The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 8 October 2019

Air Date: 
October 08, 2019

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 1, Block A: Elizabeth Peek, Fox News and TheHill, on the best US economy in fifty years; seven million more jobs available than workers to fill them; the average — median, definitively not rich — family has $5,000 more per year than several years ago: from $61K to $66K.   Tax rate reduction, diminution of regulations, several activities of this Administration. The tight labor market means that even the lowest-level employees can ask for benefits or a raise.
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 1, Block B:   Elizabeth Peek, TheHill and Fox News; in re: 
Elizabeth Peek, TheHill and Fox News; in re:   Bernie Bro’s, Elizabeth Warren (who’ll  ban fracking on her first day as president and thereby alienate all of western Pennsylvania, plus a few other swing states; and destroy Medicare with “Medicare for All”), a possible Michelle grand entrance.  Massachusetts in the mix.
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 1, Block C:   Bill Whalen, Hoover; Area 45 blog; in re:  Current politics surrounding the upcoming presidential campaigns.
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 1, Block D:   Brenda Shaffer, Georgetown University, Fellow with the Atlantic Council; in re:  Tragic recent deaths at the Line of Contact at Nagorno-Karabakh, between Armenia and Azerbaijan.  History of the conflict.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 2, Block A: Steve Moore, chief economist at Heritage; in re:  The state of the US economy, in considerable detail.
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 2, Block B: John Tamny, RealClearMarkets; in re: Article centering on Glover Park in Washington, D.C.:  “Joe Biden Should Visit Glover Park, Henry Paulson Should Call Goldman Sachs.”“. . . while it’s always dangerous to presume exact correlation, the economic fortunes of Glover Park’s businesses have visibly declined since the March 2017 shuttering of Whole Foods.  . . .  And with the decline in foot traffic related to Whole Foods, so have receipts fallen for countless businesses not Whole Foods.”  . . .  If Joe Biden walked around there, it “might cause him to tone down his rhetoric about how ‘Wall Street”’ didn’t build the United States, that ‘small business’ and the ‘middle class’ did build it. Blah, blah, blah.”
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 2, Block C:  Josh Rauh,  ,  in re: California and taxes.
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 2, Block D:  Josh Rogin, , in re:  The NBA collapses morally and tries to recoup in face of a tweet favoring liberty.  Beijing bullies everyone and every company that could make a yuan — and will continue to bulldoze at every possible chance.
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 3, Block A:   Aaron Klein, Breitbart, in re: [Investigating the investigators]
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 3, Block B:   Aaron Klein, Breitbart, in re: . . .  Burisma, the troubled energy company in Ukraine, at the center of the Biden matter, is the primary funder of the Atlantic Council.  esp the ___ Center, which sent an Adam Schiff staffer (also an Atlantic Council Fellow)  to Ukraine. Was being investigated by Shulkin, the prosecutor whom Biden had fired.  Also funded by Google and ____.  Adam Schiff personally signed the Atlantic Council permission slip to send his staffer to Kiyiv on “official duties; will not use the trip for private gain”; met with Poroshenko.   Gesha Gonzales organized the trip; director of the Eurasia Task Force at Atlantic Council financed by Burisma. Also David J Kramer, who handed Fusion GPS dossier to Comey.  Atlantic Council lists donors, incl Google, which also funded Crowdstrike – when H Clinton refuse to let the FBI insect the server it clamed was hacked. Google funding Burisma, Crowdstrike,  Atlantic Council, all of them important in the Mueller investigation.  Atlantic Council financed by Soros, Rockefeller and State Dept, inter al..
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 3, Block C:   Aaron Klein, Breitbart, in re: Atlantic Council has always been at the forefront of Ukrainian tragedy.  Burisma, a primary Atlantic Council funder, was being investigated by Shulkin, the prosecutor whom Biden had fired.  Also funded by Google and ____.  Adam Schiff personally signed the Atlantic Council permission slip to send his staffer to Kiyiv on “official duties; will not use the trip for private gain”; met with Poroshenko.   Gesha Gonzales organized the trip; director of the Eurasia Task Force at Atlantic Council financed by Burisma. Also David J Kramer, who handed Fusion GPS dossier to Comey.  Atlantic Council lists donors, incl Google, which also funded Crowdstrike – when H Clinton refuse to let the FBI inspect the server it clamed was hacked. Google funding Burisma, Crowdstrike,  Atlantic Council, all of them important in the Mueller investigation.  Atlantic Council financed by Soros, Rockefeller and State Dept, inter al..
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 3, Block D:   Aaron Klein, Breitbart, in re: July 25, 2019, phone call. Eric Schmidt, Alphabet CEO, is an active, major Democratic donor. FBI repeated asked for access to the H Clinton server and was refused; Crowdstrike was hired to look in to it.  John Ratcliffe said, “We’re in an odd situation where fact-witnesses are running the investigations.”  Victoria Nuland (notorious for her expletive — “F--- the Europeans” on an unencrypted mobile phone in Ukraine; her remarks were publicized globally by Russia, to much amusement and scorn).  OCCRP.   . . . Attorney Mark Zaid + Crowdstrike + John Podesta.  Whew!
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 4, Block A:  Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer, Robertson Dean, Mitch Weiss, et al. 
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 4, Block B:  Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer, Robertson Dean, Mitch Weiss, et al. 
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 4, Block C:  Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer, Robertson Dean, Mitch Weiss, et al. 
Tuesday 8 October 2019 / Hour 4, Block D:  Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary, by Kevin Maurer, Robertson Dean, Mitch Weiss, et al. 
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Joe Biden Should Visit Glover Park, Henry Paulson Should Call Goldman Sachs, by John Tamny
Some will view this lament as a Washington, D.C. thing, but Town Hall closed after fourteen years on Sunday. A long-time staple of D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood, it’s the latest bar/restaurant in the area to shut its doors. Once regularly packed with customers, the creeping norm the last few years had been increasingly empty tables and unclaimed bar stools.  
       So while it’s always dangerous to presume exact correlation, the economic fortunes of Glover Park’s businesses have visibly declined since the March 2017 shuttering of Whole Foods. Thanks to a lawsuit between the landlord and the grocery chain, Glover Park’s “anchor tenant” as it were has been inoperative. Whole Foods formerly pulled well-healed customers into the area from all over Washington, D.C., but with a lawsuit that’s taken on interminable qualities having kept it closed for over 2 1/2 years, foot traffic in Glover Park has fallen.
       And with the decline in foot traffic related to Whole Foods, so have receipts fallen for countless businesses not Whole Foods. No doubt bar and restaurant patrons are a particularly fickle lot, but it’s not unreasonable to suggest that Town Hall’s decision to close was made quite a bit easier by the shuttered nature of the formerly vibrant grocery store across the street.
       Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden would be wise to walk Glover Park, and maybe visit a few of its businesses. What he would discover might cause him to tone down his rhetoric about how “Wall Street” didn’t build the United States, that "small business" and the “middle class” did build it. Blah, blah, blah.
       Try that line in Glover right now. Other than a CVS (the Rite-Aid across the street closed a few months ago) and a Subway store that has been rumored to be on the verge of closure for years, the businesses that surrounded Whole Foods almost certainly never attracted the attention of Wall Street. But they benefited from Wall Street as though they were its clients. Figure that Whole Foods did and does rate the attention of the highest of high finance, this is particularly true in the aftermath of Amazon’s acquisition of the grocery chain, and it’s a reminder of a simple truth that is too often ignored: small businesses aren’t the backbone of the U.S. economy; rather, they’re a consequence of the biggest, well-financed businesses that are.
       Just as all shopping malls have anchor tenants whose existence makes possible the opening of myriad smaller businesses around them, so do business districts. In Glover Park, big and international Whole Foods was the lure for all manner of customers who, after coming into the neighborhood to shop there, would eat, drink, exercise and browse elsewhere.
       It’s a long way of saying that Wall Street most certainly did build that. Its intrepid financing of big business creates substantial opportunity for the small businesses that  . . .