The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 11 September 2018

Air Date: 
September 11, 2018

Post card:  Missouri New Capitol Building, river view, Jefferson City, Mo.
 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council under US Pres Donald Trump.
 
Hour One
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 1, Block A: Elizabeth Peek, Fox News and The Hill, anent the fact that we now have 201,000 new jobs; and finally, after a decade of desuetude, wage growth is accelerating. The NFIB reports an all-time record in small-business optimism – investments in plants, hiring new people. Consumers are feeling terrific, too.  People are trading up to better jobs and report of a record high in number of quits (people quit when they see a better prospect, esp higher wages). Fewer regulations and lower taxes — everything is contributing to gains.   A tremendous uptick in consumer confidence.  Seventeen years after 9/11, New York looks awfully strong.  Credit goes in large part to Mayor Bloomberg: he brought tech to New York for the first time, and, after a few years, New York became third nationally in IPOs; and in record time he created a high-end tech university on Roosevelt Island.  Our economy is humming in fashion, finance, tech.
What can go wrong and why?  A shortage of qualified workers, incl truck drivers.  Veteran, trained employees are hard to find.   Truck drivers’s wages are up over 10%. Older people will work longer; many people are coming off the sidelines in to the job market. To boot, there are always people with specialized abilities who are queuing up to enter the US.
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 1, Block B:   Elizabeth Peek, Fox News and The Hill, on how Republicans are victims of their own success – with jobs booming, people can go back to worrying about healthcare. The GOP looked foolish for being unable to overturn Obamacare or draw up a good replacement. We’re still paying subsidies to insurance companies. . .  I don't see a blue wave, but the GOP isn’t capitalizing n the ec0nomy, being unable to tell the story and still having Obamacare attached to their ankles.  Dems are still making Donald Trump the main issue in the midterms even though his name isn't on any ballot.  Still talking about impeaching the president despite having no bill of particulars.  
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 1, Block C:  Larry Kudlow, in re: JFK and the Reagan Revolution; The 2017 Jobs Act, with Trump’s tax cuts, are a roaring success.  Reagan gave credit to JFK and emulated his economic policies, working out brilliantly. Blue-collar workers’s paychecks are getting bigger and bigger, and we're seeing productivity booms.  A metric: the quit rate –people willing to quit one job to search for a better-paying one. Energy, eqpt, construction, transportation; large-scale training.   Growth in this sector is occurring at he fasted rate since 1984.  Attitudes matter: We like business, we want you to succeed and keep more of what you earn. The NFIB just hit another all-time historical high. It keeps growing and spreading. We’re in a capital-goods boom, first since 2000, and it may go on for a bunch of years.
Elizabeth Warren talks about nationalizing corporate boards.  Shortages, rationing, standing in line, are what the Democrats are offering.  Prominently, all the fossil-fuels firms  . . . an energy pipeline boom is just starting – Permian, and Marcellus shale – huge jobs creators, in moribund towns. Watch it spread to coal and natural gas.  Yes, I’ll take it on the road f I’m asked to. What we hoped would happen is happening, the most important story of 2018. Let’s keep it that way.
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 1, Block D:   Christopher C. Horner, senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute, in re:  Hewlett Foundation funds an alternative, private government apparently to be run by billionaires.  See: Figure 1, https://cei.org/governorsclimatescheme
..  ..  .. 
FROM SEPTEMBER 12 TO 14, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) will host a “Global Climate Action Summit,” an official state event using public positions and taxpayer resources to make climate change an issue of greater political concern before the 2018 elections.1 This three-day event is budgeted at $10 million, provided by “strong support from individuals, foundations, governments and businesses. Supporters will be able to engage Summit leaders”—e.g., elected office holders—“and shape an event that will catalyze [government] climate action worldwide.” Open record productions reveal that this summit is part of an enormous climate industry that funnels donor money through nonprofit organizations to staff up politicians’ offices. This is done off the books, and the nonprofits take a handsome percentage for serving as middlemen. The September event is just one component of a sprawling enterprise that underwrites “support functions” for politicians to advocate the parties’ aligned policy agenda. 
The $10 million is to underwrite e.g., “Communications, including traditional and digital media, marketing, and branding, Partnership engagement and coalition-building, Fundraising and supporter outreach”2 (See Figure 1) and a handful of senior, full-time, and off-the-books staff members to Governor Brown. This is on top of an existing network of off-books “staff” and consultants, plus transfers to outside groups to generously support the governors, with $50 million budgeted for 2020.3 
The Summit spectacle is made for the media and is timed to serve as a warm-up act for“Climate Week,” another donor-financed week of activism designed to advance the same agenda. That is centered in New York City to coincide with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. Records obtained through state freedom of information laws suggest that Brown’s Summit is also intended to act as a privately underwritten complement to the two-week official Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COPs are held every year in late November or early December to negotiate a series of ever-tightening climate treaties and other pacts. U.S. politics demanded an event nearer to major U.S. media than Poland and before the U.S. election.4
A particular theme slated for the San Francisco event is that President Trump’s promise to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty is isolating the United States from what is otherwise and elsewhere a doable, successful, and economically beneficial adoption of this agenda. Trump vowed to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because it is in reality a costly and ineffectual solution to the alleged climate crisis, it mostly directs resources to politically favored industries, and it harms disfavored ones.5 For similar reasons, the climate industry is dedicated to reversing Trump’s not yet consummated decision. A major component of its campaign is claiming momentum toward Paris’s goals and rebutting the history of economic and social costs involved in implementing the policies that Paris demands.
Implementation of the Paris agenda requires domestic policies, and implementing those policies is the principal objective of the campaign detailed in this paper. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) recently revealed a similar model in the report, “Law Enforcement for Rent,” that is used to provide off-books staff members for state attorneys general to investigate opponents of the climate agenda.6 This approach raises serious questions about transparency of and restrictions on gifts to elected officials under various state laws:7 Is this provision of outside consultants on a donor’s tab a gift? Does it violate gift limits? Are the gifts properly reported? Is this private provision of government services unlawful in that jurisdiction? It would be at the federal level under the Antideficiency Act, which was enacted to prevent a variety of abuses, including bestowing private benefits and having officials avoid incurring obligation to private parties.8
The bigger-picture questions remain: Are the donors going to such lengths to avoid 1) directly placing consultants in governors’ offices or 2) giving the money to do so directly to those offices, because they are barred from such placement? If so, why is this permissible? Or is the effort creating middlemen all merely due to appearances? Why do we find participants misleading or telling outright falsehoods when questioned about what we have found?
And the biggest issue of all is, does this represent government for hire?
This paper details how this activist donor network provides off-the-books staff members and consultants for governors, both ad hoc for this Summit and as a going concern, while using middlemen nonprofit organizations to administer the funding—to work for and promote politicians who in turn support the donors’ climate agenda.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 2, Block A:  Senator Jim Talent of Missouri, anent the question, Are we safe?  Not within acceptable risk, but more so than we were 17 years ago. Trump has broken the defense sequester and begun to rebuild the military.  “No enemy in the field has done as much harm to the American military as the sequester did.” ---Secy James Mattis.  . .  We’re opposing our enemies and supporting our friends in the Middle East; but  . . . [dangers and competitors abound], none of which existed 15 years ago.
Syria is the breeding ground for future mass-murderers. Bad, bad actors come from bad circumstances, as we see from the history of WWI and WWII. The major prize in that area is Iraq: the first thing is to get back into Iraq and add those partners. At a minimum, get enough inv0lved to keep Iran from having a land bridge to the Mediterranean – make it spend [too much] to get there. There are significant ways to apply pressure to Putin and Xi without getting mired up in Syria.  Trump is doing some very good things against the Chinese.  We cannot allow Xi, Assad and Putin to consolidate power there.
East Asia— the fleet needed to protect the region: 355 ships is the minimum.  The biggest and most important American influence is the presence of US naval vessels.  Obama reduced the pie by moving vessels out of the Atlantic.  We need to delay retirement of some of the Ticonderoga cruisers; we must get holds in the water. Also vital that we build the missile frigate – it’s lighter, less expensive. Will Congress cooperate? If the president, Secretary and chiefs present the matter in a powerful way, I think Congress with give them basically what they want. Deepest bipartisan concern: China.
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 2, Block B:  Senator Jim Talent of Missouri, in re: The man from Missouri speaks facts.
Missouri is an agricultural and manufacturing state with a good tourism component.  We have upward pressure on wages – we’re sharing in the general prosperity. Tax relief was important on both the supply and the demand sides, but especially Trump’s promise not to issue unpredictable and [negative] regulations. People are converting to full-time jobs with benefits, which is hugely important if you have children.
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 2, Block C:   Andrew C McCarthy, III, NRO and The Hill , in re: Treason and the NYT Anonymous op-ed.   Treason is the only federal crime spelled out in the Constitution; how careful the framers were of who could be convicted of it. 
President is moving toward declassifying the material on the FISA warrants.  . . . FBI suppressing exculpatory information.  . . .  “Tickling the wires”:  leaking a little of the wiretap info to the media, then seeing how the tapped speakers react to the information.   . . .    
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 2, Block D:  Chuck Ross, The Daily Caller, in re: Alexander Downer, Pappadapoulos, FBI investigation into possible collusion . . .  14 days’ jail.
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 3, Block A:  Aaron Klein, Middle East bureau chief, Breitbart, in re: Andrew Gillam, mayor of Tallahassee, made statements extremely at odds with US foreign policy.  DeSantis in Jerusalem a few months ago identified bldgs that c0uld become the US embassy.  . . .
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 3, Block B: 
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 3, Block C:  Bill Whelan, Hoover’s Area 45 podcast; in re:  Rule of 8: First-term Cal governors elected are re-elected.   Rule of 20: every 20 years we have an election whose year ends in the digit 8.   . . .
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 3, Block D: David Maxwell, FDD, in re:  The three-dimensional chessboard [concerning Kim Jong-il]. He’s a master at that, and wants to get something for nothing.   . . .
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 4, Block A: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re: IAU falls on its nose in calling Pluto not a planet.
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 4, Block B: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  ___ mil used a spy sat to film a launch test. Ariana 6, Europe.  Faulty, spongy concrete in Vostochny – contractor was forced to cut corners
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 4, Block C: Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I, by Nick Lloyd
Tuesday 11 September 2018/ Hour 4, Block D: Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I, by Nick Lloyd