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(Illustrated once again by my ChatGPT effort from last year.)
Veronique de Rugy notes Socialism in the Open and on the Right.
The Democratic Socialists of America released their platform last month, and let's give them credit for candor. They want public ownership of large corporations, the abolition of police and prisons, a defunded Pentagon and open borders. Conservatives read that document and saw the future they have been warning American voters about: the government seizing the commanding heights of the economy and becoming owner rather than referee.
Their alarm is warranted. The socialist program would be a catastrophe. So, here's an awkward question: Why is a Republican administration quietly doing the public ownership of businesses part on its own?
Last week, the Commerce Department announced that letters of intent have been signed to provide federal incentives to seven more companies under the CHIPS program. Each letter of intent is conditioned on the government taking an equity stake. By a Cato Institute count, that brings the federal corporate portfolio to roughly 30 firms.
A year ago, these deals looked like improvisation — one-offs stitched together under pressure with President Donald Trump's fluid negotiating style. Now, the department announces them in batches. Federal ownership of private companies has become routine, and it is happening on the right even as members busily point fingers at the left for its socialism.
Meanwhile Chris Freiman is in compliance with Betteridge's Law of Headlines at his substack: Does Funding Research Give Government a Claim to Tech Firms?
A common argument for government regulation and taxation of tech companies begins with the observation that government research has contributed to the success of those companies. Mariana Mazzucato, professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, writes:
Much of modern technology came from a collective investment, with public institutions like the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), leading the way in the most high-risk capital-intensive phase. What would Google be without the DARPA-funded internet? What would Uber be without the US Navy-funded GPS? What would Apple be without the CIA-funded touch-screen technology and DARPA-funded voice assistant, Siri?
Thinkers like Mazzucato seem to view the state as a sort of partner in these businesses; after all, it’s only fair that a partner should get a cut of the profits and a say in their operations.
“We need to develop a new governance structure, which starts with creating a new vocabulary,” she says. “For example, calling platform companies ‘tech giants’ implies they have invested in the technologies from which they are profiting, when it was really taxpayers who funded the key underlying technologies — from the Internet to GPS.”
Christopher goes on to demonstrate the fallacious thinking involved. It's almost as if Mazzucato worked backward from her desired conclusion, trying hard to find a semi-plausible argument to support it.
Also of note:
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With a hefty dose of Calvinball rules. Kevin D. Williamson notes the Democrat Primary electorate Playing for Twits and Giggles. (Dispatch gifted link)
The left-wing goofball Democrats have nominated as their Senate candidate in Michigan has a bevy of enthusiastic cheerleaders, and it should surprise absolutely no one to learn that a great many of those cheerleaders are wearing stupid red hats.
Republicans ought to be running scared, but Democrats are running Abdul El-Sayed, who has bested normie Democrat Haley Stevens in the Michigan primary.
Michigan has lost more than 8,000 manufacturing jobs since Donald Trump announced his imbecilic “Liberation Day” tariffs. But many of the Michigan families that escaped the direct and intense economic pain of a lost paycheck are experiencing the pain of a diminished paycheck, a persistent if less intense economic discomfort resulting from continued high inflation, with high and rising fuel and food costs eating into family budgets. You’d think that Democrats would have chosen a candidate well positioned to keep that issue and similar “kitchen table” issues, if you’ll forgive the tedious cliché, front and center.
On top of the tariff misadventures, Republicans in Congress are studiously gazing at their Florsheims and pretending that the United States is not currently engaged in an illegal—and losing—war in Iran, one that is playing hell with the economy here at home and abroad. The president wanders around talking like an untreated stroke victim while even such utterly supine and slavering sycophants as Jeanine Pirro are walking sideways away from the hypertensive, sneering face of the Republican Party. That’s a lot to work with. Trump and the economic failures associated with him are “like an anchor around Republicans,” says Michigan pollster Bernie Porn, whose name you should definitely never, ever Google.
It's shaping up to be a real hold-my-nose-in-the-voting-booth election come November.
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Who had this on their "Articles of Impeachment" bingo card? Charles C.W. Cooke points out: Truth Social’s Early-Access Scheme Is Indefensible. (NR gifted link)
On Saturday, the Trump Media & Technology Group launched a new commercial offering: A real-time feed on the Truth Social website that will give paying institutions early access to certain high-profile posts for between $60,000 and $100,000 per month.
There is no credible defense of this. The only reason that anyone would want priority access to Truth Social is to gain priority access to President Trump’s pronouncements on that platform. And the only reason that anyone would want priority access to President Trump’s pronouncements on that platform is to act on them for pecuniary gain. Trump often uses Truth Social as the primary forum for his announcements — announcements that include changes to personnel, the imposition or rescission of tariffs, key foreign policy decisions, and more. These announcements are extremely useful to financial institutions, and, in the age of high-speed trading, the faster those financial institutions can obtain them, the more money those financial institutions can make. Facilitating this access is not a byproduct of Truth Social’s API offering; it is its core — perhaps its sole — purpose. Simply put: President Trump is charging Americans a fee — a fee that, in part, goes into his family’s pockets — for the privilege of receiving news about his official actions earlier than those who do not pay.
I can't imagine that early access to Trump's unhinged diatribes on Truth Social would be a reliable way to guide your investment strategy. I would guess you would have better luck with perusing sheep entrails spread across a Ouija board.
More credible explanation: simple bribery.
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Yeah, that'll be good. That'll work. At Reason, Tosin Akintola is skeptical: Senators Want To Claw Back Trump's Spending Power. They Should Just Pass a Real Budget Instead.
You'd have an easier time hitting a fastball off Milwaukee Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski than getting Congress to take back wasteful spending it has appropriated, as the Trump administration is finding out.
On Monday, the Senate passed a continuing resolution to fund parts of the federal government through December 11. The bill includes a provision that temporarily blocks the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from implementing a rule change that would have given executive branch political appointees greater control over the disbursement of federal grants.
Proposed by the OMB in May, the rule has garnered over 62,123 public comments, most of which are in opposition. It would require "senior appointees" to review grant proposals for consistency with "applicable law, federal agency priorities, and the national interest." It also says agencies must ensure that funding proposals "advance the president's policy priorities."
The ban's inclusion in the funding bill appears to be a direct response from Sens. Patty Murray (D–Wash.) and Susan Collins (R–Maine), who didn't take kindly to the Trump administration's use of pocket rescissions last year. In her statement on the resolution, Collins said she was "pleased" that the bill "prevents" the OMB from implementing its proposed rule, which would "politicize grants" and "harm small, rural communities, families, and biomedical research." Murray was more direct, calling the rule a "corrupt policy that would allow [President Donald] Trump to hold even more federal grants hostage."
Tosin's article links to the 2026 Congressional Pig Book issued by the Citizens Against Government Waste. Senator Susan Collins of that state just across the Salmon Falls River got a special mention for wangling "159 earmarks costing $431,571,000".
Susie's campaign ads are rife on the streaming services I frequent. She is damned proud to let you know that she's steered a lot of taxpayer money to Maine.
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I'm pretty sure my patience would wear thin after just one. George Will recommends: Now the midterms begin in earnest. Ask candidates three questions. (WaPo gifted link)
Political candidates greedy for power are often parsimonious with information about what they would do with it. And voters currently being exhorted to participate in electing a new Congress might reasonably wonder: Why bother? Presidents govern, Congress spectates. Nevertheless, here are three commitments voters might seek from those currently seeking House or Senate seats.
First: When the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was passed, the national debt was less than $500 billion. It is almost certain to reach 80 times that sum — $40 trillion — next month. It has become normal for the federal government to run nearly $2 trillion budget deficits even during full employment and steady economic growth.
So, ask candidates about Warren Buffett’s five-minute solution: “I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there’s a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection.”
It's fun to think about. But (as GFW admits) it would probably require a Constitutional Amendment. And those are tough to push through the ratification process.
And if you had enough votes in Congress to pass an amendment, you would have way more than enough votes to just… pass a balanced budget. Why not just do that instead?
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