Photo, above: "Citi Bike opened in New York City in May 2013 and is the largest bike sharing program in the U.S."

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Francis Rose, Federal News Radio. Is this the end of Healthcare.gov in the news, now that we have this number of six million people who have signed up? We don’t know how many have paid--it’s a number the White House hasn’t released. We should pay attention to the number six, that’s the number of Democratic senators (well, one is an independent who caucuses as a Democrat) who are publishing an op-ed in Politico on how to fix the Affordable Care Act. When you jump into the world of amazon.com you need to be totally transparent.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Edward Hayes, Attorney. BASE-jumping from One World Trade Center. There’s no way you can preserve 100% security down there. It’s going to be crazy when people get in there again; sooner or later they’re going to succeed. CitiBikes, there’s not enough money to continue the program. They haven’t even extended it to the “people’s republic of the Upper Westside.” It’s not commonsensical to ride a blue bike around Manhattan.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution. There is a right way, a wrong way, and a Russian way. Russia is a failed state, but it can recapture a large caption of the former Soviet Union. The President doesn’t understand the Cold War, he just assumed the dividends were his for the taking. There’s no reason for Russia to work with us now. We’re combating a homophobic warlord or sending John Kerry to talk about global warming, but according to the President we’ve isolated Russia.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Lou Ann Hammond, Driving the Nation. [missed what she said about GM] Chrysler’s President’s parting words on the car industry in Russia  “I was hoping cooler heads will prevail. This will hurt all of Europe.”

Hour Two

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Dan Henninger, Wall Street Journal. The private sector makes up the majority of the population. If you can’t incorporate them into government, you’re going to fail. There have been 19 UN summits on global warming, but forward motion has not been initiated.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 2, Block B:  Coal, big coal and the EPA. The new administration is trying to regulate carbon emissions from coal-fire power plants. This could have a huge environmental impact, but could also have a detrimental economic impact. The EPA is on a “listening tour” campaigning for the regulations.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Ju-min Park, Reuters. A housing boom in North Korea looks a lot like the housing bubble in China. There are many laws against buying and selling houses in North Korea--technically it’s illegal. If you want to buy a house you can go to a private marker and find a broker who communicates between buyers and sellers and then goes to a government official at the housing offices and bribe them to change the documents. They trade in USD and Chinese Yuan because the North Korean currency no longer works.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Jill Rosembaum, Retroreport. Baby M—the story of surrogacy in the 1980s. Marybeth Whitehead, the surrogate who was to be paid $10,000 to carry the child, fled with the baby she was contracted to carry and deliver for the Stern couple—but she ran off to Florida with the baby instead. When the police went and found her with the baby, she went to the media and played it up to the cameras. This week Baby M is 28 years old, married and lives in Europe. Apparently when she was 18 she terminated her relationship with Marybeth Whitehead and had the Stern’s legally adopt her.

 

Hour Three

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Kirk Johnson, New York Times. People who lived in this area knew there was a slide risk, especially after 2006 when the county did work on the mountainside and riverbank. One woman was in her house, looking out the window, and saw the wall of earth coming, her house was destroyed, but she was largely unharmed. This whole area in Washington is full of glacial soil left over from the ice age—it’s really unstable. Air pockets could be helping survivors who are trapped, but we don’t know how long they could last or how many there could be. At the moment, they are still treating it as a rescue site.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Tod Lindberg, Hoover Institution; Is Syria a cause in the crisis of Crimea? Sure it is. The president also doesn’t seem to have a plan B with Syria—that’s a problem. Has the U.S. thrown away negotiations with Iran to isolate Russia? At the moment there’s very little reason to expect any pressure from Russia on Iran—blame Putin’s actions in Crimea. We need to show our allies we mean what we say when we say we’ll help with their defense. It would be prudent to have military advisors in Ukraine at the current time, originally it was isn’t in the part of the deal—but I think it needs to be looked at now.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Bob Zimmerman, Behind the Black; The American Physcial Society has just added three global warming skeptics to the group. This might mean we might begin to see a chink in the armor and a break in these organizations that endorse human caused global warming. Bloomberg News observers say climate change is the reason we are harvesting a good crop and now seeing wine come from Scotland. We need to ask more questions about climate change that is seemingly anthropogenic—it’s very unclear if global warming would have a negative impact on human environment. Beyond the Kuiper Belt astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet beyond Pluto.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Henry Miller, Hoover Institution. China denies U.S. shipment of corn genetically enhanced with Viptera, a trait that prohibits insects from munching on corn. For years China happily imported the corn for years, suddenly last year, they started rejecting them. They’ve rejected tons of corn. They might have copied and reverse engineered the technologies. They might have wanted to squirm out of unfavorable contracts with expensive corn. But China hasn’t gone GMO cold--they still import other GMO foods from the U.S. The Chinese actually grows more GMO foods than any other country besides the U.S.

Hour Four

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Douglas Whynott, Author, The Sugar Season. Book review—Part one. The Sugar Season: A Year in the Life of Maple Syrup, and One Family’s Quest for the Sweetest Harvest.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Douglas Whynott, Author, The Sugar Season. Book review—Part two. The Sugar Season: A Year in the Life of Maple Syrup, and One Family’s Quest for the Sweetest Harvest.

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Tom Loveless, Hoover Institution. The Curriculum Wars,” by Brookings fellow Tom Loveless. In this article, Loveless writes, “For years, progressives and traditionalists have been battling out what our children learn.”

Thursday  27 March  2014 / Hour 4, Block D:  Ken Croswell, Science Magazine. Distant world surpasses its rival, Eris, in new analysis.

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Music

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