J. D. Vance: Republicans have to break the Senate filibuster and destroy the country in order to save it

Remember when W said to CNN's Candy Crowley in December 2008 that he had abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system?

We got Obama, a foreclosure crisis for six million, banks failed by the hundreds, and jobs didn't recover for six years and five months.

Why is it always the Republicans with these paraprosdokians?  

 

Trump's corrupt state capitalism, but I repeat myself, is anti-American, anti-competitive, and advances long-standing Democrat objectives, which is one reason big business is keeping its big yap shut

When the Democrats can't get what they want, a Republican chump comes along who does it for them.

The power of existing businesses will only get stronger thanks to Trump, so mum's the word.

 

Trump administration equity stakes pose risks to U.S. companies and markets 

The Trump administration’s portfolio of equity stakes in U.S. companies has reached a scale that is unprecedented outside economic crisis or wartime.... 

“It is a invisible barrier to startups and new market entrants,” said Scott Lincicome, an international trade lawyer affiliated with Cato Institute. “Why would you ever want to enter a market that you know your chief competitor is backed by the U.S. government?”...

The Trump administration’s approach is a major ideological departure for the Republican Party, which has traditionally championed free market capitalism and excoriated government intervention. The Democrats have typically been the party of industrial policy and intervention in markets.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, introduced an amendment to Biden’s CHIPS Act that would have allowed the government to take stakes in companies that accept federal funding for semiconductor manufacturing. The measure ultimately died in the Senate....

Top executives have voiced virtually no public criticism of the Trump administration taking stakes.... 

Before the U.S. took its stake in Intel, Trump said CEO Lip-Bu Tan was “highly conflicted” and called for his resignation over his ties to Chinese companies. The comments sparked a brief sell-off of Intel shares.... 

               

Trump bought 433.3 million shares of Intel in August 2025 at $20.47, about $3 off its recent lows around $17.66, risking taxpayer money, not his own.

The Federalist goes full-on Orwell: Intervention in Venezuela was a win for Anti-Interventionism

We had to intervene in Venezuela to preserve the policy of anti-interventionism. 

We had to destroy the village to save it.

We had to abandon free-market principles to save the free market system.

We had to attack the Confederacy in order to preserve the Union.

 

Maduro Raid a Win for America First Anti-Interventionism

John Davidson, Federalist

 

... Trump’s Venezuela policy these last three or four months — the stationing of a flotilla of U.S. warships off the coast, the systematic targeting of drug boats, the seizure of the oil tanker — was designed to hew as closely as possible to the anti-interventionist instincts and preferences of his MAGA base. We are not at war with Venezuela. We have no occupation force there. And yet Maduro is gone. ...

 

Maduro just magically disappeared!

 

 

Treasury Secretary Bessent says we have to stop the rigged Chicom economy by abandoning free market principles just like them

 

 Trump administration will set price floors across range of industries to combat China, Bessent says

... “When you are facing a nonmarket economy like China, then you have to exercise industrial policy,” Bessent told Sara Eisen at CNBC’s Invest in America Forum in Washington, D.C.

“So we’re going to set price floors and the forward buying to make sure that this doesn’t happen again and we’re going to do it across a range of industries,” the Treasury secretary said, without naming specific industries the administration was looking at beyond rare earths. ...

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the Treasury secretary said when asked about additional equity stakes. “When we get an announcement like this week with China on the rare earths, you realize we have to be self-sufficient, or we have to be sufficient with our allies.”

The Trump administration will not take stakes in nonstrategic industries, Bessent said. “We do have to be very careful not to overreach,” he said. ...

 

 

If you paid attention to NeverTrump, you knew Charlie Kirk was a phony ten years ago, which is why he promoted fellow phony J. D. Vance to be VP

 

 

Kirk hated Trump but saw an opportunity, claims ex-employee...

 

Well no shit.

The GOP today is riddled with sycophants who formerly opposed Trump but support him now. Those of us who supported Trump in 2015-2016 took great pleasure in pointing it out as they came crawling back.

Many who changed their minds about supporting Trump defend themselves today by saying they changed their minds because they were persuaded by reflection on the Trumpist agenda, but none of that is becoming the law of the land today through the GOP Congress. It's all by executive order and lawfare. None of this will last, except for the ka-ching ka-ching.

In Charlie Kirk's case, flipping to Trump has been bery bery good for Turning Point USA, which went from a lousy little $2 million operation in 2015 to an $80 million one by 2022.

I mean, how many dollars will it take before we actually get some of that fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government which it is supposed to promote, seeing that we're headed for a $2 TRILLION deficit by September 30th?

 

Considering how awful Trump is now on just about everything compared with his first term, it must be that they all flipflopped only for the money, the power, and the influence.  

 

 

  

The fiscal year is rapidly coming to a close, and Trump has spent us $1.973 trillion deeper into the hole with one month left to go, compared with Biden's last year at $1.897 trillion through August

 

Meanwhile ...

... [Charlie] Kirk, who had millions of social media followers, co-founded the non-profit Turning Point USA in 2012 as a teenager, which he dubbed a 'national student movement.' 

Its mission is to 'identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.' ...

 

Trump is so bad that Gen Z is falling in love with the guy who didn't keep us safe on 911, invented the religion of peace, gave us Michael Brown, and abandoned free market principles to save the free market system

 

Gen Z Falling in Love -- With George Bush... 

 

... "Many comments on videos tagged as #Bushcore use past moments to contrast the current administration," Mohammed said. "Users are saying, 'These were like Bush's lowest moments. Somehow they tower over Trump's best,' or 'I would've NEVER thought 20 years ago … I wish he could be president again … I miss him,' representing how unhappy Gen Zers are with contemporary politics."

 

"A recent YouGov/Economist poll shows that President Trump continues to have a significantly low approval rating among young voters—61 percent disapprove. They use Bush's persona as relief, reminiscent of times when there was supposedly more empathy and community in politics," she added. ...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

One would think that Gen Z would be more, I don't know, REBELLIOUS or UNGOVERNABLE if it's really true that they have experienced the following awful realities.

 

One of life's great mysteries. 

 

... a typical Zoomer on the apps is getting rejected by, and rejecting, more prospective partners in a week than a typical married boomer has in their entire life.

... Ella, a 20-year-old from Allentown, Pennsylvania, applied to 12 colleges and got rejected from 10. "I had so much hubris and unfounded confidence," she says. "I just thought, well, I'll only want to go to college if I can get into a 'prestigious school.' They ask, 'Why us?' obviously, and I couldn't tell them why besides it's Harvard." In a Substack post she published before her high school graduation, she described how at odds her tenfold rejection was with her belief in simply working hard to succeed. "I thought that I was going to be someone," she wrote.

... many Zoomers apply to more jobs in a day than many lucky Boomers have in their lives. ...

More.

 

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip observes America under Trump becoming more like China under Xi

The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics: President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into economy

 Greg Ip Aug. 11, 2025 at 10:16 am

Recent examples include President Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the “golden share” Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct.

This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises. 

China calls its hybrid “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The U.S. hasn’t gone as far as China or even milder practitioners of state capitalism such as Russia, Brazil and, at times, France. So call this variant “state capitalism with American characteristics.” It is still a sea change from the free market ethos the U.S. once embodied.

We wouldn’t be dabbling with state capitalism if not for the public’s and both parties’ belief that free-market capitalism wasn’t working. That system encouraged profit-maximizing CEOs to move production abroad. The result was a shrunken manufacturing workforce, dependence on China for vital products such as critical minerals, and underinvestment in the industries of the future such as clean energy and semiconductors.

The federal government has often waded into the corporate world. It commandeered production during World War II and, under the Defense Production Act, emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It bailed out banks and car companies during the 2007-09 financial crisis. Those, however, were temporary expedients.

Former President Joe Biden went further, seeking to shape the actual structure of industry. His Inflation Reduction Act authorized $400 billion in clean-energy loans. The Chips and Science Act earmarked $39 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Of that, $8.5 billion went to Intel, giving Trump leverage to demand the removal of its CEO over past ties to China. (Intel so far has refused.)

Biden overrode U.S. Steel’s management and shareholders to block Nippon Steel’s takeover, though his staff saw no national-security risk. Trump reversed that veto while extracting the “golden share” that he can use to influence the company’s decisions. In design and name it mimics the golden shares that private Chinese companies must issue to the CCP.

Biden officials had mulled a sovereign-wealth fund to finance strategically important but commercially risky projects such as in critical minerals, which China dominates. Last month, Trump’s Department of Defense said it would take a 15% stake in MP Materials, a miner of critical minerals.

Many in the West admire China for its ability to turbocharge growth through massive feats of infrastructure building, scientific advance and promotion of favored industries. American efforts are often bogged down amid the checks, balances and compromises of pluralistic democracy.

In his forthcoming book, “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future,” author Dan Wang writes: “China is an engineering state, building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States’ lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.”

To admirers, Trump’s appeal is his willingness to bulldoze those lawyerly obstacles. He has imposed tariffs on an array of countries and sectors, seizing authority that is supposed to belong to Congress. He extracted $1.5 trillion in investment pledges from Japan, the European Union and South Korea that he claims he will personally direct, though no legal mechanism for doing so appears to exist. (Those pledges are already in dispute.)

There are reasons state capitalism never caught on before. The state can’t allocate capital more efficiently than private markets. Distortions, waste and cronyism typically follow. Russia, Brazil and France have grown much more slowly than the U.S.

Chinese state capitalism isn’t the success story it seems. Barry Naughton of the University of California, San Diego has documented how China’s rapid growth since 1979 has come from market sources, not the state. As Chinese leader Xi Jinping has reimposed state control, growth has slowed. China is awash with savings, but the state wastes much of it. From steel to vehicles, excess capacity leads to plummeting prices and profits.

The U.S. hasn’t fared any better. Interventions made in the name of national security or kick-starting infant industries lead to boondoggles like Foxconn’s promised factory in Wisconsin or Tesla’s solar-panel factory in Buffalo, N.Y.

State capitalism is an all-of-society affair in China, directed from Beijing via millions of cadres in local governments and company boardrooms. In the U.S., it consists largely of Oval Office announcements lacking any policy or institutional framework. “The core characteristic of China’s state capitalism is discipline, and Trump is the complete opposite of that,” Wang said in an interview.

State capitalism is a means of political, not just economic, control. Xi ruthlessly deploys economic levers to crush any challenge to party primacy. In 2020, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, arguably the country’s most famous business leader, criticized Chinese regulators for stifling financial innovation. Retaliation was swift. Regulators canceled the initial public offering of Ma’s financial company, Ant Group, and eventually fined it $2.8 billion for anticompetitive behavior. Ma briefly disappeared from public view.

Trump has similarly deployed executive orders and regulatory powers against media companies, banks, law firms and other companies he believes oppose him, while rewarding executives who align themselves with his priorities.

In Trump’s first term, CEOs routinely spoke out when they disagreed with his policies such as on immigration and trade. Now, they shower him with donations and praise, or are mostly silent.

Trump is also seeking political control over agencies that have long operated at arm’s length from the White House, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. That, too, has echoes of China where the bureaucracy is fully subordinate to the ruling party.

Trump has long admired the control Xi exercises over his country, but there are, in theory, limits to how far he can emulate him.

American democracy constrains the state through an independent judiciary, free speech, due process and the diffusion of power among multiple levels and branches of government. How far state capitalism ultimately displaces free-market capitalism in the U.S. depends on how well those checks and balances hold up.

Trump's greatest economy ever is simply part of the worst economy ever, now in its sixteenth year and third year of Biden

Something about some guy abandoning free market principles in order to save the free market system.

This is how America ends

 One place at a time.

America and its free market capitalism depends on rules, a shared commitment to them and to their enforcement:

Sound money, not fiat money;

truth, not "my truth";

law and order, not one law for me and another for thee.

When you can't trust anybody anymore, it is over. People vote with their feet, as do corporations. 

Crime, Homelessness, Taxes: Hollywood Big Shots Fleeing LA...

As Violent Crime in LA Rises, Demand for Private Security Among Wealthy Soars...

UPDATE: In Atlanta's Buckhead Neighborhood, Rising Crime Fuels Move to Secede... 

AMAZON relocating workers from Seattle office due to crime...

DC WAWA closes amid ongoing shoplifting, violence...

WALGREENS closing more stores in San Fran due to organized theft...  

Violence rises as employees fight back against shoplifters, thieves... 

Chicago's Wealthy Neighborhoods Hire Private Police as Crime Rises...

NYC Mayor Eric Adams asks tech executives at private dinner to keep companies in the city

STARBUCKS Closing Stores, Citing Safety Concerns...

 SAFEWAY Cuts Hours Due To 'Off The Charts' Shoplifting... Iconic TARGET Store in San Fran to Close Amid Shoplifting Wave...MCDONALD'S CEO Raises Crime Concerns for Business in Chicago...  Portland families move to escape homeless camps, crime...  Ken Griffin Moving CITADEL From Chicago to Miami Following Crime Complaints...

Beyond parody: Delusional Rush Limbaugh says red states are paying for all this emergency spending

Here:

"The red states are gonna create capital and money to transfer to pay these people their stupid welfare costs (and whatever else they’re using to bleed this country dry), while their population sits home, doesn’t work, waits for the federal check to show up — and they sit around and they trash the supposedly reckless red states. I cannot tell you how this irritates me".

No one is "paying" for anything. It's all borrowed. And Limbaugh's personal portfolio is probably buying a bunch of it, as is every portfolio out there, from individual investors to institutional, to sovereigns, etc. The entire world craves the safety and security of US Treasury securities and can hardly get enough of them, but Limbaugh thinks Republican states are carrying the whole world on their shoulders.

Even as Limbaugh was yammering away spouting stupid, 10-year Treasury securities were flying out the door at record low rates at auction:

"The U.S. Treasury held an auction for $32 billion of 10-year notes in Tuesday afternoon, selling them at a record low yield of 0.70%". 

Federal debt has soared from $23.5 trillion on March 16th to $25.1 trillion on May 11th, and it'll keep soaring.

The Federal Reserve Bank's balance sheet has soared from $4.1 trillion on February 26th to $6.7 trillion on May 6th, and it will keep soaring.

And they are just getting started:

"The central bank had previously balked at direct aid to nonfinancial businesses, but is set to finance trillions in relief across nearly every sector of the economy amid a historic downturn".

Meanwhile Federal Reserve lending operations at ultra-low rates continue to keep businesses alive which should have died long ago. They were doing it before Trump came along, did it with Trump's assent after his election, and will keep doing it.

The Trump administration has signed off on this gargantuan repudiation of free market capitalism, but Rush Limbaugh thinks it's all paid for by Joe Sixpack.

Trump marks the end of Republicanism's "fiscal conservative" brand for at least a generation, and that's what really irritates Rush Limbaugh. He's hitched his wagon to a wayward horse and now it's in the ditch along with the rest of the country.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Don't catch a "cold" down there in that puddle.

Has anyone on the right discussed how Trump and his Fed chair are destroying free market capitalism?

Of course not. When the right does it, it's OK, see. When the left does it, it's socialism or some damn thing. These suck ups say nothing except, "China, baaaaaaaad! America, goooooooood!"

The Fed is now buying EVERYTHING in sight in order to backstop EVERYONE. Today we learned it would buy in the municipal bond market, the commercial mortgage backed securities market, the might as well be junk bond market, and CLOs. That's not free market capitalism.

The Fed balance sheet is already past $6 trillion this week. Remember when it wasn't even a trillion back in 2007? Of course you don't. Remember when Bernanke promised to "normalize" it when the last crisis was over? Of course you don't. Guess who is promising the same thing again? Same Fed chair, different name. Jerry Powell. 

Fed Is Seizing Control of the Entire U.S. Bond Market

It's bad enough the Fed has been long buying agency mortgage backed securities and Treasury securities.

Eventually it will buy stocks, too, now that it is buying anything and everything in the bond markets.

This is all bullshit. If you believe in capitalism, then you believe in bankruptcy. Nobody believes in that anymore, least of all Donald Trump. Otherwise he'd do something about it.

So America declares itself officially dead today, as it literally dies from a virus it willingly invited in.

How fitting. 

Liberalism's mental disorder gets its death wish.

Remember George Bush in 2008?

Yeah, George Bush: We have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Good times 2008 are here again in 2020. Not.

Gramps, born in 1926, says this is worse than 2008

Dad will be 94 this year if the coronavirus doesn't get him first.

He's been through a lot, seen it all. Darmouth graduate. Served in the US Navy from World War II to Vietnam, retired as a captain.

He was just a little kid during the Great Depression, didn't really know any better. But he's watched America become a lot better since then, and now it suddenly isn't.

Things may end for Dad the way they began, with Great Depression II.

Long war on terror, coronavirus, economic meltdown.

We've had war, plague and depression before in this country, sometimes in rapid succession. WWI ended with a whimper as the Spanish Flu pandemic killed tens of millions, followed quickly by the depression of 1920. That one was very deep and severe, but ended quickly because the government . . . did nothing.

Free market economies, if left to be free, quickly recover from catastrophes because debt overhangs are allowed to clear through bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is the cure.

But we can't stomach that, same as we haven't been able to say No to our children. Self-esteem and all that.

So, expect the suffering and disorder to continue.

Sad. 

NeverTrump Tom Nichols has to vote socialist in order to save the free market system

US Naval War College professor upset about the exercise of raw political power at the same time upset candidate Trump didn't do more to stop Russkies from interfering in his election.  Like the US Navy takes orders from unelected politicians.

Judd Gregg, Senate author of TARP bank bailouts which picked bank winners, calls Trump conservative in name only

Judd Gregg's idea of a conservative president is one who abandons free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Pot, meet kettle, kettle, pot:

There is probably nothing short of runaway inflation that does more damage to a market economy than to have the government pick who is going to be successful and who is not. It perverts the fundamental purpose of a free market, which is to allow the forces of private exchange to decide the winners and losers in commerce.

It's Trump statements like this on Hong Kong and Xi Jinping which keep me from supporting his re-election

"We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi," Trump said. "He's a friend of mine. He's an incredible guy. We have to stand, but I'd like to see them work it out."

Why stand with these brutal oppressors of freedom? Just so that we can trade with them?

Peggy Noonan thinks the purpose of conservatism is merely the preservation of the free market system, yet she supports Trump's impeachment.

She and Trump have more in common with each other than either of them does with real conservatism.

They are both thimble deep and symptomatic of the poverty of America's two party system.

More here.

Free market capitalism forces Charlie Kirk to ally with LGBT

Story.

 

Wayback Machine here.

 

 

 

 

Trump shill Andy Puzder complains of non-existent labor shortage, suggests more legal immigration while 3 million teenagers sit idle

Labor Shortage May Imperil Growth:

[T]he tight labor market is the elephant in the room. ... In July, the most recent month for which we have data, job openings stood at 7.2 million—nearly 1.2 million more than the number of unemployed. ... [A]t some point the economy will need more workers to meet that demand.

That means job training is increasingly important, particularly for discouraged workers who want to re-enter the labor force. ... Higher levels of merit-based legal immigration—as opposed to immigration based on distant family connections—could also relieve some of the pressure.

Both business owners and jobs data tell us the same thing: To sustain the recovery, the U.S. needs more workers.

The real elephant in the room is idle teenagers.

In 1978, 8.1 million American teenagers aged 16-19 had jobs, on average. That was 48.5% of their population of 16.7 million teens at the time.

In 2018 just 5.1 million teenagers worked on average, out of an equally matched population of 16.8 million aged 16-19. That's just 30.4% working.

Apply the 48.5% rate to today's average teen population and presto! 3 million more instantly working than are.

We don't need more immigrants. We need parents to kick their kids' butts, kids who increasingly fail to launch because they are in desperate need of job experience to help them grow up, become responsible and fly straight.

And it would also help to eliminate the minimum wage. What grocery store wants to pay some kid $7.25 an hour to corral shopping carts, restock returns and take out the trash? And adjusted for inflation from 1938, the minimum wage in 2018 should be closer to $4.45 an hour anyway, nearly 39% less than it is.

The higher than it should be minimum wage is a tax on teenage employment. And as with all taxes, the more you tax something the less of that something you get. That's one reason high levels of illegal immigration remain so persistent. It's a natural response to an unnatural situation created by hypocritical politicians who claim to believe in the free market but don't really.

And it's nothing new. We just hoped Trump & Co. would be different. 

       

George W. Bush abandoned free market principles to save banks and companies the free market was about to destroy, but hey, we can't have that! That's capitalism!

"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system" - George W. Bush

Meanwhile, millions of homeowners were destroyed, along with their jobs, their savings, and their hoped-for futures, never to return.

Updated link: