Photo, above: United States border with Mexico.  A small fence separates the densely-populated Tijuana, Mexico, right, from the United States in the Border Patrol's San Diego Sector. Construction is under way to extend a secondary fence over the top of this hill and eventually to the Pacific Ocean.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio

Hour One

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Scott Atlas, Hoover, in re: (LK: in the case of the extremely problematic Export-Import Bank,  the largesse is aimed at huge corporations; however, Boeing, et al., don’t get the money; it’s their customers who get the loan guarantees – Eximbank in fact costs US firms money because the clients actually pay less. Heritage has found 74 cases of Eximbank fraud and corruption since 2009, and there are criminal prosecutions under way.)

Similar issues: the VA.  This is what happens when the govt completely controls health care.  The ACA is not socialized medicine, but the govt gets to define access to care; the VA is analogous to the NHS, the British health system. A report by the Commonwealth Fund says the UK (under HHS) has the world's best health care and the US is at the bottom – based on phone surveys. This is demonstrably inaccurate. Look at date , survival rates, access to medicine, treatment for grave  maladies, access to screening, successful treatment of high blood pressure, it’s still true that the US has the best care; the HHS is burdened by not only bad care but a horrible access period -  waiting  18 weeks to begin treatment after the diagnosis is made by the GP, and even that is for 10% of patients or fewer.  Wait time for 2 most for cancer patients.  In England 19.4% of lung cancer patients waited 62 days after the diagnosis.  In the US, these waits are unheard-of; maybe an 18-day wait to get first apt in certain specialties. for a normal check-up, and that engendered outrage. 

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Scott Atlas, Hoover, in re: In Sweden, formerly the most socialized state, has admitted that that didn't work and now have converted toward private care. While the govt has introduced private care access, where people pay $20,000 a year toward health, more and more people are moving into private care even while paying taxes.  In England, most who can afford it use private care.  British govt has had to guarantee to pay for medical care privately, even outside of the country. LK: The American Federation of  ______ are the union that falsified the numbers at the VA.  SA: This mirrors what’s happening in the health system of England.  Our VA is a fiasco and a disgrace.  At the time of the ACA, Pelosi, et al. all were proponents of single-payer health care.  The ultimate goal is singer payer.  The Obama Administration now offers to educate veterans in their right to private care. This is the solution to Medicaid – poor people need to have the option to take the support and buy medical insurance. The point is to get good health care, not register people as "insured."  The NHS is worse than no insurance, at all.

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Let's not start with the numbers of immigrants; let’s start with the rules.

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Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: John H. Cochrane,
AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Booth School of Business,



The University of Chicago, and Hoover, in re:   JC: The right question is not the optimum number of immigrants  to the US, but the [caliber & occupations] of the persons.  In Canada, some of the criteria are skill sets and financial ability.  If you believe in free trade and free people . . .  certainly people who want to come here and contribute: why in the world are we keeping them out?  LK:  People who’ve lived here twenty years – JB: North Wichita! – anyone who says they should have legal statues (not citizenship) gets drowned out in the isolationist camp.  JC:  We're outraged when Palestinians in Saudi Arabia cant get legal status  and we're doing exactly that.  In Tulsa, A fellow arrived , founded a salon did well. a rival threatened to turn him in – and now he works as roofer, he sweats when driving his son to school because if he's stopped he'll be deported.  . . .  True, we didn’t steal jobs from the Indians – we stole everything else.  Canada lets in high-value immigrants.  Immigrants don’t leave their country to be poor; they come here to work and build things.  FDR began a speech: "My fellow immigrants." let there be some test – post a bond at the border and if you get arrested or go on welfare, we'll deport you; if you work, stay.  Let's not start with the numbers of immigrants; let’s start with the rules.  LK: Restrictionists say, "don’t break the law" and "They'll cost us jobs and     wages."  As this mess on the border gets worse, domestic politics on the matter get worse.  JC:  I teach in the graduate business school: we teach young people from all over he world- who are forbidden to stay, so they go back to China, India, South America, to start businesses.

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Gregory Zuckerman, WSJ & author, The Greatest Trade Ever, & The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, in re: the billionaires missed the huge market rally while us dummies did well. The fancy guys aren’t laughing, Hedge funds, who paid themselves gargantuan bonuses, did the worst, along with fancy-pants university investors. The average university has about 16% in stocks; the rest in what used to be considered high-risk stuff. Addicted to the holy grail of alternative investments, which do better in rough times, but when things get better (as began in 2009), not  good idea.  Private equities are doing better than hedgers. They have so much money on their hands now not clear they'll do as well in the near future.  Buy the market, the cheapest stuff – index funds, ETFs – and go to sleep for forty years.  You are the boss. 

Big Investors Missed Stock Rally.  Pension Funds, University Endowments Diversified Into Other Investments With Disappointing Performances. Corporate pension funds and university endowments in the U.S. have missed out on much of the rally for stocks since 2009, following a push to diversify into other investments that have had disappointing performances.

The institutions, ranging from large corporations such as General Motors Co. to big universities such as Harvard, have been shifting to hedge funds, private equity and venture capital. But while these alternative investments outpaced stocks during 2008's market meltdown and are seen as potentially less volatile, they have badly lagged behind the S&P 500 since 2009, a period in which U.S. stock indexes have more than doubled.  Diversifying away from stocks could  . . .

Hour Two

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus;  author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin (1 of 4), in re: Pro-Russians have shot down a helo in Sloviansk.  They have their own councils (saviets) of volunteers to resist military from Kiev.  Putin has asked his duma to extend the cease-fire.  Looks like a contradiction.

BREAKING: Putin says weeklong cease-fire in Ukraine should be extended, accompanied by talks.  A cease-fire between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists appeared to be in danger Tuesday as President Petro Poroshenko said he may end the weeklong agreement early.  The announcement came after rebels shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter Tuesday near the city of Sloviansk, leaving nine people on board dead, according to the Ukrainian government.

Poroshenko's peace proposal: seven-day cease-fire of his combined mil and paramil in the Donbass while you –the other side – will cease firing.  The "pro-Russians" of the US media re Ukrainian citizens.  Not clear hat Poproshenko can control the fellows fighting in the ast , or even his parliament.  Also, seven days isn’t very long, esp since Poroshenko says he refuses to speak with eh people doing the fighting. Won’t acknowledge that he fighters are legitimate representatives.  The helicopter – and armed flying machine – said by Poroshenko to be there only for observation, but the city has been heavily shelled for weeks and saw the helo as an act of aggression, since that's exactly what bombed Sloviansk several weeks ago  Poroshenko wants to seal the border with Russia & build a ten-kilometer safe zone,  and provide safe passage to people leaving the country – these aren’t negotiations, they're surrender terms.  In southeast Ukraine, the ten-km zone looks like ethic cleansing (as Lavrov has just mentioned).

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus (2 of 4);  in re: Putin asked the Upper House to give  him authorization to send Russian troops to fight in Ukraine; it did, and Putin is much criticized in the West.  So today he asked them to rescind the resolution. Is Putin a despot? An authoritarian leader with limits?  Russian TV, controlled by the Kremlin (newspapers are not as much), every night and during he day, Vremya appends thirty or forty minutes on the Ukrainian army bombing southeast Ukraine. Edited for dramatic effect, of course.  Has generated the now-strong popular expression "Save our compatriots!"  Russia asked Kiev to join in a humanitarian corridor [joint medical rescue], and Kiev refused so Russia has done that unilaterally.  There's a real humanitarian crisis – which the White House declines to acknowledge exists. 

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus (3 of 4);  in re: See ITR-Tass, for pix of refugees whose homes have been shelled by Kiev's troops. Burning vehicles in the background. Children I refugee camps.  People who've fled to Rostov oblast.  "A senior German official sees major change, promoting contact between Germany and Russia."   Western Europe in general doesn't want a rupture with Russia – not only nat gas but all manner of investment and trade – sanctions that'd cripple Russia and Europe equally.  What does Putin want?  I think I know. Ukraine will not get Crimea back. He wants a stable Ukraine that will trade with Russia and the European Union, and in southeast Ukraine officials not appointed but elected.  What does the White House want out of this?  I think that the US and EU goal is still to get Ukraine into NATO. If the US disavows that, almost everything else will fall in place.  To say to Putin "We'll sanction you harder" if you don’t end the conflict in Ukraine is nuts – these conflicts long long antedate Putin or his parents. Note that if Putin loses Ukraine to NATO he'll be blanked out of Russian history:   also that SE Ukraine n longer would have economic relations with Russia. We have a de facto partition of Ukraine right now; I think Putin would settle for some fairly achievable terms and I don’t see our side meeting Putin part-way.  To pass a resolution saying we fail to acknowledge Crimea as part of Russia, which we did, is unnecessarily to layer more conflict into relations with Russia. We know that Western Ukraine is pro-Europe, the center is mixed, and the East is pro-Russian but not separatist. They resist Kiev because they feel that Kiev has not treated them fairly and they ask for a federated state.  This is not a movement to join Russia – but every bomb from Kiev that falls  converts more families, afraid for their children, to the notion of giving up and joining Russia. 

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus (4 of 4);  in re:  US opposes Southstream. Putin: "US is unhappy with South Stream because it wants to deliver gas to Europe" " “They do everything to disrupt this contract. There is nothing unusual here. This is an ordinary competitive struggle. In the course of this competition, political tools are also being used,” the Russian president said after holding talks with his Austrian counterpart, President Heinz Fischer, in Vienna. "We are in talks with our contract partners, not with third parties. That our US friends are unhappy about South Stream, well, they were unhappy in 1962 too, when the gas-for-pipes project with Germany was beginning. Now they are unhappy too, nothing has changed, except the fact that they want to supply to the European market themselves," Putin stated.

There's a young man grad student in Michigan who may know more about Ukraine than anyone else in the US. He listens faithfully to this show and corrects my errors: Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi* is goveror of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Governors have formed their own militias.  Slohvansk in English is Slaviansk in Russian.

Putin's right: it'd take a decade to wean Europe off Russian gas and and to US. Also to build LNG factories, and shipping it would be much more expensive (20% more?) than pipeline gas.

* Through PrivatBank he controls Aerosvit Airlines, Dniproavia and Donbassaero. Through the asset management company Mansvell Enterprises Limited, he controls Skyways Express, City Airline, and Cimber Sterling aviation companies

Hour Three

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Timothy Kane, Hoover & FoxNews.com, in re:  American Immigration in the 21st Century.

The Truth About Republicans, Congress and Immigration Reform. See: Peregrine at Hoover.org  – What do we do with the 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. Three out of four migrants here are legal. 

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block B:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: With the impending first test launch of its new Angara rocket and the construction of its new spaceport in Vostochny on-going, Russia has begun its withdrawal from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Zenit-M rocket launching complex will become Kazakhstan’s property on January 1, 2015, Tengrinews correspondent reported from yesterday’s government meeting in the lower chamber of the Parliament. The announcement was made by the Chairman of the National Space Agency KazCosmos Talgat Mussabayev. “We have already approved the list of facilities of Zenit-M launching site that will be excluded from the lease agreement with Russia, and have obtained the technical and administrative documents from Russia that Kazakhstan needs to operate Baiterek complex. Withdrawal of Zenit-M facilities from the Russian lease agreement and their transfer to Kazakhstan is scheduled for January 2015,” Musabayev said.

In order to ensure proper transfer of the facilities and continue their operation afterword, 49 Kazakh experts are undergoing a practical training in maintenance and operation of Zenit-M site facilities. Their training will be completed before the end of the year.

Originally financed and built as an Angara launchpad in a partnership between Russia and Kazakhstan, the Russians backed out, deciding instead to keep Angara launches entirely in Russia at Vostochny while ceasing its participation in the Ukrainian-built Zenit rocket. Moreover, when Angara goes into operation, both the story above as well as this story suggest they will then cease Proton launches at Baikonur as well.

Turf war in Russia: The Russian space agency has disavowed any plans to send two tourists around the Moon in a Soyuz capsule.  Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, will not be involved in a plan to send two space tourists on a flight around the Moon and was not consulted about the project, the federal space agency said.   The mission, hatched by U.S.-based space tourism firm Space Adventures and a major Russian spacecraft manufacturer, Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, would see two space tourists travel to the Moon aboard a modified Russian Soyuz spacecraft by 2017. However, Roscosmos was kept out of the loop on the plan.  The organizers “could have consulted with us before making such loud announcements,” said Denis Lyskov, Roscosmos’s deputy chief in charge of piloted flights, Izvestia reported Monday. “We are not participating in the moon project, we are not planning to modernize the Soyuz,” Lyskov was quoted as saying.

Considering the recent power play by the Russian government to grab back full control over Russia’s aerospace industry, this disavowal does not bode well for the private effort. If the government opposes the flight, it will be very difficult for Energia to go forward.

The competition heats up: Worldview has successfully completed the first unmanned test flight of its stratospheric passenger balloon.  The flight brought a remote-controlled, balloon-borne craft up to a height of 120,000 feet (36.5 kilometers) and back down to 50,000 feet (15 kilometers). Then the craft was cut loose from the balloon and guided to a soft landing using an innovative parafoil.  The test over Roswell, New Mexico, marked a world record for the highest parafoil flight, World View said.

World View’s Tycho prototype is just one-tenth the size of the pressurized capsule that the Arizona-based company plans to build for its Voyager tours. But Tycho’s maiden voyage put the system’s aerodynamics to a valuable initial test, said Taber MacCallum, who is World View’s co-founder and chief technology officer (as well as Poynter’s husband). While these balloon tourist flights won’t go as high as the suborbital flights planned by Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and others, they will last far far longer and cost a third the price. They have already sold out their first three flights.

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Esme Deprez, Bloomberg, in re:  Honduran Boy Joins Rush to U.S. Border; Parents Must "Give a Son to the Gangs"  Carlos boarded a bus last month using money he earned picking coffee beans and corn, fleeing the gangs of his native Honduras who’d threatened to kill him if he didn’t join. The 17-year-old made it as far as a migrant shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, less than a quarter mile from the U.S. border, unsure of how to finish the trek.

“Where I live, parents are obligated to give a son to the gangs,” Carlos said this week as he fought tears and fidgeted with the drawstring of his Hawaiian flower-print shorts at the Senda de Vida shelter. His last name is being withheld because of his age.

If Carlos makes it to the U.S. before his birthday next month, he will join a record flood of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border, a deluge that began in 2011. About 52,000 have arrived since October, about 112 percent more than the entire prior year, Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said today in a conference call with reporters. They’re part of a surge of immigrants, mainly Central American, fleeing violence and poverty after hearing that immigration policy has grown more accommodating.  . . . They come north by foot, bus or atop the train they call la bestia, the beast. In border towns such as Reynosa, a city of about 600,000, shelters provide transients like Carlos with beds, food and prayer.    [more]

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  Henry I Miller, M.D., Hoover & Forbes.com, & Project Syndicate,  in re: The Unsustainability of Organic Farming

Hour Four

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos (1 of 4)

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos (2 of 4)

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos (3 of 4)

Tuesday  24 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos (4 of 4)

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