Photo, left: Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco, POTUS.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes
 
Hour One
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 1, Block A: John Fund, NRO, and Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, in re:  . . .  He should put Andy McCarthy on staff:
"Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests."  http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446415/susan-rice-unmasking-trump-campaign-members-obama-administration-fbi-cia-nsa
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 1, Block B:   John Fund, NRO, and Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes (2 of 2)
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 1, Block C: Josh Rogin, Washington Post, in re:
Trump NSC staffing slowly with Republicans. @JoshRogin WashingtonPost.com ; McMaster staffing NSC with traditional GOP foreign policy hands   National security adviser H.R. McMaster is continuing to fill out his national security staff with conservative foreign policy experts from the establishment think-tank world, preferring them to the military intelligence types favored by his predecessor, retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/04/04/mcmaster-staffing-nsc-with-traditional-gop-foreign-policy-hands/?utm_term=.e63e4416c59a
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 1, Block D: Robert Grayboyes, Mercatus Center, in re: Healthcare Moral Hazard. Robert Grayboyes @Mercatus  ;  Moving away from third-party payers is essential to control costs and improve quality, but increasing patients’ direct payments must be done with incentives in mind.

• Deductibles have grown dramatically as a share of direct payments; however, deductibles do almost nothing to contain costs incurred by the small share of very sick patients who account for most healthcare costs.
• Instead, public policy must return to equalizing the tax preference for health care between direct payment and third-party payment.
• Importantly, the government should not mandate that health insurance cover “preventive care” or other costs that are within the reach of most households’ budgets, but instead should allow people to buy health insurance that covers only catastrophic expenses.
• Government healthcare programs should operate on a voucher system: the government should transfer the means to pay to patients, who then pay providers directly.

Reforms in this direction will greatly reduce the moral hazard and other unnecessary costs associ­ated with third-party payment. Prices will come down, waste will shrink, and quality will improve. The only thing lacking is the political will to overcome the tyranny of the status quo.  https://www.mercatus.org/publications/healthcare-spending-third-party-pa...
 
Hour Two
Tuesday  4 April 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:  “Trump-Russia-intelligence” story in the New Cold War. Stephen F. Cohen.  Ms. Rice was also at pains to say that unmasking is not the same as leaking to the press and that she “leaked nothing to nobody, and never have.” But she hasn’t been accused of leaking the name of the Trump official. She is responsible for unmasking a U.S. citizen, which made that name more widely disseminated across the government and thus could have been more easily leaked by someone else. Michael Flynn lost his job as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser because of leaks about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.
Meanwhile, Democrats and the Beltway press are rallying to defend Ms. Rice by claiming that it isn’t news for a senior White House official to unmask the name of a political opponent of an incoming Administration. Thanks, guys. If you want to cover only one side of the Trump-Russia-intelligence story, we’ll be happy to cover both. https://www.wsj.com/articles/susan-rice-keeps-her-mask-on-1491348172 (1 of 4)
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (2 of 4)
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (3 of 4)
Tuesday  4 April 2017 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord (4 of 4)
 
Hour Three
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 3, Block A:   Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re: “And you can get 10 years for that. It is a tremendous abuse of the system. We’re not supposed to be monitoring American citizens. Bigger than the crime, is the breach of public trust.”
Waurishuk said he was most dismayed that “this is now using national intelligence assets and capabilities to spy on the elected, yet-to-be-seated president.”  “We’re looking at a potential constitutional crisis from the standpoint that we used an extremely strong capability that’s supposed to be used to safeguard and protect the country,” he said. “And we used it for political purposes by a sitting president. That takes on a new precedent.” http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/03/susan-rice-ordered-spy-agencies-to-pro...
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 3, Block B:  Gordon Chang, Daily Beast and Forbes.com. in re: http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/asia/north-korea-projectile/index.html?adkey=bn
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 3, Block C:   African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918, by Robert Gaudi (1 of 2)
“Let me say straight out that if all military histories were as thrilling and well written as Robert Gaudi’s African Kaiser, I might give up reading fiction and literary bio­graphy… Gaudi writes with the flair of a latter-day Macaulay. He sets his scenes carefully and describes naval and military action like a novelist. " --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

The incredible true account of World War I in Africa and General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the last undefeated German commander.

As World War I ravaged the European continent, a completely different theater of war was being contested in Africa. And from this very different kind of war, there emerged a very different kind of military leader....
 
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the continent of Africa was a hotbed of international trade, colonialism, and political gamesmanship. So when World War I broke out, the European powers were forced to contend with one another not just in the bloody trenches, but in the treacherous jungle. And it was in that unforgiving land that General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck would make history.
 
With the now-legendary Schutztruppe (Defensive Force), von Lettow-Vorbeck and a small cadre of hardened German officers fought alongside their fanatically devoted native African allies as equals, creating the first truly integrated army of the modern age.
 
African Kaiser is the fascinating story of a forgotten guerrilla campaign in a remote corner of Equatorial Africa in World War I; of a small army of ultraloyal African troops led by a smaller cadre of rugged German officers—of white men and black who fought side by side.
 
It is the story of epic marches through harsh, beautiful landscapes; of German officers riding bicycles to battle through the bush; of rhino charges and artillery duels with scavenged naval guns; of hunted German battleships hidden up unmapped river deltas teeming with crocodiles and snakes; of a desperate army in the wilderness cut off from the world, living off hippo lard and saw grass flowers—enduring starvation, malaria, and dysentery. And of the singular intercontinental voyage of Zeppelin L59, whose improbable four-thousand-mile journey to the equator and back made aviation history. 
 
But mostly it is the story of von Lettow-Vorbeck—the only undefeated German commmander in the field during World War I and the last to surrender his arms.
https://www.amazon.com/African-Kaiser-General-Lettow-Vorbeck-1914-1918/d...
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 3, Block D:  African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918, by Robert Gaudi (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 4, Block A:   Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, NYU Law, in re:  Trump’s EPA policy is the end of the world, says the New York Times. @RichardAEpstein @HooverInst.  To read the President’s critics, these niceties don’t matter. They regard his policies as indefensible by any measure. With its usual hyperbole, the New York Times’ lead editorial several days ago announced that “President Trump Risks the Planet.“ But the evidence suggests otherwise. To begin, the Times notes that Trump wishes to soften the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE). And well he should. There is absolutely no reason to impose external standards on the maximum feasible levels of energy for any given model year. Where energy costs are high, we should expect certain downsizing. Where they are low, then we should not. Imposing these CAFE standards on a “fleet” makes it difficult for certain firms to specialize in the production of expensive and heavy cars, and forces all sorts of internal cross-subsidies, where light vehicles, which pose greater safety risks, are made at a loss so that heavier ones can be marketed at a profit. The correct measure in all cases is to tax road wear and pollution accurately for each vehicle, and to put this costly adventure into industrial policy into the dustbin of history.
The Times then continues to lament that the new Trump regulations will allow hundreds of current coal plants to stay open and new ones to be constructed. But again, the source of the current difficulty is the EPA’s permitting policy, which gives an unwarranted preference to existing dirty plants over newer cleaner ones. The simple truth is that coal today is, behind petroleum, the second largest source of energy world wide—and huge subsidies for wind and solar, both erratic power sources, will not displace it from that perch anytime soon. At this point, the critical task is to hasten the transition from dirty to clean coal production, which is best done by a tax and permitting scheme that does not discriminate against “new” energy sources as the current EPA rules do. In addition, everything possible should be done to ensure that other countries, from Germany to India, substitute clean for dirty coal, by facilitating the sale of clean American coal overseas.   http://www.hoover.org/research/our-energy-hysteria (1 of 2)
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 4, Block B:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, NYU Law, in re:  Trump’s EPA policy is the end of the world, says the New York Times. @RichardAEpstein @HooverInst.  (2 of 2)
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 4, Block C:  Greta C. Dargie, School of Geography, University of Leeds; Department of Geography, University College London, in re:   Maybe the biggest peatland of all discovered in the Congo.   "Peatlands are carbon-rich ecosystems that cover just three per cent of Earth’s land surface1, but store one-third of soil carbon2. Peat soils are formed by the build-up of partially decomposed organic matter under waterlogged anoxic conditions. Most peat is found in cool climatic regions where unimpeded decomposition is slower, but deposits are also found under some tropical swamp forests2, 3. Here we present field measurements from one of the world’s most extensive regions of swamp forest, the Cuvette Centrale depression in the central Congo Basin4...."  (1 of 2) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7639/full/nature21048.html
Tuesday  4 April 2017/ Hour 4, Block D:   Greta C. Dargie, School of Geography, University of Leeds; Department of Geography, University College London, in re:   Maybe the biggest peatland of all discovered in the Congo (2 of 2)