Tuesday 19 November 2013
Photo, above: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; November 19, 1863 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block A: Larry Kudlow, Kudlow Report, in re: . . . money doesn't create jobs; need the right environment. . . . Yellin [magical thinking] . . . Companies are profitable, the fed is providing the juice . . . PE rtios are running 15, 16 times (forward earnings); in a bull mkt, could get to 20, 21. The GOP ran against the Fed's creating inflation – which it isn't. Gold crashed. I gave Bernanke a strong B, even though I disagree on QE. ("Used to be a gentleman's C, but there's grade inflation.")
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block B: Edward Paul Lazear, Stanford, Hoover and FoxNews.com, in re: President Obama, Is a 'Substandard' Health Plan Really Substandard?
"Thirty to forty per cent of the [ACA website] doesn’t yet exist" – the part that lets you pay. The ACA is impractical, doesn’t cut costs, forces Americans to buy something they don’t want, and meanwhile can't be [used]. When Ed Lazear live a mile from the White House he bough a Ford Focus, which is what he needed, What the president calls "substandard" is mostly [not accurate]; he's ruled out the most efficient ones, not the least efficient. Direction of unaffordable care. Currently, the consumer doesn’t cover he cost of his decisions, so we consume more than necessary or even prudent. Compare US healthcare to Switzerland's: costs abt 2/3 as much as ours – because Swiss co-pay is 30%, while we pay 12%. "Substandard plans exclude maternity, mental health, prescription drugs," says the president. What we want, however, is to cover catastrophic costs. He want people in those pans in order to redistribute costs, from young healthies to older/sicker. The young healthies won't buy those premiums. . . . Need transparency in risk pools.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine, in re: In the Twentieth Century, inflation was the death of governments – turmoil, revolution, war, mass murder; In the Twenty-first Century, the rules seem to have changed. That inflation ruined Weimar; money is just a medium of exchange; when you meddle with it, it undermines people 's trust. It’s like confusing coat-checks with coats. But Bernanke and Yelling favor "some" inflation. It doesn’t stimulate – it may lead to a burst of activity, like a buzz from getting dunk. We never would have had a housing bubble or a skyrocketing oil price without inflation. We have two things going on: inflation undermines the value of the dollar – see the price of gold, which is four times 12 years ago – and the Consumer Price Index. Also, the Fed tries to suppress the price of long-term money, which has never before been done on this scale. When you suppress prices you get distortions and less credit flowing to small businesses. . . . Yellin won’t have the amt of discretion Bernanke was given: 2-2-1/2% inflation is the equivalent of a $1,000 tax increase on a family. Who gave the Fed permission to tax a family? And that proposed 10% one-time tax on wealth? The IMF's proposal of a worldwide wealth tax is a nonstarter; France basically did this and has a 1% growth. In southern Europe, VAT and other taxes have hugely increased, with no growth. Recall Ehrhardt, the successful German finance minister. . . . When inflation rate goes up, you’re rising the real capital gains tax – striking at the heart of the entrepreneurial system. Even though this kind of policy always fails – see Reagan's 20-plus year boom; Britain becoming the greatest world power in the Seventeenth Century - . . .
The Bankruptcy of Modern Economics . . . Most economic thinking today is bankrupt. This intellectual exhaustion and sterility have been graphically exhibited recently by several news stories, a U.S. Treasury Department report and a tax proposal by the IMF.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block D: Heather R. Higgins, NRO, in re: Obamacare Triage: with Strategy This Time Rollback and repeal are possible, but Republicans need a realistic plan. $95 plus 1% of the income of everyone in your household – noxious and not small. Taking money from people who don’t have insurance and transferring it to insurance companies that are playing ball with the Obama administration. . . . Most GOP happy to stipulate that there be a safety net; but not a prepaid plan from a third party. Could destroy auto insurance by doing the same thing with is t that we’re doing with health.
Hour Two
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block A: Jillian Melchior, Franklin Center Fellow, National Review, in re: The Fight for Mixed Martial Arts in New York A Nevada union’s proxy war with the UFC keeps the sport illegal in New York.
Culinary Union Local 226, Las Vegas, has wanted to get into Fertitta Brothers casinos. The local has enlisted Sheldon Silver from New York – the boss, who's run New York State for the last hundred years – to legalize UFC (unlimited fighting); Shelly Silver prevents it in order to support the union. No MMA/jiu-jitsu/all-kinds-of-fighting-sports vote.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block B: Bruce Webster, andStillIPersist, in re: Project manager is the general contractor who coordinates everything and makes sure its on track. The ACA had no project manager! Also chief architect: conceptual unity of the software. QA: makes sure you’re bldg what you intend, and there are no defects; the gatekeeper. Four stages – alpha; beta;
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block C: Nancy Weber, ProPublica, in re: Medicare Wastes Billions on Name-Brand Drugs The failure to track doctors who shun cheaper generics racks up huge costs for taxpayers in Medicare Part D, which fills one of every four U.S. prescriptions. ProPublica's investigation on Medicare Part D : Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Jennifer LaFleur analyze the prescribing habits of 1.6 million practitioners nationwide, find that a tiny fraction of them are having an outsized impact on spending in Medicare's drug program. Also an update to Prescriber Checkup app, which lets users see what drugs doctors are prescribing. Among their findings:
· Just 913 doctors could have saved taxpayers $300 million in 2011 by prescribing more generics like their peers.
· Nearly half of these big name-brand prescribers have accepted thousands of dollars in promotional or consulting fees from drug makers in recent years. (Look up what doctors are receiving these fees at Dollars for Docs news app.)
· Medicare's low-income subsidy encourages wasteful name-brand prescribing by keeping co-pays so low that there's little incentive to request a generic. Congress has declined to take up a fix proposed in Pres Obama's budget.
· The U.S. military, the VA and some private insurance plans put limits on name-brand prescribing. Medicare still hasn't.
Medicare’s Failure to Track Doctors Wastes Billions on Name-Brand Drugs The failure to track doctors who shun cheaper generics racks up huge costs for taxpayers in Medicare Part D, which fills one of every four U.S. prescriptions.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block D: Bud Weinstein, SMU and Bush Center, in re: Congress wants to kill Fannie & Freddie; that'd be a big mistake, because they'd both just have to be replaced.
Hour Three
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block A: Stephen F Cohen, NYU & Princeton Russian Studies prof Emeritus; Soviet Fates & Lost Alternatives. in re: 28 November, the Third Eastern Partnership meeting in Vilnius. Vl. Putin sees Ukraine as he piece of the old empire that Russia can't do without. In ten days, Ukraine has to decide if it'll sign an economic agreement with Europe, or else join Putin's Eurasian customs union, a sort of EU of the East. Ukraine will draw a market curtain of a new Cold War-like economic arrangement; a knife drawn through the heart of the Slavic world. Russia sees a continuing march of the West in NATO missile defense into the heart of Slavic civilization – Russia's security zone. The unfolding of the ends of the Cold War and of the Soviet Union, in a new form. Tymoshenko as the leader of the Ukraine, is a major oligarch I her own right; was arrested on questionable grounds. Euros say that she has to be set free; Yanokovich won’t do that, but can release her to Germany for back treatment, and the Ukraine Parliament won't allow that.
In a move that could derail plans for Ukraine to sign political and free trade agreements with the European Union this month, the country’s Parliament on Wednesday postponed consideration of a bill that would free the jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, and allow her to seek medical treatment in Germany.
Poland thinks its treated as a second-class citizen. Ukraine has a large population, has a large economy "in the tank." Poland and Lithuania have been conducting negotiations with Ukraine. If the line is drawn though the heart of the Slavic world, will destabilize for decades to come.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block B: Stephen F Cohen, NYU & Princeton, in re: Armenia and Georgia (both Christian) will stay with Russia, as will Kazakhstan; Moldova will go to the Europeans, but it's small. EU is offering to Ukraine rich markets + money from IMF; Russia offers comparable. Ukrainian goods cannot compete in a European market; EU won't let Ukies work in the EU. the card to play: pipeline of Russian natgas to Europe; in 2015, that'll be gone. Ukraine is a divided country : half is more like Lithuania and Poland, the other half is Russian. Ukraine is an economic basket-case. Yanokovich in re-election in 2015, needs western Ukraine to win. His opponent is the heavyweight champion.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block C: Aaron Klein, WABC radio, in re: Benghazi attackers knew location of safe room Benghazi laid out in detail. Rep. Devin Nunes. Timeline of State Dept is detailed; if there were other attacks [as there were], then State put out misinformation. Unprecedented: force command transferred mid-operation. In June, Dempsey said C110 was in Croatia, two or three hours' flight from Benghazi. Events: 9:30; 10:15; 2:30 AM; 5:30 AM. NDAs had to be signed by CIA. Unheard-of for an ambassador to testify before a closed-door hearing; why did Amb Stevens? On 15 Aug, Stevens determined that the mission annex couldn't be defended. Weapons transfers to Libyan warlord: from US to Turkey, from Turkey to Libya. See: Mike Rogers on Fox commenting on Benghazi. More questions.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block D: John Bolton, AEI, in re: That is why evaluating the terms of the upcoming interim deal — who scored on this issue, who scored on that — is beside the point. The negotiation process itself buys Iran both time to continue its nuclear-weapons activities and international legitimacy. Kerry and others, even at this supposedly interim stage, are already speculating openly about ultimately normalizing relations between Washington and Tehran. This tells the ayatollahs everything they need to know.
Consider one historical analogy. In 1938, Germany wanted the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. It would either get the territory or not. There was no compromise position. Ask Neville Chamberlain how that worked out. Read this article online.
Hour Four
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block A: Matthew Continetti , The Washington Free Beacon, in re: Obama-contra Obamacare is not like Katrina.
Poll: Most Americans Oppose Obamacare Repeal Despite Rollout Troubles United Technologies/ National Journal Congressional Connection poll finds public opinion on the health law holding steady with a narrow split emerging on its ultimate impact.
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block B: Michael Hirsch, National Journal, in re: Welcome Home, Tim Geithner You can't blame the former Treasury chief for cashing in. But let's not whitewash him either. "It was inevitable that a man who had been spiritually captured by Wall Street would someday join it in the flesh . . . Geithner, in truth, often seemed in denial of the deeper systemic dangers on Wall Street that he, as a member of [former Treasury secretary Robert] Rubin's team back in the 1990s, had helped to create. Their signature policy, the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, ensured there would no longer be any strong firewalls and capital buffers between Wall Street institutions and their affiliates, and between banks and nonbanks and insurance companies. A year later, in 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Geithner pushed for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which created a global laissez-faire market worth trillions in unmonitored trades. With the repeal of Glass-Steagall, systemic failure was largely forgotten while at the same time, with the passage of the CFMA, huge new systemic risks were being created. Yet Geithner, throughout his tenure, did not acknowledge these mistakes and resisted more fundamental reforms like the Volcker Rule, which harked back to the spirit of Glass-Steagall by seeking to bar federally insured banks from the riskiest trading."
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block C: Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray, in re: ‘Geneva talks a facade, US-Iran worked secretly on deal for past year’ White House denies report Obama team has been negotiating terms with Tehran, didn’t fully coordinate with Israel. The Geneva negotiations between the so-called P5+1 powers and Iran are a mere “facade,” because the terms of a deal on Iran’s nuclear program have been negotiated in talks between a top adviser to President Barack Obama and a leading Iranian nuclear official that have continued in secret for more than a year, Israeli television reported Sunday. . . .
Tuesday 19 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: MAVEN has reached orbit. After an additional engine burn, the spacecraft is now on its way to Mars.
Some spectacular oblique images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have been released.
The top three images are all oblique. Make sure you click through to the full caption of each image to get more information. The Lunar Alps image is especially interesting to those who have ever explored the Moon with a telescope from Earth. The rill shown is well known to amateurs, as are the Montes Alpes, or Alps Mountains, adjacent to it. From Earth that rill definitely looks like a meandering river canyon. This LRO image resolves it into a canyon made up of a series of crater-like depressions, a geological feature quite different from the river canyons of Earth.
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Music
Hour 1: Road to Perdition. Sin City.
Hour 2: The World Is Not Enough. The Proposition. Rome.
Hour 3: Apocolyptico. The Road.
Hour 4: Star Trek. God of War. 300.