Wednesday 4/30/25 | Headlines | Kevin McCabe on Education Vote

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. Yes, it is hump day. I know I was, I was quizzing the people who were watching online because it said Tuesday for a little bit. That's because it was a test. It was just testing you.

It is Wednesday, which is the benefit of being off one day. It makes for a fast week. Here we are, hump day, looking forward to Firearms Friday, enjoying and getting ready for the rest of the week. Thank you for coming in and joining us this morning. We have got a lot of things to talk about today. Waiting in the wings right now is Representative Kevin McCabe, who's going to be joining us here in just a... A hot second to talk about...

Education, the new bill, where do we go from here? What is going on down in the legislature? The fate of the state of Alaska as far as long-term fiscal plans and so much. It is, I mean, I just don't even know what to say these days. I'm almost rendered speechless on a daily basis, the amount of... maneuvering and chicanery that we see coming out of the legislature.

I just don't even know what to say anymore to this. So we're going to continue to discuss this with Kevin McCabe here in just a second. We're also going to cover some of the other stories, including the latest on that plane crash. That happened in Nanwallic yesterday or on Monday, rather. And just the tragedy, the absolute tragedy that that is. We'll also talk a little bit about. What's going on with the CBR? A new regulatory scheme in the state of Alaska to now regulate.

Interior designers, because that's a burning, that's a burning need. We need, we've got to regulate them, interior designers. Absolutely. And Dina Bishop, the education commissioner. talking to Alaska schools and superintendents directly, telling them you should be you should be backing the governor's school policies. Otherwise, there could be another veto.

And so we're going to talk about all that today. And we'll even talk about the whole Port of Seattle thing. I don't know if you've been following the whole TikTok. youtube instagram thing where everybody's talking about you know how empty the port of seattle is i mean i received several messages on this already today And it's partially true. So we will see if we can get to that today as well. It just, again, goes to show you that what I've been saying for years is.

Still patently true. And we'll get to that here in just a bit. But before we go on, before we get any further and deeper into this morass. Let's bring on the real Slim Shady. That is Kevin. mccabe uh he is a legislator at for uh the uh big lake area uh they're representing them in the matzu good morning kevin how are you doing this morning my friend how are things going

Good morning, Michael. How are you? You know, no complaints, no complaints. Nobody listens anyway, so why bother, right? It's all good. Let's, well, Kevin, let me get the big question out of the way. What the hell is going on down there, man? I mean, seriously, we've got the same bill. Coming back again and again, you know, the Senate stripped out. The House, first of all, stuffs the bill full of all this stuff, this cell phone bill.

and then throws it over to the Senate, and the Senate then strips out, and then now it puts in just a couple things, and now it says it's all, what is going on? Is this just, is it Groundhog Day? Are we over and over and over again? What's going on down there? Yeah, so a little bit of it. Well, there's a couple things. First of all, HB 57, when it left the house, was strictly the cell. It didn't have the language in it necessarily that we all wanted because it...

It didn't put the onus or the blame on the state. It gave the... It gave the districts local control on their cell phone policy, which is fine and which I would normally like. But in this case, it should have been maybe where the districts wouldn't have to fight with the parents.

sorry i wouldn't have to fight with the parents they could actually say um hey the state said that you can't have cell phones in your class so we just have to do it now When it left us, it went to the Senate and it said that just the school districts themselves had to come up with a policy. That was halfway towards what we wanted to do, but it didn't quite go far enough, in my opinion.

I'm typically not one to think that we should put a bunch of restrictions. And again, I like the local control idea, but the districts were asking us for the... the ability not to have to make that decision I guess. in the school boards. So sure. They wanted to be able to point to the state as well, the state says we can't do it. It's not up to us kind of thing. Right. I mean, that's what they wanted to look at.

They want to look the parents in the eye and say, it's not us. It's, you know, this is a state regulation. Sorry, Junior's got to keep his cell phone in his locker or whatever. Yeah, pretty much. So that's how it left us and went to the Senate. And then the veto of HB 69 and the veto of upholding the veto happened. And now they have to find another place to put.

you know, to put the funding that the school districts are still clamoring for in the NEA and the Alaska Council and school administrators. The governor conveniently gave us another bill. He dropped another bill and said, hey, put it here. This bill has all the things in it that I want. including the funding, the $700 BSA, and just use this bill. And so the governor gave us a vehicle.

And then the Senate said, well, we don't like you, governor. So we're going to come up with our own. How dare you tell us to where to put, you know, how to do this. This is our job. Pretty much that's what the Senate's saying. I mean, I.

the house is always such a mess i hate to say that but this is a battle frankly this is a battle between um between some folks in the senate uh who don't like the governor and the governor and and that's exactly what it is it's a political battle so the senate said well We have this cell phone bill here that's dealing with schooling. And so we can put, because of the title, it's a house bill. We can put the funding in it, send it back to the house for concurrence.

We have heard that there are some in the House that would accept. um you know the seven hundred dollars and accept the funding and we might have to put something in it they weren't going to do anything at first they weren't going to put anything else any policy changes in it at first but apparently smarter heads prevailed and they put some policy changes in there and sent it back to the house the problem was The first one that they sent back, which they have recalled,

had a, and you know, this had a shell in it. It tied some, uh, the Reeds Act and the CTE funding, um, funding for the Reeds Act apparently and funding for CTE to, um, passing a internet tax or a digital tax bill, which I totally disagree with, but, um, Anyway, so they recalled it, and it went back to the Senate, and then we got to looking at it, and in section, the last section, which is the contingency language section, it says...

that the CTE section and the read section, the two sections on CTE and the read section, will not be effective without... funding without that tax, the internet tax bill. It was basically contingent. You know, we'll give you this money if this tax bill passes. And so basically saying if it doesn't, then there is no money for any of the things that and that's just two things that the governor wanted. But if it doesn't pass.

And this is trying to tie the governor's hands because the governor said he wants no new taxes. And there's a threat that at SB 113, the tax bill may be vetoed. by the governor and so if you veto your tax bill you'll lose all your that it's kind of trying to tie him up into a hog time basically sure it's trying to it's trying to leverage well it's trying to double leverage him actually if you want to think of it

um that way so now he's leveraged hey this has some things in it that i want this uh hb 57 the funding bill the school funding bill But if I want to get them, especially the reads, which are very important to the governor and the CTE language, if I want to get them, then I have to pass this digital. highly digitized business tax bill. And, um,

The more I read it, the more we read it and looked at it. We initially thought, well, if that 113 doesn't go, if the digitized internet tax bill doesn't go. Those pieces, the CTE and the Reads Act, will still be in there. They just won't be funded. That's not true. Those pieces won't be in there. They just completely go away. I was already a no, but now if there's something south of no that I can push, I'll push that button. So I think that that...

Realization yesterday flipped a lot of people in the house. or some number of people from a possible yes to a hard no. Well, that leaves a bigger question. And again, this whole thing, as you point out, seems to become it's more it's a pissing match between the Senate and the governor or portions of the Senate and the governor on this. The bill that he put forward is still just sitting in the House, right? It hasn't even gone anywhere.

It went straight to finance. It didn't even go to education, even though it's an education bill. So it's been sitting in the finance committee. Hasn't had any movement that I've heard of. I mean, is there anything, nothing has gone on with it at all? Yeah, 100%. It's just sitting in finance. We could get that bill out in a couple hours, probably. We've already had, public testimony isn't really required.

for a bill and we've already had enough public testimony on this subject i think that we could put that bill through the house finance and maybe look look for a few amendments from folks and and get it to the senate it would be very easy This is emblematic of our problem, I think, in the state. We're just not focused on the real problem. you know we're not focused on kids our problem is of the education of our kids

I get that the school districts say that they need more money and many of them do. And there are some schools that need major maintenance, but there's another way to fund that. our kids are the are the issue that's the problem it's i mean i'm not comparing kids to fish but in the fisheries

We're not focused on the resource. We're focused on the stakeholders. Well, here we're focused on ourselves and the governor and all the other. That's the same problem here, right? You're focused on the stakeholders. the teachers, the teachers union, the education industry, rather than the outpum, the actual product, which is the kid. That's been my problem this whole time. The kids are failing and nobody seems to mention that.

You know, and now they came up with this new and you've seen it in a dozen different publications from a dozen different people. We're not failing. We're starving. Right. We're not failing. We're starving. Even though you can point back to 2015 when we were spending more per capita than anybody else in the nation. And we were still in the bottom of the achievement scores, the actual outcome, the judgment of the actual product.

And so this is not about money. This is about something that's fundamentally flawed in the way that we're doing this. And until we address that, until we admit that, nothing's going to change, right? I mean, we could throw as much money as we, we could double the money and nothing's going to change. 100 and then they point back at the well it's the testing it's the testing you see it's we're not doing that right

or they point at something else. You know, the homeschoolers aren't tested, so we really don't know what the outcome of the kids in the state is. I've been told that there are some homeschool... managers and people that are running homeschool programs that say, look, Kevin. You don't want homeschoolers to test because if you do, they will blow every other brick and mortar school completely out of the water with the results that you're going to get from our kids.

It would be a bad look. It would be a bad look for brick and mortar schools is what you're saying. Worse than it is right now. Right. So, you know, I think that I've written a couple of pieces on the NEA and on our school model. And, you know, if you get right down to it, we are still stuck in the old Prussian rule or Prussian model of schooling. which was designed for children to set them up to go work in the factories.

right has never been like that we we need smart creative thinkers we need independent thinkers we need um kids that are you know ready to go out and be an entrepreneur or ready to go out you know, be a craftsman or a, you know, that's, that's what Alaska needs. And, and, you know, we're trying to teach our kids to go work in factories. That's kind of silly. Yeah, no, I'm with you. Kevin McCabe is our guest.

state legislator representative for the Big Lake area. We're going to continue with him here in just... a moment don't go anywhere the michael duke show continues common sense liberty based free thinking radio where do we go from here does the governor veto this And if so, what does that look like? Since we've seen some of the, we've already got some telegraphing coming out of the Senate. What does it mean in the House side?

We will wait and see here. We'll talk with Kevin McCabe on the other side. Don't go anywhere. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense. Liberty-based. Free-thinking radio. You can listen to it on your time with Duke's On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay, Kevin McCabe is our guest here on the Michael Duke Show. We're in the break right now.

Anthony just said, oh, Lord, I'm trying to imagine this generation of TikTok kids actually working in a factory. And the only thing that comes to mind are all those old OSHA videos of people being maimed by equipment. It's true. They couldn't figure it out. I just know. He also said, I don't know, Kevin, at the 52nd position on the education charts, comparing them to fish seems intellectually equivalent. I mean, but I don't think you're wrong. You're not, you know, again.

If you have a product for a product, you need to be, you know, you need to be, you know, comparing them and saying, what is the outcome here? And that's what we should always be looking at. is what is the outcome we're trying to achieve here? And if we're not getting there, if we're not doing it, then we need to analyze what's going on. And we poured ever increasing amounts of money into this thing.

Regardless of the rhetoric that we hear, oh, we have underfunded. Oh, we haven't been funded. We've been shortchanged this whole time, never accounting for all the one-time funding that's gone on almost every year over the last 20 years. And and they just act like they just and they have like the thing that kills me, Kevin, is they act like this is a surprise.

Like all of a sudden, oh, well, we've been counting on this. We knew it was. You guys knew this was coming. Schools have counted on this. This is ridiculous at this point. It's ridiculous that you're at this point. looking at this and acting like this is a surprise. You knew this was coming and you failed to plan.

You failed to account for it in your budgeting. You knew there was declining enrollment. You knew that there was lower money from the state. We on this program have been talking about the shortfall that was coming for the last five years. Because just based on the government's, just based on the governor's 10 year forecast, we could see it coming. Sure. And yet here we are.

And you know the first step in solving a problem is identifying first that there is one and then telling what it actually is. And I think that the NEA and the school administrators have misidentified the problem. They think the problem is money. We know better. I mean, you just have to ask yourself why the enrollment in Anchorage schools is shrinking.

You know, the enrollment's shrinking, so they're losing money, so they're having to close schools. Well, why is the enrollment shrinking? Is our out-migration the problem? Not really. The problem with the enrollment in the Anchorage schools is they suck. Frankly, they're just not doing what they need to do for our children. And so let's fix that problem and see if the enrollment starts to increase where parents can trust that the school is teaching.

their children, what they want their children to learn, fix that problem and see if the enrollment starts to come back up. Then the money will start to come back up because the money follows the child. And, you know, we're just, we're trying to solve this problem with the bandaid or, or maybe we've misidentified the actual problem that we're trying to solve. And, and we're taking steps to do it the wrong way. It's just.

I don't know, it just seems so simple to me, but then politics enters the fray, and then you have people that are... making decisions that have never had children. They're not teachers. They've never been on a school board. And yet they're out there making the biggest decisions that they can in the Senate for children. And maybe we ought to shift that a little bit. Well, I mean, we've got the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem. I mean, really.

And they're saying that there's a problem, but the problem is always to them is always funding. It's never the process. It's never the way we're doing things. It's never changing things out. You know, the administrative positions. Or in the empty teacher slots, again, every time I look, there's another story about how Anchorage is going to eliminate, and you notice how they word this, 180 teaching positions.

They never say 180 teachers. They're going to eliminate 180 teacher positions because that's how many they have that are empty, right? They have 180 empty positions, but they make it sound like they're going to be cutting your kid's teacher right out of the classroom. So it's always this fear tactic to just, it just, it's blind. stupid. It's just absolutely... I'll make a prediction, Michael. Anchorage School District is going to hire teachers.

with their resignations that they have already on the books and with the empty positions they have, they're going to have to hire teachers. So this whole pink slip thing is 100% eyewash. Yeah, well... Not surprising to me at this point. All right, Kevin McCabe is our guest. We're about to jump back into it. Please like, share, subscribe, ring the bell, do all the YouTube-y things. Let's go. I saw Lisa say, Lisa, did you guys hit your enrollment goal? Let me know.

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. We're back now. Kevin McCabe is our guest. We're talking about the education bill, which is expected to be voted on today.

This is that kind of Frankenstein bill that came over, started off as a simple bill about restricting cell phone usage in schools. Then it was beefed up with a bunch of monies, and then... uh and then added a few little teasers in there and then and then went on and so now it's going back to the house they had a little bit of a problem they had a may instead of a shall in there so they had to claw it back because it wouldn't have been constitutional to designate those funds

So they clawed it back and they're sending it back now. And today you guys are going to vote on it. Now, yesterday you said you thought, oh, this will probably pass the House, not with my vote, but it'll probably pass. But today you sound like you may have changed your mind a little bit. We already know, according to reports from the ADN yesterday, that Kauffman, Kronk and... Kaufman, Kronk, and Yount all said that they would...

that if the governor vetoed it, they'd vote to override. Schauer said he'd change his vote. I don't know where Shelley Hughes is. I don't know what's going on there, but it looks like there's some support in the Senate. I still don't understand this, quite honestly, why they would do that. But yesterday you said you thought it would pass the House. Today it sounds like you're something different. So what do you think happens today in the vote?

And then what do you think the governor is going to do? Because the governor, Dina Bishop, has said yesterday she's put out a plea to the superintendent. You guys need to ask for these policy changes. Otherwise, there's a veto in your future, essentially, is what she said. So what do you think is going to happen? Right. So yesterday when I said that yesterday morning was I mean, that was kind of my opinion yesterday morning. Now this new.

discussion on the on the SB 113 or similar the highly digitized internet business uh discussion has come into light and If that doesn't pass, there will still be the reads act or the reads portion and the CTE portion will still be in there. They won't be in there and more thorough reading of the bill. and some more thorough discussion. And I think that maybe some in the Senate have.

possibly change their minds for the vote based on that more thorough discussion of the contingency section. So that sort of changed my opinion a bit. I'm sure it will still pass the Senate. It will still come to us. I'm not so sure they will be able to get anything in there based on... um dina bishop's discussion so i don't know if the senate will allow any more amendments other than just fixing that shell and turning it into a may

If they do, you know, it will shift everything possibly. But I think it will still pass the House. but it might be closer to party lines than it was going to be. I think yesterday I was just thinking it might just be a couple of the real conservative legislators that said no, myself, Tilton. Maybe some more in the Valley, Rauscher vans. And I'm not trying to speak for them. It's just Kevin's opinion, right? So now I see Michael's gone, so I'm talking to myself. But now.

It's going to be a little bit different, I think. Now people have re-evaluated and now it may be that we change up in the house. more conservatives or more Republicans will vote against it. My opinion, and my opinion only, is that it's not going to survive a governor's veto. And so he's going to send it back and we're back on the hamster wheel again, like I said yesterday. And then we will have to override his veto.

I think that would be very close one way or the other. It would be within a vote or two whether or not to override. My opinion only and this is just something that I've been mulling around in my head So it doesn't come from the governor. It doesn't come from anyone else, but my opinion only is if the governor's veto was overridden and that bill became law or was put into law, he would strip the money for the BSA increase out of the operating budget.

when it came to him, which is his prerogative. And then we would have another... we would have to override that as well so um this is the hamster wheel we are on and this is the brinksmanship if you will that that we are on and meanwhile our kids are suffering So maybe it's time for the school districts to pressure the Senate. the school district administrators the alaska council on school district administers administrators to call up the senate and say hey

you know, put enough in here that the governor won't veto it and let's stop this stupid hamster wheel right now and focus on our kids. But nobody's going to do that. Nobody's going to focus on our kids. You've heard me say it before, out of all the... the school district administrators out of all the ACSA people, everybody that I've had in my office, the only school district that ever talked about kids was the Matsu School District.

Dr. Traney and Kathy McCollum and others came in and they wanted to tell me how well their kids were doing and what programs they were doing. you know sure at the end then they said hey our funding our our school bus you know people transportation funding is lacking and we need to

We need to solve that. And we're building this new charter school and there's some money that we're going to need for that. But hey, our kids are doing great. These programs are great. The CTE program is great. The REES Act is fabulous for us. We're doing a really great job. That's the kind of thing that we need to do. I understand that people are going to need money. I understand that it comes from the state. Nobody hates kids. Republicans do not hate kids.

We love kids. We want our kids to succeed. We need to focus on our kids. That's where the problem is. That needs to be the focus instead of... Instead of just the funding and protecting the administration and the industry rather than the actual product, which is the kit. And that's a problem. And as you just pointed out, there's various levels here where the governor can still take a crack at this. Unfortunately, I keep hearing this and I don't I haven't been able to describe any real.

truth to it up until now, where there was a saying that somebody said, oh, they're really trying to get us to a special session on education. And I thought, well, why would they? I mean, we're going round and round over the same thing over and over. Is anything going to change?

But maybe that's what the push is here for. They want him to be able to veto it so they can use it as a political cudgel and then keep going and keep vetoing it. And they keep trying to pass something and he keeps vetoing it until we reach the end of the session. But I mean, what good does that do? Because then he can call a special session with his bill that he's been asking everybody to look at.

Um, or do they try and override it and put their own bill? I don't know. I'm trying to figure out the. Is this just about the rivalry between the Senate and the governor? Or is there something more here? Is there a fifth dimensional chess move that I'm missing here somewhere? Yeah, if you're missing it, I'm missing it as well. And there certainly could be. There is a big rivalry. There are a couple of senators that just don't like the governor.

And maybe it's likewise. I don't know. I haven't talked to the governor enough to know that. But I don't think there is much. push or much of an idea in the House or the Senate that we will be here for. a special session. There's really no appetite for that. So I have been told that there are...

some pretty powerful senators that have said, absolutely not. We're not doing a special session. We are going to solve this before we leave. So that kind of gives me hope that we might have a path forward but once again here we are 20 less than 20 days left or right at 20 days and we are

running out of time so yeah we can say it together we're using time compression as a weapon right all the time time compression as a lever and amongst other levers that we're trying to pull in And frankly, the only lever that I'm interested in pulling is how to solve education issues for our kids. It's frustrating that we look at these things. And again, I go back to, and this has been my contention for a while on this.

that a lot of this can also be laid back at the feet of not just the legislators, but of the districts themselves in their planning. As I said earlier, they knew this was coming. There's a projected decline in enrollment. They know that. There's been a projected, you know, this increase in homeschooling and alternative schooling.

has been on the increase. They knew that was coming. The governor has made no secret in his 10-year forecast that the crunch was coming, that we were going to be out of money, that we were going to have deficits. Five years ago, we didn't know exactly what year it was going to hit. It could have been 24, 25, 26. Here we are in the middle of 25 and boom, it's hitting. We knew this was coming. They could have planned better. They could have started.

to do reductions they could have changed things the way they spent money i mean instead All the school boards, it seems like, just kept planning as if it was going to be high cotton season forever. This is not just a legislative thing or a state not ponying up thing. This is a lack of proper planning on the part of many of these districts just expecting to keep getting to the gravy train to continue, I guess, is what I'm saying.

100 percent and here's the deal you know the uh i've heard some people have said to me well kevin you can't brag on the mat-su school district because they're begging for money as well and and that might be true but you know what the mat-su school district did they did two budgets they did a budget based on a thousand dollar bsa and they did a budget based on zero bs And so that school district, nobody wants to talk about them. Nobody wants to use them as an example. Oh, they're the outlier.

You know, maybe they might be the outlier, but maybe they might be the smartest people in the room because they're actually looking at that kind of thing and they're trying to understand where they will be based on.

different bsa levels and different different pupil transportation level levels so they can plan right so they can properly plan and you don't see them out there leveraging teacher positions or hockey um you know hockey programs or cte programs or um you know i'm so sick and tired of this whole uh what was it the base realignment commission the brack method of right

leveraging the the people well your school is going to shut down or we're going to lose teachers or these programs or that programs let's just have an honest conversation on how we're going to solve the issue for our kids Right. They call it an outlier. I call it the forerunner. That's what it is. I mean, right. They're the forerunner. I mean, they, they are doing it right. They, everybody else should be looking at them. They're the example of what you, yes, you do a budget with zero increase.

And you do a budget with the increase you want, if that's how you want to go. But at least you have a plan because these other districts have no plan. If we don't get all the juicy gravy. Then they start running around like their hair's on fire. And of course, the first thing they do is talk about, well, we're going to have to cut music and we're going to have to cut sports and we're going to have to cut out all these teaching.

Not teachers, but teaching positions, again, making you think like you're going to lose the teachers in the classrooms for a lot of these things, when usually it's an empty position. It's infuriating, and it's all basically to help protect the industry itself, and it doesn't care about the kid.

That's what it gets down. You know, we were just talking about the Nicolaita school there where they were going to get shut down. They didn't have enough enrollment. They didn't have enough this. They didn't have enough that. And now they're going to bust the kids three hours back and forth. to school somewhere else because the district didn't plan well enough to make sure that these outlying communities have enough to get, you know, it's maddening. It's all maddening.

And, you know, there's a school at Homer right now, the Nikolaivich School or somewhere on the peninsula there, I think. It was Nikolaivich. That's what I was just talking about. Yeah. so those parents have recognized that they're in sort of a different situation they're in a different where different models such as a charter school that is run by the parents that is is possible. So why don't we let them do it?

you know the parents want to be involved in their school's education we should absolutely let them be involved so they they have a model and an idea for a charter school because of where they live but how far they are away collectively they have decided hey our kids could

bus an hour and a half to school but why do that when when we could form a charter school here in our community we could set the parameters we could do everything we need to do for our kids it would bring in some folks that are maybe doing

school right now that don't necessarily you know that are forced in or feel like they're forced into homeschooling um i have a school in my district anderson that's the same way you know they have five full-time students two pre-k students and for part-time students that are part-time brick and mortar and part-time homeschool that's the sum total of their students but in the community there are maybe 20 students some of them go to ninana some of them are homeschool full homeschool so

If we had a charter school up there, if they could put together a charter school with the parents that hired a teacher and they planned on how they were going to do it and they were involved in their schooling. in their kids' schooling, maybe that's the best model. Maybe we should get out of their way and let them do that. And unfortunately, the system or the NEA or the whole...

Whatever we're doing just gets in the way. The education industry is getting in the way of what's going on. Kevin McCabe is our guest. We've got one final break. We're going to be back up next. The question is, how do we pay for everything? That's the question, especially when we're flat broke. We're going to continue here in just a moment. The Michael Duke show common sense, Liberty based free thinking radio. We return with Kevin McCabe right after this.

listened to by more staffers in Juno than any other show. Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're gonna be pissed. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show. That's the problem with this whole thing with the Nicolaeva School is that, I mean, they've tried to get there wanting to get a charter school. And they were asking, give us one more year. Because they've apparently put in two applications already and the applications were denied or whatever.

But that's what they want. They want control of their local schools and they want to be able to do it themselves. And the school district is like, no soup for you. Sorry. You know, and it's like, this is what they want. And it would prevent them from having to bust their kids for three hours a day. That just. It seems to be a good way to do it. And they're willing to pony up and do their own thing and, you know, fund more of their own stuff and take local control.

But I think that's antithetical. The school teachers, the school unions, they hate the idea of charter schools because it takes the control away from them. That's the thing. Sure. I have a, I have a couple of, I have a sub stack. account or whatever it's called right now, where I've written a couple of articles about that, about the NEA. and the system, if you will, the Prussian model of schooling, as well as the interference and the...

by people that frankly shouldn't be interfering in this whole discussion. They should just focus on the kids, and they are... Unfortunately, the ones that are out with the big red buttons and whipping up the... whipping up the parents and whipping up the kids there was another big education rally on the steps of the capitol yesterday at noon you know so um how many of our kids are skipping school to do that i don't know but um

So, yes, it's frustrating, the Nicolaebas, and there's one in Fairbanks that they wanted to do that as well. It was, I can't remember the name of the school, but.

the parents got together and said hey what about a charter school could we put this together as a charter school where we could be more involved and we could uh you know be the the school board if you will for this school and instead of just a sort of a in um ineffective pta we want to we want more control over our schools and we could put this together and the And the school board said no. I'm sure there's more to it. Melissa will probably let me know if I'm wrong.

We just need to get out of the way. Like everything else, the government just needs to get out of the way. The people, the local control. When we say local control, we mean local control. We don't mean the school district or the boroughs. we mean the schools we mean the parents let's just get out of the way and let the parents solve this yeah

Anthony says, as a homeschooling parent, I can reasonably say none of us feel forced to do it. Most of us just decided to put our money where our mouth is and not drop our children into the intellectual meat grinder that the public education is in the state. And I agree. He also said something earlier on about. you know that here we are we're still trying to teach and you you've mentioned it on the whole prussian model thing

You know, until we understand that at a fundamental level, the age of brick and mortar schools is over, we'll never fix anything. Kids are operating plugged into the matrix like Neo from the womb. Warehousing them for 12 hours a day is a system that won't work in the modern age. I mean, when we homeschooled our kids, and again, all my kids are graduated now, but when we first started, it was amazing because that was just the beginning. My oldest daughter now is early 30s.

she was one of the first generation of kids that went through idea we were in the first year that they started And that was amazing that they had all these online resources and everything where you could take classes and do things online. And that's more and more with the contact teacher to help you through. The way we're teaching is changing. The way we are teaching is changing. The way kids are learning is changing.

As it should, we should adapt and overcome. This same model has been used for over 100 years. It's got to change and adapt. But nobody wants to say that something's fundamentally wrong with the way we're doing it. They just want to say more money will fix it.

Right. Isn't it funny that the colleges have been doing online learning big time for 20 years? I did an MBA in the early... well like 2005 or 2007 two um two years worth of an mba and i never went to the school it was all online and that was back when skype was the You know, was cutting edge. It was cutting edge. Right. Skype was cutting edge back in the day. Right. Right. Now you have Khan Academy and you have all these resources for kids and college kids. Why don't we get to that?

model. I have a friend right now that's doing a complete law degree online, which was unheard of even back when I was doing my college degree, you couldn't get an online law degree because, you know, they felt like you had to go to the brick and mortar college for a period of time so they could, maybe it's so they could indoctrinate you. I don't know. he's doing a completely online law degree and um you know i i suspect he probably has to go for testing at some point maybe twice a year but

So still, the colleges are morphing. Why can't we morph right along? Why are we still stuck in this morass mired in the NEA? in the whole, um, old style or old school model. Yeah, no, it's, uh, it's madness right now that this is where we're at. All right. We're going to come, we're going to change gears a little bit and we're going to talk about, you know, The overarching problem of this whole thing is, of course,

How do we pay for everything? Because we're broke. And Kevin's just getting buzzed the hell out of Kevin right now. We're broke, right? What's going on? We're going to talk about that here next. Kevin McCabe is our guest. The Michael Duke Show. Like, share, subscribe, ring the bell. Common Sense, Liberty Base. Freak that cat. Public Anima number one. Oh, wait, sorry. Enemy. Public Enemy number one, which makes more sense.

On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show. Yep, that's me. We're back. Kevin McCabe is our guest. We're continuing now talking about, well, the state budget as a whole. We're running back and forth. You know, I thought that Bert Stedman last week in his comments was very, very good. It's amazing what a difference a week makes because last week Bert Stedman.

said this. And I think some of the rhetoric that we've had for the last two months is numbing people's minds on how big a billion dollars is. They act like we've got a billion and a half underfunded. It's no big thing. Or we're a billion or we're 500 million. That is a pile of money. And when we look at adding another hundred million or so cut out of our operations, we put it in today. We take it out tomorrow. in the finance committee, in other areas. We don't have any choice.

You know, it's not a matter of what we want to do is what we have to do. So, I mean, that's exactly it. I mean, he realizes it, and I don't know why he's changed his mind today, why all of a sudden $700 million is acceptable. But he was saying last week, you know, we're busted. We're broke. I mean, it's hundreds of millions of dollars in the red. And the question should become at all levels, how do we pay for all this? And they have no suggestion.

And the governor has already said he's not interested in any new revenues. He wants to drag it all from savings. I think both sides are wrong. We've got to find somewhere in the middle where we've got to meet on this. But, I mean, what do we do, Kevin? I mean, we are busted. Sure. And, you know, so on the fiscal policy working group, when I was on there with Shower and Shelly Hughes and Ben Carpenter and JKT, Shroggy was on there as well.

there's still a few of us around that were that were on there um we approached it holistically so You know, we realized that there needed to be a spending cap. We realized that there needed to be some new revenue measures. We were hopeful that could be resource development, but that's years away. We knew that there was going to have to be budget cuts.

And we knew that the legislature was going to have to deal with the PFD one way or the other. So we put all that together in five or eight pages or so. JKT was roundly criticized. That's Jonathan Christ Tompkins. He was in the majority at the time, and it was a Republican-Democrat coalition at the time. And he was roundly criticized for going down the path with us that he did. And of course, we were not seen as very friendly because of that big revenue measure thing in there.

You know, I'm not a fan of taxes. I'm probably never going to be able to vote for an increased tax of any kind. But, you know, at some point, we're going to have to explore that. And Alaskans are going to have to explore that. I would rather put something out there for Alaskans and try to help them understand how big of a hole. You said it recently, just a couple of minutes ago, you said the budget as a whole.

And I heard you say the budget is a hole because it is a huge hole that we are going to have to fill. So how are we going to do that? Certainly cuts are part of that. We proposed at one point in the budget discussion coming out of the House, we had proposed several hundred million dollars worth of cuts. If you look at Dan Sadler's 2.5 percent. across the board, other than the programmatic increases.

2.5 percent cut that would have been a perfect way i mean a number way way long time ago governor sheffield cut the budget 10 across the board except for education and it made him a one-term governor, but he did it. Maybe we need to do that. Maybe in the light, if we're looking for something quick to do, something that can take effect this year or next year, which is going to be worse, folks. You heard it first here. Next year is going to be way worse than this year.

So maybe we need to start this year. and cut the budget 2.5%, just 2.5%, 2.5 cents on every dollar. Why don't we do that? Is that such a big problem? Could you folks out there in the radio or could you cut your budget by two cents on the dollar? if you needed to, if you didn't have a way to pay for your rent or your heating or your car payment or the gas to get to work.

could you cut your budget two and a half percent i bet you could and i bet every commissioner in the governor's office could cut their budget by 2.5%. And there would be wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth and threatening to fire people and everything else. But two and a half percent is really nothing if you boil it down to the granular.

Maybe that's what we need to do. I would have loved to have seen Sadler's amendment passed, but the Democrats weren't hearing of it. I had $8 million worth of cuts in there. hearing that was that enough no but it was a start right um eight million here eight million there pretty soon you're talking about real money they wouldn't even they wouldn't even cut

unfunded or unfilled positions, funded but not filled positions. There's hundreds of them, hundreds of them in the state, and they won't even think about cutting those. I mean if we can't cut positions that are not even filled with a human being, we can't even do that. There's a serious problem. We got two minutes here, two and a half minutes here, Kevin. Right. And those are a slush fund and the commissioners don't want to give those up.

because they're a way that they can fund overtime, so it gives them the ability to flex if they need to for overtime for certain issues, whether it be emergencies or whatever. And I understand that, but at some point... you need to say, well, wait a minute, we have got to find a way to cut the budgets. And, you know, frankly, the other real issue that I see right now is our CBAs or collective bargaining agreements with the state. And the unions have infiltrated the state-run departments.

And I'll give you a classic example, the Department of Labor, Workforce Development, those unfunded positions that I tried to cut.

are sort of being controlled by the deep state people that are in that department and their former union or even current union members so do they have any uh reason to cut those positions no so the very first thing they did when i put in a bill to cut some or put in an amendment to cut some of those positions you know they have a fiscal note it's actually my bill for an increase of

increase the amount of money we can spend on contracts. They gave me a million dollar fiscal note, a million dollar fiscal note to make a change on the books of, you know, a hundred thousand dollars for the cap on project. Well, why would they do that? Well, because of Davis Bacon and they're protecting the union. So the protectionism and the collective bargaining agreements, in my opinion, are at the root of some of our issues.

Kevin, down to about 90 seconds here. I guess the big question is, you know, there's been some advocacy here in the chat room and on the program, and we've been talking about, you know, how do we fix this? If we don't have a strong governor who will do what needs to be done, willing to be a one-term governor like you talked about earlier, if that doesn't happen, do we just...

Wait for it to crash? Do we just accelerate it until it does crash? Do we have something left over? Do we wait for them to drain out the CBR and the PFD and then merge the ERA and the corpus and let them start to drain the seed corn? What do we do? Yeah, that's that's for the first time I've heard that discussion down here from Republicans are like, well, let's just roll over and let it fail in a big crash and burning way and then rebuild from the ashes.

You know, that's a discussion. That's a way of doing it. That's a way of demonstrating, apparently, to the Democrats. You know, their programic model is, you know, they're funding every single little program is not going to fix our budget problems. No, it's going to fail. that's the problem Kevin McCabe has been our guest Legislator from the Matsu, thank you for coming on board and joining us. I appreciate you.

coming on board uh kevin uh we'll be back with more in just a moment don't go anywhere the michael duke show common sense radio if you gotta go be kind love one another live well all right well i guess Not to leave it on too down a note, Kevin, but I mean... More and more, I used to rail against that, but over the last year or so, year and a half, I'm starting to think that that's the only solution. The only solution is to let the train go off the cliff

And then try and sift through the ashes on the other side. Maybe you give it all to them. and let them own it on the other side when it all comes flying apart. And you go, we tried to tell you, we tried to tell you. And I, you know, the problem with, and I told you so.

And I told you so only feels good when you're not being affected by the outcome as well. Right? Right. Unfortunately, you could be laying at the bottom of the cliff all broken and bloody and say, I told you so. It doesn't make it any better. Maybe that's the only solution. We've got to hit the wall before any, you know, maybe again, it's the whole, you know, drug addict or alcoholic. They'll only when they hit rock bottom, are they willing to change? Maybe that's what it takes.

Right. Yeah. And maybe it's also, you know, it's also OK to blow everything up if you have the means to fix it on the other side. So if you think we talked about revenue measures a little bit, what people aren't telling you is.

any kind of a revenue and you know i say revenue everybody else should be hearing that tax word Any kind of a measure like that is going to take two to three years to implement between by the time you hire people, by the time you plus up your tax department, by the time you. come up with the forms, the procedures, the regulations surrounding that, that's going to take a long time. We would have been much better off allowing a, you know, you know.

west of Sydney access and gold and coal mines and copper mines. We should have started those years ago. Right. Well, best trying to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best is today. Right. I mean, that's right. That's where we're at right now. And the problem is. if we have to have something left over to rebuild with.

And if we let this drag out and out and out and out, we'll have drained every available source of revenue, including the permanent fund itself, the corpus of the fund, if they get their way and are able to combine the funds and do all that. And we won't have anything to rebuild with. So maybe the argument to accelerate the crash and make it happen now.

is the right one because at least you'll have strategic assets to be able to rebuild with if you do it quickly rather than dragging this out and letting us all bleed to death. Right. Yeah, 100%. You know, Hammond, Governor Hammond said it when he said that the militant ring of Alaskans was going to be activated by the loss of their dividend. He wasn't talking about protecting the dividend.

He was talking about protecting the permanent fund, the fund, the corpus itself, because that's where we're headed. The legislature is absolutely headed towards that particular pot of money to try to fund our government. And Hammond was right. And unfortunately, because this has been a slow drip, drip, drip.

alaskans are a little bit fatigued over the whole hey i don't want to fight over the permanent fund dividend anymore and they don't realize that you're not fighting over the dividend you're fighting over the legislature legislature's access That's what that dividend is designed to do. You know, people ask me, why do you want a full dividend? Well, I wanted a full dividend because it provided a spending cap, a pseudo spending cap, if you will.

to the legislature we have to pay a full dividend now we don't have the money for all these programs now we have to do a two and a half percent or three or five or ten percent cut to the budget and that would be uh that would be one way we could solve it it is a scorched earth way but it's better than running the train off the tracks and not having anything to rebuild with right right right well but i mean it kind of that's where we're at though i mean really unfortunately

They didn't do it. With the court decision, we can't use the dividend as a de facto spending cap anymore. Because it's at their whim. They can do whatever they want. And the legislature is being run by big government folks. Not Republicans, not Democrats. Big government folks versus smaller government folks. That's what it is. That's the breakdown.

It's not along party lines. It's along big government versus smaller government, folks. And that's where we're at today. And if we wait and this drags out another three or four years. You know, there'll be nothing left when we do hit the wall. It's going to be ugly, ugly. And that's that's the problem. And I just don't think that I don't think there's enough political will to pull the brakes on.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you, although you did see the horror on some of the co-chairs' faces in finance. When they realized what was about to happen Thursday night, a couple of weeks ago, Thursday night, that whole. I think Will Stapp called it a clown show. But I mean, I think there was some realization there that...

they had created a problem or they had allowed a problem to move forward that they should have solved very early on. And, and now we're stuck in this position where we're letting one body. decide what the spending is going to be and unfortunately that body is not a lot different from from the house yeah well

And that's going to be like a big surprise. Like they didn't realize that they were throwing gasoline on the bonfire, although we've been screaming from the rooftops for 20 years on this program that this is the direction that they were headed. And like I said, I'd love to be able to say I told you so with a smirk on my face. But unfortunately, I'm going to be feeling the pain along with everybody else. It's not nearly so satisfying to tell you I was right.

Uh, when we're all going to be hurt from it. Right. Right. A hundred percent. Yep. You know, I mean. states can't go bankrupt but if you could go bankrupt and show up in court in front of a judge state of alaska and say hey judge we don't have any money and he looks at the permanent fund and he said 80 billion dollars or close to 80 billion and he says huh Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You are on the hook, baby. And that's, what's going to happen. They're going to drain it out.

All right, Kevin McCabe, thank you so much for coming on board, my friend. I appreciate it. Good luck today. We hope your predictions come true. Yeah, pray for us. Yep, thanks for being part of it today. We appreciate it. Kevin McCabe, our guest. as a contractor blowing it up and starting over. is sometimes the best option to the consumer. Sure, I could entirely rebuild your 40-year-old furnace for $15,000 in parts and labor, but why not just do a brand new one for $3,000?

That's kind of where we're at right now, folks. Anthony, always the font of wisdom here on The Morning Show. All right, we're getting ready to do it. Here we go, The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thickening radio. Whoa, buddy. Put that thing back in its holster. We haven't gone anywhere. I don't understand. Check out themichaeldukesshow.com for information on how to get access to the podcast. Welcome to the party pal.

The Michael Duke Show. The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low-budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS. time to get a new perspective we know just what you need and we've got just the cure open wide and prepare for steaming hot cup of freedom i just don't fathom it The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com.

Across the state of Alaska on this, your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Good morning, my friends. Welcome back to our two of the big radio show for this Wednesday edition, the hump day edition. of the broadcast we are ready to go and um it's uh it's Thank God it's Wednesday, right? Just a couple more days till Firearms Friday and we can be ready to go.

Look, we just finished up with Kevin McCabe talking about the struggle for an education bill in the state, the struggle to pay for all of the states. all of the state's funding and the projects and the programs and everything else that's going on. And I gotta say, it is astonishing to me. that we're here, especially since this is stuff that we've been talking about on this program for so long.

And it's just like now only a few of the people are actually waking up to what the problem is. And the problem, I mean... Not to beat a dead horse. This horse is so dead, rotten, and stinky. But not to beat a dead horse. But this is a spending problem, and it's a problem of our own making. We know that there's a fix to this. Many of us knew that there was a fix to this. And yet there are people who are blithely going on just saying, oh, we'll just we'll just spend it. We'll just spend it all.

We just, you know, we're just going to, and the PFD, Zach Fields, um, was, uh, has got a quote, um, His quote out of this article in the Alaska Beacon from James Brooks today, this morning. where the headline reads, Between vows against state taxes and using savings, the 2025 PFD and the Alaska State Services are in a vice.

basically pitting taxes against savings and everything else. And Zach Field's comment is, in the absence of revenue, the PFD is going to go away. An affordable PFD this year is like $500. And for that side of the fence, for the big government side of the fence, that's where they're going. They're going to take all of the PFD. Because it's the only readily available source of money. And they can't stop spending.

So what is the solution? And this is we've been talking about this lately. What is the answer? And I don't have a clear answer. I don't have the sure thing because, I mean, the sure thing is to reduce our spending. I mean, I do have the end. But the answer is not going to happen because there's not the political will to make it happen. As a business owner, I don't spend money or commit to spending money that I'm not sure that I'm going to have.

I just don't do it. Why? Because I would be bankrupt. Because I would be out of business. Sure, there's many things that I would love to have here at the radio station to do. There's plenty of new technology. There's things that I would love to plug in and people I'd love to hire and do all these things. and maybe it could work out, and maybe I could generate enough. Maybe. But I don't plan on the if-come. I plan on income, not if-come.

But at the state of Alaska, it's like it's a whole different world. They live in a separate reality. where it's government money and you just can't treat it like it's a regular budget. The money will always be there and our things will always be there. And don't worry about it. And they're going to continue to stretch that out until it comes completely unraveled. And one of the ways they're going to insulate themselves from the reality is by taking the PFD.

It's coming, folks. It's inevitable. Now, the Senate, I guess, to their credit, has drawn a line in the sand and said $1,000 PFD, no lower. Except for last year, they said 75-25, that was their line in the sand. And this year, that $1,000 PFD is more along the lines of like an 80-20. So maybe it gets chiseled away over the next couple of years. But folks, this is where it's going. And the problem is, the longer we drag this out, the longer we allow this to slowly drip away our lifeblood.

We will have less of it's again, I, I, we can. The analogies of the triage and the medicine and the sickness and all that that I use all the time, better to get sick from the cure than die from the disease, et cetera, et cetera, is prevalent here. If you're bleeding out. The longer you wait to tie off that tourniquet or stop the bleeding, the less chance you have of survival.

And the longer we allow ourselves to be slowly bled out, when the inevitable crash happens, and it will happen, maybe not this year, maybe not next year. I would venture to say within the next five years, based on the amount of money, unless there's some kind of wild price spike where the price of oil goes way up. But in the next five years. We will hit that cliff. Next year is going to be worse than this year. And this year, we have as much as a $1.5, $1.6 billion deficit.

If you jigger stuff around and you take all the PFD and you do all that kind of stuff, maybe it's a $400 million deficit. But again, we still don't know because they haven't finished. with the negotiations with all the state employees unions. So we don't know what the employee costs are going to be. But next year is definitely going to be worse than this year. They keep saying they don't want to spend from the CBR. Why don't they want to spend from the CBR? Let's see what Bert Stedman says.

Bert Stedman quoted again in this Alaska Beacon article, we're very concerned about any access to the CBR this year because the concern is next year, it's highly likely we're going to need it. Now, the CBR has about $2.8 billion in it. They say we need about a billion dollars.

to maintain cash flow in the state somewhere between i think 700 million and a billion dollars needs to be maintained in the cbr so that we have adequate cash flow for the state to be able to operate on a day-to-day basis So that means we've got about a billion and a half, maybe $2 billion that we could pull out of there. And this year we are potentially already a billion dollars overdrawn? I mean, and it's less than a billion only if you account for taking basically the entire PFD?

And next year is going to be worse? So if they take the full PFD, they have to draw $300 million or $400 million from the CBR this year to make up for it because they're not willing to make any cuts whatsoever. And then next year, we're in exactly the same position, only this time there's no more PFD to draw from. And they have to draw another billion dollars from the CBR. That's it. There is no more money in those areas, in those arenas. Then all this left is the ERA.

And of course, they're going to draw their 5% from the ERA. And that's it. They can't overdraw it without changing statute or changing. Maybe they could. Maybe they could over. But again, that has its own risk. The more you draw, the faster you draw it down. It also impacts the earnings of the fund. Because ERA earnings are still counted and used for investing. So anything that they cut out of there then reduces the overall earning impact of the fund itself.

And if they get their way and are able to combine the ERA and the corpus of the fund and getting access to the corpus of the fund and overdraw it at their leisure. Well, then you're just eating the seed corn and you're just causing the bleeding to continue and continue and continue until when we eventually do run out of money. And the state is literally bankrupt because of the spending practices of the legislature. And we do hit that wall and we crash and there's nothing else we can do.

Now we have nothing to rebuild with. We have no permanent fund corpus. We have no ERA. We have no CBR. We have no SBR. We have no additional money. And I'm not trying to be doom and gloom here, but I'm trying to be realistic. We have been fighting for cuts on this program for 25 years. And I've been warning, this is what's coming. This is what's coming. This is what's coming. And then it gets here and everybody acts shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

That this is what's actually going on. And even though they know. Even though they can look at it and they can see, and they're now actually talking about the projections. Bert Stedman, next year's going to be worse than this year. The year after that, ooh, baby. Even though they're talking about it, it is not changing because they just don't believe it. Because this is government, and government can never run out of it. Now, somewhere in there, maybe they throw a tax on us.

Because as Andy Josephson said, we've got to be willing to invest in our state. But we don't yet live in a world where the Alaska people are ready for themselves to invest in their state government. It doesn't matter that we've been investing in our state government for decades. that all the money that we as owners should have been receiving is going straight to the state. We are the highest taxed people in the nation.

The problem is it's a stealth tax and we never see it. We never see the money doesn't trickle through our hands and then go to the state. which would cause a couple different things to happen. One, the economic impact of every Alaskan receiving their share of the royalties directly would be enormous. The second thing that would happen is that would be an automatic limiter on government.

Because the people would, you know, you'd get a check for, you know, family of four would get a check for $60,000 and you'd be like, woo. And then next week you'd get a check, you'd get a bill from the state, a tax bill. for $52,000 or $53,000 of those $60,000, and people would go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. What are we spending this on? We are the highest taxed people in the nation. We just don't see it.

We just don't see it. And they're going to walk up to us in a year or two and say, oh, buttercup, oh, buttercup, now it's time for you to pay your fair share. so we can spend it. So the question is, Do we just... Do we just crash it now? Do we just crash it now? Do we allow them? Do we encourage our legislators to just step aside?

and let them spend all that they want to spend. I mean, I don't know how many amendments were on the House budget. I think it was in the 80 range, somewhere in the 80 range, 80 different amendments. And all the ones from the minority, ostensibly a conservative minority, all the ones from the minority, with the exception of, I think, one or two. with something like 80 different amendments, were all denied.

All amendments to cut the budget in one form or another, make it smaller, little bits and pieces, a million here, a million there, cut unfilled positions, funded but not filled positions, all of them denied. all that wasted energy and effort and everything else for them to be able to do nothing. So do we just encourage our legislators to step aside? Stop. You don't have to vote for the budget. But stop fighting it. Just let it go.

Stand on the floor and say, what you guys doing is going to bankrupt the state and drive us, you know, we're going to crash. Just stand up and do it and then vote no. Don't put all, don't stand in the way. This is what they want. Let them have it. Because if we do it sooner rather than later, At least maybe the citizenry would wake up before they got their hands on the corpus of the fund, before they spend all the CBR, before they spend all of the dividend.

Maybe then people would be like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. The bottom line is, at least, I mean, we put horses out of their misery, right? They break a leg. Sorry. Sorry, Trigger. Maybe that's what we need in the States so we can get a new horse and start fresh. It, it's a solution. It's not a solution that I am happy about, nor have I embraced up until this point, but I'm starting to think. that that might be the only way we get out of this with the least amount of debt.

What do you think? Me at michaeldukeshow.com. Send me an email. Tell me if you think that I'm just being doom and gloom and I'm way out of line. Or tell me if you think I'm right. In the chat room, you can tell me, am I right or am I wrong? This might be the only way to get it over with quickly so that we can start fresh. It's depressing. I want my kids all to stay here. I want my kids to thrive and succeed and live in my state so I don't have to fly 3,000 miles away to see my grandchildren.

I want them to be here. I want it to be better for them than it was for me. And it was pretty good for me. This is the This seems to be becoming the only viable path to come out of this is to go through it rather than to stop it. tragic. Absolutely tragic that we're here, but... All right, we got to go. So you tell me. Email me. I suppose I could turn on the phone lines, but I got other things I want to talk about. But that was just on my heart. You tell me. Me at MichaelDukeShow.com.

or go to michaeldukeshow.com and just fill out the contact page there and it'll send me an email. All right, we gotta go. Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Randy says, Michael, I beg you, don't encourage Alaska to go off a fiscal cliff. I'm not encouraging anything, Randy.

I'm saying continue to warn people, continue to tell them it's going off the fiscal cliff, Randy. You and I are not going to be able to stop. And all you're doing with your assertions and your encouragement is you're delaying the inevitable slightly and you will make the inevitable crash even worse. That's what's going on. Frank says we will be talking about the same thing in five years. It's possible. It's very possible. I'm sorry, I'm just going through the comments here.

The state government is over bloated. They are used to the 90 spending when they had the money. Yeah. Um, who is stopping the spending now? Nobody. That's my whole point. That's the whole point.

anthony said i think it's already crashed at this point mike like an old car where the alternator dies once we turn it off it's not starting again i mean yeah we could be on the death coasting right we're coasting into the repair shop because that's it it's it's over the motor's blown and we're running on sheer momentum at this point You cannot bankrupt a state.

There's never been a state that's gone bankrupt. And I'm not saying that it's a bankruptcy. I'm saying there will just not be enough money. The state will still be on the hook for it. No, you can't bankrupt it and wipe your hands of the debt. You're still going to be on the hook for it. But then you have to rebuild. You have to start fresh. You have to redo the whole thing.

life support hospice kim says you're right md let it crash frank says i tell my kids to get a government job i mean that's what i tell my kids if you i mean if you want to It's the only way you're going to get any bit of that gravy train. It's all going to come apart at one point. Might as well get it while the getting's good at this point.

The state takes all of your oil funds revenue. Yes, that is the hidden tax. PFDs are the crumbs left over, and they don't even want us to have the crumbs. Crash the bus, says Tim. Miguel says, what a night at the Fairbanks Borough Assembly last night. I mean, wow. But we get to do it again May 16th. I don't know what happened. I didn't get the recap of what happened on the Savannah Fletcher deal. Good morning, good morning, good morning.

Terry says, after talking to my son last night, selling out and moving to some podunk town in Idaho is sounding better and better. I never thought I'd leave Alaska again. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Harold said it the other day. Harold said they're thinking about moving out of all, you know, it's crazy. I mean, it's crazy.

Everyone declared conflicts of interest on the assembly. Oh, so it was some theater stuff going on. We all have a conflict of interest, so we can't decide if our friend had a conflict of interest? I mean, okay. All right. maybe i should turn the phones on and get get the rundown who wants to volunteer to call in and give me a report i'll turn the phones on i will i don't have much time here but i'll turn the phones on Who wants somebody to tell me that they're going to call in?

The Michael Dukes Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. Well, I decided to go ahead and turn the phone lines on because, well, a couple reasons. One, I'm purely curious from folks out there if they agree with me. Is this the only solution? And I think Anthony, who's been a sage of wisdom today, he says the crash is already in motion within the state. Mitigation is the priority at this point, not recovery or repair.

Sometimes you got to steer into it, right? Sometimes you got to steer into it to get it over. You got to choose how bad the wreck's going to be. You know, you're going to wreck. So do you pull a head on into the oncoming lane or do you hit the guardrail on the right hand side? Which one's more survivable? The crash is inevitable. That's a good analogy. Thanks Anthony. That's a good analogy.

The other reason I'm turning the phone lines on is because that meeting went on last night over the, and I haven't seen any reporting on it. over the ethics violation meeting for Savannah Fletcher, former borough assemblywoman and legislative candidate. We talked about that yesterday. Give me your number in the chat. I don't know what my number is in the chat. 319-527-3864. 319-527-3864.

is the number if uh if you want to call in we got one line on hold and i so we're going to see what that goes on to and i've got some other stories we can get to as well but first let's go over to the phones and see who's here with us good morning who's this where you calling from Hi, Michael. This is Bubba from North Pole. Really quick comment. Okay.

subject this morning if instead of using them they and and so forth they keep doing this them want to wait till we get to the end of the you know start throwing names out there i mean we throw shelly hughes's name out there when she does good rob uh meyer does great Everybody that's a minority, they're doing good. Got their names out there. But let's let the voters know who they are that's causing this. And maybe... Somebody will hear it and say, oh, that's my guy that's causing this to happen.

That's all I'm suggesting. Instead of them do this, them do that. You know, Bert Steadman. Yeah. I was never a big fan of Click Bishop, but... Throw names out there, please, because them doesn't affect anybody. Well, I mean, I've got the names out there. I've got the names going on out there. We've talked about it. In this case, in this last case, I still don't know why Shelly Hughes and Mike Schauer and...

Mike Cronk have voted the way that they have on this education bill. And I have questions. Why would you vote for this? You know, I respect Rob Myers for voting no. There should be questions. If you're going to let them accelerate the crash, I'm not saying that you vote for their bills. I'm saying you say, here's what's happening and here's what you guys are going to cause.

But I'm going to vote no and then sit down, not try to offer any amendments because they're going to just get shot down. They're just wasting time. We need to get it. You know, if you're going to accelerate it, get it done. But you're right. Call a spade a spade. And that's what we need to do. All right. Thanks, Bob. I appreciate you. Appreciate you calling in. Let's go over here. I believe this is I believe this is Melissa. Hello. Hey Duke, it's Melissa. Hey, how are you?

I'm good. How are you? So I did. I watched the assembly meeting last night. Okay. And, you know, it was a lot of dramatic. and every single member. So first off, Kristen Kelly was not there. She had an absence last night, so that left them short a member. And then everyone on the left side of the assembly declared some sort of conflict of interest. and then with the conflict of interest also declared that they would not be able to rule fairly against Savannah. Some of the reasons...

Okay, but like one of them from Scott Krass was like, Savannah donated like $160.36 or something like that to his campaign, and so he had a conflict of interest, and that meant he couldn't rule on this. And it got to a point where they ended up with no quorum because of all the conflicts of interest. And so they had to postpone until a time certain, which is now May 16th.

So it's basically getting to a point where they're going to have to enact that rule where they're going to have to vote by necessity. That's where this is going. Right, right, right. Well, so it was all political theater, basically. And they all basically used the same thing that she's being accused of as a way to get out of accusing her or prosecuting her for this basic violation, this ethics violation. Yeah, basically. Yeah. It was very dramatic, and I just left that going, what?

Yeah, because apparently they haven't had a problem voting on this kind of stuff before or doing on this kind of stuff. You know, I mean, I think they're trying to make a point by saying, well, if we had to declare conflicts of interest for everything, we couldn't do anything. I mean. It's all that, you know, this is all doing it on purpose and they're all in it together at this point is what I believe.

This is how they want to do it. It really begs the question, Dukes. You know, I don't want to accuse anybody of anything. As an elected official myself, I know how things are and how things can... But it really begs the question of what is going on because it's just fishy. Yeah. No, it is. It is fishy. Well, I mean, again, I can see it. They're basically giving you the finger.

by saying oh we all have a conflict of interest which is what she's accused of right we all have a conflict of interest so we can't vote it's basically their way of giving you the proverbial finger and then saying we can't do it and protecting their friend at the same time But like you said, eventually there's going to be a necessity that somebody is going to have to vote on.

And I guarantee you, you don't want some kind of committee impaneled of non-borough assembly members to vote on this because with evidence that I've seen so far and I've heard has been put forward. She's going to be in trouble, but maybe that's their way of getting out of it. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It just is one of those things that, like, it really makes you take a step back and look at it and go, okay, guys.

Like, who's the adult in the room here? That's the question. Who's the adult in the room? And let's do the things we need to do because we are a government body. Yes, she might be your friend. Yeah, you guys might have relationships. That's cool. You still have a job to do, and there's still an ethics or three ethics violations at hand that has to be ruled on. That came forward. This has to be taken action on.

Yeah, you notice that none of those people declared a conflict of interest when Barbara Haney was on the hot seat, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Of course not. Well, you know, I mean, it's Barbara. Yeah. And I don't think that I don't think that anything is going to change on the 16th. I think that the room will still be packed with people who are outraged about all this stuff. I don't think anything's going to change. They're just delaying the inevitable at this point.

Yeah, I said that actually to Brett Roterman last night. I called him after the meeting and I said, where does this go? What happens here? And he goes, well. It goes to the 16th and should Kristen come out and declare a conflict or anything like that, then it gets postponed. It's like it's delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed until the inevitable. And that's where this seems that's going to go. Yep. All right, Melissa. Well, thank you for the recap and the heads up. I appreciate you calling in.

Absolutely. Thanks, Diggs. Have a good day. All right. Thank you. Let's go over here. One more call before we end this segment. Good morning. Who's this? Where are you calling from? I'm Candy and I'm in Anchor Point. Hello, Candy and Anchor Point. What's on your mind today? I think it's just like a little kid with a crayon box. If you can't stop drawing on the wall, we're going to take your crayons away from you. Break their pencils.

Yeah. Well, you know what? That's, that's what it's going to take. Yeah. You, sometimes you got to do that, right? Yep, yep. Don't they work for us? Why can't we just say, okay, you're not doing your job? So long, sayonara, sorry for your luck. Because there's a lot of people who are happy.

With all the lucre that they're getting, right? All the loot, all the benefits that they're reaping from this kind of spending. There's tons of people out there, constituencies that have been built up by all this excess spending. that are living large, that are, I mean, and I don't mean literally living large, but are getting all these. free services and benefits and everything else, or their industries are benefiting from it, be it the telecom or construction or education.

They're getting it. So they're just voting for their own self-interest. They're not thinking about what's coming down the road. They're not thinking about what the inevitable crash would look like, because to them, of course, it's government. No government has ever crashed in the United States. There have been other governments that have crashed.

around the world. But, you know, and this is inevitable. And it's the same thing that's happening at the national level, Candy. We're too big to fail. That is the problem. Yep, I agree, I agree. Well, I just think we need to slap their hands in some way or shape and get done with it. Well, I just think, you know, I guess my question to you is,

Do you think that we should just embrace the fact that the crash is going to happen and we need to get it over with as quickly as possible? Or should we try and continue to just scream to the high heavens that cuts have to happen and it's inevitable? Should we be kicking and screaming and dragging our feet? Or should we go ahead and just go ahead and hit the guardrail instead of dragging ourself into the other lane?

I agree with you what you were saying before I think you've got it on the nail head I just I just think it's like a kid take their box of crayons away and make them stop. All right, Candy. Well, I appreciate you calling in. Thanks for signing off this morning. I appreciate it. 319-527-3864. 319-527-3864. If you want to be part of it, now's the time to do it. You know, I just realized why the guardrail is there.

the guardrail is to prevent you from going over an even bigger obstacle it's there to keep you on track it's not it's not easy it's painful it's going to be damaging but at least you're not sailing over the edge of the curve and going into the ravine So head-on collision or guardrail? Which one should we choose? Alright, one final segment dead ahead. I'm going to leave the phone lines open if you want to sound off.

And tell me, you're crazy, Dukes. We should still be fighting for cuts. We can do it. Or is the crash already in process? I think Anthony may have been onto something this morning. All right, we got to go. Back with more of The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. We're broadcasting live through a series of tubes. Allowing all of these entities to provide streaming stuff going on the internet. Well, it's kind of hard to explain. Sorry. Streaming live.

every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Yeah. The state can't cut their funding. They have, they've, they're, they're spending every program they fund has increased every year. randy says we should not crash at all i think we alaskans are responsible enough to call for a balanced budget how are we calling for a balanced budget randy you've said we should give them every opportunity to spend all the money

How is that making them any more responsible? The only way to make them responsible is to take away all their toys, but there's no political will to do that. You know, that's, you know. Miguel says in regards to the Savannah Fletcher thing, she was found guilty. They have to rule on punishment.

Well, they're going to have to do something. But she's right. And Brett was right. Maybe they'll put it off. If somebody else declares a conflict next go around, they may put it off again. I mean, this could drag on for months. Anthony said, the government lecturing and administering itself over ethics is a fun irony. The fact that they're serious makes the satire even more comical. Yeah, exactly. Oh man. Why are they protecting that Fletcher Cronk?

I don't know. It's Savannah Fletcher. Fletcher ran against Kronk, so I don't know what you're meeting there, Terry. Myers said on the floor, let your yes vote be a yes vote and your no vote be a no. Oh man. Naresh always has some good news. Naresh out of Mike Schauer's office says, Yeah, gee, I was wrong on my calculations the last time. The state employees' contracts still in play are going to be close to $300 million instead of $100 million.

That, at the current numbers, will put us close to 600 million or more upside down. let's see what the senate substitute two on friday comes up with yeah that 1400 or so 950 million dollars for pfd is going to shrink even further yeah yeah I mean, if we get $1,000, we'll be lucky. Again, Zach Fields is $500. We'll be lucky if we get that. Rick said, you mentioned your kids are well-educated. Then they'll probably head south. Can't blame them. Is that, that's just, that's just.

Anyway, thanks, Naresh, for making my day. Anthony says, man, why does Candy's phone audio sound so freaking clean? I don't know. It was a very clear call, wasn't it? Oh, she's a crook, not a cronk. You said Fletcher cronk. And I was like, why is it? Why is it Mike cronk? I see. It was a crook. He must be at the mountaintop today.

You've got to maintain a realistic perspective on the crash. We can't change it. We're standing on the edge of a lake, and the choices made years ago are a giant stone being dropped in the center. The ripple is coming no matter what and the rock is in the lake. Any changes we make now are not going to fix anything in the immediate. We're trying to make another ripple that will eventually make its way to shore.

Yeah, it's like we're trying to drop another ripple to cancel out the first one, but it's going to take time. Kevin says, maybe we need to start a PFD pool. I'll take the $300 block. I'll take the $400 block. How about that? I mean, yeah, the PFD is dead, folks. You know, the PFD is dead. Sandy says, make sure you get your prepping upgraded, which is actually a great segue into our next segment.

because I'm going to talk about some of the things that are going on. My dog is like, dude, you've got to scoot over. I've got to put my feet there. it's like laying halfway across my legs uh all right candy was so wonderful take away their crayons take away their crayons yeah All right. Um... Oh, it's a hell of a way to start a day, right?

I feel depressed now, man. I'm just like, oh, because he's right. We are in the middle of the crash. It's like it's slow motion and we could see it happening. And we're like, do we swerve left or do we swerve right? Aren't you all just so happy to be here today? Aren't you all just so grateful that... We get to visit every morning. Jesus, I need a tomorrow. Maybe we just do a whole lighter side show. I don't even know who to bring on tomorrow.

All right, here we go. The Michael Duke Show, common sense, liberty-based, free-thinking radio. The Michael Duke Show. Proudly splitting the left versus right dichotomy. Yeah, I had to look that word up too. I don't think it means what he thinks it means. I just feel a little depressed now. Just a little depressed about everything. Because again, I never quite looked at it.

in the way that Anthony kind of portrayed it, that the crash is already happening. And it's not like we can avoid it, right? It's we can only mitigate the outcome. And, you know, your choices are, again, to swerve into the incoming lane and have a head on with a truck. or to turn right and hit the guardrail. Either way, it's going to be painful and messy, but one is survivable. There is a lesser of two evils there in that regard. So it's going to lead to some other issues as well.

And we've got some other exacerbating factors that may be part of it. I got a text and messages from several people about what's going on down in Seattle. I don't know if you've been watching the TikTok.

uh the tick tock stuff and everything else about how the port of seattle is empty um it's it's it's gonna be bad we're all gonna die we're not gonna have anything on the grocery shelves and everything else I mean, I've warned about for a long time that we're on the end of the chain out here and that you guys should all be prepared.

Somebody in the chat room said in regards to the crash that you better have your prep. What did she say? You better make sure you get your prepping upgraded. Well, yeah, you should have, you should have been prepped for a long time.

That should have been prepped for a long time. But there's this TikTok thing where they're showing the port is empty. There's no containers. There's no traffic in the harbor. And it's all doom and gloom. I think Harold even said something about it this morning, you know, that the shelves are going to be empty and you best get stocked up now. Well, I mean, I'm not saying he's not wrong.

You probably should have enough food on the shelf for a few weeks. That's just kind of the Alaskan thing to do. But... I don't know as that is totally true. There's two reports out of here. One is out of K5 out of Seattle, and the other was from Fox 13 in Seattle, and they both took a look at these. viral TikTok videos and Facebook posts that were claiming that the port of Seattle is effectively dead, that it's a ghost town. But according to officials, the rumors aren't necessarily true.

The claims which show videos of an empty looking dock and container yards have reached tens of thousands of viewers. One widely shared video falsely states not a single international cargo ship in the port of Seattle. But, according to the numbers, despite what the videos show, the latest shipping data from the Northwest Seaport Alliance tells a different story.

They represent the ports of Seattle and Tacoma and report nearly a 20% increase in domestic and international container volume over the first four months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. In the past month alone, the Port of Seattle saw a 7% increase in cargo volume. As of Monday, three ships were docked in Seattle and three in Tacoma, with more than 30 international vessels scheduled to arrive at the ports in the next month.

two weeks. Now, that doesn't mean that the tariffs aren't going to have a ripple effect. While the port traffic is healthy now, local officials say they are bracing for an economic ripple. From the tariffs, they said they expect that the tariffs could cause job loss and economic harm, warning that higher costs and supply chain disruptions may be on the horizon. So there are some changes there. K5 goes on to talk a little bit about some of the details.

They said some of that volume where it's been up in the last 30 days with an 18 percent increase in volumes in March is partially driven by shippers trying to move cargo before the tariffs took effect. And they said there's going to see some droppage and they expect that there's going to be less cargo than anticipated. They forecast that the overall over the next three months, that they're forecasting it to be down about 25% per month.

So, while it's not empty, while it's not zeroed out, there is going to be some effects. But it's not as doom and gloom as everybody wants you to hear. But again... This reminds me, why aren't you putting some food on the shelf and doing what? I mean, come on, right? We've talked about this for years in this program. Why don't you have a few weeks worth of food on the shelf?

I mean, we could we could stay at the house right now and live here for at least two months on the food that we have here now with all five. We could do that. I mean, maybe near the end, we'd be down to top ramen and some hamburger mixed in it or something. But, you know, two months, three months, somewhere in that neighborhood.

Why wouldn't you have, it's Alaska. Why wouldn't you have a few weeks worth of food on the shelf at any given time? What do you mean you don't buy your toilet paper in the bulk 30 pack or 12 pack or whatever to the big pack of toilet paper? Come on. Anyway, I don't think it's anything to panic about. I think it's something you should have prepared for, and you probably should be paying attention. I did want to touch on this as well, this tragedy that happened in Nanwallic, this Cessna 207.

that crashed it killed one of uh one of the more beloved residents of homer daniel bunker he's a pilot he's involved in the community i've had a lot of friends down here say man i just saw him the other day What a great guy. It killed him. One of his passengers, an artist.

and photographer, Jenny Irene Miller. And it looks like what happened was, according to reports from the NTSB and from the... troopers the department of public safety is that uh that uh bunker uh daniel bunker had told another pilot behind him that there was something on the runway As he was trying to attempting to make his landing and that he was going to do a go around and he initiated the go around and apparently.

he stalled out on the go around trying to pull back up uh off the runway and that's when the plane crashed now they say it looks like it was a loss of control consistent with a stall is the verbiage that they used

But they're going to go through the plane to see if there was any mechanical cause, if there was an issue, some kind of mechanical cause that caused him to lose control. But it turns out that there was a dog on the runway, apparently, in Nanwallic. A loose dog had gotten out and was on the runway. And so, I mean, it's just tragic. It's just absolutely tragic. The outpouring of support from Nan Wallach talking about how Smoky Bay Air.

has uh has been such a lifeline to them and how dan was well loved down there and how they just, you know, that he was just a great guy and how much they depend on Smoky Bay Air to get in there. This is just a tragedy. So our thoughts and prayers go out to the Bunker family. He had a wife and children. And to the family of Jeannie Miller as well, Jenny Miller.

Um, what it's just, it's just tragic. This is again, the dangers of small town, small, you know, small aviation in a, in a big rural state. This is a tough. It's one of those things, man. It's just tragic. Absolutely tragic. Um, I wanted to get into this, but instead I got into my, should we, I don't have enough time. Interior designers. The Senate on Wednesday voted 18 to 2 to approve Senate Bill 54, which would create an interior design license.

Because apparently it's now this is what this is what great. He said the changes. This is Matt Clayman, who sponsored the bill. This is his third time sponsoring this bill, by the way, that the change is intended to improve the safety of commercial building. Because, yeah, that mauve versus top wall draping, oh, one's dangerous, one's not. This is like the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Uh, the no votes came from Rob Myers and Mike shower. Thank God.

Meyer said he's concerned about the way the number of regulated professions in the state is growing. He says, I'm very skeptical of creating more occupational licenses. requiring people to register more. We've got so many problems in the private sector already. I really hesitate putting any more barriers to employment, any more barriers to business. You're going to regulate.

You're going to regulate interior designers? Don't you guys have bigger problems here? I'm just, I'm just asking. That's, that's, I'm just asking. Be kind, love one another, live well. Harold says the rhetoric about the ports is 100% propaganda. The word on the ground is port traffic is cratered. Well, I'm sorry that the...

that the official place that runs the joint said that traffic is up. I'm sorry that that's just propaganda. I really am, Harold. I mean, don't let the facts get in the way of your, you know... in a way of your psychosis no big deal yeah it's it's i mean it's it's insane yeah a new task force what um wait a second i'm sorry pre-buying before tires nothing will stop the ports from dropping off blah blah blah doctored photos and videos from seattle um

Frank, Frank Banks says, tax me harder, daddy. And reduce tourism. You can make bank if you sell those t-shirts in Juneau. That's right. Text me harder, daddy. Okay. Um, yeah. David said, thanks for letting me know about your two months of food. See you soon. Hey, no problem. Bring a friend and some body armor. That's all I'm saying. Let's see.

uh go through here gonna make him play the noise food storage is a good thing not planning leaves your dinner plans limited to eating the dogs or your neighbors if the lights go out for too long yeah And as much as I like, as much as I like Asian food, I'm not into the, although, you know, a little man burger helper might not be too bad. Anyway, let's. Let's see. Good news.

if the painter is somehow altering the structural load capacity of the building that dude isn't just painting i know right i mean it's just it's crazy how is an interior designer I mean, how is... How is an interior designer going to affect the safety of the bill? i mean come on i just don't even know what to say chris says i can't retire here in alaska and have to work till my last breath of air

Mean you were planning on retiring? I think they're going to have to basically pluck me out of here with a crane. All right. We gotta go. Gotta go. Appreciate you guys being part of it today. We will see you guys Tomorrow, be kind. Love one another. Live well. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. We'll see you then. And now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.