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Libertarian: A Rush To Cash-Bathe Ailing Intel
“President Joe Biden’s administration is hurrying to shovel as much cash out the door as possible” in his final weeks, including by preparing to grant Intel nearly $8 billion under the CHIPS and Science Act, fumes Reason’s Joe Lancaster. Problem is, Biden’s “making a big bet on a failing company.”
“As of November 6, Intel was the year’s worst-performing tech stock on the S&P 500 index,” and “in October, the company revealed a $16.6 billion third-quarter loss, the largest in its history.”
“The company’s struggles” have led the feds to slightly trim the expected grant, but they’re also “hurrying to finalize the terms of the deal so the next administration can’t take it away.”
Eye on China: Jimmy Lai’s Trial Is Absurd
The trial of Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is “absurd” as Hong Kong prosecutors try to paint him as the “mastermind” of a “national security threat to China,” seethes The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn.
Lai was put in “chains” when arrested and kept in “solitary confinement” for most of four years in jail.
Under questioning from defense attorneys, Lai testified that his interviews and articles were done without “any sense of hostility or intention to be seditious.”
His staffers were even “forbidden to advocate for Hong Kong independence.”
His testimony made clear that “all his activities were pro-freedom and pro-Hong Kong” and about “trying to hold China to its promises to honor the values and freedoms” that made Hong Kong “a global center for trade and finance.”
From the right: How Trump Won Minority Voters
Donald Trump won his election “with key support from blacks” and other minorities after he “made time to court votes in racially diverse communities,” cheers Jason L. Riley at City Journal.
It clearly made a difference: “Trump’s increased appeal to minority voters” helped give him “an edge in swing states.”
This, running against “a woman of black and Asian heritage who made overt racial appeals.” The lesson for Republicans: “Stop ceding votes to Democrats. Even in the bluest precincts, show up and make your case.”
Blacks and Hispanics “are more likely to be working class,” and more of them “have started to vote like working-class whites.”
Increasingly, it seems, “economic status matters more than ethnic identity when filling out a ballot.”
Science desk: How To Save Public Health
“The incoming administration presents the opportunity for a reset” on public mistrust of health officials, argue Frances Lee & Stephen Macedo at Compact.
That’s why Trump should nominate Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health.
Early in the pandemic, Bhattacharya “set out to gather vital information and to question what had too soon become settled assumptions” around the dangers COVID presented.
He “drew attention to the tremendous collateral damage” of lockdowns. Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins and other “public-health leaders” issued “a series of bewildering flip-flops” on “masking, airborne transmission, the lab-leak hypothesis, and whether vaccines prevent infection.”
“What we need now is a strong dose of fresh thinking and institutional reform” to “renew our commitment to the basic values of science and liberalism.”
Media watch: MSNBC’s Sharpton Problem
“MSNBC was ‘unaware’ that Kamala Harris’s campaign paid Al Sharpton’s nonprofit $500,000 shortly before Harris sat for a softball interview with the cable host, a network spokesman” told the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross, but “wouldn’t say” if MSNBC “is taking any action against Sharpton for a move that appears to violate network policy.”
“Sharpton did not inform MSNBC viewers of the contributions during the segment, nor did he inform network brass, a network spokesman said.”
Yet his actions “clearly constitute participation in a political campaign, also violate basic journalistic ethics guidelines regarding financial relationships with sources or interview subjects.”
Meanwhile, the nonprofit National Action Network “paid Sharpton around $650,000 in 2021. It also spent more than $900,000 on private jets and limousine services seemingly used by Sharpton.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board