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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, senior advisor to CNBC, and on WABC radio.
Hour One
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: David Davenport, Hoover, in re: Baseball in August: not the World Series; teams still positioning themselves; the races within the race – all these obtain in the GOP's 17 candidates.   Rick Perry flames out for lack of money: as for Trump, this helps build Brand Trump.  Scott Walker has faded a tab but is in; eke Cruz and Rubio; most of the rest are on to specific issues or else do well in certain states. Trump is not a conservative but a businessman, tapping in to frustrations.  Trump, Bush and Ben Carson are currently the top three in RealClearPolitics. Trump: a protectionist/restrictionist/nativist, not a conservative, which favors free market, free capital and labor (with rules).  Trump trashes the yuan, must want a cheap dollar. Where is he on health-care reform? He's a pragmatic businessman, a bloviator; there is a kind of conservatism that takes a heavily law-and-order view.  Recall that his great-grandfather immigrated from Germany, would not have been admitted according to 2015 Trump rules – he would have been returned to Germany and there'd be no Donald Trump with us today.
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: David Davenport, Hoover, in re: Nixon used to say that he had to run rightward for the primaries, then center for the election.   Jeb Bush is rather conservative except that he wants immigration reform; John Kasich: seems to be trying to find his kinder, gentler voice. Ohio will be important electorally and he's made his state work reasonably well, trying to place himself as somewhat centrist – but a lot of GOP red meat doesn't favor that.   People say: "Bush + Kasich"   JB: I don't think you can win the White House without Ohio.  DD: I don't se how Kasich gets through the playoffs, how he'll get traction w traditional Republican base.  LK: Ben Carson!  Every time I interview him: moral values, flat tax, all the right things? JB: My reservation is that Dr Carson is a rookie.  DD: His poll ratings are good an=as is his fundraising. Appointed a friend of mine to coordinate his campaign – and my friend also had zero political experience.
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Joe Rago, WSJ, in re: The Animas River in Colorado that flows down through several states; has been fundamental to the Navajo Nation and Hopiland, as well as much of Arizona. The EPA was doing "due diligence" with a backhoe, released from a disused gold mine an ocean of lethal, yellow toxins into the entire region.   As far as anyone can tell, there was no reason whatsoever for the backhoe to have been there at the gold mine; apparently, the EPA is looking for problems by which to justify its existence.  . . . Supreme Court on power plants.  Govt management of the economy: Obamacare. Presentation by Gov Walker – not "Obamacare Light." He proposes it as a deregulatory project: how to do we reduce govt, increase transparency, cross state lines.  Reduce marginal rate on capital income by 2.9 percentage points; rids taxes on American innovations [innovative industry?]. More consumer and patient choices yield the dvpt of an economy within healthcare.  Block grants might pass in Congress, was the most thought-out portion, from a governor who must deal with th Governors across the nation, both Dem and GOP are begging to have the feds give the funds to each state so the state, which knows how to organize these things, can successfully run healthcare.  The feds refuse.  Poverty trap: if you earn a dollar of income you often lose more than a dollar of aid.  Disincentive for upward mobility – really hard to climb the income ladder. Scott Walker presents a flat Medicare subsidy based on your age, no forms to fill out.  . . . [See current WSJ editorial on Gov Walker's response to the Affordable Care Act.]  
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  Larry Kudlow, in re: top of the list are growth, tax reform and    .  Some flat-taxers out there. GOP needs not to get bogged down in immigration.  US needs to lower corporate tax to 15% to match in Canada – with that much growth, immigration will be no problem at all. Protectionism, restrictive trade.  Over three decades, 47 million new jobs.  We must get back to 4% growth.  Without immigrants and their birth rate (Europe has a demographic crisis: no young people to care for their old people) -  . . . We need to reform our legal immigration policies.  Legal immigration is pro-growth; fences are anti-growth. Fifteen per cent corporate and wage-earner tax rate would make everyone so happy no one would worry.
Hour Two
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: Putin slams 'external control' over Ukraine on Crimea visit  ; Ukrainian President Slams Putin's Visit to Crimea  ;  Kyiv, Moscow Trade Blame for Escalation in E. Ukraine  ; Russia warns of Ukraine offensive amid deadly shelling - Al Jazeera English  ; Putin Escalates Again in Ukraine ; Shelling in east Ukraine kills nine ; Despite 6-month-old cease-fire, Ukraine fighting rages  ;  Civilians, soldiers die in east Ukraine fighting as Putin visits Crimea  ;   Putin: Ukraine will build its future together with Russia  ;  Civilians killed in Ukraine amid fears for fragile ceasefire   (1 of 4)
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; and author; in re: Despite 6-month-old cease-fire, Ukraine fighting rages  ;  Civilians, soldiers die in east Ukraine fighting as Putin visits Crimea ;  Putin: Ukraine will build its future together with Russia  ;  Civilians killed in Ukraine amid fears for fragile ceasefire (2 of 4)
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; and author; (3 of 4)
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; and author; (4 of 4)
Hour Three
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 3, Block A: Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Steelers fan; in re:  A few miles off the Ohio Turnpike west of Youngstown, a homemade sign billowed in a breeze along a rural highway.  “Run Joe Run” it read.  Presumably, someone there was pining for Joe Biden to run for president.  The prospect of the vice president's jumping in to the 2016 race was always a possibility; he left that door wide open earlier this year, when he said he would decide by summer's end. Earlier this month, a New York Times column outlined just why that might happen.  . . . LINK
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  Sarah Westwood, Washington Examiner, in re: Sen Grassley: Hillary's attorney lacked security   Thumb drive.  . . . Catherine Duvall was a private attorney, then moved to IRS in search for Lois Lerner's missing e; now in charge of document production related to Mrs Clinton's e; and she has very close ties to a firm working with Mrs Clinton.  Dept of Justice and the thumb drive, with the 55,000 pages of e provided last year from the home-brew server. " Hillary Clinton's private attorney, who was permitted to retain copies of Clinton's emails until earlier this month, may not have had the proper security clearance or adequate tools to protect those documents.
"[I]t appears the FBI has determined that your clearance is not sufficient to allow you to maintain custody of the emails," wrote Sen. Charles Grassley in a letter Friday to David Kendall, Clinton's attorney. Three days earlier, the FBI had taken from Kendall a thumb drive that he used to store copies of the work-related emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in December of last year. Investigators grew increasingly concerned about . . . "
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  Mary Anastasia O'Grady, WSJ, in re:  Trump's defective economics.  Donald Trump is speaking of currency devaluations in Japan and Argentina are doing well because it's being run by geniuses. However, when the govt cuts the value, that makes us poorer, not richer.  May do it because in the very short run exports become cheaper – but that's a short-run bounce because seven loaves of bread still equal one bottle of wine  - in a fiat currency you get no benefit; you transfer the burden to the backs of the poor!   The US dollar has the honor of being the world's reserve currency. You can't say "one of our dollars equals two of your currency" and also tell your central bank to print a vast amount of dollars. Btw, Argentina is an economic basket-case (again).  . . .
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:  Clare Foran, nationaljournal.com, in re: Though they may appear to have little in common, Clare Foran explains what Lawrence Lessig loves about Donald Trump. Professor, author of books on governance; holds that big money in politics is the root of most of our political evil. Also thinks that Trump is doing wonders for the effort to reform campaign finance laws when he says, "Big money buys media."  Lessing, however, is little money: is crowdfunding a million dollars by Labor Day – so far, has over $300K.  Ultimately, he favors public financing of elections, using a sort of voucher system. 
Hour Four
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 4, Block A: Sumi Somaskanda, freelance journalist living and working in Berlin;  in re: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/07/germany-refugees-asylum-seekers-arson-violence-unlwecome/ (1 of 2)
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Sumi Somaskanda, freelance journalist living and working in Berlin;  in re: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/07/germany-refugees-asylum-seekers-arson-violence-unlwecome/ (2 of 2)
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Jody Kantor, David Straitfeld New York Times, in re: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace  Amazon, America’s most valuable retailer, is “conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable.”
Tuesday 18 August 2015 / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re:
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