The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 28 June 2016

Air Date: 
June 28, 2016

Photo, left:
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio.
 
Hour One
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 1, Block A: John Tamny, Forbes.com, RealClearMarkets, & author, Who Needs the Fed?; in re: Economics and politics.
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 1, Block B: John Tamny, Forbes.com, RealClearMarkets, & author, Who Needs the Fed?; in re:   LK: China has stolen $350 billion of US intellectual property . You can be a free trader and yet deal with this – the Kevin Brady bill covers it. Canada is our biggest trading partner.  JT: We're a rich country because we're already an open market – the source of our wealth. Why would we renegotiate something like that? If China were such a thieving country I think we’d see that in the stock market now.  Trump speaks of bad trade deals: he’s talking down the dollar, which I find scary.  LK:  We should have stable currencies . . . As for border tax, either they drop theirs or we establish ours.  JT: A border tax is just a tax on the purpose of our work. I say the open borders are the source of our wealth.
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 1, Block C: Bill Whalen, Hoover via Forbes, in re:  Three Things to Keep an Eye On -- Unless You've Taken a Campaign Brexit  With the calendar about to flip from June to July, here’s a suggestion: take some time off (presumably there are travel bargains to be had in the U.K.) and rest up for the fun of next month’s national conventions. / Turkey, Brexit, trade, Democratic succession, Trump.  Weekend polls were all over the place.  UGov poll from Hoover. People are disappointed with the political class, and Hillary reacts to a crisis with the word, “experienced.”  This bespeaks establishment, which people are running away from all over the place.   She has $700 million for this campaign; but recall Meg Whitman: you can have super machinery and plenty of money, and still not be able to sell the product.  VP? Maybe Sheryl Sandberg?  Probably Tim Kaine or Sherrod Brown – Kaine, esp, would be an asset to the campaign.
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, in re:  The Roosevelt Administration had to design new tax regs on the fly; it eventually devolved into the mess we have today.  Interruptions were under Reagan and Kennedy.  Kennedy reduced marginal tax rates on every single bracket, from richest to poorest.  This was the first supply-side tax regime.     Jack Kemp: “Let’s just use Kennedy’s tax cuts” – he sold that to Reagan, who used precisely the same cuts. Recall that at the worst, the highest tax rates was 91%.    Arthur Goldberg spoke directly to Jack Kennedy about 5.5 million people unemployed- a 50% increase over the previous year; he was alarmed and took a radical move. He had tremendous support from the Chamber of Commerce and Wilbur Mills.  More next week.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies/History/Politics at NYU and Princeton; also Board of American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); in re: Istanbul, Brexit.  . . . Putin said that on balance he’d prefer the UK to stay in the UK.  . . .  Putin has taken advantage of the low value f the ruble to increase exports.   If the pound sterling stays low [1.33 this evening], maybe the UK will do something similar.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/27/europe/brexit-eu-putin-chance/ ; http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/17/europe/cameron-eu-exit/
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies/History/Politics & eastwestaccord.com (2 of 4)
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies/History/Politics & eastwestaccord.com (3 of 4)
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies/History/Politics & eastwestaccord.com (4 of 4)
Hour Three
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 3, Block A:  Dr Lara M Brown, George Washington University, in re: Clinton Leads in Nearly All Battlegrounds
New Public Policy Polling surveys in key battleground states were released:
•    Wisconsin: Clinton 47%, Trump 39%
•    Pennsylvania: Clinton 46%, Trump 42%
•    Ohio: Clinton 44%, Trump 40%
•    New Hampshire: Clinton 43%, Trump 39%
•    Iowa: Clinton 41%, Trump 39%
•    Arizona: Trump 44%, Clinton 40%
Clinton Expands Lead over Trump   The latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey tracking poll shows Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Donald Trump to eight points, 49% to 41%.
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 3, Block B:  Josh Rogin, Washington Post, in re:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/benghazi-report-clinton-was-planning-a-trip-to-libya-before-the-attacks/2016/06/27/582980a6-3cb5-11e6-80bc-d06711fd2125_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russia-is-harassing-us-diplomats-all-over-europe/2016/06/26/968d1a5a-3bdf-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275_story.html
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 3, Block C:   Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs, in re:  “We urge the world, especially Western countries, to take a firm stand against terrorism,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “Despite paying a heavy price, Turkey has the power, determination, and capacity to continue the fight against terrorism until the end.”  The attack on the airport “should serve as a turning point in the fight against terrorism around the world, and especially in Western countries,” he said.
Outside the airport, stranded passengers hauled their luggage as they were evacuated from the terminal. Some travelers cried and embraced one another. One woman stood outside with a sign bearing the name of a missing passenger. Ambulances raced in and out of the area, sirens wailing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/explosions-hit-istanbuls-airport-official-says/2016/06/28/a5cedca6-3d65-11e6-9e16-4cf01a41decb_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory (1 of 2)
The Urban-Regions War Has Begun, as Predicted   The United Kingdom’s Brexit decision — at least the electorate’s decision — to quit the European Union marked the first major reversal of the dominance of urban capitals over their hinterland regions in the post-Cold War era. But, given the continuing lure of urbanization and the current insistence on voter numbers as the sole measure of democracy, was it a last hurrah for the countryside? 
Or was it a sign that the regions would no longer accept the tyranny of the marginal majority — as the current iteration of democracy has become — and therefore the start of a resurgence of a more Westphalian version of democracy, one which balanced territory with population? Urban voting concentrations — or the urban political élites in most countries — have, for the past decade or more, been attempting to eradicate the institutions designed to give weight to geographic dispersal or citizens. The geographic representation given by the UK’s House of Lords (until Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair’s destruction of the spirit of that House); the gradual politicization of the Senates of the US, Australia, France, Nigeria, and the like, have all been vitiated by a gradual removal of these bodies’ original intent to represent rural or geographic interests of a nation-state. 
The result has been a rapid accretion of power into the hands of the urban mass which has then comfortably disregarded the regions. 
This writer forecast the revolt of the regions in the 2012 book, UnCivilization: Urban Geopolitics in a Time of Chaos, noting: “In the current wave of cultural realignments, confederacies such as the European Union may enjoy a breathing space if they resist the urge toward unified policy and centralized power, but the EU seems bent on having all the powers of an Empire, with none of the responsibilities. Ultimately, a further battle between urban and non-urban societies may be played out in Europe.” Clearly, in the ensuing years from 2012, the EU did not resist the urge toward greater power, and remained blind to the anger of the regions. 
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 3, Block D:  Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs, in re: The Urban-Regions War Has Begun, as Predicted;  in re:  Middle East and Europe.  Note that "some northern Kurds speak Greek dialects"!  [The main Kurdish language is Kurmanji, which is Indo-European. In iraq, many also speak Arabic.] (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 4, Block A:  The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions, by Andrew Hacker (1 of 2)
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 4, Block B:  The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions, by Andrew Hacker (2 of 2)
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 4, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, behind the black, in re: Russia in Orbit. /A Russian space station spun off from ISS?   The competition heats up: Energia, Russia’s main contractor for building its part of ISS, has proposed a plan to separate the Russian modules from ISS, once they are finally launched, to create a new and solely Russian space station.
According to RKK Energia, the prime Russian contractor on the ISS, the new outpost would begin with the separation of the Nauka [Russia’s ISS science module, long delayed] from the rest of the old station in mid-2020s. By that time, Nauka should have two even newer modules in tow. One would be the so-called Node Module, a tinker-toy-like component that could connect to six other modules, crew ships, cargo tankers, structural elements, you name it. The Node Module is already in RKK Energia’s garage and ready to go within a few months after the Nauka.
Next would be the new Science and Power Module (NEM) which, as it name implies, will finally give cosmonauts a state-of-the-art science lab and a pair of large solar arrays, making the Russian segment fully independent from the rest of the ISS in terms of power, communications, and other resources. The launch of NEM, currently promised as early as 2019, would set the stage for these three components to leave the ISS to form ROS. Russia has always given itself the option to do this, designing its part of the station in a way that would allow it to stand alone. http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-russian-space-station-spun-off-from-iss/   (1 of 2)
Tuesday  28 June 2016   / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behind the black, in re: Russia looks to reduce Proton launch costs.  The competition heats up: Russian officials are considering developing a new variant of the Proton rocket that would cost less to launch and thus make the rocket more desirable in the increasingly competitive launch market.
They have not made a decision yet. As the article notes, [G]iven the extended length of time required for even less radical upgrades of Proton and the official Russian strategy to phase out the vehicle in favor of Angara-5, it is unclear whether it would be possible to justify the Proton-Light development effort. A number of previous proposals to change the shape and size of the Proton-M rocket were deemed too expensive more than a decade earlier in the rocket’s operational career. http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/russia-looks-to-reduce-proton-launch-costs/   (2 of 2)
..  ..  ..