Lee Elci: Red Jahncke is joining us right now. You can find out more about him by going to the-red-line.com, and check out his columns. All the great stuff that he writes. And he is joining us now. Good morning. How are you?
Red Jahncke: Hey Lee. I’m just fine. How about yourself?
Lee Elci: We’re doing good, a lot to get to today. But I did want to ask you, right off the bat, we had talked a little bit about this, the other day, but, I mean, I have a serious concern sometimes when the federal government gets involved in purchasing pieces of of a company. And I guess we we bought 10% of Intel. And, what’s the significance of that?
Red Jahncke: Well, as we discussed, we covered this a little bit off line at the time. Let’s compare it to Chrysler back in the day. Chrysler was going bankrupt. Basically, the government at that time, rescued Chrysler. Otherwise, it would have gone bankrupt. One third, arguably, of the US auto industry would have been out of business. That’s an outright rescue.
Now, look, look at Intel. It’s a 10% position. 10% is not a bailout. 10% is an investment. So, I think we should draw that distinction first and foremost. The general question is whether the government should be in the business of picking winners and losers. This is somewhat in that category. Is Intel going to be a winner or a loser? And then you start an evaluation based on that, on that basis, right? The general principle basis: should the government be doing that at all?
Lee Elci: Well, my, my position would be probably not. I mean, look, even, you know, if you look back during Obama, what we give $500 billion to Solyndra? That money was wasted. And gone in the wind. I mean, I think more often than not, unless it’s to save an industry that’s vital. Like we had talked about off the off the air. I mean, if Boeing was going into the toilet and you save it because we we need it, right? So that’s different. But if it’s just an investment, like, why are we doing that? Why are we not investing in an AI company? Why are we not investing in this one or that one? It seems it makes me think, there’s I don’t know, it makes me think of collusion or some unscrupulous behavior, if that makes any sense.
Red Jahncke: Well, let’s take your two examples, because I think they, they are, are, are interesting ones. One Solyndra and, two, Boeing. Starting with Boeing, there’s no way the government is, or should, allow Boeing to go bankrupt. It is a critical element of our economic vitality. There are only two jet makers in the world, Airbus and Boeing. To surrender that position would be ludicrous. So yes, we’re going to bail out Boeing for economic reasons.
And then Boeing is a strategic asset. It produces a tremendous amount of, of hardware for the military and for the space program. Now, for the space program, they’re they’ve been embarrassed by Space-X, which has, forgive the pun, rocketed by them in terms of advancing the ball, both in terms of what’s being accomplished and the, the, technology and cost involved in doing that. But there’s no way we’re going to let Boeing go, nor should we let it go.
Then you look at Solyndra. That was basically a startup that was not a real preexisting company. That was a launch into a business that was perceived at the time to be a critical business. It was not going to be critical to the economy. It was not going to be critical to national security or national defense. That was ludicrous for the Obama administration to plunk down that kind of money. That was a ridiculous aspirational: we’re going to go green, overnight! Right?
Lee Elci: Red Jahncke is with us. The-red-line.com. And, as always, Red joins us here on these Wednesdays. You can see Red again, probably at 1:00PM this afternoon. If you want to see what Red looks like and take a look, you can go to the Rumble feed through Patriot TV. That’s coming up right now. We are live streaming that. And just a special bonus, coming up on Friday, PM 730, we’ll have Red talking about some of his past columns. And might have him on talking about that with the Wayne Allen Root show, which is across the entire country, which is kind of cool. So I kind of co-opted the whole conversation today, Red. Was there something you came into that you wanted to start with today?
Red Jahncke: Yeah. I first have to take note of your offering, as a bonus, to have a look at what Red Jahncke looks like.
Lee Elci: I mean, you’re going to get all these women, you know, letters from women from all over the country. Now, pretty soon, Red.
Red Jahncke: Yeah. We’re going national! The fan club is expanding dramatically.
Lee Elci: There you go.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.