Photo, above: In New York City, Brooklyn Bridge Park is now home to an historic and beautifully restored carousel, a gift of Jane and David Walentas.  Built in 1922 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, the carousel was purchased in 1984 and painstakingly restored to its original condition.  The carousel is located in the Empire Fulton Ferry section of Brooklyn Bridge Park, housed in an extraordinary new pavilion, designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect Jean Nouvel. The carousel will be operated year-round for the enjoyment of children of all ages. Of course, the city now  occasionally rents out the carousel for a fabulous fee to cover maintenance expenses.  At that moment, the 99% can only stand away and watch, in a Dickensian tableau, as the beautifully rich disport themselves.  See Hour 1, Block D, Harry Siegel, New York Daily News: " We were among the families whose kids stared sadly at the horses at seven on a beautiful evening, an hour after the carousel closed for public use.  What did they pay? Emails and calls to Walentas and the nonprofit that operates her carousel went unreturned . . ."

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Michael Daly, Daily Beast, in re: Boston, NYC Bonded by Tragedy
 
A relationship that started on 9/11 was strengthened by the Boston Marathon bombings and endures through smaller but no less painful moments   NYPD Spying Is Alive and Well
 
Undercover officers and informants will continue to provide intelligence on members of the Islamic community, police officials say.


Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Coral Davenport, NYT, in re: Political Rifts Slow U.S. Effort on Climate Laws

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Gene Marks, NYT, in re:  The U.S. added 30,830 franchise jobs in March, according to a report.   Placing ads on search engines isn't paying off for many small businesses.    Businesses adapt to cashless society       Mom-and-pop stores not taking to health exchange   An inventor of a digital board game shares the lessons he learned when his Kickstarter campaign failed.   17 ways managers can show their employees appreciation.   Burger King rolls out Whopper Wi-Fi nationwide

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: It remains to be seen if Mayor de Blasio will fight to keep our parks public. My Daily News column, with a remarkably infuriating photo:  Brooklyn, 2014: Where your writer spent Saturday evening explaining to his 2-year-old that she couldn’t ride the public-park carousel even though grown-ups in evening wear had paid for a private event on the painted ponies.

This was in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the beautiful new green space straddling Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo, the neighborhood the Walentas family and their development firm Two Trees effectively created in the space left behind when manufacturing abandoned the waterfront.  The carousel itself, named for Jane Walentas and now a “gift to the city,” was purchased by her for $385,000 and brought to New York (and enclosed in a gorgeous $9 million jewel box she commissioned). It was, the New York Times reported, part of the family’s plan to “turn the waterfront beneath the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, then abandoned, into a marina and shopping complex.”

Ride are free for kids under 3, and $2 for the rest of us. We were among the families whose kids stared sadly at the horses at 7 on a beautiful evening, an hour after the carousel closed for public use.  What did they pay? Emails and calls to Walentas and the nonprofit that operates her carousel went unreturned, but it was surely a bit more than renting out Chuck E. Cheese.

Hour Two

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Seb Gorka, FDD and Breitbart, in re: As the strategist Steven Metz wrote Wednesday, Russia has demonstrated great skill in unconventional warfare techniques from the very start of the crisis, skills that the U.S. seems unable to match.

Could this all lead to a third global conflict, this time involving nuclear armed forces on both sides? The lessons from how the last two World Wars were triggered suggest that perhaps it could.

WWI was triggered by the violent attack of one ethnic nationalist who successfully killed the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Gavrilo Princip wanted a free Serbian state and appealed to ethnic unity, much as the Kremlin’s agents in the Crimea and Ukraine are doing.

As for WWII, that was triggered by a leader who thought his nation had been unjustly treated - very similarly to the way in which Putin views the loss of the Soviet Union as the greatest geostrategic tragedy of the twentieth century - who used a false flag operation to say his ethnic brethren in Poland were in danger and Germany must respond. Unfortunately, it seems that the nations of the West have learned little from the 75 million deaths resulting from the two World Wars of the last century - and that the worst-case scenario is far from impossible

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Susan Berfield , Bloomberg Businessweek, in re: HOBBY LOBBY: DOES GOD HATE OBAMACARE?  For the past year and a half, the Green family which owns Hobby Lobby, the national chain of more than 600 craft stores worth $3.3 billion, has sought a religious exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers providing health insurance cover all 20 federally approved methods of birth control. The company’s plan provides some birth control; the Greens, evangelical Christians, object to Hobby Lobby having to cover four kinds they say are tantamount to abortion. The family and its supporters hope the Supreme Court will rule that for-profit corporations have the same religious rights as individuals or actual churches. Such a decision could potentially give companies sweeping powers to opt out of laws they find immoral, perhaps those concerning discrimination, the minimum wage, family leave, maybe even taxation. A closer look at the Green family and their brand of business-class evangelicalism.  full story here  

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Gregory Copley, Strategic Studies director & author, UnCivilization, in re:  Nigerian military: Over 100 girls abducted from school are ...
 Heavily armed men descended on the school as the girls slept. Bullets flew as guards fought back, but they lost. Most of the Dozens of Girls Abducted in Nigeria Reportedly ...  Nigeria unrest: Search continues for abducted teenage girls

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Clyde Haberman, NYT, in re: In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake sent deadly shockwaves across northern California, becoming a national television event. The earthquake left 63 dead, caused roughly $10 billion in damage and touched off a national conversation about seismic readiness. But a quarter-century later, how much was done after the panic died down? This week’s Retro Report revisits the  disaster and examines major gaps in current U.S. earthquake preparedness: latest Retro Report, “On Shaky Ground,” is now on NYTimes.com; here's the film’s accompanying essay.

Hour Three

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Jim Robbins, NYT, in re:  Paying Farmers to Welcome Birds

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 3, Block B:  Lanhee Chen, Hoover, in re:  a piece in today's Los Angeles Times argues that the recent effort to reinstate affirmative action in admissions to California public colleges and universities has significant political repercussions for Democrats and creates interesting opportunities for Republicans as well.  [more]

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Jack Hitt, NYT, in re:  The Artificial Leaf Is Here. Again.  An energy source based on photosynthesis still appears tantalizingly close. But consumers first need to become accustomed to what else is needed for it to work.

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  McKay Coppins, Buzzfeed, in re: No Sign of Social Issues as Conservative Leaders Preach to Activists  Cruz, Paul, and Huckabee compete for conservative activists’ attention — by ignoring marriage and abortion. “I think there’s an arrogance to having absolute litmus tests.” — At a conservative conference Saturday billed as the “unofficial start” to the 2016 Republican primaries, the right-wing heroes Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee competed for activists’ attention with ready-made messages for the movement, replete with Obamacare-bashing, foreign policy tough talk, and more than a few NSA phone-hacking jokes.  [more]

Hour Four

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes by Michael Rubin (1 of 4)

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes by Michael Rubin (2 of 4)

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes by Michael Rubin (3 of 4)

Friday  18 April  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes by Michael Rubin (4 of 4)

..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..

Music

Hour 1:  Ides of March. 

Hour 2:  Battleship. 

Hour 3:  Babylon AD. Ides of March. 

Hour 4:  Pacific Rim.