, you know, to another story. But here we are. And, you know, we'll get into this in the next segment because I think Ben Carpenter is going to try and join us a little early here. But what are we holding the money back from? There's a few things that I heard yesterday that made me go.

What? What? What are we doing? All right, we got to go. The Michael Duke Show, Cop of Tense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. we'll be back with more in just a moment don't go anywhere hoping to hear from ben carpenter here in just a few minutes What is that? Common Sense. Regularly heard on American Radio. Michael Duke Show. Okay, everybody want to break? We're all good here. I'm going back here. Nonprofit industrial complex. That's one of the comments that I saw this morning from Kevin.

that's kind of it right i mean when they've created an industry you know they create the industry where it's the yeah money is one hell of a drug All right. I'm going out. I'm going down here. Murgatroyd. Heavens to Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd? hemorrhoids to murgatroyd what the what do you believe in state sovereignty i do i believe in the concept unfortunately the state of alaska doesn't believe in it

Again, we've become such a dependency state that we've ceded much of our sovereignty over to the federal government. And they like it that way. That's what's going on. All right. Melody said, that is really messing with a lot of people. Food banks, school lunches, farmers markets and farmers grants, WIC, homeless shelters. My sister runs farmers markets in Southern California. That affects a lot of people.

Why do they need a federal grant to run a farmer's market? Just ask it. Why do they need a federal grant to run a farmer's market? Isn't it where you just rent a parking lot or a plot of land and you set up and why do you need a federal grant? See, this is the thing that nobody's asking. Why? Why do we need federal funds for X, Y, or Z? That's the million-dollar question. Now, Melody goes on to say later, she goes, I agree.

uh with me but the wick and the school lunches does this have anything to do with all the illegals that have been brought into the usa getting benefits i'm sure in part it does i mean not as probably a direct benefit but it is an ancillary benefit But the problem is the government has become so involved in every aspect of everything. This is it. You know, this is it. Okay. What do we got here? I'm going back through the... I'm going back through my earlier comments. Um...

Chris said, you went hard on unnamed legislators that would not come on the show the other day. No way you can bump Rob. No, I don't want to bump Rob. I actually. You know, here I was fat, dumb, and happy thinking, okay, great. We've got a guest in each hour. It'll be good. We'll have a great conversation. It'll be easy peasy. And then I realized that I had accidentally, accidentally.

You know, did my thing there. OK. Frank says, you never want to talk about the control the federal government has and the loss of state sovereignty has over Alaska with legislatures, nor candidates or commissioner. Look, we've talked about state sovereignty in the past, Frank. I mean, we have talked about it repeatedly.

And I have said that we have ceded a lot of our state sovereignty out because we walk up with our handout and say, please, sir, may I have some more? Please, sir, could I have another bowl? Your delicious money that's causing me to do whatever you tell me to do. I will be your big... I mean, you know what? That's what they're saying.

We have given up state sovereignty here in the state of Alaska. I mean, the Western Sagebrush Rebellion, many of those places have given up their sovereignty, even though there's still a fight going on about that. State sovereignty is important, but we don't have any because we're suckling so hard on the teat of government that we just can't be bothered. Getting that yummy milk. Oh, man. Just hit us with it all the way through. All right. Let me look here. What else? Where are we going?

I'm scrolling down here. The why is simple. The more addicted to government we get, the easier and easier it gets for them to keep bumping the price without resistance. Standard crack dealer strategy. pretty much all right here we go jumping back in the michael duke show common sense liberty base free thinking radio let's do this

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. All right. We're continuing ahead. Good morning. Good morning, my friends. Thanks for coming in and joining us. We're talking about this federal freeze and the effect on Alaska.

Because it is, again, it was going to have a big effect on Alaska yesterday. I was having a conversation offline with one of our favorite people here in the chat room. This is the commentary. Basically, and in reality, you're shuttering the federal component of the Alaska economy. Alaska's welfare office is about to receive thousands of new dependents. Just can't stress how bad this is going to bet. This is an immediate crash of Alaska's economy. The next month will be nasty.

This is it. Basically, this is going to be a huge, huge thing. i pointed out this is just for grants and assistance and not for regular payroll but he also pointed out that thousands of payroll programs are tied to that the majority of federal dollars to any state is through the asap grant program that was just suspended

And so, again, doom and gloom, doom and gloom. These are all the things that are going on, and this is all that's happening. But let me make my point one more time, just for those of you in the back. If we are so dependent on the federal government and on federal spending for living in Alaska, This is a larger, overarching problem. This is the same argument that I made, again, when we were facing these government shutdowns. You remember the government shutdowns where they wanted to put up...

These metal barricades on the mall in Washington. They wanted to put barricades around the Washington Monument so that you couldn't, you know, walk up to it and take a look at it. They wanted because, you know, well, the Park Service is closed. Well, I don't really need the Park Service to hold my hand to go walk up and take a picture of the Washington Monument.

Or the Lincoln Memorial or whatever. I mean, I could just stand there and look at it, right? Oh, no, no. You've got to have a park ranger there just to guide you. And so here, stand on the other side of this barricade. Because we're shutting it down. I mean at that point again if we are so dependent on that the problem is even bigger than I feared. And again seeing some of these numbers and for those of you just joining us we were talking about this article.

by Michelle Theriault Boots in the ADN that's saying this is catastrophic for the state. That's a quote from... That's a quote from somebody here. But, I mean, that's catastrophic for the state. That is from the Lori Wolf, the president of the Forica Group. While the scope and dollar amounts of the grants affected was far from clear on Tuesday, federal grant money courses through almost every aspect of the Alaska economy.

According to Lori Wolf, the president of the Foraker Group, which is a statewide nonprofit association. A freeze, even temporary, would be catastrophic for a state like ours were so reliant. We're so reliant on, we rely so heavily on federal dollars. In 2023, $32 billion in federal funding went to Alaska recipients.

with the largest shares going to state and local governments and private companies. Nonprofits, which we'll get to in a second, non-profits received about $579 billion, or 2% of the overall money that got dumped in the state in alaska federal grants pay for everything from salaries of homeless outreach workers to airport

harbor port construction and improvements to operating shelters for domestic violence victims to preschool programs to tribal health care entities i mean just it's everywhere it's just a never-ending stream of money that they've stolen from somebody else to give to us The nonprofit sector employs 35,302 people directly in Alaska. That's not indirect. That's just the direct employment.

If you counter the indirect, I'm sure it would be probably the largest industry in the state. Folks, this is a wake-up call. This is just grants. This is not overall federal spending, okay? This is not overall federal spending. This is just grants from the ASAP program and everything. What happens if something else catastrophic happens? What happens if there's a run on the dollar? What happens if the brick...

You know, Brazil, Russia, India, China decided to take a run at the dollar as the world reserve currency. What do you think is going to happen then? This is just a sneak peek, a preview of what could go on. And it hasn't even happened yet. It's been stayed. They announced it and they immediately stayed it about 10 minutes before the thing was supposed to go into effect. What do you think is going to happen if if something.

If we don't stop our frivolous ways, what do you think is going to happen? Now, several of the examples that they used yesterday, which I just, I mean, it was just like, wow. Because the DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, and the OMB have been going through the books. They've been going through what the Biden administration had already committed to.

And one of the reasons why they had to throw the roadblock up on this and put the brakes to it was because they were finding all kinds of crazy, crazy things. $37 million to the World Health Organization. Which again. I'm not a fan of the WHO. I'm not a fan of most of those UN type organizations anyway, but the WHO, especially after what happened during COVID, not a fan.

But here was another one. $50 million to buy condoms for Palestinian men in the Gaza Strip. Okay, first of all, I mean, they must be getting busy. $50 million in condoms? I mean, wow. We're going to repopulate the Earth, Mars, and half of Jupiter. $50 million. And why? And then it turns out... According to Must Read, they've got a post here that they've reposted from the Jerusalem Post four years ago.

Palestinians first started launching flaming kites and other improvised explosive devices like condoms and balloons tagged with explosives into the South. Booby-trapped balloons and condoms began to be carried east towards the south, carried by winds coming off the Mediterranean. While the use of kites...

Seems to have disappeared. Scores of balloons and condoms with explosive devices attached to them continue to land in schoolyards, agricultural fields, and highways. $50 million in explosive delivery devices to... the Palestinians. 50 million? Just think about that for a minute. Why? And this is just two of the most high-profile egregious examples of what's going on. I mean, what is going on? All right. I see that Ben Carpenter's joined us. I'm going to try and we'll keep Ben over.

uh with rob in the first segment or so so we can get a little bit more out of ben here uh because uh it's uh It's a crazy time. Let's jump into it here. Ben Carpenter joins us this morning for commentary, discussion, and more. Hey, brother, sorry about that. This is what we get when I'm talking to you in my car and I don't have my calendar in front of me. I was sure that Rob was on at six and you were on at seven, but thanks for coming on board.

Oh, I get it. He's a sitting senator, so we'll adjust the schedule for him. That's exactly what I did. I was like, no, no, this guy's important. He's a politician. Ben, feel free to comment on this whole grant situation if you want before we get into the legislative stuff. But this whole meltdown and the fact that, I mean, it's really opening my eyes to a lot more things. I know that we've become a dependency state.

We're so, you know, we're so beholden to the federal government and you can see it in just the. outrage and the hysteria that's come out of the potential for these grants to be shut off, even for a week, even for 10 days. It's a total freakout. So feel free to comment on that before we jump into the rest of it. Well, I think that it's evidence that people don't know where money comes from. Money comes from economic activity in the private sector. Right, right, right.

This whole battle that we have going on within the Alaska state legislature over the permanent fund, the earnings in the permanent fund, and the propensity of our national budget to spend from debt. there is a linkage in ideology and thinking, right? We don't know where money comes from. We're just okay to take it from the permanent fund. Right. We're okay to take it from future generations. Right. That's.

Last I checked, our federal budget is about 27% of it is financed. It's debt. So 27% of our dollars that come to us. from federal government for our state budget, our future generations are on the hook to pay for it. So we're literally saying we've got to have all of these grants. We've got to have all of these things. And I read one article that said, hey, look, there's going to be some real direct economic impact by this, you know, at the local level.

by this move by Trump to stop the money flow from the Investment Act, the IRA, right? Well, who's paying for it? Like that thing's financed from future dollars. that are going to be created by our children and grandchildren and grandchildren right 34 trillion dollars in debt our service on our on our debt at the federal level is more will be more in this next fiscal year for than our defense spending

Right. Just servicing the debt. Right. Just servicing the debt. Just servicing the debt. Right. Not paying down the debt, just servicing it. So this whole concept of, well, we've got to have grant money to live. to continue our way of life, right? This is killing our country because we cannot pay for it. We aren't willing to pay for it with taxes from our own lives.

Our own livelihoods. We're not willing to do that. Right. The current users, they want to force it onto future users. Your children and grandchildren. That's why we'll finance it. Our children. We're like, no, we can't afford it. But they can. Yeah, I'll gladly take a taco today if I can pay you tomorrow with my children's money while I eat the taco today. Right. And that's where we're at. And this push in the Alaska state legislature, the push to.

constitutionalize a payment from the permanent fund itself and get rid of the earnings reserve account. This is nothing more than getting access to the seed corn to make sure that government gets its due. right make sure that it gets funded and it's again uh um putting all of your eggs in one basket or in this case two baskets oil and uh um permanent fund earnings that isn't tied to, in this case, economic activity within the state of Alaska.

Right. And that's what you really want your legislature to care about is economic activity. Right. Which they could give to. I mean, they don't even care. They don't even care if they're eating the seed corn because most of them are like, I probably won't be here. So it doesn't matter. As long as I get my program today, I'll pay you tomorrow.

With future money that I don't have to worry about. That's what it's all about. If they're even thinking that far ahead. Yeah, which, yeah. Ben Carpenter is our guest. The Michael Duke Show continues. We got more coming up. Don't go anywhere. We're going to continue with him into the next segment, and we're going to try and do a three-way conversation here with he and Rob Myers in the first segment of Hour 2.

And we'll see how that goes. That should be fun. We'll continue the Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Bay's Free Thinking Radio. If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Duke's On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekly morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. All right, Ben Carpenter is our guest here, ready to go.

uh getting things getting things ready uh i gotta say ben you look a lot more relaxed and happy than the last time i talked to you um it must be in some ways it's in some ways it must be a bit of a load off like

man, now it's somebody else's problem. That's the pressure. That's the pressure of a text message is, hey, you got five minutes to get on the show. Oh, okay. That's it. No, but you just, you look so relaxed and say, you know, I didn't, just so you folks know, I didn't tell him you got five minutes. I asked him if he could come on early, please.

Don't paint me. Don't paint me as a badder guy than I already am, screwing stuff up in the middle of the night. But, yeah, I mean, this is – and it's got to be a little freeing now to be able to actually speak your mind without fear of – offending somebody's delicate feelings and having reprisals and everything else. I mean, now you can kind of lay it out as you really see it. Well, not if my future still includes service in some way.

I mean, people do have memories. And so if I'm a jerk now. Oh, well, I'm not saying. Yeah. And I'm not. I don't think you're I mean, I don't think that's the kind of person you are. I just think that, you know, there are ties. And I think you would agree that. You know, a lot of times you can't call a spade a spade. You can't you can't, you know, necessarily call people out when you're in the legislature with them because of decorum and, you know, work. But now at least you can be.

kind you don't have to be ugly about it but you can be blunt and say this is the problem and here here are some of the people that are helping to perpetuate it or creating it or facilitating it and without being ugly about it I mean, yeah, it happens. Maybe, maybe a little bit, but I'll be honest. I kind of feel like I'm the same person now that I was in the legislature. It wasn't that I was pulling punches and not asking tough questions of everybody.

or pointing out the obvious to everybody, including my own caucus and others, while I was in the legislature. So I really don't feel like I'm going to operate any differently than I did while I had an official title. but the truth is we're we're going to deal with our financial um structural imbalance one way or the other well that's true yeah that's what i've said for years i said look you're gonna have to face this eventually

Either you're going to grab the brakes and pull it to a screeching stop, you know, inches before the precipice because the bridge is out, or you're just going to pour the coal to it and say, here, hold my beer, watch it, we'll make it across this gap. And that seems to be the...

current trend for the last 15 20 years is hey hold my beer crack out just keep throwing the coal into that box and crack the throttle wide open we'll leap the gap don't worry about it it's gonna come crashing down at some point I watched the State of the State speech last night and I was pleasantly surprised and did a little bit of looking on my own. Governor Dunleavy had said that we had a population increase.

and i thought not strange that's not what i have normally heard or knew to understand to be true and it is true we have had a population increase in the last couple years But it's not in the population that is actually working and producing in the state of Alaska. It is in 65 plus age group. The 0 to 17 and the 17 to 64.

we've seen a decline in the number of people in the state of Alaska. So while we have an overall larger population, it is a population that requires more federal spending for Medicaid, Medicare type situations. I say Medicare, not Medicaid. And it is not producers that are actually in the workforce. The largest sector of our growing population or a growing economy, drum roll, is government sector. Right.

Right. Yeah, Brad Keithley broke this down for us here about three or four weeks ago where he talked about this. He goes, because the news story came out, oh, we actually had a popular. So he went back and looked at it and demographically he found the same thing. Who's moving out? The working age private economy folks, the people who are moving in are the retirees, the top 20% who aren't interested in paying taxes.

but love to get all that government lucre in the form of, like you said, Medicare or other subsidies, and just don't want to pay for anything else outside of that, don't want any form of taxation or anything. And it's forcing the working class, working... age people out of the state government and those who rely on government are taking care of themselves at the federal level and at the state level that is what our local argument over permanent fund earnings boils down to

People want to see their livelihoods continue. And they're going to make sure that that happens by using permanent fund earnings to continue state spending. And that's, of course, a self-licking ice cream cone, because once that permanent fund is gone, then what do you do? Well, you either have to implement taxes, some form of taxation or something else, or...

As you pointed out earlier, you could always combine the earnings reserve and the corpus of the fund itself and then have the ability to draw from the corpus of the fund, which again is also a self-linking ice cream cone because now you're eating the seed corn. for what's going on um it's uh it's crazy stuff all right uh ben carpenter is our guest

I see that Fairbanks continues to come back to us about 30 seconds early every day the last couple of days. So hello, Fairbanks. Sorry about that. We're about to get started. Here we go. The Michael Duke show. common sense liberty-based free thinking radio ben carpenter's our guest let's do this thing here we go no no i meant right now here we go

The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry. Not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew. I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show. Okay. Continuing on now, Ben Carpenter, our guest, the Michael Duke show. All right, Ben, let's.

Now that we've whipped that pony for a little bit here, let's get on over to what's going on in the legislature. The legislative finance, Lexi Painter and Company, came out with a presentation here a couple weeks ago that said blatantly on its summary. That 75-25 is not going to cut it. It's not going to make it. Even if all you wanted to do was hold steady on the spending from 2025 and not do anything else, just hold the line.

7525 was not going to cover it. And yet now we've got a brand new proposal. They're fast tracking a brand new proposal for nearly half a billion dollars in increase to school funding through the BSA. There's, of course, talk about the defined benefits program, which.

It could cost upwards of, you know, 50, 100 million dollars a year every year, if not more, because we really haven't seen true hard financials on that. And then, of course, the issue on natural gas in the Cook Inlet and what is the state going to do there? subsidies, royalty relief, et cetera. What do you see when you look at this? Well, Alexi's a smart guy. And he did this work at the beginning of last year because...

We presented this type of an outlook and a projection in House Ways and Means last year. This is nothing new. I don't know why anybody would be surprised about it. The 25-75 and the 25-75 split of the permit fund earnings. And the propensity for growing government and the demand for additional spending in key areas like education is going to like those are two trains heading towards each other. And there's there's no off ramp like.

it's gonna come to a head sooner or later and what's going to give is the permanent fund dividend and we'll see additional government spending. That's most likely course of action from my perspective and we've known that for a couple years i think this is why you've got unions and others in the in the public sector that are clamoring so hard for additional spending is because they know

that this this chunk of change that's sitting out there that gets spent on dividends is gonna go away and they need to get their portion of it before it goes away before it's claimed and earmarked for other for other things they want to get their piece of it. And that is, I mean, it's clear as day to people who've been studying finance. They want to get theirs while the getting's good before it all goes away. Right. That's right. Otherwise they've got to convince people that they need taxes.

for additional spending that's a conversation that 49 other states in the nation have not our federal government because they can just go into debt but 49 other states They got to say, hey, you know what, if we want additional spending on education, then we're going to have to raise taxes somewhere. And then the people say, well, I'm not sure I want to pay more taxes. We just short circuit that conversation in the state of Alaska.

We just say, oh, we don't have to pay taxes. We'll just take it out of the permanent fund. And, of course, the beat goes on because this has been the... actions by the legislature for years and as we pointed out before and as you just alluded to in the last segment and in the break that that disconnect between the public and private economy has become so stark and real every other state in the nation the legislature

body in that state, whether it's a legislature or an assembly or whatever they call it, has to care about what goes on in the private sector because that's where they get their money. They have to care about the private sector and make sure that it's as robust as possible because that's where they're drawing their pay and their funding from. In the state of Alaska, it's so disconnected that it just don't matter. Don't give no never mind.

Right? Oh, public economies or private economies doing good or bad? I don't really care. As long as the public economy is doing well, as long as the employees are taken care of and we got new monies for whatever it is, we're fat, dumb, and happy. And it'll continue on. And it'll continue on until it doesn't. Then what happens? We're placing our hope right now in growth in the oil sector.

that might be a fairly good bet. We can point to history and it shows that from time to time, we have some major booms. And oil has saved the day, provided enough revenue through taxes to pay for all of the desires of our state spending. We even were able to squirrel some money away into our CBR, Constitutional Budget Reserve. many years ago, right? But hope's not a plan, right? We know that oil revenue is volatile.

We might have four years now under the Trump regime of positive developments and positive growth in the oil industry. But what happens after that, right? Do we get another pro-Alaskan? uh oil and gas development uh president and regime in washington dc or do we get more of what we've had for the last eight years um four years of um Biden, I should say, and then the eight years of Obama. So it's clear to me that we're short-sighted and it's a vision problem because not enough Alaskans look at...

private sector economic growth as possible, right? There's some significant challenges that we have. Yes, energy being one of them, and we're trying to rectify that, but it's a vision problem we don't see ourselves as either a wanting to grow economically we've got oil and gas we got taps why don't we have a petrochemical industry in the state

where we're actually producing something with our oil that's coming from taps add-on industries value-added products right why aren't we doing that well it's a vision problem it's a cost problem it's a labor problem i mean there's all there's a lot of inputs here that cause cause things to um to not pencil out economically but what what are we doing to solve that right so the legislature isn't focused on that type of economic growth it's focused on growing government

on taking care of so you're looking at people going to the legislature and saying i'm not socialist but i'm going to support socialist policies we're going to put all of our eggs in the oil basket and the permanent fund earnings basket And then wonder why we don't have more jobs and economic growth in the rest of the state. Well, it's because part of your thinking here is promote government spending.

that permanent fund earnings thing that would go out and help small business, help agriculture, help your, help your entrepreneurs. We're not going to give that to you. We're just going to give it to government. We're gonna make sure government gets their own.

We're not going to infuse cash into our private economy. Right. When they talk about employment problems, they're really not talking about employment problems in the private sector. They're talking about employment problems in the government sector. As long as those people are good and we can retain. those people and those people don't leave that's fine everything else though is is you know

It's an afterthought if it's thought of at all. And you keep, you mentioned the oil boom. And I keep remembering that old bumper sticker that we used to see after the pipeline that said, you know, you know, God, please grant us another oil boom. We promise not to piss this one away because that's.

where we're at i mean we're like those i i often think when we talk about things like this i think about that scene from pirates of the caribbean where they have to flip the boat over so they run back from one side of the boat to the other until they roll the boat over because that's where we're at we're at feet Easter famine. Oh, my God, we're over here. Oh, no, we're over here. Oh, no, we're over here. Nobody is thinking about, well, maybe we should, you know.

be stable. We should put this money away. We should live within our means so that when the good times are here, we put money away. When the bad times are here, we can live off of what we put away during the good times instead of just spending it. I mean, you're right. In the early 2000s, we put, you know. almost 20 billion dollars in the cbr because things were you know riding high you know 2000

Five, six, and then even into seven and eight, even though we were having a hard time, oil was still going crazy. They were still putting money away. But then in the next 10 years, we spent $14 billion, $16 billion out of that CBR. We just spent it all. There was no fiscal discipline and has not been any fiscal discipline. You've got about two minutes here, Ben, to finish up your thoughts for this hour.

Yeah, that's a good example. The absence of that cash in the CBR is the example that when times are good, we spend and grow our government. our demands, our things that we think we want to the scale of the revenue at that time. And then when the revenue is no longer there because it's volatile source, then we're in a pickle. We're like, okay, now what? So it's not a stable system. We're going to replace that oil to a certain extent with permanent fund earnings.

And right now, we actually are limited to spending just the earnings. If you have more earnings one year, then it's similar to having more oil one year. If you have less earnings one year. It's similar to a decline in the price of oil and less revenue from oil. What we're talking about now is getting rid of the earnings reserve account and just drawing from the permanent fund to pay for state government. That means if you've got...

earnings uh great one year then good you're paying you're paying for state government from earnings but if earnings are bad one year you're going to be paying for state government there's not going to be a pfd by the way you'll be paying for state government out of the seed corn of the corpus yeah some people are okay with that i think most alaskans are probably not okay with that right no you'll draw it down and then there won't be anything and then once that's gone then what'll happen

I mean, and you're like, well, it's $70 billion. Yeah. Well, that won't last long. We went through $14 billion in like four or five years. So it's not going to last long for sure. Ben Carpenter is our guest coming up next. We're going to include Rob Myers in this discussion. We'll be back. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're here. Ben Carpenter is our guest. I have to look at something here. Don't go anywhere.

This is what happens when you're running three different things. Okay. That all looks good. That all looks good. All right. Yeah. And I just don't think, Ben, you know, they're just not they're not thinking about it. It's just it's it's it's not even an afterthought for these people where the money comes from, who pays, how do we continue to do that?

It's just, it's not there. It's crazy at this point that this is where we're at. And then to see, like, this Grant thing that Trump did on top of that, that... just shows you again how dependent we've become on all this crazy, crazy stuff. We're living a lie. Even fiscal conservatives in the state are living a lie. We think we're opposed to taxes. Who isn't? Who isn't opposed to pay more in taxes? Nobody likes to pay taxes, for sure. We're also opposed to living without government.

for certain for certain things right for schools for roads for um police force yeah except if you're um you know extreme libertarian you you'd be okay with living without those things but For most of us, even a libertarian wants courts and police, courts, police and military. They want those things. They believe that there's a there's room for limited government. I mean, I guess unless you're like an anarcho whatever, you know, but most libertarians believe.

that there's a place for those things the problem is is that when they grow beyond their scope and their means and you get mission creep which is where we're at today yeah that's that is the thing the thing that every state every every um population that has a government has to deal with on an annual basis you can't create there is no way to create a process where

it just takes care of itself and you don't have to participate in and struggle every year to keep that government tamped down it's the nature of bureaucracy to grow and to protect itself and it's the nature of socialists to try to grow and have the government take care of them right so

So from a conservative perspective or from a fiscal conservative perspective to say, well, we don't have any, the solutions that we're going to have can't include any sort of taxation, right? And for the state budget, we don't pay taxes. we don't pay in income taxes or sales taxes we're relying on industry to pay taxes

At the end result is the consumer actually ends up paying taxes. So whoever the oil industry is selling their oil to, they're the ones that are actually paying our taxes, which is a good thing if we're exporting our oil. The point though is the structural imbalance that we have and the government growth that we're experiencing is because the electorate is disconnected from, largely, from the cost of growing that government.

So why do I care if I don't have a thousand dollar PFD every year? Well, those who have got good jobs, it doesn't really care. I can see it go away. If it means that I'm not going to have to pay taxes, then great. But the byproduct of that. is a government that's going to demand taxes in the future.

When that permanent funding runs out. And at that point, you're like, you've already created it. Right. And never looking at the unintended consequences of the impact of a PFD in the economy like you talked about. Entrepreneurs creating more jobs, you know, buying things, buying power.

Investing in stuff, you know, all those things, ignoring all of those things as well. Ben Carpenter is our guest. I see that Senator Rob Myers is now in the in the green room. Let's bring him on board here and say good.

morning to him good morning sir how are you hey morning michael were you were you trying to make me a morning person it's not all the way successful i i know i mean was i did i panic you when i was like oh man i now i'm gonna ask rob to come on early and uh uh ben says it's only because you know you're a sitting legislator that i i asked him instead of you you know because

Do I need to stand up so I'm not a sitting legislator? Take a bow. Take a bow, take a bow, take a bow for sure. All right. Well, we're going to we're going to hold both of you over for the first segment because I wanted to get it. I was trying to get a full hour with Ben. um because i want to get a little bit of that um you know i'm out of the thing attitude kind of thing i want to get some of that stuff uh i want to get some of that stuff

go through. Rob, I see your message here. We're going to remind people that the public testimony on education funding is today. And let me highlight and copy and paste this. If you want to testify today and that's at five today. Is that right, Rob? So house education. They're going to start at 8 a.m. today. They're going to go until 10. Then they're going to start up at 5 o'clock tonight again. Senate education is taking testimony on Friday. starting at 3 30 p.m okay

All right. So I'm going to go ahead and type that in there. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and post both of these up into the chat room. These are email addresses where you can comment at the House and the Senate education committees and the 800 number. if you want to testify so uh not that i think that they're going to be listening to you but you know because we've seen how that's gone uh so far uh on the on the thing

Rob, we'll go ahead and we'll get started with you here when we come back onto the radio. And then we'll get Ben's commentary on your commentary as well for at least that first segment. And we're going to tackle the education component first. And so this is now Ben feels totally free. He can just rip up anything you say. Right, Ben?

That's that's where you're at. I still want to be friends with this guy. I know. I know. Well, you know, and I said, I think I said it in the description. You know, you guys are probably two of the most conservative, especially fiscally conservative legislators.

uh who've been in the state uh in the state legislature and you've you know you've addressed a lot of these issues either what you guys are the ones that have talked about that public and private divide in the economies and everything else so this ought to be a

This ought to be a good discussion. So you guys hold the line. I'm going to pull you both back into the green room right now as I get ready to go. Folks, please like and share, like and follow, subscribe, ring the bell, do all that kind of stuff. It's time to... It's time to come back to it. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. Let's do this thing. 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. Fathom it.

The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the great state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Hello, my friends. How you doing? You ready to go? Quick housekeeping. Mat-Su area expecting blizzard conditions. Blizzard conditions until 9 a.m.

Tomorrow. Now, mostly this is happening up towards Isabella Pass and Paxson, but expect some cold weather. Wind chills as low as 40 below. Lots of snow. Also blizzard conditions for the Kenai Borough, Kodiak Island. Lake and Peninsula Borough, accumulation of four to nine inches, winds gusting up to 40 miles an hour and more. So Bristol Bay, all you guys, it's going to be.

This is going to be a rough couple days for you guys. So just in case you were wondering, spring has not sprung. It's time to go. All right. Joining us this morning, we're continuing our discussion. We were just talking with Representative Ben Carpenter.

uh former representative ben carpenter who's come on to tie and talk with us a little bit about the federal freeze on grant spending uh the habits of the legislature and more we're also joined this morning by senator rob myers who comes on to talk with us about those things as well so we got a little bit of a three-way round robin here let's get started we'll start off with uh we'll start off with uh rob myers who i know wants to talk a little bit about the big elephant in the room

which is the education component, $460-something million in proposed increase in education spending. by Rebecca Hemshoot. And that, of course, is being echoed across the aisle in the Senate as well. Rob, tell us a little bit about your thoughts on this. I mean...

What's going to happen? We're changing it in the formula. Why are we doing it in the formula? Is that the best way to do it? Can we afford to do it? Who pays? Hit me with all of it, and then we'll get Ben's thoughts on it as well. Yeah, so... Michael, to start off with that $400-something million increase, keep in mind that's only year one. With that bill that's out right now, it actually goes through year three. There's two more increases along the way.

Two of which are already straight dollar figures baked in. And then there's a third. And there's also an inflation factor packed in as well. So it's going to go up more than just the dollar figure. That's the straight dollar figure that's in the bill. By the time you get to the end of it, it's you're looking at more like six to 700 million extra a year. So that's.

going to be that's going to be big and so you know who pays is is of course a large part of that you know um my my questions with this is you know is is the goal here to fund a system

or is the goal to educate kids? And that's what we have to talk about. Last night in the State of the State of Speech, the governor was pretty clear that if we're going to talk about education, we're going to talk about funding we're also going to talk about policy because you know we have have seen over the years we know that policy is what drives academic improvement and you know the governor highlighted the reads act

which of course is huge in a lot of ways but there's other issues as well. I think a little bit later I want to get into how our funding actually and our funding formula and things like that encourage us to spend money in ways that don't help our kids.

you know but that's you know these are the sorts of things that we have to start talking about um and you know there was a there's comments you hear every now and then of well you know if we can't get our funding then eventually we're going to sue because The state constitution says that it's the responsibility of the legislature to establish and maintain a system of public schools. That is true. However, there was a court case.

in 2007 called Moore v. State of Alaska. And in it, the Superior Court judge at the time, who is now actually a federal judge. she made an interesting comment in there and she said okay yeah funding is part of it but your standards and your achievements are also part of it because while you can't expect every student to achieve perfectly every time if you have a your students by and large failing then that is also saying that we are not establishing and maintaining public schools and so

We have to be talking about this policy stuff because it's not just about funding. It's also about performance. And if we don't take that into account, we're failing our kids. And that opens us up to a lawsuit. Now, here's the question. We already know roughly who's going to sue if they don't get funding. Who's going to sue if we don't get performance? Until that threat is out there. this argument is going to be a little bit lopsided.

Right. Right. Something for us to think about on the conservative side. Right. Because the Constitution says we have to we have to maintain an education system, but it doesn't give a funding number number. And of course, it's not just about money. It has to be about results. And that's been part of.

the problem ben your thoughts on this because again the big problem here is that we spend we're in the top five in the nation i think uh as far as education spend per pupil and yet we're in the bottom on the achievement. So is there a possibility that somebody could step up and say, that's also not fulfilling our constitutional mandate? Well, it's a really interesting point that Senator Myers brings up, and I guess I hadn't... put the two opposing but equally important concepts together.

um sue for money or sue for results right and who's who's looking out for the results well that should be the legislature but it also should be local school districts we like local control so our school boards in school districts who are failing They're the ones that actually bear the burden of improving results because we want local control. So if you want to point a finger at somebody who's failing, point a finger at the school board in those school districts who are asleep at the wheel.

Because they've got the control and they've got the power to improve the policies that are actually impacted here. You can't, from a school district's perspective, you can't say, hey, look at our outstanding teachers. We're doing it every day. and yet come to the legislature and say hey we need more money because we need better teachers we need more teachers right so um i guess you can try to say that but at some point in time you're like right the teachers we have are not not adequate

And therefore, that's part of the results. And we need more money to be able to hire better teachers that the argument is kind of circular. I also want to point out that. This goes into the way we do things is bakes in a way to waste money. We're having a conversation over the BSA, the base student allocation, right?

it is just a formula that was established to provide predictability to funding at the at the district level right it doesn't say anything about results or policies or anything like that in the bsa so to To think that the legislature is going to just naturally include results in that conversation is nonsense. It's not part of the system that was built. Now, what we should be pointing out is...

student enrollment was baked into the BSA. Average daily membership matters to the BSA. So if you've got a school district like Kenai Peninsula Borough School District who has students who are it's a declining population who are actually attending the school district then you ought to be asking the question are they actually hurting for money like are they hurting for money because

the the bsa isn't correct or is the bsa correct they're just they're just the bsa is just giving them less money because they've got less students right are they having to live increase your increase your student population meaning get more competitive and lure um provide a reason or a um a value that parents recognize and they bring their kids back to the school district and then the bsa funds the school district appropriately because you've got students there you're basically saying

at the state budget level, we recognize that the policies that the school boards are putting in place and that the administration is running is running parents and students out of the school, and we're just going to keep funding that. right i'm hearing two things here one it seems like

Utilizing the BSA as the funding mechanism where you increase it may not be the best choice here. That's what I'm hearing from you in that regard. Rob, you're nodding, and so I'm assuming you can comment on this in a second. But the second thing that you said is, you know, this is on the law.

local school districts. Well, then, shouldn't it also be if the local school districts refuse to produce the desired results if they're not doing the things that are necessary? Isn't it then incumbent on the legislature to put those standards in place? Then quickly. Yeah, this is a double edged sword. This is why I voted against the Reeds Act is because I think that the pressure.

ultimately needs to come at the local level. I don't really want to see a state that's completely in charge of our education system. I want local control of schools. This is fundamentally where I think the control of our schools needs to be. But, and this goes back to the taxpayer issue, right? By and large at the state level, people are not paying taxes for school.

We do pay local property tax and that goes to our school. So if you're going to have a conversation at the local level that says, hey, we need to pay more in property tax because we need to pay more. for our teachers well then you're going to have an engaged population at the local level that doesn't want to see their property tax go up here you've got a conversation that we're going to take more of the dividend to pay for education and people are like

Eh, okay, I guess that's what we'll do. But it has no tie to actually fixing the problem. It's just going to spend more on the current problem. Policy change is the problem. That's what needs – policy change is a solution to the problem. That needs to come from the local level. That needs to come from our school boards solving that problem. Rob, your thoughts on that. Is the BSA the best choice? Should it be totally local control? Should there be accountability baked into any kind of funding?

Well, I mean, we've got to work with the school boards in some way, you know, because as the legislature, I mean, we're here four months a year and, you know, we can determine overall policy, but we can't. deal with with day-to-day operations you know we're talking about um school closures up in fairbanks and you know i think you you covered this a few days ago um and naturally i'm getting emails from from parents okay don't close my school

And I go, okay, I can sympathize with that, but I'm not in charge of picking which schools close. I'm not in charge of picking which schools are magnet schools. There's a push to do that with one of the schools up in Fairbanks. I'm not in charge of those things. Now, I can provide broad, or I should say we. here in the legislature can provide broad policy and talk about what we want overall. But we can't do the day-to-day operations. The Department of Education can't do.

day-to-day operations now we if you really want us to do that you know we can do that and we can abolish the local school boards and and move forward but i don't think that's that's the solution that people want here We're going to have to work with the locals and say, all right, guys, here's roughly what we want. And you guys are going to have to implement it. And yes, take...

take local conditions into account. We know that a school in Fairbanks is going to deal with different situations than a school in Kotzebue or a school in Sitka. So we're going to have to take those into account. But, you know, broad policy, you know, there's the old saying that, and I think Ben and I differ a little bit on this one, the old saying, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

If the legislature is in charge of the majority of the funding, the legislature is going to end up being in charge of the majority of the at least broad policy goals. You know, Alaska is, as Ben pointed out, Alaska is a little bit different compared to most states in this regard. In Alaska, for every buck of local dollars, it's about two bucks a state dollars, roughly. And it varies. that very significantly by school district of course you know some portions of the state

the unorganized borough don't pay local taxes directly into their schools. Most states around the country, it's closer to the other way around. And so that's a little bit more conducive to local control, even though the states do. tend to do uh some policy changes you know the reeds act across the states that was a that was a state level policy goal in the states that have implemented right

Ben Carpenter, Rob Myers, our guest. I'm going to hold Ben over if he's willing for just a short little bit more because there are some other fiscal things, non-fiscal things, non-funding changes it can be. And Ben actually has suggested a good one that I know that Rob.

has talked about so we're going to continue here in just a minute rob myers uh ben carpenter our guest the michael duke show continues uh common sense liberty-based free thinking radio don't go anywhere we'll be back with more in just a moment And we will return right after this. Our light, our guide. And our trusted friend. All right. Rob Myers, Ben Carpenter, our guest.

here on the program. I want a sidebar. Ben, can you stick with us here just for a little bit longer before I kick you to the curb? I can. Yeah. Rob? The other thing that I want to get into probably after we let Ben go is, again, going back to the formula and some of the changes that can be accounted for in here, because you've talked about it, we've talked about it. There used to be a mandate.

That, you know, 70 percent of the funding needed to go into the classroom. And now we're lucky if we get. If we get over 50 percent going into a classroom, it's usually it's in the 40s, high 40s or something, which means a lot of that's being sucked up by overhead and other things. Is the BSA the best mechanism for a funding increase? uh rob in your mind as of right now the bsa for unfortunately uh

has some incentives baked into it that encourage districts to spend money in ways that don't benefit students. And so if we're going to increase. the formula that increased the funding through the BSA, we need to take a serious look at the BSA and what it's encouraging people to do. It's baked in to encourage more buildings.

And that's one of the things that we're fighting right now is we've got more building than we have student. And the BSA encourages districts to keep the buildings around even when they don't necessarily need them. You know, you mentioned that old 70-30 split that used to be in the formula, in statute, and that got repealed somewhere around 2012 or so, I think. It was a while ago.

But what people didn't realize is even though it said in the statute, okay, 70% has to go in the classroom. In regulation, it defined what the classroom meant. And it said, well, the principal of the school. qualifies as classroom spending. It says the entire district's IT department qualifies as classroom spending. So should we go back to that model of 70-30?

Possibly. I think that's definitely worth talking about. But if we're going to do that, we've got to be a little bit more careful about defining what's in 70 and what's in 30. Right. Administrative overhead and other things, support stuff, should not necessarily be in the classroom. Ben, do you agree with that?

Is the BSA the best way to fund this? Should it still be one-time funding? I mean, you made the point. The BSA was simply a formula just meant to stabilize and give secure funding so that they knew what they were getting. Is it the best way to do it, especially if it locks us in in perpetuity? I think actually the opposite.

approach would be would be better let's have some competition and some justification for the spending that does occur every year so why don't why don't school districts come to the state every year with a audited audited books

and a plan for how they're going to spend their money. And that is what the legislature then looks at as far as funding is concerned. What the BSA is, is a socialist idea to just pigeonhole money every year and not even look at it. Not even look at the... results that's happening we just just spend money just here's what the numbers say we're gonna

allocate that to the districts and then the districts can do whatever they want well we're finding out the districts aren't aren't um making good decisions as far as results are concerned so turn this around get rid of the bsa have a process put in place where each district submits the correct financials, the necessary financials for the legislature to make a good decision on what actually needs to be spent for each one of the districts.

right we should be doing that for our rea schools because they don't have any local contribution we are the school board for for the rural schools and the non-unorganized boroughs So we should be having that kind of scrutiny for those schools. Justify the spending that you're doing. We would expect that of our local school board for organized boroughs. But the legislature is not doing that. So scrutinize what your plan is.

for spending and the results that you're obtaining from that from that spend for the process of of actually figuring out a state budget yeah i mean that to me that would make That would make a lot of sense. And as we look at this, I'm starting to be concerned that the BSA is not the answer for how to fund this at all, because, again, it locks us in. And as you say, it rabbit holes it and you never think about it again.

And especially if you put a connector in it to the peg it to inflation, it's going to always be creeping up and it's going to be a problem. All right, we got to go. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. I meant right now. Here we go. The Michael Dukes Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry. Not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew. I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show.

Okay, we're continuing now. Rob Myers and Ben Carpenter are guests. Rob, I know that you have talked about this in the past that... Ben has discussed some non-fiscal things, non-funding changes that could be done inside the schools, including More parental involvement. Parental volunteers creating an academic policy committee similar to what's going on in charter schools. Let's talk about that for a second. We'll get Ben's take on it as well before we let him go.

Right. Yeah. So one of the things that we need to be talking about here when it comes to policy changes is, you know, we need to be encouraging things in schools that we already know contribute. towards better academic achievement. And one of those is encouraging more parental involvement in schools. So Ben had a piece in a bill last year.

that was an interesting concept. It said, okay, for every neighborhood brick and mortar school, you will establish an academic policy committee inside of that school. And they're going to monitor student achievement. They're going to monitor the curriculum, things like this. And it's a group of parents, teachers, and the principal all together that work together to put those policies in place.

and and really create that cohesive team and cohesive vision inside of that school and you know i i understand a little bit of that you know two of my kids are in a charter school in north pole And so a friend of ours is on the policy committee and she keeps us updated as to what's going on in the school. You know, we recognize that, you know.

some people you know you got whether it's single parents or a two-parent working household things like that you know some parents don't have the ability to go in and volunteer at the school so i'm not saying that we should be requiring parents to volunteer but i think we should you know whether it's through the academic policy committee or through some other method uh we should encourage more parental involvement uh in the schools and because you know hey if i see

uh a parent in the school as a student you know even if it's not my parent you know maybe they know my parents and so you know i know that they're keeping an eye on me they're making sure that that uh i'm i'm doing what i need to be doing and that's gonna help both with behavior and with academic achievement.

These are some of the sorts of things. We've got some things that we were just talking about over the break with changes in the formula that need to be made. We need to make some changes into how we're spending things outside of the formula. And then we need to be talking about some of these things that...

really aren't necessarily driven by funding that that are you know kind of outside of that that that really need to uh need to be included to help improve our outcomes because if it's not If it's not outcome based in the end, then what's the point?

And I would agree with that. If it's not outcome-based, then what are we doing at that point for sure? Ben, charter schools have been held up as a prime example of what we should be doing. Their outcomes are great. You talked earlier about local control, this kind of idea. would give people more skin in the game and maybe open the eyes of some of the local parents to what the achievement actually is, right?

Yeah, getting local control in our schools is what's key. Central offices in the district are making decisions about funding. They're making decisions about curriculum. They're making decisions about policies. not parents making decisions. It's not the school board making decisions. It is incentivizing parents to just wash their hands of the education of their kids. And if you've got a parent who wants to be more involved, there isn't a way.

maybe run for the school board, but then you're going to have the NEA challenging you for if you've got thoughts that are different than what the NEA wants. So the duplication of what's working. is to look at the charter school model and say, look, it's performing well. What's the difference? Well, parental involvement is the difference. You're never going to get every parent to be able to participate, and nor should you.

want that, right? We're all different, but there's enough parents in each one of our schools that would participate and that would be able to contribute that over time. You're going to have a culture change in your communities that says, that's my school. It's my school because I get to choose. to be on a academic policy committee and i get to actually have control over the the funding of the decisions the curriculum decisions the policy whether we've got cell phones in classrooms

Give me a break. Is that something that needs to have state or school board level decision making on? Why doesn't the school and the parents of the school just say, hey, we're not going to have cell phones in the classroom. Keep them in the locker or whatever.

whatever policy you come up with, but we're not going to be distracted by cell phones in the classroom. This is a no-brainer. It's why parents pull their kids out of the school and go to a different option because the school district is inept. It can't keep up fast enough. And it can't make the decisions that the parents want to see, and so the parents vote with their feet. So get control. And another thing that's just human nature, you can't have responsibility for education without control.

So if you want parents to be responsible in the school district, you have to cede control. You have to empower the parents to have control over the results of the school, of the process, if you want parents to want to participate with the process.

make that academic policy committee part of the culture of our schools and look at the parents if the results of the policies that they put in place aren't working, well then it's not the school district's fault, it's not the teachers fault, it's the parents fault.

Well, that's what you want. You want parents to be involved and making the best decisions for their kids at the local level. Ben Carpenter, former representative here. Thank you so much for coming on board. We're going to we're going to. Keep having you back on, and we'll give you a full hour next time where we can kind of run free and do what we need to do. I'll make sure that I schedule you at the right time this time. So, Ben, thank you for coming on board.

Yeah. Good to see you. Good to see you, Senator Myers. Thanks so much for being part of it today. All right. Back to just me and Rob Myers here this morning. So, Rob. You've got you've got ideas here as well. We're talking about how the BSA may not be the best mechanism for this. Before we go any further, though, I do want to remind people that house education is going to be taking.

commentary and testimony today at 8 a.m and 5 p.m and the senate is going to be taking in their education committee 3 30 p.m on friday And you can send emails to Senate Education and to House Education at house.education.gov. Excuse me, houseeducation.akleg.gov and senate.education.akleg.gov. Or you can call the 800 number if you want to testify at 844-586-9085.

So those are things that we can participate in. But let's talk about some of the changes. I guess, Rob, if the BSA is not the correct way to fund or increase funding... Is there a better way, first of all? And then if not, what are the changes that we should be making to the BSA? Yeah, so kind of the way I've broken it down is you can think about it in three categories. There's changes that we need to talk about in the formula. There are changes to how we spend our money.

And, you know, some of it might be increased spending, but it's not necessarily having to do with the formula or with what's inside of the formula. And then there's some non-funding changes. You know, we just talked about the academic policy committees as one example. So within the formula, first off, the one that gets my goat the most is the school size factor. It's one of the multipliers in there. And effectively what that does is it says to a district, all right, if you have.

the same number of students and you put them in two little schools or two half full schools, we're going to give you more money than if you put them in one larger full school.

And that causes problems on both ends. It encourages districts to overbuild. And then when... we're in the situation where we are now where student populations are dropping it encourages them to keep more buildings open and put more money into buildings and less money into teachers and classrooms you know so that's that's one that we we need to address

You know, we need to talk about how we calculate our attendance. Right now, the ADM, the average daily membership, is calculated once a year. It's the average of how many students show up at a school for the first three weeks of October. Problem with that, then, is that encourages districts to say, great, let's get everybody into the school in October. And then after that, we're really not so worried if you show up. You know, you were just talking last week about the proposed.

teacher contract that they're discussing in Anchorage right now. And one of the things they were talking about is, hey, we want a boost if we have more students in the classroom. over a certain figure. I don't know what the figure was. And so a district can just look at that and go, oh, well, as long as they show up and they were going to count it monthly.

So a district can look at that and go, oh, OK, so that means that if as long as it's not October, if fewer students show up, I actually spend less money. I get the same amount of money from the state. but I'm going to spend less money. That's kind of screwed up on the incentive side, especially when we know that one of the biggest factors as to whether or not kids are actually going to learn and achieve is just getting a butt in a seat.

Just actually showing up, that needs to be something that we encourage. And instead, with our funding formula, we discourage that. You know, we talked a little bit about the old split used to be in.

uh in law that said 70 had to go in the classrooms but we were talking over the break that you know that they had even though that had been in law up until roughly 2012 um that uh really was neutered that provision was neutered in regulation because it defined classroom spending to include things like the the school principal do we need a school principal sure but does that is that what most people think of when you think of um

what qualifies as being in the classroom? No, I don't think so. So those are the sorts of things we need to talk about when it comes to the formula itself. We can talk about changes to what we're spending. You know, Sarah Vance and Shelly Hughes had the bill out last year, and I think they put it in again this year, although I.

Everything's been a little chaotic first week, so I might be off on that. To allow the school districts and the university to pool their health insurance with the state. And health insurance is a huge, huge cost.

for so many districts around the state and this would allow them to pool with the state get a little bit of a more volume discount and actually what maybe what's more important is it would uh smooth out some of the changes you know one of the benefits to having a larger pool is if you have a few people with large claims that tax the insurance company uh when you go back around to renew

uh they don't try to jack your premium is a huge amount it might go up just a little bit right you know as opposed to a small pool they jack your premium you know to pay for what they just had to pay out they jacked the premiums up significantly and fairbanks just went through that last summer You know, we need to talk about the teacher retention bonuses that the governor brought up last year. The Fairbank School District just told me they're very interested in that.

because hey how do we make sure that money that money that we're spending actually gets to the teachers well we pay the teachers directly you know we want to show we keep saying oh well we need to pay our teachers better we need to pay our teachers better but going through the bsa has shown that That doesn't always happen. So using those retention bonuses, that's one way to make sure we're paying our teachers.

We keep talking about retirement and we've talked about the defined benefits and how that's probably not going to pan out on the numbers side. But what we can do that we know does pan out on the numbers side is we can increase the employer contributions to people's DC plans, and we can put everybody into SBS.

Supplemental Benefit System. Basically that's the state's replacement for Social Security because the school districts and a lot of municipalities around the state opted out of Social Security. shoot back in the 50s. And getting them back in is very, very difficult. But we have set up an alternative to that. And we know the numbers work. We know that's not going to break the bank.

One suggestion I've had is, okay, let's reward some people for good performance. If a school is doing well on their test scores or some other performance measure. then let's throw them a little bit extra money that they can put towards extracurriculars. You know, give teachers and students an incentive to do well. You know, those are things that aren't necessarily in the formula, but can... be encouragements to to perform better um you know and then

you know, then you've got some non-funding changes. You know, we talked about the charter school model with Ben and how we can copy some of that with our regular neighborhood schools. But, you know, there's some other... Other pieces as well that, you know, I think we're getting close to a break here. Yeah, we're coming up. Yeah, let's talk about that, because I think non-funding changes.

Should be easy to discuss because, again, they don't have any funding mechanism baked in around them. So let's talk about that. Rob Myers is our guest. We're going to continue with him here in just a minute. Senator from North Pole. We're talking about education. and how do we fix it? And what does it ultimately mean for the PFD? That'll be up next. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Freethinking Radio.

Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. OK, we're in the break right now. Rob Myers is our guest. We're getting ready to to jump into this. If you had your druthers. Rob, and you could do, you know, however, whatever you wanted to do as far as this goes. I'm assuming the BSA wouldn't be your weapon of choice. What would be?

the funding mechanism that you would use. I mean, would it be, again, back to one-time funding, would it be something that could be, you know... sure fiscally sure or you know what what would be your answer if that was the case well there's a model regarding funding formulas that a number of states have started adopting. There's 10 dozen of them, I think, so far that have been adopting it in the last 20 years that I think we need to start thinking about.

you know we adopted our formula uh in current formula in the late 90s excuse me and we've tweaked it significantly since then um with the different multipliers and stuff and you know that that formula was based on all right how many students do you have we're going to give you a set amount per student you know and then we we tweak that by size of the school as i mentioned we tweak it by what part of the state you live in you know various things

Special education students require more resources, so we boost that. And one thing that some other states are doing is they're saying, oh, well, instead of doing it that way. Let's do it on. All right. Here's how much we're going to give your district. But then we're going we as a state are saying, OK, that district breakdown is going to be. taken care of a little bit in the funding formula. And it's going to say, all right, we're going to give you X amount of dollars, but.

this portion of that is going to go towards teacher salaries and benefits this portion that's going to go towards building maintenance this portion that's going to go towards student transportation this portion of that is going to go towards utilities and building maintenance. So no blank check, no blank check to just like, here's some money, go do what you want. We already do that with one piece. The student transportation funding is broken out separately.

from the the regular bsa and uh you know i think that's something that that we need to to look at open up that formula and say all right it's obviously not working because ever since that formula got into place our our student

our student achievement has been dropping. So we need to open up that formula again. And I get the benefit to districts for the predictability. Now let's keep in mind that you know we we've taken some blows against predictability in general over the last uh few years um one thing that i think people forget is that the pfd case basically said yeah we could violate the school funding formula and it won't matter

So, you know, because that applies across the board. Right. So, you know, these are the things I think we need to talk about in the long run. Given who's in the legislature right now, is that going to fly? No. It's not. So let's talk about these incremental steps that we can take right now to try to fix some of these problems that we have identified.

Quickly, we're going to sidebar for just a second before we come back to education when we get back out of the break. But this defined benefits bill, what's your prediction here? I mean, this thing seems like they're pretty certain that they're going to get this thing pushed through. But I haven't seen anything as far as fiscal note or anything that actually shows the actual cost of this. I've heard a lot of conjecture. What are your thoughts on that?

So it's too early for fiscal notes. Those will come out later in the process because they just got started. The bills haven't even had a first hearing yet. It's interesting. They're already throwing numbers around that are significantly different than the numbers that they had last year. And so I want to see where those numbers are coming from. They said last year it was going to cost a minimum of 80 million a year. Now they're saying, oh, it's only 46.

Last year, they said it's going to save us $6 million a year. And now they're saying, oh, it's going to save us $50 million a year. I'm like, those are big changes. Where did those come from? know i i mean in the grand scheme of things just looking at who's sitting in seats here now um they've got the votes for it they've got you know what 13 in the house or 13 in the senate they've got 21 in the house so if they want to push it through they can

What's going to happen when it hits the governor's desk? I don't know. What's going to happen in the process along the way as the negotiations happen, recognizing that it still has to pass the governor to pass? I don't know yet. You know, there's it's pretty early in the process. Well, we'll have to see, because, again, I am not I am not convinced that.

that this is the magic bullet that everybody says it is oh we need to stop the outflow we need to do yeah but it just it doesn't seem like i said that this is the magic bullet that's going to fix that And again, it shows them one more time how they're just focusing on what's happening in the private economy or in the public economy and not what's in the private economy, because that only fixes it for.

those employees at the expense of every other taxpayer in the state at this point. All right. Rob Myers is our guest. We're going to continue here. The Michael Duke show, common sense, Liberty based free thinking radio. Like, share, subscribe, ring the bell, do all the things in the YouTube and Facebook things that we need to do. Here we go. Let's do it.

The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. Oh man, he's so mean to me. All right. Welcome back to the program. Rob Byers is our guest. Rob, we were talking about some of the non-funding changes that could happen to the funding formula for the schools, the BSA. We talked a little bit with Ben and with you about creating academic policy committees like charter schools have. Speaking of charter schools.

How about maybe we get more of those? The problem is, of course, is that it's the local districts who I would argue are the direct competition of charter schools who are the ones that have to authorize that. I mean, there's a bit of an analogy in there somewhere. Yeah, so most states that allow for charter schools allow for a second authorizer, not just the district.

For most states, that's the state board. A few states set up a separate board at the state level as an authorizer. And then there's a couple of states that actually have the public university as the authorizer. That's an interesting model. But you're right. You know, if you have a district and you tell the district, OK, the money is going to either go to you or it's going to go to the charter.

You know, it still passes through the district along the way, but it's going to go to this charter and you don't really have control over that spending because it's in a contract. That is. direct competition and you're saying to the direct competitor, you know, you're going to authorize whether or not your competition gets to do business in effect. You know, it's kind of like giving Coke veto power over Pepsi's business.

You know, it doesn't make sense in the long run. You know, so that's something that the governor brought up last year. And he mentioned the state of state last last night. that he's going to be putting forth some education policy bills here soon. So we really haven't seen those yet, but I would not be surprised if that piece comes out. Ben was talking about a cell phone ban. And we're kind of starting to find out how significant that can be in terms of learning.

uh with within a school and also is significant within in terms of of uh behavior and socialization with this school too um now the state school board just came out with a policy here in the last couple of weeks has said we recommend You don't allow cell phones to be used during the school day. Wasn't a requirement, but it was a very strong recommendation. They're still leaving that up to local districts. And I know that that has brought up.

uh some there's some strong feelings uh on on that one um you know kind of that's kind of surprising to me so i was in high school in the late 90s early 2000s i graduated 2001. um cell phones were banned in my high school and i'm pretty sure it was just school policy wasn't even district policy just school policy um all they were worried about back then you know because remember we only had dumb phones you know it was that that nokia brick that everybody was carrying around

um that they were just worried about you know people being able to cheat during a test and you know it's gotten a little it's a lot bigger deal than that now you know with with smartphones and social media and everything um and you know teachers we're hearing stories from teachers that yeah you get the phones out of the school and all of a sudden you know students actually start talking to each other and they start talking to their teachers and

It actually kind of mellows things out and allows teachers to manage the school and manage the classroom a lot better. It's kind of kind of crazy. You know, you get rid of the phone and people start having face to face conversations. Funny how that works.

You know, and then one idea that we've had brought up is, you know, teachers having a little it kind of kind of goes hand in hand with that academic policy committee is teachers having a little bit more control over picking the curriculum because.

um you know different districts are better or worse at this but one complaint that we hear is some districts like to you know find the shiny new curriculum and change it out every couple three years and that right you know one that costs a lot of money right of course and two it really throws off teachers because

they get a curriculum and they have to tailor their teaching to that curriculum and you know once you've done it for a year or two you start to get a little better at it and you you find the pitfalls and you work your way around them um and then if you

You know, just as you're getting to a point where you're feeling comfortable with it, that's when they change it again. You know, and so, again, this is one of those policies of, hey, let's try to find, you know, it's not necessarily about what you're spending. It's about.

what you're spending it on. And if teachers are saying, hey, you know, we put this math curriculum into place about three years ago, we really like it, the kids are learning, their test scores are showing it, then let's stick with it. you know, let's give them some more say in that. And, you know, so that's something I think we need to think about. And, you know, that's one of those policies that, yeah, we can try to do some of that at the...

the state level here, but that one's probably handled a little bit better at the local level. Yeah. April Smith says the state actually is the one that requires the curriculum to be reviewed and updated every six years, but reviewed and updated is different than swap. the whole thing out, which is I heard from several teachers over the last couple of years that that has been one of their major points of frustration is that.

They get good at a certain curriculum and then somebody finds a shiny new toy and they're like, oh, hey, this will be even better. And so they swap it out at the tune of, I mean, it's millions of dollars to swap a curriculum. It's not cheap. to go in and swap a full curriculum with books and everything else. So, I mean, to me, that makes sense. If something's working, why would you change it if it's working?

And I don't think that two or three years is a long enough period of time to be able to figure out if it's working at that point. Right. You know, periodic review makes sense. Is this working? But it does not make sense if the answer to that question is, yes, it's working. no keep you know like okay great we found out it's working let's keep doing that let's not swap it out just just for the sake of swapping it out you know i mean it's you know we've got a small issue with that at the uh the uh

a slightly different version of that at the university level where you know every couple of years they come out with a new edition of the book you know and you gotta oh dang it i was gonna you know buy the the old book off of my buddy who took the class last year for 20 bucks and

now i got to go buy the brand new one for 100 bucks you know um but yeah if if something is working why are we going to swap it out let's let's stick with what works and let's take some more input from our teachers on what is working uh and and stick with that The biggest question, though, for this whole situation, the biggest question is, how do we pay for it? You're talking about half a billion dollars this year, increasing every year beyond that, right? Because, I mean, the way I...

Yeah, the way I read it is that that $1,800 increase, the first $1,000 is this year, and then $400 a year for the next two years. Is that $1,000, is that the $400 million, $400 and change, or is it the whole thing is $400?

hundred and change uh the whole thing together is around 600 okay so and then there and then there's also a second inflation factor that's that's packed in that bill currently they peg it to the piece yeah to the to the cpi right right for the next three years and so that's gonna that's gonna go even higher right um so yeah you're right how do we pay for that you know as of right now

Yeah, as of right now, the entire PFD is about $850 to $900 million, if I remember right. And so it's like, oh, okay, well, that's gone. And so the question there, of course, is, OK, well, what happens after that? Because we know that we're going to be back for another funding increase, you know, not too long after this three year step up is gone. And, you know.

there's there's comments i hear occasionally i've heard these you know since i first ran and there was a comment on the house floor just i think uh yes no two days ago about it you know is somebody you know says well can a pfd buy you a teacher Okay, maybe not, but let's think about what that PFD does that still does impact education. You know, we as a state, and a lot of this is federally funded, but we pay for school breakfast and school lunch.

for kids that can't afford it because, you know, it's kind of hard to learn on an empty belly. Well, you know what else can help you buy a little food? A PFD. You know, if you're involved in... band or an afterschool sport or you know some of these things that

you know some kids say is what helps keep them in school you know what else you're going to need you're going to need your parents to drive you around either before school or after school because there's extra time involved there gear equipment instruments i mean you need all that stuff all that stuff could be paid for with a pfd exactly exactly and so there are you know just just the fact that pfds help uh lead to a more stable home life because it's a stable income that

leads to better academic outcomes so you know these are the things that we need to be talking about here the the whole picture not again not just how much are we spending what are we spending it on How are we paying for that spending? All of that needs to get included in that conversation. And otherwise, we're shortchanging our systems and we're shortchanging our kids. One of your colleagues, a couple of them, Wilkowski and Josephson, were quoted in the paper here last week, I think.

and it was a josephson that basically said well it just means we'll have to take it out of the pfd i mean it's gone it's gone folks The PFD will be gone in the next 24 months at this rate of spending if all that stuff gets through, not to mention the defined benefits and the gas and everything else. All right, Rob Myers, we are out of time for today. Thank you so much for coming on board.

Appreciate you being part of it. We look forward to talking to you again here soon, okay? Yep, you bet. We'll talk to you later, Michael. All right, hold the line for a second. Folks, we're out of time. We will be back tomorrow, Thursday edition of The Michael Duke Show. Please be kind. Love one another. Live well. We will see you then. Have a great day.

Okay. Rob Myers is our guest. Final bite at the apple, Rob. Final bite at the apple. Whatever you got going on here. That's just two hours in radio, right? It is the fastest two hours in radio. There's no doubt about it. I feel like every time I get to the end of it, I got to take a breather here for a minute because we've been talking so fast.

Yeah, again, so much of this boils down to it's not just funding. It's one thing to say, okay, we have a plan that's going to help increase our student performance. And again, we ain't got nowhere to go but up on most of the metrics. It's another thing to just say, we're going to increase the funding to keep doing what we've been doing. And when you always done.

When you always do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you always got, right? If we just increase the funding, we just take care of inflation, you know, we're going to have to do some of that. But if that's all we do, we know that nothing is going to get better. And we have to make things get better. We can't sit at the bottom of the national.

rankings and and and call that hey we gave our kids a quality education right we gave it our best shot i mean we spend more than almost anybody else in the country but we're still at the bottom and that's adequate education and if we only had more money to spend on the same things that we're doing right now that's getting us nowhere we'll have more money uh i mean it's it's

or we'll have we'll have better outcomes i mean it's just you again you can't make this up there's got to be some accountability there right yeah absolutely you know the the last number i saw uh said that we are all in federal state and local spending together uh we are funding uh at the number six in the nation on per pupil spending

um at a little over 22 000 a piece i think um and so you know every state's a little different you know like i said most states fund more at the local level and a little less at the state level you know and that leads to some different changes because of of where policy comes from then at the local level as well but um yeah we can't be okay we are at

you know sixth in the nation on funding and 48th in the nation on results that that that's not good and and we we just know from the numbers that we've seen over the last 20 something years that our funding has gone up at the same time that our achievement has gone down and we're going to have to deal with that something's got to be done and i don't think that funding necessarily is the answer at this point i think it has to be a fundamental shift in the way we're doing business

Not funding alone. Yeah, and I think that's part of the problem. All right, well, Rob Myers, thank you so much, my friend. As always, it's great to talk with you. Appreciate you coming on board, and we will see you sometime here in the near future. Yep, you bet. You know where to find me. Thank you so much, my friend. I appreciate it. All right, folks, that's it for today. Don't forget the testimony for the testimony is...

going on right now at the state level in the House and the Senate committee. 8 a.m. this morning and 5 p.m. today in House education. 3.30 p.m. on Friday in Senate education. and there is the contacts i just put everything up in the chat room you can go check it out there all right my friends we will see you guys tomorrow be kind love one another live well we'll see you then Lizard.