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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media.  Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes. 
 
Hour One
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block A:  Greg Zuckerman, WSJ, in re:  The tale of the 2011 London Whale, Bruno Iksil, at J P Morgan. A lucha (vs. the Feds) continua.
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block B:  Greg Zuckerman, WSJ, in re:   SAC Capital, Connecticut; Stevie Cohen. Offshore funds, execs deterring bonuses. Deferrals continued, no taxes.  Feds gave them till 2017 before starting to pay (huge) taxes.  Individual rates.  Build-up in an IRA is tax-deferred; and it was legal to store it overseas.  Capital leads to investment and growth. However, Stevie Cohen is using his capital to buy art.  Repatriation: at 35% taxation, corporations kept their money overseas. 
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block C: Scott Atlas, Hoover, in re: AGHCA. Very expensive overpriced markets that rule things arbitrarily.  While there were some good reforms in the GOP proposal they failed to make the case, to explain their work to the public;  failed to educate the public: “a tremendous failure of messaging”— while the Democrats got all the airwaves.
Need to get people relief from all the [mandates] of Obamacare, incl the idea that you don't need insurance till you get sick, then can buy it with govtl support.  Companies withdraw from exchanges because they can't afford to stay in that specific game.  Pharmaceuticals: If you cap prices, the one thing you can guarantee is that supplies will dry up.  It does NOT take 14 years and $2.5 to develop a drug. We also need to get generics rapidly into the market.  Morass at the FDA. Scott Gottlieb will clear this up.  Will 24 million people lose insurance?  NO, not at all. Calculation: they assumed that every state would fully expand and that 90% of people eligible would actually sign up for Medicaid. False. Also, in comparisons, they used not Jan 2017 CBO projection; rather, used early 2016 projection Used a false projection, apparently for political reasons.  They were off by two to three times. Also said people would lose insurance — but in fact many millions won't buy insurance, so do not fit into these bogus statistics.  . . .  The Feds pay 90-100% of the cost of Medicaid expansion.   Called “free money” because people are paying from other states.
Medicaid, SNAP/food stamps, Social Security, disability coverage: at what point do we hit a wall where ewe must move able-bodied people to work?  Entitlements have disincentives to work. Make Medicaid a bridge to private insurance; seed-fund health savings account.  By  2049, there won’t be one penny for any govt expenditure except health coverage.  Therefore, things won't continue on their current path. 
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block D:  Larry Kudlow, in re: Fred Smith of FedEx (usu votes Republican) and David Abney of UPS (usu votes Democratic), two rival CEO’s, write to say the US economy is at an inflection point that the economy is growing too slowly, 2% isn’t good enough.
Lower tax rates and above all simplify the filings,  We can move to 3 or 4% by lowering corporate tax rates to 25% (or less). Invest in infrastructure, Fair trade.  Growth by lowering tax rates because the rest of the money goes into the economy, yielding jobs.  They’re critical of lousy US transportation system.   For decades China has stolen US intellectual property – not fair; creates disincentives.
 
Hour Two
uesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:
 
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block B:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re:  Robert Conquest, The Great Terror.
The Levada Center asks Russians: The most outstanding person in world history? Poll showed Stalin as number one with 38%; Putin, 34%, and tied is Pushkin; then Lenin and ____.
This year, 2017, marks the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Was it good? What did it contribute?  Also the 80th anniversary of the onset of Stalin’s Great Terror. Destroyed the entire Leninist elite, brought autocracy; changed the nature of the Party, the relationship bet people and Kremlin; destroyed private farming. Yet it modernized agriculture.  . . .   Stalingrad renamed to Volgograd. 
I grew up in thoroughly segregated Kentucky; have just returned from a trip to Russia, where there are ongoing arguments on whether or not to keep old statuary of hideous Communist tyrants, esp  Stalin, while the US has a parallel argument on tearing down statues of Confederate generals.  After decades of studying history, esp of the former USSR and now Russia, I find myself opposed to tearing down any historical monuments. 
Feliks Dzerzhinsky statues: one stood on Lyublyanka Square by the KGB HQ.  It was taken to a garden museum at the Tretyakov Museum, to a park of deposed rulers.
In Kentucky, we were taught a very lacquered version of history. . . . [all] I learned [relevant was] that Jefferson Davis and __ hailed originally from Kentucky.
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block C:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re:   , ,  , Stalin died in 1953; for the next decade, Khrushchev released its of information about the truth of Stalin’s mass-murder and torture.  His successor, Brezhnev, shut that down.  Gorbachov came to power in 1989(?); he de-Stalinized the system.  Under Yeltsin, so much everyday current misery in the country – 80% of the country fell into poverty, life expectancy lowered; no time to reflect on the history, but Stalin began a comeback against the absence of law and order and the looting of the oligarchs. Putin inherited all this in 2000— the state had collapsed twice in the Twentieth Century: in 1917 and 1991. His job was to rebuild the stet, Regions weren’t paying taxes, nukes weren’t secure. Had to rebuild and dvp security. Putin does not censor access to historical records, even the most appalling. 
The only real political party here is the Communist Party.  On October 30 of this year, Putin is scheduled to unveil in central Moscow the first-ever monument to Stalin’s victims.  Putin has become the most influential anti-Stalinist in Russian history. 
Museum of the history of the gulag. Want the Ministry of Education to make it mandatory for students to visit at least once while in school; so far, no success.
We have no museum of the history of slavery in the US.
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block D:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:  Prof Conquest asserts that it was Stalin, and Stalin alone, responsible for the mass-mass murder. The Great War: 26 million Soviet citizens dies, 1,400 cities were destroyed. Horror.  Yet the victory was so great that, unable to reconcile the horror of Stalin’s terror with the existential greatness of winning WWII, Russians chose to praise Stalin’s military victory.
How can democracy be created by men who were slave-owners?  One answer is, “They were men of their times.”
 
Hour Three
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block A:  John Bolton, AEI and Senior Fellow, Hoover; The Hill; in re: It's in China’s best national interest to pressure North Korea:  best for China to re-integrate the Koreas – thereby avoid an ocean of refugees, et al,; long-term stability of Northeast Asia requires eliminates DPRK nukes, meaning the end of the Kim regime. China can buy off mil leaders; controlled collapsed wd involve Chinese and US forces going in to secure the weapons. We've wasted 25 years; I don’t think there’s any other diplo alternative. US mil action would lead to an uncontrolled collapse, which would be bad for China with refugees’ streaming north into China and the US at China’s border.
Afghanistan:  We don’t have a solution. Americans are asking; For all the time we've been there. What re we getting?  The key is to [halt] the Taliban, not build Switzerland in Central Asia. We need to focus on Pakistan.   . . .  We need more [grand strategy] in Afghanistan.
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block B:  Jed Babbin, American Spectator, and former Asst Deputy Secretary of Defense; in re:  We can’t continue in this situation where DPRK has the wherewithal to nuke the US, although it may or may not have a re-entry vehicle. A matter of weeks or months.
Need to say  to Beijing: We will remove Kim one way or another, and ask you to put your own guy in there.  North Korea will not surrender.
The president is not being a war leader; this administration is not giving us the information we must have.   
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack, and author, Capitalism in Space; in re:  Happy surprises in commercial space.
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack, and author, Capitalism in Space; in re: Planetary investigations.
 
Hour Four
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block A:  Ian W. Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block B:  Ian W. Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block C:  Robert Klara, The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence
Tuesday  15 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block D:  Robert Klara, The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence