The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 16 August 2016

Air Date: 
August 16, 2016

Photo, left:
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
 
Hour One
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 1, Block A:  Bill Whalen, Hoover, in re:  : FBI has just forcefully defended its decision not to charge Mrs Clinton in connection with her home-brew email server.  If an d when Mr Trump cam focus and message on the economy he still can win. Unfortunately, by week’s end other [irrelevancies] intruded.  Mrs Clinton’ message is more taxes and spending. Not helpful .  Rather, lowering the tax helps middle-income earners; he wants to get rid of Obamacare — that’s growth.  I’m asking for only two or three bullets. She’ s untrustworthy and is anti-growth; he has a few problems, I see, but he’s pro-growth. Will he get on message or not?  WW:   . . . If Trump is in the news, his numbers go down; if she is, her numbers will. That’s why she’s [laying back].   Her “infrastructure investment” is really stimulus spending, which has not worked for years.  She has no plan, no message, other than spending. 
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 1, Block B:  Bill Whalen, Hoover, in re: WW:  First, stop attacking media on a daily basis. No more “crooked CNN.”  And don't panic.  See 1988: Reagan was down 8 points in mid-August. Just chip away.  LK: Number-one issue is the economy, even more than trade and natl security. He has a good economic recovery plan while she has none.  None.  All I need is a 3 x 5 card with no more than four bullet points. Reagan used this through the debate and he won.  Leave the histrionics out?  No – Trump has a comedic genius, which is why the crowd appear.  The Gallup poll: 87,000 respondents, shows that most of his supporters are above-average-income  white males in demographically homogenous zip codes.  Ailes will be Trump’s communications guy, his spokesman.  WW: Ailes got Nixon and G H WvBush elected. Trump needs to leave out the sarcasm gene. Stop being funny or a showman; just get the message.  out.   LK: In the Cobo Center when he spoke about taxes he got huge standing ovations.   JB: Falstaff or Prince Hal??
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 1, Block C: Brian Blase, Mercatus Cente & Forbes, in re: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just announced its analysis found per enrollee costs in the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s individual market were unchanged from 2014-2015, suggesting that risk pools are improving.   Note that Aetna is exiting ACA exchanges.   People who joined were older, poorer, sicker, than expected, so Aetna cannot afford to stay, withdraws from eleven of fifteen states, while other other big insurers have left; and sixteen of the original insurers have collapsed. May be 1,000 or more counties having only one company participating in the exchange; and at least one with no insurer.  How could the models not see this coming? Built-in temporary stabilizers for the first three years. Risk corridors. Thought that n three years the mkt would be stable and the govt could withdraw its support. Plans come with very high premiums and deductibles, so whoever can has stayed out.  (“The geniuses who designed this with their Ph.D.s simply didn’t get it. Hillary is angling for a single-payer system.”)   It's a mess right now.  . . .  With only one insurer – [yike] extremely high prices. . .  . Yes, unjust.  Millions will receive cancellation notices. New plan will be much more expensive. (This is where Trump should be going. I’m OK with paying for the indigent sick; for the other 98%, I want a market-based system. She wants to add to the re-insurance program–bail it out. That still won't work because it’s state-run.”  WaPo; Anthem and Humana and smaller ones are pulling out. The whole thing has collapsed.”)  There’ll have to be some sort of compromise; the system is broken. In an adverse-selection spiral.  Death spiral?  Yes.
Brian Blase writes a regular column for Forbes and has an endless amount of research, articles, and op-eds discussing the financial pitfalls of Obamacare.   Phila Inquirer: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160815_Commentary__Cost_of_Medicaid_expansion_far_exceeds_initial_estimates.html?mobi=true
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 1, Block D: Brett Arends, Dow Jones Market Watch, in re: Quite right, economic trends have not recovered.  Trump’s message on shipping jobs overseas was relevant – we need to have jobs before ewe can buy goods from China.   Since China joined the WTO: a body blow to a lot of Americans with factory jobs.  Bring cash home by slashing taxes  so the companies will come home; also: quit regulating everything that moves.  Make this place a free-enterprise country once again.  Dems, esp, seem to be addicted to complexity, As for taxes: yes, let all corps be like subchapter S so the end receiver pays the taxes. Trillion sitting overseas only because we can’t agree on how to bring the money back. Tax reform, however, would be the easiest thing to do.  Need solutions that emphasize simplicity.   It's not that Hillary has a bad plan—she has no plan.  Her basic message is, I’m not Donald Trump. He’s basically in a boxing ring knocking himself out. Bizarre.  Trump will return to economics: Roger Ailes.
How Economic Anxieties Explain Donald Trump’s Appeal—And Where They Fall Short  A new analysis finds supporters of the Republican candidate can be identified more easily by measures of racial isolation and cultural anxiety than by measures of personal economic well-being. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-hunt-for-another-record-session-as-dollar-tumbles-2016-08-16
 
Hour Two
Tuesday  16 August 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: Crimean Tatars fighting the Moscow Kremlin for independence, perhaps with Kiev. A fleet of Russian bombers is on Iranian soil, to be deployed against Syrian rebels (of whom the US supports some).  The Aleppo battle is ferocious.  In Aleppo, the citizens living to the west of the city, the middle class, sides with Assad; the eastern-Aleppo citizens, plus the US, UAE, Saudis, others, are fighting Assad and the Russians, who bomb the hospitals.   In Russia, the month of August is seen as a month of shock – 1917, 1991, et al.  A time for conspiracy: everyone’s at his dacha, so the plotters have the city to themselves.    . . .  Putin withdraws from the Minsk Accord. Kiev did not implement the accord out of fear of being overthrown by the ultra-right.   Ergo, IMF refuses to turn over the large sums it's promised because Kiev is so extremely corrupt.
The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, claimed Wednesday that one of its officers was killed over the weekend near the de facto border between Crimea and Ukraine. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in early 2014, then backed a violent uprising in Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. The latter continue to simmer with deadly force, but the line between Crimea and Ukraine had been relatively calm. According to the FSB, the infiltrators were armed with bombs and ammunition, intending to destroy infrastructure in Crimea, and a second attempt occurred Monday with support from Ukrainian artillery, killing a Russian army soldier. Ukraine responded that it was all “fantasy,” a provocation from Russia. There is precious little evidence of what really happened, and this conflict has given new meaning to the old adage that in war, truth is the first casualty. But the FSB announcement sounds suspiciously like a gambit by Mr. Putin, who swiftly vowed revenge. On Thursday, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, put his troops on combat alert.
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 2, Block B: 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:  President Vladimir Putin of Russia is again playing with fire. This time, it may be a summer bluff, or it may be a pretext to escalation of war with Ukraine. Either way, it reflects Mr. Putin’s determination to deceive and subvert whenever it suits his goals, at home and abroad, taking advantage of a distracted United States and Europe.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/while-the-world-is-distracted-putin-escalates-his-war-in-ukraine/2016/08/11/7c6c44ac-5fed-11e6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html?utm_term=.62fdad2a819a  ;  http://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-putin-discusses-additional-security-...
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 2, Block C:  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:  Aleppo.
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 2, Block D: 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:  Paul Manafort. NYT says he was a gun for hire for Yanukovich  to clean up his image (with millions of dollars misplaced?).
 
Hour Three
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 3, Block A:   Salena Zito, National Political Reporter, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, and Dr Lara M Brown, George Washington University, in re:  1.  Astonishing work for Gallup based on 87,428 Trump responses.  Resulting in a profile of Trump supporters and doubters.  In any case, this analysis provides clear evidence that those who view Trump favorably are disproportionately living in racially and culturally isolated zip codes and commuting zones. Holding other factors, constant support for Trump is highly elevated in areas with few college graduates, far from the Mexican border, and in neighborhoods that standout within the communting zone for being white, segregated enclaves, with little exposure to Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics . . . 
To situate these diverse results more theoretically, I find only limited support that the political views of US nationalists—as manifest in a favorable view towards Donal Trump—are related to economic self-interest. If so, the self-interest calculation must go beyond conventional economic measures to include one’s physical health and inter-generational concerns. Standard economic data are likely inadequate to understanding important aspects of well-being that shape political behavior. Second, I find evidence that contact with racial minorities reduces support for nationalist politics.  These findings suggest a need to better understand how even seemingly affluent voters may take extreme political views when their health status and the well-being of their children fail to meet their expectations. The results also suggest that housing and social integration can moderate extreme political beliefs, consistent with contact theory.
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=505074082114097025097004127000099029049047056084030089124065081009123072127098064002052103055052104116023096121126004072081105028045036041065024020099030005028004025077028077026088123092099088068085091120071117022067012020080098116124118119007120083126&EXT=pdf
. . .  Toomey had an ad today with the daughter of a Sandy Hook victim. Powerful stuff.
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 3, Block B:  Salena Zito, National Political Reporter, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, and Dr Lara M Brown, George Washington University, in re:v2.  Wlezian predicted if Clinton holds onto her current margin over Trump after just one more week of polling — making it three weeks since the Democratic convention — she would have a nearly 90 percent chance of winning the election, based on past campaigns.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/pollsters-trump-approaching-zero-hour-227000#ixzz4HPrEb6Sz  
3.  “Political movements are driven by many things — economics, societal or geographic displacement, detachment from the normal political process. The thing that the political class misses is that men such as Sam do not necessarily decide how to vote based solely on material wants.
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 3, Block C:    Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/middle-east/where-did-they-go-wrong-1091
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 3, Block D:  Simon Constable, TheStreet.com, and author and economics writer; in re:   TheStreet: Brexiteers Need to Be 'Swashbuckling' on Trade -- It's Made the U.K. Rich Before.   https://www.thestreet.com/story/13641073/1/brexit-eers-need-to-be-swashbuckling-on-trade-it-s-made-the-u-k-rich-before.html  ; TheStreet: Gold Rush Fuels 'Best Year Ever' for Precious Metals Funds  https://www.thestreet.com/story/13668148/1/gold-rush-fuels-best-year-ever-for-precious-metals-funds.html  ;  Forbes Video: Why Stocks Look ‘Way Overvalued -- S&P's Stovall   http://www.forbes.com/video/5081141915001/
Hour Four
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 4, Block A:  Eli Lake, Bloomberg, in re:  https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-16/how-george-soros-threatens-to-make-israel-a-pariah ; https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-11/orders-for-u-s-forces-in-syria-don-t-get-shot ; https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-15/-a-lot-of-people-are-saying-trump-is-a-democratic-party-plant  (1 of 2)
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 4, Block B:  Eli Lake, Bloomberg, in re:  https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-16/how-george-soros-threatens-to-make-israel-a-pariah ; https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-11/orders-for-u-s-forces-in-syria-don-t-get-shot ; https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-15/-a-lot-of-people-are-saying-trump-is-a-democratic-party-plant  (2 of 2)
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 4, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, behind the black, in re:  Up Close with Balanced Rock.  YuTu Resurrection.   http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/balanced-rock-at-last/  (1 of 2)
Tuesday  16 August 2016   / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behind the black, in re:  Up Close with Balanced Rock.  YuTu Resurrection.   http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/balanced-rock-at-last/  (2 of 2)
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