I'll discuss that cartoon below, but right now it's an illustration of Daniel J. Smith's WSJ column: Trump, Intel and the Road to Serfdom. (WSJ gifted link)
The Trump administration is pursuing federal ownership stakes in companies such as Intel and U.S. Steel, ostensibly to advance national security and domestic manufacturing. Yet these moves risk leading us down the road to serfdom that Friedrich Hayek warned against in 1944. Such actions pave the way for future administrations to impose DEI, environmental and regulatory mandates on businesses through back-door control.
Recent developments—a proposed stake in Intel to accelerate chip production, a “golden share” granting veto power over many of U.S. Steel’s decisions following its acquisition by Nippon Steel, and the Pentagon’s 15% equity in the rare-earth mining company MP Materials—would all expand federal control over the means of production. Hayek warns in “The Road to Serfdom” that state ownership threatens both prosperity and liberty. As he defined it, socialism involves state ownership and direction of the economy, which President Trump’s policies increasingly resemble.
Well, that got my fist pumping. Also weighing in, the NR editorialists with a milder criticism: The Government Shouldn’t Get into the Chip Business.
The federal government has a hard enough time doing the things it should do: securing the border, winning wars, collecting taxes, administering the capital city. It doesn’t need to take on the difficult and nongovernmental task of turning around a struggling semiconductor company.
The Trump administration is reportedly considering taking an equity stake in Intel at public expense. This would be in exchange for the grants the company is already due to receive under the CHIPS Act.
By the way, remember the CHIPS Act? The law that was enacted three years ago for the supposedly urgent task of re-shoring semiconductor production? In those three years, the government has distributed almost no money for that purpose. As we said at the time, the law was so loaded up with extraneous provisions and deficient in specific anti-China provisions that it was never going to a present an effective challenge to China’s chipmaking ascent.
Yes. True dat.
But about the cartoon above: that's my effort at using ChatGPT for image generation, which puts me about three years behind everyone else, AI-usagewise.
My first prompt:
draw an interstate highway with a car labeled "Intel" heading toward a destination labeled "Serfdom"
I got a good result. But after thinking a bit, I decided I could be a little more ambitious and explicit:
Make the car a convertible and show President Trump driving it.
And ChatGPT responded:
Sorry, I can’t help with that.
Sigh. I think I get it: ChatGPT doesn't want to get involved in politics. So, I pared back my request:
make the car a convertible
And you know what? It did that, the result is what you see above, and darned if it didn't slyly make Trump the driver anyway! Funny old world.
Also of note:
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And can they be as bad as we all imagine they are? James Freeman is curious: Will CBS Release its Biden Tapes? (WSJ gifted link)
The main question about the Biden administration remains unanswered: Who was running the U.S. Government prior to Jan. 20, 2025? There are related questions about who knew what and when regarding Mr. Biden’s cognitive challenges. Now the former controlling shareholder of the parent company of CBS News suggests that in 2023 staff at the network got a damning look at a struggling Mr. Biden that they never shared with viewers.
James discusses the possibility, raised in an interview with Shari Redstone, that 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley interviewed Joe Biden back in 2023, during which he seemed "drowsy and had to be prodded to answer."
So, to repeat James' headline: will CBS release its Biden tapes? My guess is that doing so would demonstrate both (1) Biden's cognitive decline; (2) CBS's general reluctance to display Democrat incoherent babbling. Neither would be a surprising revelation.
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Speaking of incoherent babbling… Trump's been doing some of that too, as Andrew C. McCarthy demonstrates his recent constitutional ignorance: Trump Has No Power to Tell States How to Conduct Elections.
As is reliably the case with President Trump, one can agree with his policy preferences while recoiling at his disregard for the constitutional processes and principles attendant to making such policy. I happen to agree with him that we would be better off without mail-in voting (and related innovations, such as ballot harvesting and drop boxes). But Trump’s notion that he can direct such an outcome, or that the state legislatures should care what he thinks, is not just ill-conceived but alarming coming from a president who has already once abused his powers to try to retain the office.
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An amusing turnabout. As revealed by John R. Puri: Wait, the ‘Washington Post’ No Longer Thinks Elections Should Be Federally Run?
He compares the WaPo's recent reaction to Trump's screed:
Everyone loses when the federal government runs elections
… with their opinion back in 2021 about the "For the People Act":
Republicans’ rhetoric on H.R. 1 is apocalyptic. Are they that afraid of democracy?
To the WaPo's (slight) credit, the 2021 was from Congressional Democrats, not a Presidential Decree, so arguably more constitutional.
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