Photo, left: Canadian military trainers in Ukraine.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block A:  Stephen Moore, chief economist, Heritage Foundation, in re: Capital gains create opportunity: need a new business needs investment. HRC asks to increase the capital gains tax, considered the 2d-most important – and double, from a statutory 20% to 44% for at least six years. Will stifle risk-taking, growth, everything. Inconceivably stupid. .  If you raise this crucial tax you'll wind up with less money! Note that Bill Clinton w Newt Gingich cut the capital-gains tax and had an explosion of growth, We'd have the highest capital-gains tax in the world. HRC said: Business are chugging along but not investing capital. Why?  Precisely because of inane ideas like hers.  With these policies, she'll have less money to redistribute.  Jack Kemp.  Mrs Clinton simply doesn’t understand these economics. We also have a corporate tax, has to pay 35% tax and only then can distribute to money back to shareholders.  If you add HRC's 44%, you wind up paying 65% tax.  Lock-in effect helps existing companies – people won't sell their stock – but no money goes in to start-ups. Jude Wanniski: The re-oxygenation of your capital.
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block B:    Stephen Moore, chief economist, Heritage Foundation, in re: Mrs Clinton says she'll save capitalism.  To do that, need capital. She also want half a billion solar installations We've spent $100 bil in the last decade subsidizing solar; today we get 2.5%  of our energy from solar. Need coal, nat gas, nuclear power. Mrs C want solar, wind, geothermal.  Tom Steyer, Bernie Sanders. Solar panels are mocked because of Solyndra.  . . . We have 500 years' worth of coal!  Two words describe Mrs Clinton's policies: Bernie Sanders.
Mrs. Clinton is targeting public-company shareholders, especially the pushy ones. You know, the types who buy stock in a company and then act like they own the place (because they do). On Friday she called out “increasingly assertive shareholders determined to extract maximum profit in the minimum amount of time” and said it was time to “address” their “influence.”
A Monday editorial in the Journal noted the capital-gains tax hikes Mrs. Clinton has planned for those who sell stocks before she wants them to. The Democratic candidate also promised on Friday to review current regulations on shareholder activism and said that “as President,” she would use “the convening power of the office to bring all relevant parties together to help move our corporate culture toward solid long-term growth and investment.”
Hillary Blames Business  But don’t worry. Mrs. Clinton has a plan to ‘save capitalism.’
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Bud Weinstein, SMU, in re: There are hundreds of pipelines across the US-Canada border; State ordinarily rubberstamps requests. Now, however, she refuses t say a syllable about the Keystone XL Pipeline – "I'm not going to second-guess Pres Obama . . . I want to wait and see what he and Secy Kerry decide." In fact, State signed off on this three times but the White House kept sending it back.   This is goofy. It does matter what variety of wind or solar.  . . . at $100 Bbl, it looked as though renewables were becoming competitive; but now nonrenewables are half the price. One of the benefits of cheap and abundant energy is that we're seeing he renascence of American manufacturing!
Hillary Clinton dodges Keystone pipeline question.  Clinton sets climate, renewable power goals

 Hillary Clinton has big plans for solar power. Are they achievable ...
 
Hillary Clinton rolls out climate agenda

Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: David Malpass, Encima Global, in re: When China's stock market tumbles, does it damage the US economy? Not much.  I think the US has done a bad job in creating growth, As for Greece, problem. Am worried. Commodity price declines are good when due to incr productivity; here, it's US monetary and regulatory policy all fouled up.  Fed has kept the rate at zero for years – zero use.  We have a global establishment that thinks that no tax rate is high enough. Through S AM demanding 20% on every transaction – in countries where the police don't work, infrastructure is weak, and there's massive corruption. Raising the tax rate is [nuts].  No sense to make the tax rate above the Laffer rate: if you tax at 100%, you get zero revenue. Descent on a curve; maximum growth reached at a certain, reasonable rate.  The US is the center of the world economy, we’re supposed to lead. We [ain't]. We’re more than 4X Germany, double China. No reason that the US economy can’t grow at 4% - need to invest more, and on the Fed side, cannot be at 0%, which hurts savers and everyone else.  LK: this is not rocket science, David and I can sit down and fix this in seventeen minutes.
Is there a global slowdown that connects to the US 3rd and 4th quarters?  Conference Call Slides: Global Slowdown; Greece, China - 7-14-2015
e  Have global growth forecasts finally bottomed? 
e  Will commodities stop sliding? Problems for Brazil, Mexico 
e  Credit growth still slow and distorted; can the Fed hike? 
e  More declines for Greece and the European Union? 
e  China: how much will stock market decline affect the slowdown 
Hour Two
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / 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; in re:
1.  Putin and Turkey
2.  Putin and Syria
3. Putin and European Cup/Sepp Blatter (1 of 4)
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author:
4.  Putin & China
5.  Putin and NATO (2 of 4)
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: "We should not repeat Cuba's experience, which stayed in a black hole for 50 years, as Mariani said. But there is hope that Crimea won't stay there. I personally hope that the Minsk agreements will be followed, after which it is necessary for Ukraine and Russia together with the EU to look at how the Crimean issue can be resolved, because people live there, two million residents who are right now in this black hole," Pozzo di Borgo told Sputnik.  [more] (3 of 4)
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author (4 of 4)
Hour Three
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:   Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: Click here for link  Larry Fitzpatrick woke at 3 a.m. two Fridays ago, hours after five servicemen were gunned down in Chattanooga, Tenn., and just knew he had to do something.   A few hours later when the Armed Forces Career Center opened in Lincoln Village, mere yards from Fitzpatrick's home on the old National Pike, he sat on a folding chair in a parking lot, a .22 rifle at his side. Despite the sweltering heat, he vowed to protect the unarmed military recruiters in his neighborhood. 
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block B:  Kate Glabraith,  , in re: http://www.calmatters.org/articles/california-climate-change-policy-overview/
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:
SpaceShipTwo accident report released   The National Transportation Safety Board today released the results of its investigation into last year’s SpaceShipTwo crash, concluding that the accident was caused by pilot error combined with the failure of the ship’s designers to include systems that could have prevented that error.   The National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday that the developer of a commercial spacecraft that broke apart over the Mojave Desert last year failed to protect against the possibility of human error, specifically the co-pilot’s premature unlocking of a braking system that triggered the in-flight breakup of the vehicle.
In its recommendation, the board took pains to make clear that Scaled Composites, an aerospace company that has partnered with Virgin Galactic to develop the spacecraft, should have had systems in place to overcome the co-pilot’s mistake. NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said he didn’t believe the company took shortcuts that compromised the spacecraft’s safety. Rather, he said, it didn’t consider that the crew would make such a mistake. “The assumption was these highly trained test pilots would not make mistakes in those areas, but truth be told, humans are humans,” Hart said after the hearing’s conclusion. “And even the best-trained human on their best day can make mistakes.”  This really isn’t news. This was the conclusion reached only weeks after the accident. It also does little to ease the problems at Virgin Galactic.
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 3, Block D:  John Bolton, AEI, in re:  If Israel strikes, there will be no general Middle East war, despite fears to the contrary. We know this because no general war broke out when Israel attacked Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981, or when it attacked the North Korean-built Syrian reactor in 2007. Neither Saudi Arabia nor other oil-producing monarchies wanted those regimes to have nuclear weapons, and they certainly do not want Iran to have them today.
     However, Iran may well retaliate. At that point, Washington must be ready to immediately resupply Israel for losses incurred by its armed forces in the initial attack, so that Israel will still be able to effectively counter Tehran's proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be its vehicles for retaliation. The United States must also provide muscular political support, explaining that Israel legitimately exercised its inherent right of self-defense. Whatever Obama's view, public and congressional support for Israel will be overwhelming.
    American weakness has brought us to this difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago. Read this article online.
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Hour Four
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block A: Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties by Kevin M. Schultz /  SCHULTZ AND SCHWARTZ PREVIEWS
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News by A. Brad Schwartz /  SCHULTZ AND SCHWARTZ PREVIEWS
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Trip Gabriel (with Coral Davenport), in re:
Hillary Clinton Lays Out Climate Change Plan   Focusing on an issue that resonates with Democrats, Mrs. Clinton set a goal to produce 33 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027.
Tuesday  28 July 2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Joel Stein, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re:
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