The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 30 April 2013

Air Date: 
April 30, 2013

 

Photo, above:  Chinese ethnoburbs in the San Gabriel Valley are a vital demographic component of the region and the San Gabriel Valley has achieved international prominence as a hub of overseas Chinese or hua qiao. Although Chinese immigrants were a noteworthy presence in the establishment of Southern California from the 19th century, significant Chinese migration to suburban San Gabriel Valley began following the white flight beginning in the 1970s, well-educated and affluent Asian Americans began settling in the west San Gabriel Valley, primarily to Monterey Park. See: Hour 3, Block D,  Jennifer Medina, NYT, on "An Asian Majority on the Rise in California."

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio

Hour One

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 1, Block A: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio, in re: 

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 1, Block B:  Lanhee J Chen, Hoover and Bloomberg News April 18, 2013, in re: How Republicans Can Win Over Asian-Americans I am the son of Taiwanese immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 1970s seeking opportunity for themselves and the chance for their children to grow up in a more prosperous society. My story is not unusual among Asian- Americans. It’s also a profile that is tailor-made for the Republican Party, which stands for enhancing opportunity. Yet Asian-Americans from my generation (and others) are finding less and less appeal in the Republican Party.   In 1992, a total of 31 percent of Asian-Americans voted for Bill Clinton for president. In 2000, Asian-Americans were roughly split between George W. Bush and Al Gore; 62 percent voted for Barack Obama in 2008; and, according to exit polling, last year 73 percent of Asian-Americans voted to re-elect him. (Obama won a higher percentage of Asian-American voters than Latino voters.) That’s a near-total inversion over two decades. The National Asian American Survey, conducted after the November 2012 election, illustrates how thorough the political transformation of the community has been. Obama carried every segment of the population, including Vietnamese and Filipinos, who have traditionally been more supportive of Republican candidates. [more]

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 1, Block C: . John Cochrane, Hoover and Booth School of Business, Chicago, in re: April 14, 2013 | Wall Street Journal    America Needs an Alternative Maximum Tax   If you pay 70% of your income in taxes, let’s cut it back to 50%; f you’re paying 50%, keep it at 50%  This is not a replacement for the tax code; think of it as  limit: whatever you [govt] do, I've already paid it forward. The average person already has abt half his income taken in taxes if you add up local, state, federal, real estate, cap gains, sales, and all the taxes.  Currently it’s a pork feeding frenzy for special interests. So far, it’s damaged California, damaged people who invest in business; It’s OK to hate rich people; it’s just that if you take 70, 80, 90 % of their money, they’ll quit investing. How much do the extremely rich pay? It’s intentionally obscure, so I don't know.

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 1, Block D:   Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio, in re:  Robert Parra, 35, is being punished for his success . . .

Hour Two

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  . Michael Graham, American talk radio host, writer, & conservative political commentator; in re: the day after the day after the Tsarnaev hunt. Police had air, land, sea huts; Watertown has large houses and lawns – why couldn’t they find him?  They locked down the T – there's not even a T stop in Watertown.  I live in Waltham, the next town over; Gov Patrick shut down the entire regional bus and T system, so people in Quincy, miles away, couldn't even get on a bus. It made no sense.  I got in my car, drove downtown to a breakfast appt, left and (illegally drove back home) – no one on the streets at all, it was great. The Russians warn about Tamarlane, who travels back and forth to Daghestan, they still couldn’t find him. Over 400 rounds fired at an unarmed 19-yr-old bleeding to death in a boat – we did not "do the job"! Dzhoshkhar ha four public defenders Tsarnaevs collected over $100K over five years. Also got Pell grants, et al.  Cd be as much as $300K. Now we throw four taxpayer-funded attys at a guy whose photos we have in flagrante.  The police simply missed the street the kid was on.

If you're outside of Mass you've probably seen Ed Markey more often than we have; he's in Chevy Chase, MD more often; his house here is just to keep him a legal resident. The only question in Mass is which Obama supporter will get more votes. 

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 2, Block B:  Charles Pellegrino, author and explorer, in re: Titanic giveaway. The inquest at Waldorf Astoria into Titanic sinking 101 years ago. Ofcr [Lightoller] being asked about the lights of another ship that were seen by people in lifeboats; 'twas abt seven miles away; was the Californian.  J Bruce Ismay was one of he owners of both Titanic and Californian, so Ismay denied that the ship that bugged out was the Californian.  Made its money carrying working-class people back and forth to Europe.  Ismay said he "stepped into the boat" and that it was "as quiet as a church." In fact, pandaemonium all around, warning shots being fired, utter chaos. Ismay never claimed  he had permission to get into the boat. the historian Walter Lord said he didn’t quite blame Ismay for stepping into the boat.  Did he run from doom? Ran from absolute panic all around. Died in 1937.

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 2, Block C:  . John Avlon, CNN, The Daily Beast, and Newsweek International, in re: South Carolina Slugfest (debate). Gov Mark Sanford is looking to return to politics after his scandal; challenged by Elizabeth Colbert Busch. First District is coastal; heart is Charleston, second-largest town; goes down to Beauford and Savannah. People moving in from all over for jobs and quality of life. Decline of textile mills was devastating, but f you live somewhere people want to visit, you've got a good thing. It's a beautiful, quaint city, excellent restaurants; it's a right-to-work state. Boeing Dreamliner plant.   ECB made clear that Sanford's character issues would be on her list. Hosted by Path,com; John Avlon was the host. She more than held her own, was crisp, laid down declarative sentences. Sanford's style is laconic, enormously practiced.   Mark Sanford is a flawed candidate; the Republican Party walked away from him after he was charged with trespassing by his ex-wife.  (On 3 Feb. Superbowl night Sanford went to what had been a family cottage with his two sons; his presence had been forbidden by court order.)

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 2, Block D:  Jeff Bliss, The Bliss Index, in re: Jerry Brown's fantasy of building a high-speed rail line in a state that's broke.  The first link is being held up by a company that's dug in its heel; will be on hold for a long while (the part that goes from a hundred-year-old Chinese graveyard to the state prison where Manson is. Not exactly airport-to-airport. It'll cost $90 billion; number of riders has been overstated; land acquisition is not done and underfunded. Subsidies alone will cost $200mil a year or more. Note: high-speed rail is mid-Twentieth Century technology. This is Gov Brown's high-school fantasy.   And btw, it'll make so many stops that it'll never reach its high speed. Brown went to China, rode in the train that'd fallen off a trestle (and cars buried with dying passengers inside).  Anyone who opposes this project is labeled y the governor "a declinist."  California's total debt in now $1 trillion !  Note that shale is thick in Texas and reviving the state's economy. There's a lot of shale in California – but environmentalists have sandbagged that development.

Michael Barone  Senior Political Analyst  The Washington Examiner  The idiocy of California’s proposed high-speed rail line continues to astonish. For reasons why, consult “California High-Speed Rail: An Updated Due Diligence Report” prepared for the Reason Foundation by Wendell Cox and Joseph Vranich. Cox and Vranich point out that the high-speed rail authority’s projections are hopelessly unrealistic. The decision to use commuter rail lines in the San Francisco peninsula and near Los Angeles means that HSR cannot possibly meet the travel time goals. Cost projections are equally unreliable, and there is no financing in sight for a project whose costs have gone far beyond the advertised $40 billion beyond a $3 billion federal match (which the Obama administration is eager to buy) and $9 in state bonds (which can be issued pursuant to passage of a referendum in 2008. As Cox and Vranich write, “’Astounding’ is the only word to describe the manner in which the [High-Speed Rail] Authority has ignored reviews ranging from constructive analysis to censure.”  What I found most astonishing is that [more]

California Governor Jerry Brown, along with an entourage of high-profile business and financial leaders from the Golden State, recently traveled to China on a trade tour. The agenda included government and private sector partnerships in electric vehicle production, trash-to-electricity technology, and green energy research and development.

But the tour’s main purpose centered on garnering Chinese financial interest in what Jerry Brown hopes to be his defining legacy: high-speed rail for California. (Embarrassingly for Brown, China indicted its former top rail officialon corruption charges during the governor’s junket.) China is currently sitting on $3.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. Traditionally, these have been invested in foreign government bonds. But in recent years, China has moved to diversify its holdings away from government bonds—which have been yielding historically low interest rates—and into more lucrative brick and mortar assets. Needless to say, the China’s banks and sovereign wealth funds would be fools to invest in Jerry Brown’s white elephant for several reasons.

KMJ NEWS   THE HIGH-SPEED RAIL PROJECT IS FACING A PROBLEM THAT COULD JEOPARDIZE ITS CONSTRUCTION KICKOFF THIS SUMMER IN THE VALLEY.  THE NEW CHALLENGE COMES FROM A PRIVATE RAILROAD THAT CONTROLS A KEY RIGHT OF WAY.  THE RAIL AGENCY IS BEGINNING TO MAKE PURCHASE OFFERS FOR LAND AROUND FRESNO AND SAYS IT STILL PLANS TO START BUILDING THIS SUMMER.   BUT LAST WEEK, BURLINGTON NORTHERN SANTA FE RAILWAY CO., WHICH OPERATES A FREIGHT LINE THAT FOLLOWS SOME OF THE 130-MILE INITIAL ROUTE IN THE CENTRAL VALLEY, WARNED IN A BLUNT LETTER THAT NO DEAL HAS BEEN REACHED TO BUILD ON OR NEAR ITS EXISTING TRACK.   BNSF ALSO SIGNALED THAT IT MAY NOT BE WILLING TO ACCEPT THE PROJECT AS PROPOSED, IN PART BECAUSE THE EXACT ROUTE OF THE LINE IS STILL UNCLEAR - CALLING IT  "AMBIGUOUS AND CONTRADICTORY." A RAIL AUTHORITY SPOKESMAN DOWNPLAYED THE BNSF LETTER, SAYING IT IS "NOT A SHOW STOPPER."

Hour Three

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 3, Block A:  Larry Johnson, NoQuarter, in re: What actually happened in Benghazi? A Special Operations soldier reported that they know where the person responsible for the attack on the ambassador and annex is known, in Libya, have "fixed " him – got his coordinates. Have been denied permission by Pentagon, State and White House to go and catch him.  Variety of whistleblowers: at State (Clinton defenders say "she had to sign every cable, as long as she was in Washington" – but her deputy, Amb Patrick Kennedy, was well informed of all this.) Amb Stevens ran situations and so State knew all. In fact, that evening, Secy Clinton deliberately refused to respond in order to avoid an attack on the 9/11 anniversary or to publicize the fact that al Qaeda is alive and active. Victoria Toensing, Esq., represents ___.  The White House is in desperate damage control. The night this occurred, Pres Obama was missing in action, did not take actins required of a chief of state. The American people do not have a complete story – training of surrogate forces, moving them to Syria, collection and movement of weapons, all commissioned by CIA and by Secy Clinton. "A tough Chicago crowd who tend to get down in the dirt; tend to impugn motive and" personal history.

Henry turned to Benghazi and asked Obama if his administration has been actively attempting to intimidate the survivors of that September 11, 2012, attack on an American consulate in Libya into not testifying about the events of that night.

“Ed, I’m not familiar with this notion that anybody’s been blocked by testifying,” Obama replied.

“They’ve hired an attorney because they’re saying that they’ve been blocked from coming forward,” Henry pressed.

“I’m not familiar with it,” Obama reiterated.

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 3, Block B:  . Kathleen Howley, Bloomberg, in re:  Boston Manhunt ‘Missed the Boat’ as Police Skip Street  Reporters spoke to more than a dozen Watertown residents on the street Johar was found, all of whom said their properties weren’t checked, even though the road was in the 20 block door-to-door search zone. Also spoke with police officials to report on the skepticism of the police work in the hunt. 

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 3, Block C:   Andy Fixmer, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re;

iTUNES: THE OVERSTUFFED ADOLESCENT:   iTunes’s share of U.S. music sales has fallen from 85 percent to 65 percent in less than three years, as avid music listeners turn elsewhere.Amazon.com’s cheaper digital music store has seized about 22 percent of U.S. music sales in the last several years. In a bigger threat to the song­purchase business model, Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody have signed up millions of subscribers for their music-­streaming services, a feature iTunes doesn’t match.

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 3, Block D:   Jennifer Medina, NYT, in re: An Asian Majority on the Rise in California  Asians are now the largest population group in more than half a dozen cities in the San Gabriel Valley.

Hour Four

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 4, Block A:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 4, Block B:  Tod Lindberg, Hoover,  in re:  Barack Obama Revived George Bush's Popularity

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 4, Block C Ken Anderson, Hoover, in re: 

Tuesday  30 April  2013 / Hour 4, Block D:  Brian Winter, Reuters, in re:  Latin American presidents love Twitter - maybe too much.  When a million angry Argentines flooded the streets earlier this month to protest her government, President Cristina Fernandez decided to post a message on Twitter.

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Music

Hour 1:  Spy; All the King's Men

Hour 2:  Invasion

Hour 3:  Persia

Hour 4:  International