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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio
 
Hour One
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block A:.   Joe Rago, WSJ, in re: AHCA and the ditch in which it's temporarily stuck.  LK: The White House hasn’t yet made the sale. Absent that impetus, we have here a Pyrrhic victory. . . .  Agree, the politics are awful. Corn-husker moment?  A far less ambitious Medicaid program; increase deregulation to in over the conservatives – but the dials  he’s turning tend to displease one camp or another. . . . The Millennials aren’t rich. . . . I don’t want to cede to the Schumers of the world  . . . Industry [taxes] incl those on medical devices are paid for not by corporations but by consumers.  Lower premiums, increase choices.  Perils of Pauline moments.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-senates-health-care-hour-1498517228
https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-health-bill-vote-delayed-until-after-congress-july-4-recess-1498586899
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block B:  Joe Rago, WSJ, in re:  Chuck Schumer stands there in the suddenly-opened door, grinning. Nightmare. Major ongoing problems in Obamacare – surging premiums, declining choices, insurers’ abandoning hundreds of counties.  Either a revised AHCA or a bailout of Obamacare. Seven years after the Democratic Party votes in Obamacare, the Republican Party destroys itself.
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block C: Doug Badger, Mercatus Center, and  Galen Institute senior Fellow;  in re:  Response to the delayed health care vote.  Medicaid was formed by Lyndon Johnson.  Today: Medicaid-Plus, the expanded Medicaid population.   NY Times claimed that “gutting” will turn elderly out of homes, remove food from them in hospital. This is extremely not factual. Nondisabled childless adults with avg incomes of $16K per year; Medicaid has been related to age, disability – children, people in nursing homes. The ACA made childless, able-bodied adults eligible for Medicaid and Feds pay 100% of costs for the firs three years. GOP bill keeps these people in but won’t sign up more of them.  Ninety million people were on Medicaid for part of the year; 73 million were for the whole year. These able-bodied, childless adults are much more expensive than the historic population.  To borrow a phrase, the working poor: if they can get a little help they can get on their feet How does Medicaid help them? You’re just perpetuating people in it, a truly dreadful system. 
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With only 52 GOP Senators and a purely partisan schism, any bill with a chance of succeeding has to fit within the narrow confines allowable under the rules of Reconciliation. And the fact is, it’s difficult to craft a bill within those confines that pleases 50 or more GOP senators.
So, we’ll have to see what gets added and subtracted over the next few weeks. As an aside . . . the ideal outcome might be one where the Republicans pass something that lets them claim, “We repealed and replaced Obamacare” while Democrats can simultaneously proclaim “Obamacare is here to stay.” Maybe then, we can turn to some critically important issues that are lost in the current debate.
. . . The Senate's decision to delay action on health care reform is unfortunate. Obamacare has raised premiums for millions of Americans and priced insurance out of the reach of millions more. The Senate should make health care reform its first order of business when it returns to work next month.  See Doug Badger's op-ed on the CBO score at National Review.
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, in re: Ms Yellin and the interest rates.  The national economy. 
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re:  The new and ever-more-active — and dangerous — cold war.
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block B:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  (2 of 4)
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block C:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin (3 of 4)
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 2, Block D:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin  (4 of 4)
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block A:  Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, in re:  Democracy under attack?  How will the special counsel pursue this?  Will people in the Kremlin respond to subpoenas?  On to Pathfinder, Adam Schiff: suddenly interested in Loretta Lynch. Why?  Note CNN producer: “No proof!”    Maybe because Ms Feinstein has said that Ms Lynch’s behavior gave her a “queasy feeling.”  What will the media do when they find they've been played that there’s no evidence of Russian collusion?  --They’re defending democracy now, firing producers and re-proving to Americans that . . .   The allegations that the president colluded with Russia need to be investigated.  US govt illegally and reverse targeting Americans for political reasons: this is what counts for the republic,  Adam Kredo names Ben Rhodes and his colleagues as the leakers; undermining the Trump Adm with falsehoods. Who's paying Ben Rhodes? Adam Schiff, Pathfinder we’re depending on you. And now you're getting wobbly.
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FBI Has Questioned Trump Adviser at Length “FBI agents have repeatedly questioned former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page about his contacts with Russians and his interactions with the Trump campaign,” the Washington Post reports.
“Over a series of five meetings in March, totaling about 10 hours of questioning, Page repeatedly denied wrongdoing when asked about allegations that he may have acted as a kind of go-between for Russia and the Trump campaign.”
“Because it is against the law for an individual to lie to FBI agents about a material issue under investigation, many lawyers recommend that their clients not sit for interviews with the bureau without a lawyer present. Page said he spoke without a lawyer and wasn’t concerned about the risks because he told the truth.”
CNN will host a special documentary, "The Russian Connection: Inside the Attack on Democracy," reported by CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto on Tuesday night.
Sciutto, a veteran of the Obama State Department who came to CNN in 2014, "recounts and tracks the story of Russian hacks targeting the 2016 presidential election from the very beginning to the investigations still underway today and to new fears of Russian attacks on upcoming U.S. elections," according to the network announcement.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, former national security adviser Tom Donilon and former CIA Moscow Station Chief Steven Hall are among those interviewed for the documentary.
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Pathfinder nervous language:  “But I would like to hear what her explanation for that was. But I certainly wouldn't want that to distract us from what we need to do to get to the bottom of the Russia allegations,” he said.   http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/26/another-dem-queasy-over-claim-loretta-lynch-meddling-in-clinton-case.html
A Russiagate tale . . .  CNN goes too far on Pathfinder's bluster . . . https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/business/3-cnn-journalists-resign-after-retracted-story-on-trump-ally.html?_r=0
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block B:  Matt Desch, Iridium CEO, and Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com and author, Capitalism in Space, in re: Iridium and Space X
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/25/spacex-is-critical-to-iridiums-future-says-ceo-matt-desch.html
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block C:  Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com and author, Capitalism in Space, in re:  Update on Mars rovers
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 3, Block D:  Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com and author, Capitalism in Space, in re:  SpaceX’s launch frequency
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block A:  John Tamny, RealClearMarkets, and Forbes,com, in re: Uber and the culture that creates a major economic and social shift.  “Seemingly forgotten by the handwringers troubled by Uber's ‘bad boy culture’ is that only a bad boy like Travis Kalanick could do what it took to turn what was a concept into a global brand.  People like Kalanick are microscopically rare in much the same way that Nick Saban and Urban Meyer are in football.  What a shame if commerce and a company lose a visionary in order to make the overly-sensitive feel better.  RealClearMarkets,
Without Travis Kalanic, There Is No Uber...and No Lyft   “The idea of ‘light regulation’ (whatever that means) is music to the ears of regulators since no one will ever agree on what should be regulated lightly.  To have a little of what's senseless means lots of it.  Equally ridiculous is the notion that absent government oversight, big corporations would pollute with abandon.  That's as silly as the presumption that if Whataburger, Pfizer and American Airlines didn't have to contend with federal and state ankle-biters that they'd regularly foist on customers spoiled food, life-negating drugs, and ancient planes prone to mid-air malfunction. That companies want repeat business is a certain sign that they won't go about offending customers.  This includes polluting the rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans that people of all income classes enjoy.  Forbes.com.  
De-Regulation, and the Rivers, Lakes and Streams Fallacy
If businesses and the economy might benefit from apprenticeship programs, then there would be no need for the Trump administration to subsidize their existence in the first place.  What makes the apprentice idea even more ridiculous is to contemplate how Republicans would properly react if a President Hillary Clinton had instituted what's plainly unnecessary.  The expressed outrage would be deafening.  That Republicans are justifying their support for Trump's apprentice program by saying the an alleged shortage of technical workers is holding the economy down just adds insult to injury.  In a free economy defined by price signals, there's no such thing as a shortage.  Forbes.com. 
What Would the Republicans Do If Hillary Clinton Introduced a Jobs Program?
That Paul Ryan and Kevin Brady still reside in an unreal world in which importers can be harmed without visiting equal harm on exporters speaks to tax disarray within the Republican Party.  The problem is that few are talking about the across-the-board income tax cuts that would be the most successful politically, and also economically.  RealClearMarkets.  
The Republicans Needs to Get Serious About Taxes Again  (1 of 2)
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block B:  John Tamny, RealClearMarkets, and Forbes,com (2 of 2)
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block C:  Peter Snow, When Britain Burned the White House: The 1814 Invasion of Washington  (Part II of II)
Tuesday 13 June 2017 / Hour 4, Block D:  Peter Snow, When Britain Burned the White House: The 1814 Invasion of Washington  (Part II of II)