The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 16 April 2020

Air Date: 
April 16, 2020

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Colleagues:  Sebastian Gorka, Fox; and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents
 
Hour One
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 1, Block A: Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ America column, in re: Pan-American Health Organization is the WHO in Latin America. In January, news that some Cuban doctors were not being paid by PAHO and they sued it.    Dr Ramona Matos Rodriguez was a Cuban doctor who got to Brazil, was being paid $400/mo, while PAHO was paying $5,00o/mo to Havana; and her money was going in to a Cuban bank where she couldn't access it outside of Cuba. Under the law, this constitutes human trafficking. PAHO made an arrangement with Brazil for it to pay PAHO secretly so the money could continue to Havana.  Further, Cuba’s medical training is conspicuously inadequate so Havana sends untrained medical personnel into the world.
When a doctor was sent to a remote clinic in Bolivia, no one showed up, so she was instructed to invent names; and when supplies were sent, she was instructed to destroy them.   All this is to be able to send hard currency to Havana.  In documents, Cubans, Brazilians and PAHO meet in Havana to discuss how they can get around the matter of slave wages to doctors in Brazil.
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 1, Block B: Michael Faren, Mercatus Center, in re:  Unemployment: 22 million American worker out of work.  Seven million a week filing for UI.  From an all-time unemployment low in February to the worst ever in early April.  PA jobless claim peaked in March. Not V-shaped or L-shaped, but tortoise-shaped recovery?   Great Depression unemployment figures, largely of males: there was no work and nowhere to look for work. All there was was government assistance.  In New York, we’re paying people more than they got before and most people expect to go back to work. I remember my grandmother giving food to men from her back porch.  [Historical note: the desperate, wandering men were called hoboes.  Editor’s grandmother,  in a farm family, gave food as she could, and did so until after World War II.] Pennsylvania is doing well; not yet awarding claims for independent contractors; overall reduction in claims since 23 March. 
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 1, Block C: Conrad Black, NRO and Canadian National Post, in re: On the virus and the US presidency. Ontario and Quebec are the hardest-hit provinces. Internal travel is down to modest levels, so it may not travel westward. We have 30,o000 cases nationally out of 38 million people, with a fatality rate of 3%.    Decisions on reopening so far are fuzzy.  Globe and Mail, like much of international opinion, is harsh on President Trump.  They al parrot what US mainstream media says.   India and countries closer to China know what the reality is and are much more appreciative of Trump.
       FDR was peppered with questions such as “You had two years to prepare” for WWII. Today, at press conferences he’s asked questions as though he’s a criminal. Recall that he attacked the entire political spectrum, from left Democrats to Bush, saying that the whole system was corrupted.    The non-Trump universe considered power to be its birthright.  When Trump attacks the power structure  . . . he now has control over the Republican Party. If he wins again, he really will clear the swamp.
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 1, Block D: Richard Epstein,  , in re: The Atlantic Charter, Au 19401; Churchill and FDR met on a warship off Canada.  Eight principles of liberal democracy:       .  Are we coming to a point where we’ll discuss the Utopian vision of all people working together?  Anent the Atlantic Charter: they proclaimed they had no design on territory; redux Pax Britannica/Americana.  The virus is a very different kind of problem.  We don't need grand alliances; our most powerful weapons here are simple steps and personal hygiene.  . .  . There’s a push for One World, incl having the US and China work together to solve the virus.  [Yike.]   Hayekian notion of: decentralized action beats the single command through the state.
 
Hour Two
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 2, Block A:  Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re: Local decisions about reopening commerce in each state.  What does “patience” look like now?   For recovery, we need to get everybody engaged; this is beyond the reach of the president [or any pol].  What would persuade people? Maybe a low lethality rate.  . . . Disproportionate mandates: sheriff in Cali gave thousand-dollar tickets to people who drove to seashore and stayed in their cars.  . .  . We still have highway patrol with no one driving.  Why? . . .  Three kinds of worker: essential (healthcare, truckers, pharmacies, et al.); knowledge workers who can work at home; and everyone else, who’s out of luck.
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 2, Block B:  Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re:
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 2, Block C:  Andrew C McCarthy, Ball of Collusion, and & Thaddeus McCotter, American Greatness, in re: . .  .  Michigan governor [Cruella de Ville] banned buying seeds on the grounds that it’s snowing.  Sheriff in California gave thousand-dollar tickets to people who drove to seashore and stayed in their cars.  Public servants doing a tremendous disservice to the public.  Expect a citizens’s reaction in due time.
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 2, Block D:  Andrew C McCarthy, Ball of Collusion, and & Thaddeus McCotter, American Greatness, in re: Justice and State ave appropriately made all the arguments needed to be made  . .  ,  Judge Lambeth issued an unusual order: Mrs Clinton    had created more questions than answers; to be brought in to testify. Clinton seeks extraordinary mandamus.  Justice said mandamus is not correct here.  This is an FOIA claim brought by Judicial Watch, not DoJ; against Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff.  “Anonymous” – is that Victoria Coates (who wrote about artistic liberty)?  Probably not.
 
Hour Three
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 3, Block A: Sebastian Gorka, America First radio, in re: 
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 3, Block B: Sebastian Gorka, America First radio, in re: 
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 3, Block C: Tony Morris, president and CEO, HeliumX.net: Vector Development; in re:  Oil prices being down right now, $18-$20 Bbl.  They went to $9.50.    Fracking has been around for many years before it became a headline. We did the first two Barnett Shale wells in Parker Co., Texas.  Helium now at $350 to $450 per mcf, and  73% of the world’s helium reserve is in SW Texas. Best area is Eastern Arizona, which usually is a by-product of nat gas, but in Arizona we have the highest concentrations of 8-10%.  There’s a shortage of helium for MRIs in Cyprus. The federal govt used to have a reserve but auctioned off annually. We have maybe twelve months’ worth of helium.  We need to keep looking for new exploration prospects, as we rely on helium for R&D, military, medicine.  Coolants for big servers—everything we depend on in the high-tech realm needs helium. 
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 3, Block D:  Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus, in re:  SBA funds exhausted to PPP ($349 bil) and emergency aid program ($10 bil?). Was there another way to do this?  The SBA has failed over and over and over again. Carbon-copy stories of what we heard after Katrina, 9/11, everything.  My colleague Arnold Kling proposed: Fed issue a line of credit for every checking account in the country, wd allow overdrafts for any amt that any individual or bz has put in as revenue for the first two months of the year. Eighty per cent of companies are a sole proprietorship.
 
Hour Four
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 4, Block A:  John Tamny, RealClear Markets, in re: Reopen America and let the social experiments begin. @JohnTamny @RealClearMarkets  It's maybe too easily forgotten that freedom is the ultimate producer of information necessary to crush all foes, including viruses. If Covid-19 is passed by close contact, those who don’t follow norms like SIX FEET APART and AVOID CROWDED PLACES are as crucial producers of information that will enable cures as those who are obedient. What applies to individual decisions also applies to businesses. They should be free to try everything, including re-opening, so that we can find out what consumers want along with what they will want as the true innovators lead them to a better place. People free to operate without forced limits show us through their successes and failures how to get by, and thrive. In that case, not only do one-size-fits-all lockdowns blind us to what will save us, so do government-planned re-openings. If we want economic recovery, it's time to we take control of it away from the political types who wrecked it to begin with. 'Plans' produce darkness.  The opinion piece can be found here.
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 4, Block B:  John Tamny, RealClear Markets, in re: Investors and entrepreneurs drive American growth; the government deters American growth. 
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/04/14/entrepreneurs_will_...
Government spending is expected to grow as politicians extract trillions more from the private sector to put much less than a Band-Aid on their lockdown errors. The spending naturally limits the experimentation that powers progress, and that is always a consequence of market-disciplined allocation of resources. The speculation is that despite the growth of government, ongoing automation will result in resource abundance that will overwhelm the waste, and that will enable entrepreneurs to work around it. The opinion piece can be found here
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 4, Block C:  Williamson M. Evers,  Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Educational Excellence Independent Institute, in re: California's anti-gig law, AB5, inhibits independent truckers from their delivery work #in-the-time-of-the-virus.  AB5 aims to unionize gig workers and prevent independent truckers from working unless they join a union.
Thursday 16 April  2020  / Hour 4, Block D:  Marc Coleman, Octavian.ie,  in re:  The virus in Ireland as a vista into Europe.   Radical Uncertainty by Mervyn King