The John Batchelor Show

Friday 29 April 2016

Air Date: 
April 29, 2016

Photo, left:  Space debris seen from high Earth orbit (HEO). The two main debris fields are the ring of objects in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO).
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Jim McTague, Barron’s Washington, in re: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/277986-economy-grows-just-05-percent-t...
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 1, Block B:  Liz Peek, Fiscal Times and Fox, in re: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/04/28/Beat-Hillary-Trump-Has-...
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 1, Block C:  John Fund, NRO, and David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent; in re: http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2016/04/29/indiana-gov-mike-pence-make-significant-announcement-noon-speculation-focuses-ted-cruz-endorsement/83697052/
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 1, Block D:  Prof. Charles D. Kolstad, Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE) & Dept of Economics, Stanford University, in re: Opportunities for advances in climate change economicsScience 15 Apr 2016: Vol. 352, Issue 6283, pp. 292-293.  Summary  There have been dramatic advances in understanding the physical science of climate change, facilitated by substantial and reliable research support. The social value of these advances depends on understanding their implications for society, an arena where research support has been more modest and research progress slower. Some advances have been made in understanding and formalizing climate-economy linkages, but knowledge gaps remain [e.g., as discussed in (1, 2)]. We outline three areas where we believe research progress on climate economics is both sorely needed, in light of policy relevance, and possible within the next few years given appropriate funding: (i) refining the social cost of carbon (SCC), (ii) improving understanding of the consequences of particular policies, and (iii) better understanding of the economic impacts and policy choices in developing economies.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6283/292.full
 
Hour Two
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, in re: Storm clouds gather over the South China Sea.  (1 of 2)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/storm-clouds-gather-over-south-china-sea-ahead-of-key-un-ruling/2016/04/27/fd5d1c7b-d425-4567-b225-921c7ee1ffba_story.html  
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/29/politics/russians-barrel-roll-air-force-plane/index.html ; http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1937437/chinas-president-xi-steps-out-new-military-title-and   /  There’s more here on the building crisis point, which will be over Scarborough Shoal:  http://www.smh.com.au/comment/south-china-sea-the-fight-china-will-take-to-the-brink-of-war-20160425-goe3zi.html  
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/04/27/beijings_south_china_sea_land_creation_at_what_cost_109306.html
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1938277/china-build-atoll-contested-south-china-sea-source-says?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=%2ASituation%20Report  
http://amti.csis.org/scarborough-shoal-red-line/
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 2, Block B:   Michael E Vlahos, in re: Storm clouds gather over the South China Sea.  (2 of 2)  
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 2, Block C:   Patrick Tucker, DefenseOne, in re: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/04/pentagon-dawdles-silicon-valley-sells-its-newest-tech-abroad/127708/?oref=d-river
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/04/intelligence-chief-we-dont-know-if-north-korea-has-boosted-bomb/127782/?oref=d-topstory (1 of 2)
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 2, Block D:   Patrick Tucker, DefenseOne  (2 of 2)
 
Hour Three
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 3, Block A:  Marcus Weisgerber, DefenseOne, in re:   . .  F22 is top of the line, even compared to the F35 – in a dogfight, it’ll take down any plane, can turn almost on a dime. Has superior long-range radar so it can target and maneouver better; has supercruise mode, so issues not so much heat and ergo is less detectable. 
What the F35 has is newer computers and radars. If you restart the F22 line, take the guts of the F35 and implant them in the new F22. Merely need a sense of Congress Act – Japan, Australia others, would buy right now.  At present, they're deployed in too-small numbers; there exist so few.    In an emergency, could deploy them in large numbers, but not as things stand now. Sell the  remaining F22s overseas? There’s a law against that, but the legislation can be changed.
F322 engines are still superior.  The factories where the F22 was built have “moved on,” and parts come from more than twenty different states.  It’d take at least five years to get them built again, meaning they’d be ten years out of production.   . . . . The F35, a controversial aircraft, can indeed see an enemy plane far ahead and shoot it down before the enemy plane can even detect the F35.
"Want More F-22s? Here's What That Would Take": Marcus Weisgerber reports that U.S.. lawmakers have asked the Air Force about the possibility of restarting production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, an endeavor that would be far more complicated than signing a check and flipping the lights back on. First, the Air Force would need to find a boatload of money that it doesn't have. A second problem, or perhaps an opportunity, is that the new Raptor would need new electronic guts. 
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 3, Block B:   Marcus Weisgerber, DefenseOne, in re:  Next chief of staff of the Air Force was going to be the head of Space Command.  In th event, picked someone ho[d had a lot of war-fighting experience.  Low-earth orbit and high-earth orbit are radically different. Does the AF acknowledge that these missions are growing swiftly? Yes; and know that the next war may be in space, Protect satellites from being hacked.  Douglas Lovero, Deputy   . . .  Air traffic control in space – thousands of sats orbiting at 17,000 mph; and China conducted anti-sat test exploding its own missile, creating tens of thousands of pieces of debris still endangering craft above.
Need to establish a space traffic control.  Those advocating it say it must be civilian, not military, so it can interface with equivalents in other regions of the world.   Secretive nations; Russia, e.g., has created angst by manoeuvering one of its craft among US mil satellites.   http://www.govexec.com/defense/2016/04/air-forces-next-chief-might-be-its-space-war-general/127443/?oref=d-river  ; http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2016/04/do-we-need-air-traffic-controllers-space/127495/?oref=d-river
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 3, Block C:  Patrick McLaughlin,  Mercatus, George Mason University, in re: The cumulative cost of government regulations on GDP growth since 1980.  We used the maximum-possible number for regulations we could measure in a replicable way acoss industries, True, this is a larger-scale study than before because the data weren’t available before, Also, need to see  longer run ad the dynamics, over time. O&G, paper, energy, primary metals, computers and electronic, mfrg, transportation (incl pipelines) finance, banking, commodities, insurance, health services, amusement, gambling , among many others. Endogenous [from within the system]  growth theory: growth within an economy is not something that falls from heaven, it’s something you choose to do 0 – say, invest to bld a new product, open a new storefront, do R&D. These lead to productivity and in the long run raise GDP.  Everyone who runs a bz is extremely aware of how much paperwork he has to do. If it's an additional hour, an analyst might think, “only an hour,” but the owner might think, “Yike, that adds an hour on to 16 other hours, so it's cheaper for me not to make the addition.”  . . . The ACA is just one more rock in the stream; all together the cumulative effect is discouraging. AS the rocks pile up, you can block the stream entirely.   . . . “The effect of govt regulations is duplicative, conflicting” . . .  and many of the regs are overtly obsolete.  (1 of 2)
Bentley Coffey, Patrick McLaughlin, and Pietro Peretto created the dataset by combining data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census for 22 industries and using Regdata to measure regulation within these industries.  The combination of careful modeling and data across industries over time permits an empirical assessment of the effect of regulatory accumulation on economic growth.
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 3, Block D:   Patrick McLaughlin,  Mercatus, in re: The intransigence of the regulatory system. A  single rule from decades ago, still on the books and now applied to digital technology, makes no sense,,. Needs reassessment. Also, investment choices of existing firms, and also the choice whether or not even to open a new firm. Larry Paige of Google gave an interview: made contact lenses that can measure your glucose level – but it won't make them because the regs are too cumbersome even for Google to endure  Silicon Valley can't work with he DoD for similar reasons.  Counterfactual: what wd happen if we took our model of the economy and froze the regs level at 1980 regulatory conditions, then compared that hypothetical growth  to current reality, The difference finally becomes $4 trillion – our economy would be 25%larger had we not brought on the decades of new regs. Knowledge from new entrepreneurship did not happen. All that nongrowth is what we're measuring, Today we’re growing slowly – the new normal??   We’ve lost 8/10 of  1% per year in GDP growth because of regs – we’d be at 4% today (“the magic number!)”
Bentley Coffey, Patrick McLaughlin, and Pietro Peretto created the dataset by combining data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census for 22 industries and using Regdata to measure regulation within these industries.  The combination of careful modeling and data across industries over time permits an empirical assessment of the effect of regulatory accumulation on economic growth. (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt by Eric Burns.  (1 of 4)
“Piercing the larger-than-life Teddy Roosevelt myth, Burns (1920), a former correspondent for NBC News and Today, explores the personal side of the energetic, rambunctious war hero and politician and his doting relationship with his youngest child, Quentin. Burns’s unique, stirring account of America’s most colorful president allows Teddy Roosevelt, the man and father, to step off the page.” (Publishers Weekly)
“Burns finds special meaning and resonance in the father-son relationship. A fine homage [and a] solid, very well-written contribution to the vast literature surrounding Teddy Roosevelt.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Burns tells the story of parallel lives. The Golden Lad is not a conventional White House biography. Burns offers a sharp picture of a still-iconic figure. A close and often painful family portrait.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“A crisply written profile. A father-son focus reveals much about the multifaceted Theodore’s personality. General readers seeking a naturally sympathetic, full-length portrait, will appreciate this work.” (Library Journal)
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt by Eric Burns.  (2 of 4)
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block C:  The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt by Eric Burns.  (3 of 4)
Friday  29 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block D:  The Golden Lad: The Haunting Story of Quentin and Theodore Roosevelt by Eric Burns.  (4 of 4)
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