This Wall Street Journal headline from this weekend caught our eye:
This is the same Intel that is in line to be the biggest corporate welfare recipient under the CHIPS Act – the Biden bill designed to make sure that microchips are made in the USA. Intel is first in the soup line to receive $8.5 billion in grants and $11 billion in subsidized loans.
Now Intel's near broke. The industrial policy advocates say it's because the big bucks haven't started flowing yet. But the stock market is forward looking and Intel's outlook is negative. So negative, that they were just replaced by their rival chipmaker Nvidia in the Dow Jones composite. Nvidia gets none of the stashes from the Chips Act, yet its stock price has soared more than four-fold.
Talk about politicians betting on the wrong horse.
Ironically, Intel made more than $20 billion in profits BEFORE the Chips Act welfare bill was passed. So far this year it has lost nearly $20 billion.
There's an important lesson here. Corporate welfare subsidies never work. Just ask the EV industry.
Amazingly Biden still trumpets the Chips Act as a glittering success.
2) Whatever Happened to All Those Rants About Money in Politics?
For almost 50 years after the Watergate scandal, the mainstream media and liberal advocacy groups railed self-righteously against the corruption of American politics by campaign contributors.
Suddenly, they stopped. Was it because money suddenly lost its supposed magical powers to undermine democracy?
No. What changed is that, as this chart shows, Democrats now utterly dominate the raising and spending of election-related money, inside and outside campaigns.
We're happy to see campaign finance reform fanatics cool their enthusiasm for limiting free speech but they aren't intellectually honest enough to admit they now LOVE seeing "big money" money spent on politics for two reasons. First, so many Democrats live in the swamp and make their Rolex-watch-living off of politics. Second, for many in the anti-free speech echo-chamber, those dollars now end up in their pockets.
One way to measure economic success is to examine what has happened to the plight of the lowest-income workers.
Here we find one of the most decisive triumphs on the economy under the Trump administration compared to the Biden years. The difference is a 10% higher pay under Trump admin. per week.
4) Britain's New Conservative Leader Will Battle "The Blob"
Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of Britain's Conservative Party. A 44-year-old engineer, she is a first-generation immigrant from Nigeria who wants to return to the free-market ideas of Margaret Thatcher. She admits that Conservative governments of the last 14 years had failed to control spending, taxes, and illegal immigration. She promises to "begin the work of renewal" and fight a Labour government that – as we reported last week – is profoundly anti-growth, pro-tax, and "woke."
Even the Economist agrees that regulation is to blame for an astonishing range of Britain's ailments: "low growth, high taxation, social polarization, and the weakening of the nation-state itself."
Our video of the day is this trailer for James O'Keefe's new border documentary.
Undercover journalist James O'Keefe goes to the front lines of the migrant industrial complex, using hidden cameras and raw testimonials. O'Keefe reveals the shocking reality of the U.S. border crisis like never before: Mexican freight trains, cartel tunnels, and U.S. funded child detention camps. It’s a powerful and heart-breaking exposé of a corrupted system that hurts the migrants and American citizens.
