Musk is on the Nation’s Dole. There’s a lot he has completed with the assistance of presidency funding. Now he needs to carry effectivity to authorities. The biggest objects he needs to assault on his record contains veterans’ healthcare, childcare, faculty grants, NASA, and housing help. That’s going large with veterans particularly when Trump and the opposite two by no means served.
It would result in authorities layoffs and damage individuals receiving whereas Musk collects his $hundreds of thousands.
One other Reich Commentary . . .
The Musk rat
On Tuesday night time, Elon Musk and Donald Trump watched SpaceX’s launching of a rocket that would sometime take individuals to Mars. It might additionally make Musk even richer if Trump awards him authorities contracts to strive.
Musk’s more and more highly effective position within the Trumposphere has led some progressives to recommend we mood our criticisms of him.
On Saturday, Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman representing the South Bronx and a self-described “pragmatic progressive,” requested on-line why Elon Musk “came to be the favored punching bag of the far left,” as Torres put it (on the Musk-owned X).
Torres continued:
With due respect to Congressman Torres, Musk is not any “intrepid innovator.”
He’s an intrepid authorities contractor. And he’s precipitated extraordinary hurt to America — from the harmful lies he’s spewing on X, to his conflict on employees, to the $120 million he spent to get Trump elected.
– Musk’s so-called “innovations” have relied on authorities cash. Tesla and SpaceX obtained began with help from state and federal insurance policies, authorities contracts, and loans.
– By January 2010, Musk had offered fewer than 2,000 Teslas. He then acquired a $465 million low-interest mortgage from the Division of Power, months earlier than Tesla’s preliminary public providing. With that mortgage, Tesla developed its Mannequin S automobile, its first main success, and repaid the mortgage via proceeds from an extra sale of inventory in 2013.
– Each Tesla purchaser additionally acquired a $7,500 tax credit score for electrical autos, a subsidy that totaled an estimated $3.4 billion for Tesla. Even when the subsidy let Musk increase costs by half that quantity, that will be one other $1.7 billion in federal assist.
– As well as, state and federal tax credit geared toward lowering greenhouse gases generated one other $2 billion for the corporate between 2008 and 2019, accounting for almost 25 p.c of its income in 2008 and 10 p.c of its income over the following 5 years.
– Total, gross sales of regulatory credit have introduced in almost $11 billion to Tesla.
– Not till 2021 was Tesla capable of put up a revenue with out the assistance of credit score gross sales. With out regulatory credit, Musk wouldn’t be the richest individual on the planet.
– Musk can be depending on authorities funding for his SpaceX. In 2021 and 2022, SpaceX obtained NASA contracts value a complete of $4 billion to take people to the moon.
– In June, NASA introduced that SpaceX acquired an extra $843 million contract to “de-orbit” the area station when it’s prepared for retirement in a couple of years. SpaceX additionally has contracts to launch army and spy satellites.
– All advised, in keeping with USASpending.gov (the federal government database that tracks federal spending), SpaceX has signed contracts value almost $20 billion.
– If the Trump administration will increase funding for NASA’s efforts to return to the moon and journey to Mars, SpaceX’s worth might simply improve to $500 billion or extra.
– By hypothesis and since Trump’s election, Musk’s web value has elevated $64 billion, or almost 25 p.c, in keeping with Bloomberg’s estimate. That is based mostly partly on traders’ assumptions that Musk will get contracts from the Trump administration for extra rocket launches, satellites, synthetic intelligence, and self-driving autos. He’ll keep away from the regulatory constraints and authorized troubles he’s confronted earlier than.
– His firms, together with Tesla and SpaceX, at the moment are the topics of over 20 investigations or regulatory opinions, in keeping with an examination by The New York Occasions.
– Musk has given his center finger to legal guidelines designed to guard the well being and security of employees, legal guidelines enacted to guard employees’ proper to prepare a union, and legal guidelines to guard shoppers and small traders.
– Tesla’s push for autonomous driving is a selected focus for regulators. Simply final week, the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration mentioned it was investigating a number of self-driving crashes involving fog and mud.
– Musk has additionally often tussled with the Securities and Change Fee. The fee has investigated Musk’s 2022 buy of X, then referred to as Twitter. Musk didn’t present up for a deposition in September, resulting in an SEC request that sanctions be imposed on him.
– There’s an abiding assumption in America that the wealthy should be sensible and that the free market doesn’t play favorites.
– In truth, the wealthy have typically gained their wealth because of their talent at getting authorities subsidies, grants, bailouts, and contracts; their cleverness at skirting authorities rules; and their hubris in ignoring conflicts of curiosity. Wherever nice wealth connects with important energy, democracy suffers.
Donald Trump is Exhibit A. Elon Musk is Exhibit B.
That Trump has tasked Musk to seek out some $2 trillion of cuts within the federal finances via extra “efficiency” is as bonkers as placing the Justice Division within the palms of an alleged intercourse trafficker or assigning an anti-vaxxing conspiracy theorist to run public well being, or selecting a attainable Russian mole to direct U.S. intelligence.
