Fascist Musk, Fascist Tesla: The electric car company would have been unprofitable for seven consecutive years through 2020 without selling its phony government carbon credits to other dirty automakers

 

 Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding

... Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers. ... He has been a big beneficiary of national industrial policy, especially Democrat industrial policy, through government funding. ...

About a third of Tesla’s $35 billion in profits since 2014 has come from selling federal and state regulatory credits to other automakers. The credits are given to automakers that meet certain standards, including selling a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles. Tesla is the largest seller of these credits to automakers that don’t meet the standards and want to avoid paying a fine.

These credits played a crucial role in the company’s first profitable quarter in 2013 and its first full year of profitability in 2020, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits, according to an analysis of SEC filings.

With the credits, the company instead reported a $862 million profit.

While Musk has advocated for ending the EV tax credit for consumers, he has said little about these regulatory credits. ...

Nearly a tenth of government money that has benefited Musk’s companies comes from agencies in eight states, including California. ...

In 2016, SpaceX’s success in securing federal contracts prompted rival Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin (and owner of The Washington Post), to say in a company meeting: “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” The Post reported. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”

More.

Musk's many government subsidized businesses are just the currently most prominent examples of American fascism. For bigger ones simply look into the defense industry, the energy industry, or healthcare, or Amazon's early no-sales-tax arrangement which allowed it to become the retail behemoth that it is. President Eisenhower warned us about this long ago, but we're so used to it now that we just take it all for granted.

Real capitalism is swallowed up by the combine between the taxation authority holding a gun to your head, taking your money, and giving it to the corporations.

That's the racket. That's the American way.

The Trump administration voted against condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine at the UN yesterday, an unthinkable betrayal of the American record at the UN and of American values

This odious lot must be stopped.

 

GOP trainwreck Nancy Mace accuses ex-fiance in US House floor speech, adultery with whom almost made her late for a prayer breakfast in 2023, of recording sex acts with her and others without their consent

 

 Rep. Nancy Mace accuses ex-fiancé and associates of assaulting her and raping others in House speech

... Saying she was going “scorched earth,” Mace detailed how, in November 2023, she says she “accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable. ..."

The prayer breakfast incident occurred in July 2023:

Nancy Mace tells prayer breakfast she told fiancé ‘we don’t got time for that this morning’ 

 

Maybe she'll change it to an "S" now?

 

Scandalous: Republicans subscribe to Politico Pro just like everyone else lol

... records from USAspending.gov show Politico payments totaling only $44,000 from USAID during fiscal years 2023 and 2024. ...

 

Last year, Republicans and committee offices paid for Politico’s products including $9,060 from the Office of the Speaker of the House, $84,000 from the House Committee on Agriculture, and $58,000 from the House Committee on Energy, according to government records.

In total, 38 Republicans in the House spent over $300,000 on Politico subscriptions in the first nine months of 2024, and committees led by Republicans expensed almost $500,000 of Politico subscriptions in the same time period, a Washington Post analysis shows.

 

The day before the mini-scandal erupted, the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director signed a $35,000 contract for a Politico Pro Premium subscription for 15 users, according to government records. ...

 

Throughout the day Wednesday, Musk and other Republicans claimed that USAID alone had spent millions on Politico over the past 12 months.

 

But that characterization is false, according to a senior executive at Politico who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private internal data. The entire federal government spends more than $16 million on Politico subscriptions, the executive said. Those payments go to Politico Pro and other professional offerings from the Axel-Springer-owned publisher, which offers some subscriptions and licensing deals that can reach five figures. ...

 

More.

Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has given Elon Musk control of the payment systems which control everyone's Social Security and Medicare benefits

 

 Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.  

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said. 

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues. 

Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment. 

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

More.

These guys are up against the debt ceiling and are obviously looking for other ways than the customary "extraordinary measures" to cut spending under the circumstances of a new administration trying to pass new tax and spending legislation. That's why Trump has offered buyouts to government workers so they quit, among other novel spending gambits like freezing program spending for 90-days.

The Treasury stopped paying into certain accounts from January 17th, before Trump and Musk took over, as part of the extraordinary measures undertaken by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to keep from hitting it.

She's been keeping the national debt at $36 trillion to $36.2 trillion ever since Thanksgiving.

It's all very troubling, as elected officials like to say.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them. 

FBI failed to investigate Pete Hegseth, GOP Senators afraid of being primaried just fine with it

 A gross dereliction of duty on the part of the Republican-controlled Senate and the Trump-directed FBI. That is a harsh but unavoidable assessment of the confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth to serve as Donald Trump’s defense secretary. ...

Only [Senators] Wicker and Reed were permitted to review an FBI report that Reed described as “insufficient.” The FBI failed to question Hegseth’s second wife, despite her expressed interest in being interviewed. It didn’t speak to the woman who accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her — and was paid by him in exchange for executing a nondisclosure agreement. It didn’t obtain the forensic audit of a veteran’s organization Hegseth ran that found “evidence of gross financial mismanagement.”

Mayer reported that “the F.B.I.’s background investigation also failed to interview Fox News personnel who had described Hegseth to NBC News as smelling of alcohol on the job as recently as last fall. Instead, sources say that the Bureau settled for an interview with a public-relations official at Fox.”

The FBI’s role here is troubling, because the bureau is supposed to serve as the Senate’s chief source of reported and reliable information about the individuals whose nominations it is considering. ...

The bureau has argued that the scope of its inquiries is limited by the directions it is given, in this case by the Trump transition team. But the Trump team’s goal is to win confirmation, not to get to the truth of the matter — which makes a Trump-directed FBI investigation worse than meaningless; it makes it effectively a coverup.

More.

Maybe the two best things about Marco Rubio are his condemnations of China for persecuting the Uyghur Muslims and of Tesla for opening a store where they live

 You go, Little Marco.

WaPo story reproduced here.

You say Uyghur and I say Uighur . . ..

Well, (((Laura Loomer))) is not wrong

 

 A MAGA ‘Civil War’ on X between Musk and the far right over H-1B visas

The online rift over the H-1B skilled-worker visa program signifies a potential wedge between Trump’s core base and his new Silicon Valley supporters.

Far-right activists clashed online with billionaire Elon Musk and other supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over the need for a skilled-worker immigration program that has long been a lifeblood for Silicon Valley — signifying a potential rift between Trump’s core nationalist base and technology executives who have come to support him.

The fight that spilled into public view over the holiday week could preview a wedge within Trump’s coalition over how to execute immigration policy, an issue that animated Trump’s White House campaign.

The controversy spread across X after far-right activist Laura Loomer on Monday criticized Trump’s choice to name Sriram Krishnan, a technology entrepreneur and investor who was born in India, as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. She pointed to Krishnan’s previous support for removing some caps on H-1B visas, a program allowing foreigners with technical skills to work in the United States. The policy is “in direct opposition” to Trump’s agenda, Loomer wrote.

The critique ran headlong into tension with some of Trump’s closest advisers, notably Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk; David Sacks who will be the president-elect’s AI and crypto czar; and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-lead a commission to cut government spending. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent,” Ramaswamy said. “And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a--es handed to us by China.”

The online fight sparked a slew of racist posts from Loomer falsely describing Indians as “third world invaders" with low IQs, while saying it is fueling a “civil war” between Trump’s far-right base and the “tech bros” that have come to support his upcoming administration. ...

 

 

 

Iraq combat vets wondered why National Guard member Pete Hegseth showed up in Iraq in 2005 leading a platoon

 “I showed up in the 101st Airborne Division, in one of the most storied units in our nation’s history, with a bunch of combat vets who’d already done a tour in Iraq and they looked at me like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’” Hegseth said in a 2021 interview on “The Will Cain Show” podcast.

One former officer who served with Hegseth said he was surprised to see a National Guard member taking on such a role. He surmised that Hegseth probably wanted to run for office someday and thought a combat tour could help, the former officer said. ...

The former Army officer who served with Hegseth in Iraq said he believes he has latched on to “populist scenarios” in a quest for personal gain. When news of Hegseth’s potential nomination emerged, old acquaintances from those days got back in touch with one another, the former officer said.

One text he received especially stood out. All it said: “WTF?”

More.

WaPo defends rule of law in Pennsylvania, says Democrat defiance of judicial election rulings is corrosive to democracy

 ... elected Democratic officials in Philadelphia and three other counties — Bucks, Centre and Montgomery — voted this week to defy these and other court decisions at the request of lawyers for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey ...

Mr. Casey has almost certainly lost this race. The Associated Press called it for Mr. McCormick on Nov. 7. Mr. Casey’s deficit still appears insurmountable. The three-term incumbent sees it differently and has every right to plead his case in court. State law also entitles Mr. Casey to a statewide recount because Mr. McCormick’s margin of victory is smaller than half a percentage point, though not by much. A recount is unlikely to change the outcome.

More.

 

Meanwhile for the annals of dead American conservatism, meathead Mark Levin laughably eulogizes Ted Olson as the "late, great"

 

 Mostly because of Olson's role in Bush v Gore in 2000.

Levin never mentions that Olson himself, a thorough-going amoral libertarian who worshiped freedom above all other things, thought his greatest legacy was overturning California's same-sex marriage ban, glowingly covered by WaPo:

Mr. Olson said he considered his greatest legal legacy to be his role in invalidating California’s Proposition 8, a measure banning same-sex marriage that had passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote after the state’s Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.

He had come to the case in a most unlikely way, through Rob Reiner, the film director and liberal activist who was among those intent on reversing the recently approved proposition.

Reiner had a decidedly low opinion of Mr. Olson, stemming from what he regarded as Bush’s ill-gotten 2000 election win. But Mr. Olson told Reiner that he found Prop 8 “wrong, morally and legally,” and Reiner was convinced that the lawyer could appeal to conservatives.

“It is a conservative value to respect the relationship that people seek to have with one another, a stable, committed relationship that provides a backbone for our community, for our economy,” Mr. Olson later told the Los Angeles Times. “I think conservatives should value that.”

Mr. Olson endured taunts from former supporters on the hard right, some of whom unleashed homophobic vitriol. Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh denounced him on the radio. Others declined invitations to dine at his home near the Potomac River.

Mr. Olson also said he wasn’t trusted by gay rights advocates who feared that Americans were not ready for same-sex marriage and that challenging the ban in court might backfire and set back the cause for years. Some marriage-equality supporters said they feared that Mr. Olson took the case intending to throw it, a notion he dismissed. “I don’t take cases to lose,” he declared.

In part to allay those suspicions, Mr. Olson asked David Boies — an impeccably credentialed trial lawyer and a registered Democrat who had argued Gore’s case in 2000 — to take the marriage case with him. To the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Olson explained that the case was not a partisan matter but rather one about “human rights and human decency and constitutional law.”

Mr. Olson delivered the opening statement on Jan. 11, 2010, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

“In California,” he said, “convicted murderers and child molesters enjoyed the freedom to marry,” he said. “What Prop 8 does is label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal and disfavored. It says to gays and lesbians, ‘Your relationship is not the same.’ … It stigmatizes them. It classifies them as outcasts. It causes needless and unrelenting pain and isolation and humiliation.”

Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who heard the case without a jury, ultimately found Prop 8 violated the guarantee of equal protection under the law. Although the decision had an immediate effect only in California, it was a major rallying point nationally for gay rights proponents.

In 2013, the Supreme Court avoided ruling on the merits of same-sex marriage, although it affirmed Walker’s decision, finding that opponents of same-sex marriage lacked standing to defend Prop 8 in court.

Still, the win was credited with paving the way for the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which extended marriage equality nationally. 

      

In the 2020 United States census, same-sex married couples accounted for 0.5% of all U.S. households and unmarried same-sex couples accounted for 0.4% of all U.S. households.

Adolf Hitler was spotted this morning taking The Washington Post very seriously indeed lol

 

The Washington Post has decided not to endorse anyone for president even though we literally have Adolf Hitler running against Kamala Harris lol

 

GlObAl WaRmInG iS cAuSiNg ThE hUrRiCaNeS

 The current global climate is a coldhouse climate.

 

The Washington Post, September 19, 2024

Are you ready for 67% all-electric vehicles by 2032, or 56% all-electrics and 13% plug-in hybrids, because that is what you will get if Kamala Harris wins and simply lets the EPA final rule from March play out

 Automakers could still comply with the final rule by making EVs account for 67 percent of new car sales in 2032, according to the EPA. But they could also meet the requirements by making all-electric vehicles account for 56 percent and making plug-in hybrids represent 13 percent, the agency said.

Story.

And we're not talking about hybrids which you don't have to plug in.

Kamala Harris is bent on abolishing combustion engine vehicles entirely, as she was in 2019.

 

 

ROFLMAO WaPo's "most rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past [Phanerozoic] temperatures ever produced" surprises Michael Mann, says human-caused warming will not make the planet uninhabitable

The article has this response from Michael Mann:

 The timeline, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the most rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past temperatures ever produced, the authors say. ...

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who is known for his analyses of past global temperatures, said he was also surprised by the suggestion that the planet got so warm. The finding supports many scientists’ concern that feedback loops in the Earth system could lead to much higher temperatures than most climate models predict, he wrote in an email. But it’s also possible that the data assimilation assumes too much warming and is missing factors that might forestall a runaway greenhouse effect. “While I applaud the authors for this ambitious and thoughtful study, I am skeptical about the specific, quantitative conclusions,” Mann said. ...

Even under the worst-case scenarios, human-caused warming will not push the Earth beyond the bounds of habitability.

 

The article, which places us today in some of the still coolest climate conditions in 500 million years, never connects the dots.

It maintains that a dramatic warming event 250 million years ago caused the largest mass extinction ever, spewing carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, 25 million years BEFORE the first mammals appeared, who breathe the OXYGEN emitted by carbon dioxide consuming PLANTS, who then in their turn THRIVED for 125 million years under EVEN WARMER conditions than that extinction event produced.

Evolution was evidently turbocharged by this warming and its carbon dioxide, but then suddenly the first humans supposedly started to evolve 6.5 million years ago at the end of 50 million years of cooling conditions, WHEN THE TEMPERATURE WAS 62.6 F*, and continued to evolve into modern humans 300,000 years ago just as temperature KEPT FALLING to the coldest point in the record (51.8 F).

How did that happen?

The study authors are worried about what warmer conditions in the future will mean for humans, but seem oddly uninterested in how humans supposedly evolved in relatively much cooler conditions.

Maybe we don't really understand the evolution of mammals. Maybe humans are much older than the record indicates, and much more resilient.

 

At its hottest, the study suggests, the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) — far higher than the historic 58.96 F (14.98 C) the planet hit last year. ...

At the timeline’s start, some 485 million years ago, Earth was in what is known as a hothouse climate, with no polar ice caps and average temperatures above 86 F (30 C). ...

For most of the Phanerozoic, the research suggests, average temperatures have exceeded 71.6 F (22 C), with little or no ice at the poles. ...

But humans evolved during the coldest epoch of the Phanerozoic, when global average temperatures were as low as 51.8 F (11 C).

Without rapid action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 F (17 C) by the end of the century — a level not seen in the timeline since the * Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago.

 

 

Biden-Harris administration forges ahead with electric vehicle mandate through EPA final rule, Harris-Walz campaign disavows it to get elected

 

The sometimes in the subhead means there are other times, like when he's doing the nanny and getting her pregnant, then he's just the rogue sex symbol

How does Rampell write this stuff without heavy medication of some kind?

 

Apparently The Washington Post is trying to make itself look reasonable with actual journalism because it lost $77 million last year?

 I mean, they predicted a $100 million loss, so it wasn't THAT bad, right?

Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for WaPo in 2013.

But I don't think $77 million really matters to Jeff Bezos.

Sum ting else wong.

 

Another salvo at Kamala Harris: WaPo editorial board calls her anti-big business proposals populist gimmicks, says her first-time home buyer $25,000 down-payment plan will increase housing prices

 

 The whole thing makes sense, which is surprising coming as it does from The Washington Post, which ends this way:

 [Even] her [good] ideas would cost money, yet she insisted in her speech that she would hold to President Joe Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on any household earning $400,000 or less annually. That excludes 80 percent of taxable income, and does not take into account the recent surge in families earning over $400,000. The Harris campaign says it plans to raise revenue to cover these costs but did not provide specific offsets in its economic plan rollout. Without them, Ms. Harris’s full plan would add $1.7 trillion to federal deficits over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.

To be sure, every campaign makes expensive promises that will never come to pass, especially with a divided Congress. Remember Mr. Biden’s pledge to make community college free? Even adjusted for the pandering standards of campaign economics, however, Ms. Harris’s speech Friday ranks as a disappointment.

Wow.

What's that old saying, When you're a liberal and you've lost The Washington Post, you've already lost?

Well ......................................................................................... is the Democrat Party still liberal though?