Pun Salad

Jeff Maurer announces his own ideological transformation: Trump Held a TV Meeting to Show How Government Works and Now I’m an Anarchist.

I missed it, but I probably wouldn't have been able to watch for more than a few seconds. Blood pressure, gotta keep an eye on it.

The Eye Candy/Amazon Product du Jour above popped up when I searched for "Anarchist Sign". I'm pretty sure it qualifies by demanding "Hands Off! … Our Wallets".

Back in the heady Tea Party days, people made fun of the guy who demanded that his CongressCritter “keep your government hands off my Medicare." It's fair to say that sign raises the bar quite a bit from there.

Also of note:

• Speaking of the Tea Party. Kevin D. Williamson looks back at the 2008 progenitor of Trump's Intel deal: It’s a TARP!

  You’ll remember TARP–the Troubled Asset Relief Program—and the bailouts that were executed during the 2008-09 financial crisis. I don’t think anybody remembers that time fondly except for me and other journalists who had the daily pleasure of writing about it. Bad times, great story.

  I suppose there are some similarities between the Trump administration’s partial nationalization of Intel and the Obama administration’s bailout of GM, in which the U.S. government owned an equity stake. You have two opportunistic presidents who like to talk about economic nationalism jumping into two businesses they don’t understand for purely political reasons and, in both cases, probably doing so illegally. The U.S. government ended up losing billions of dollars on its “investment” in GM, and there is every reason to believe that Uncle Stupid’s stake in Intel—whose Ohio-based chip-foundry is foundering because it has no customers—will end in tears one way or another.

  Citing the bailout policies of the early 21^st century as your model going forward is a real . . . interesting choice. U.S. taxpayers lost billions on GM, and GM is still a piss-poor company that makes inferior products at every price point from $20,500 to $130,000-and-up while pissing away billions of dollars on mismanaged overseas partnerships. It didn’t even make sense from the political baloney “saving jobs” point of view, inasmuch as GM has shed some 80,000 employees since 2008. The heavy-handed government-backed GM restructuring saw the firm kill off Saturn as a sop to the union bosses, who did not like the semi-autonomous division’s independence from rigid work rules. The parallel bailout of Chrysler (not Chrysler’s first) saw the administration essentially rob the bondholders—the secured creditors who had first claim on the firm’s assets—to pay off its union-goon allies.

  I don't watch CNBC, so is Rick Santelli saying anything about this?

• Unfortunately, the production is stuff people aren't that interested in buying. Nevertheless, Tyler Cowen Goes There: Trump Seizes the Means of Production at Intel. The whole thing's great, just a random excerpt:

  Given that this is a blend of socialism and corporate statism, it should come as no surprise that Bernie Sanders has endorsed Trump’s Intel decision. Sanders, at least, is consistent. “Taxpayers should not be providing billions of dollars in corporate welfare to large, profitable corporations like Intel without getting anything in return,” he said.

  Other Democrats refuse to see how they helped make this bed. They had a nonchalant attitude toward the CHIPS Act, which they saw as a sane move in the direction of a sounder industrial policy. But their underlying view of government was naive, as they assumed it would always be “the experts” in charge. The rude awakening has now arrived.

  Milton Friedman’s longstanding insistence that government funding will, sooner or later, mean government control has now come to pass. The Democrats are not so much shocked as catatonic and lacking much of an effective response. But it is they who are responsible for making so much of the economy dependent on federal government funding. And now, they are learning lessons to their distaste when it comes to science funding, DEI in universities, and now, tech companies.

  But I also want to emphasize, and agree with, his bottom line:

  Are you a Republican, conservative, or libertarian? Have you spent most of your life believing that governmental ownership of the means of production brings terrible incentives, politicization, and is a recipe for economic and political disaster? Is that not why you have always opposed socialism?

  If so, now is the time to make your displeasure felt. Loudly.

  Maybe I can get one of those yard signs.

• One-stop ideological shopping. At the Dispatch, Scott Lincicome sums up All the Reasons the Intel Deal Is Bad. Just a snippet:

  The most obvious and immediate problems with the Intel deal rest with the company itself, which—despite all those subsidies—has struggled even more since we dug into its many longstanding problems a year ago and briefly reviewed its current situation in July. As I wrote in the Post, there’s little reason to think this latest move will somehow reinvigorate the company:

  With the U.S. government as its largest shareholder, Intel will face constant pressure to align corporate decisions with the goals of whatever political party is in power. Will Intel locate or continue facilities — such as its long-delayed “megafab” in Ohio — based on economic efficiency or government priorities? Will it hire and fire based on merit or political connections? Will research and development priorities reflect market demands or bureaucratic preferences? Will standard corporate finance decisions that are routinely (and mistakenly) pilloried in Washington, such as dividends or stock buybacks, suddenly become taboo?

  Much more at the link, and I hope you can get through the paywall, by fair means or foul.