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Elon Musk Knows How to Fight the Federal Government
Regulators despise him. Stakeholders love him. Fans of space exploration laud him. And innovators—well, it depends on whether you see electric cars as an inevitable part of the future, or an irresponsible and impractical development.
Very few people are indifferent to the workings of Elon Musk.
The main reason I want to celebrate Elon Musk is that he isn’t afraid of anyone, at least not in the federal government. He has repeatedly pushed back on, insulted, ignored, and refused to comply with federal regulators. Some people would say that he can afford to be incorrigible with his remarkable ventures, wealth, and success. On the other hand, there are many corporate CEOs who have caved into regulators who mainly seem to want to flex their muscles, exert stifling control, and make life difficult for risk-takers.
Musk has scuffled with the National Transportation Safety Board, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Security and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. We could debate whether these agencies have had legitimate concerns, but Musk is making a critical point: you’d better have good reasons for slowing him down or he will stonewall, criticize or ignore requests.
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Elon Musk sets an outstanding example for corporate America to stand up to totalitarian forces and not to cave into the federal government. He is an iconoclast; his politics are all over the place. But he is very clear on his overall mission: to break boundaries and push ahead with every bit of his being—and to hell with the powers-that-be.
As we watch corporations supposedly stand up for the American people, we choke at their duplicity, ignorance, and disingenuousness. They don’t even care for their shareholders anymore; their priorities are virtue signaling, and as long as the Left dictates their agenda, they will foolishly comply. As businessmen, these CEOs aren’t obligated to defend America, but they are naïve enough to believe that if they walk in lockstep with the Left, they will be safe from criticism and retribution.
They have no clue that when the Left has used and abused them, those CEOs will be chewed up and spit out.
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Elon Musk is also sending a message to everyday Americans, those of us who live ordinary lives and might think we have no power to make a difference.
We are lying to ourselves.
Each of us has an obligation—to our country, our communities, our families, and friends—to protest the lies and misrepresentations of the Left. We must support each other in taking a stand, for speaking out and refusing to bow to the arrogant and deceitful Left. More and more we are realizing that the consequences we might face if we speak out are inconsequential, compared to what we have to lose as a people.
May we have just an ounce of the boldness that Elon Musk demonstrates every day, and speak out against tyranny and oppression.
Published in Domestic Policy
I think he left his silent partner with a quarter million in debt.
There was a contract, too. For me, it wasn’t worth the fight. But I feel sorry for his partner.
Why would control-freaks stop control-freaking?
Yes, but a cancelled check at/through his bank would be his own record, he wouldn’t need a subpoena to get that. If he wanted to get the other guy’s bank account record to show that the check was deposited, that would probably require a court order. But having the signature and account number etc on the check covers that.
In true Ricochet fashion, we have gone down the rabbit hole.
I heard from a friend that her financial adviser just died when a Tesla that that he was driving exploded and burned, in the Woodlands, Texas. Her financial adviser was incinerated, no body left. Cremated. The vehicle’s battery kept exploding and it was many hours before anyone could even approach the vehicle.
Musk’s main skill is getting government to throw money at him. The jokes on us.
I just drove by a parking lot for Tesla’s at the local University, with solar panels atop poles at each parking spot. Guess who paid for that?
The government throws the money. Musk doesn’t force them to do it. SpaceX would be doing almost as well without the government contracts. These are contracts, not free money.
If government is going to throw money, I’d just as soon they threw it at Elon rather than ACORN.
Agreed, because Elon is performing on a contract and giving value in return.
He doesn’t have to: the fix is in.
He’s got to deliver.
The “fix?” What fix is that? He’s doing things no one even dreamed possible. He has made it so that no other business can compete with his company. He hasn’t stopped them from copying his methods, he’s encouraged it.
Anyone saying SpaceX has had a fix is really just an apologist for the status quo where big businesses get government contracts based on politics instead of value and performance.
SpaceX’s competitors for sending people to the space station are the Russians, who are paid to keep their rocket scientists from supplying our enemies, and the conglomeration of the usual suspects in the aerospace and defense industries who have failed to stay on budget or schedule and have not even yet successfully launched an unmanned system.
Those businesses that have failed don’t have a single face to point at. They’re an amorphous blob that has tremendous political pull.
Tell me how SpaceX isn’t saving money and isn’t providing what was contracted cheaper and better than any competitor and maybe there might be a case for a fix. As it is now, almost any company that is awarded any contract in space except SpaceX are the ones with a corrupt “fix.”
What. Two rocket rides? Everything else he’s build explodes or catches fire.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. The flights in Boca Chica are are radical new method of landing very large rockets.
The falcon 9 system hasn’t failed to deliver in a very long time and they’ve successfully landed more than 80 times to allow reuse of the first stage. They have launched thousands of satellites into orbit. They are far and away the most successful launcher of all time.
My comments about Musk go back to the idea that “he shows us how to fight with the government”. I think Musk is not an entrepreneur who fights with the government but an irascible and semi-competent government employee front man. I haven’t been keeping up but a lot of his government scuffling, in which he took on and disobeyed the SEC, had to do with tweeting false tweets to boost his stock value.
Yes, there’s much I don’t know about Musk. I lost all interest in him years ago, and only know now what I read on Ricochet. I understand one of his cars just spontaneously combusted and immolated a woman in Texas.
That is an absurd perspective that borders on the insane.
To be clearer, he doesn’t fight the government. He works with them and sells his products to them. But he is not a government employee or even spokesman.
Remember pedo-guy? Musk did that. Do you think he really engineered one single part of anything he produces? He’s a front man with enthusiastic boosters.
Yes. I remember pedo guy. Musk won the lawsuit by the way. And the guy did move to Thailand to marry someone who was half his age. Poor judgment by Musk to attack him over it, though.
He has a degree in physics. He is the company’s chief engineer. He is very involved. He doesn’t do all the work and not every idea springs from his mind, but he’s the boss and he’s no slouch.
I’m the chief engineer of this thing, so I’d just like to say that if it goes right, it’s credit to the SpaceX-NASA team. If it goes wrong, it’s my fault.
— Elon “Yeah, they clank when I walk” Musk, on “CBS This Morning” the morning of the first manned DragonX launch.
They have tentatively scheduled a launch for around 3pm this afternoon. I’ll be watching!
I told my daughter the launch was about to start. “Is it a flip ‘n’ burn launch or the boring kind?” Sigh. Landing rockets on a barge at sea after boosting a payload to orbit is the “boring kind” of launch now.
Darnit. 10 minutes late.
I’d guess you’d call it the boring kind; it landed on the drone ship, “Of Course I Still Love You.” It’s always magical to me. We watch it on the local TV station–the tv is in the living room next to the kitchen. Once it lifts off, we switch to the big picture window. Just amazing!
How many Teslas would sell if it wasn’t for government subsidies?
He didn’t make the subsidy. It’s not his fault.
I didn’t say it was his fault, I said I’m blaming him (sorry, couldn’t resist). It remains that, if the government wasn’t subsidizing him, he wouldn’t be in the Tesla business.
SpaceX is something else entirely, and I have no qualms about him taking government money to launch satellites and astronauts into space. Probably saves us money in the long run.
Musk didn’t lobby to make those subsidies. But once the rules of commerce changed, he sought to exploit the rules exactly within the intent of the rules.
And I suspect, given the cachet of his brand, that his cars would still sell well without the subsidy.
But it’s possible that he wouldn’t have had the funding to develop them, without the subsidies. Perhaps especially advancing to the model 3, which is the only moderately-affordable one and took a lot of expensive work to get to. Work that was funded in part through those subsidies.