The vile woman who is responsible for AB5 may have just insulted Elon into pulling up stakes in California, at least for Tesla. The Democrats in the state seem determined to destroy the middle class, and in as nasty a way as possible.
[Monday-afternoon update]
[Tuesday-morning update]
[Bumped]
[Update a couple minutes later]
“Point of privelege! Point of privilege!
California doesn’t need boorish, selfish people like Elon Musk, or the many narcissistic contractors who think only of themselves, instead of thinking of the plight of the working class, as a group. [ed. one that needs to be led like sheep by HR departments full of enlightened white feminists.]
Some might claim the state will just split into creatives and underappreciated agricultural laborers [ed. illegal Guatemalan stoop laborers], and point to this as somehow being unfair exploitation. Well, as should be obvious, the big problem with the Eloi and Morlocks story was the meat-based diet…”
Leading the Leftist lemmings walking over the priviledge?
One way of looking at this is that the GOP “stupid party” is just as much at fault. The Democrat’s constituencies are unions, immigrants – legal and illegal, public employees and the academy. The GOP did nothing about illegal immigration in California, GOP governor Pete Wilson approved government unions – which now function as the Democrat version of the Sturmabteilung. The GOP has done nothing about the media – the first 2 years of the Trump administration they could have given Hollywood and the 5 giant media companies an ultimatum – go politically neutral in your offerings or have copyright reformed down to 10 years. That last was a recommendation by Kurt Schlichter and I’m all for it.
If the Copyright goes down to ten years (10 years! The Horror!) Disney may stop making Star Wars™ movies!
…on second thought.
” the first 2 years of the Trump administration they could have given Hollywood and the 5 giant media companies an ultimatum – go politically neutral in your offerings or have copyright reformed down to 10 years.”
As much as I like Trump and despise Hollywood, I would be against this. Hollywood should be free to produce whatever they want. But they should suffer the financial repercussions and they should be reported on fairly but deeply.
Do you really think the West would be a worse place if communists had been banned from the media in the 50s?
Ed – you seem to be replying to me. That’s not what I said. Did you mean to reply to Fenster?
If copyright went down to ten years, then anyone could make a Star Wars™movie. Just not use the Star Wars™ trademark, or anything from the last three horror-shows. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the last movie was so bad even the Rule 34 types won’t touch it.)
Besides, we are only a few years away from fan-vid being made of fan-fic, especially if they can finally get the voice synthesis right. Voice actors everywhere hit hardest…
Good for Elon. I don’t know how he (or his workforce) has put up with California this long. Though I’m a fine one to say that, having put up with it myself for 28 years…
Last-straw legislator gets the Michael Moore Award for offending the right person for far-off-the-edge-of-the-flat-Earth-vegan-crunchy-woke reasons.
Remember all of the bouncing Blogospheric links to Mr. Moore’s latest documentary knocking Alternative Energy and Renewable Power? He didn’t answer a rightwing altar call, after all. He is saying that windmills and solar panels are futile because there are too many people in the world, stripping the Earth of its resources, and Alternative Energy won’t help in the least.
For what it is worth, there is a rather acerbic textbook-published atmospheric scientist (atmospheric, not Climate, it means something different) Murry Salby who got Photoshopped out of the group photo at the last major scientific conference for claiming that all but maybe 5% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 comes from natural sources — my carbon model taking into account a non-linear ocean CO2 sink comes up with humans responsible for 50% but that is a longer discussion. In one of his video lectures, go too goes all population control on us, so this isn’t just a leftwing perspective.
But for all of the Elon Musk worship (Space-X, by the way, is run by Gwynne Shotwell who appears to have much more authority than any of the cowed execs over at Tesla), he is arguably obnoxious, and the Author of AB5 is even more obnoxious. So there!
Moore has clearly gone full-blown Malthusian.
But even in our increasingly anti-natalist society, there’s still a pretty limited market for that.
Probably why it’s free on YouTube.
I’m surprised, by the end that it didn’t start accusing parents of being mass murderers. That’s the concluding logic of it all AFAICT.
The left has long been anti-human. They’ve just stopped trying to hide it.
At the risk of riffing on your book, Rand, this pandemic has revealed some fascinating and sharp divides on risk levels that Americans are willing to accept.
A disproportionate cohort visible on social media is at something like moral panic about risk: they’re willing to accept very, very little. Of course it also has to be observed that these are people who disproportionately occupy mindworker jobs where they don’t need to accept much risk, either. They can code or teach or write or design or review docs from home and order groceries and Stuff They Need for home delivery. It’s a low cost exercise for many of these people. For now.
Whereas a guy like Elon could be at risk for becoming an unexpected folk hero (especially should Alameda authorities decide to throw him in jail) for another whole swath of people willing to accept greater risk, not least because their family livelihoods depend on it. But for these people it’s also deeper, more visceral. Many of these people are religious, but many are not. There’s more than one great book waiting to be written on what we’re seeing now.
To add to your point, if you’re still making your regular salary while staying at home, odds are you’re unwilling to do anything else. Some people are actually making more than they did while working, so of course they want the gravy train to continue as long as possible. The Democrats are saying they want to give $2000 a month “to everyone”. If everyone actually means everyone, how do they plan on coming up with almost $700 billion a month to pay for it? Of course, they can’t, so all they’ll do is keep borrowing ever more money with no possibility of ever repaying it.
Those who have lost their jobs or businesses and are struggling to get by are suffering, while the others have the attitude of “I upped my income. Up yours.”
“how do they plan on coming up with almost $700 billion a month to pay for it?”
There is the Wiemar and Zimbabwe plan. A plan that would make bitcoin and etherium look stable.
Many of these people have never shown an ability or even a desire to run their own lives, so they are more than willing to outsource that to someone else, and to blame everyone else when things don’t turn out perfectly.
It’s also the Comfy Class that has no problem with Soviet style queues to enter stores, or the mandating of cargo-cult masks, or having the gov’t deciding what is or is not “essential.” They’ll accept group punishment and forcing others to believe the lies as long as everyone is equally debased. These Stasi wannabes aren’t going to let this panic and crisis they created go to waste.
Holy shit, I’m glad I left California! That state holds a fatal attraction to me as an engineer: It seems to be where most of the interesting science and technology work is getting done. Was getting done … (And perhaps outside of a few key companies, the opportunity there has already passed.)
My coworkers are under house arrest. We’re all working from home. Count me as someone who has sailed through this lockdown without any personal sacrifice, and yet still thinks this lockdown killing the country, mendacious, stupid, and unconstitutional.
I don’t want to live and work in a nation where all the small businesses have been crushed and you are dependent for your livelihoods on state-favored megacorporations. I want to own my own business one of these days, and this crap would have ended it.
“It seems to be where most of the interesting science and technology work is getting done.”
Which is why Elon Musk set up all of his companies out there. It was a very sensible move, in this respect.
But it looks like that may no longer be enough to keep him there.
If I was a Flyover Country governor with a working majority in the statehouse thinking hard about reforming my state’s dysfunctional higher ed system, I’d be seeing an opportunity here to move a lot of funding from certain places and shift it to my engineering schools.
Oh, and BTW, Musk *isn’t* breaking the law. Most idiots in this country don’t know what the law is.
He’s breaking a non-statutory order by the county health commissioner, backed up by no legislative act. In other states, governors issuing executive orders to private citizens have already overstepped their bounds. An executive order is an order by an executive to an agent of the executive branch, to organize and instruct them in *how* to carry out the law or mission. It isn’t a law, and it has no force of law.
Gonzalez. Sounds like a Marxist import. This is the big problem you have. Out of control immigration pushed by the big internationals for 20 years. California was an independent Republican stronghold, but after the demographic betrayal, never again. Fleeing to Texas, or blasting off into space, will only get you cornered in the end. You need to drive the problem away or you will be flanked.
Fleeing to Texas, or blasting off into space, will only get you cornered in the end.
By what? Your dog whistle isn’t working for me. Spell out what you’re really thinking.
By refusing to fight back against progressive Marxism where you currently live, you do nothing to solve the problem. Leaving let’s the progressive marxists win and likely spreads the seeds to your new home because people often can’t confront how their own politics helps the Marxists take hold.
Getting to Mars is more important than saving California. The latter is a fool’s errand.
I don’t pay too much attention to what either Musk or Trump say, far less aggravating to just wait to see what they do.
What I can’t see is why anyone in their right mind would start anything in California or why anyone that wasn’t making crazy money would stay. I’m not about to take a job where my choice was between living in a camper or a multi-hour commute. Outside the 1%, what made California attractive seems to have disappeared a long time ago.
That said, it’s really hard to keep up production while you’re moving your only production facility. Separating your sole production facility from your management by hundreds or thousands of miles doesn’t make much sense.
It would seem to make a lot of sense to move Falcon production closer the launch site. I’m not up on just what is produced in California and what elsewhere.
When you play the Brinksmanship game – as Musk is doing – you better be willing to follow through. Or your future threats will never be taken seriously.
Is is really prepared to move the operation out of California, should the Ca. politicos continue to fight him?
Well, the state blinked and said he could reopen, so I guess he won. (They are supposedly working to come up with a list of additional “safety measures”.)
It wasn’t the state that was keeping the plant closed; it was Alameda County.
Yes, I meant county, my bad.