Should those companies also give up all of their corporate funding?
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Elon & Twitter
- Thread starter Buckminster
- Start date
- Status
Should those companies also give up all of their corporate funding?
You're missing the point. Most people here have spent years arguing with FUD such as 'Elon got all his money from the Govt.' or 'emerald mine'. We ALL get help from one another. Tesla benefitted from loans, which it paid back early, as well as from public education and infrastructure. It used these to channel Elon's singular genius and his almost unbelievable capacity for hard work, as well as the hard work of 100,000 employees, into creating wonderful cars (and more) to create the EV revolution, and to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. We here bought Teslas and shares and spent a decade talking up Elon and Tesla to everyone we know till their brains went numb.It was a general grouping, but for details here are 2 articles.
Ford, still hasn't fully repaid their loan:
Ford took $6B government loan in 2009 — and debt still haunts company
Ford isn't alone in the struggle, but it entered 2020 reporting a much smaller-than-expected profit than its competitors.www.freep.com
GM, as you correctly state, was bailed out and all of that funding didn't come back, the Gov wrote off 10.6B.
In the five years since GM's bankruptcy it made $22.6 billion. But taxpayers lost $10.6 billion on bailout that saved the company.
In five years since bankruptcy GM made $22.6 billion while taxpayers lost $10.6 billion on bailout that saved the company.money.cnn.com
Compared to Tesla, who took an ~$450M loan, and repaid it in fully, 9 years early, with interest:
Now he is sitting on his privately owned and very public throne and bullying, belittling and shaming anyone who crosses him, even just a little. He's acting like a mad king. He cozies up to people from the fringe alt-right and allows Nazis back on the platform. Look at the account I posted earlier. It's still on Twitter, and some images there are too horrific to share.
Twitter has always been a cesspool. It was also a useful place to get alerts and follow a wide array of interesting people. Elon seems intent on alienating much of the world. He PICKS fights. On purpose. With everyone except a group of alt right accounts and sycophants. He's lost the plot.
I don't know how anyone can see all this and say it does not reflect badly on Tesla.
He could have stopped this behavior at many points along the way. Handled the purchase in a more dignified way, instead of shaming employees publically. Handled layoffs in a more dignified and orderly way. Not tweeted what he did about Pelosi. Not tweeted about the disabled Icelandic employee. LISTENED when people begged him to stop acting this way.
But, no. He keeps going, with his '!' and 'interesting' and bullying.
It's not about politics so much, it's about chaotic and repugnant behavior.
FACTS: Tesla, SpaceX at some point has received “STATE FUNDING”
That “STATE FUNDING” was then used as an investment, which was then used to buy Twatter…..
Are Elon Stan’s denying Tesla and SpaceX NEVER received “STATE FUNDING”?
This isn’t about FULLY REPAYING OR NOT. It’s whether they RECEIVED STATE FUNDING.
Let’s not even start with CALIFORNIA STATE FUNDING
That “STATE FUNDING” was then used as an investment, which was then used to buy Twatter…..
Are Elon Stan’s denying Tesla and SpaceX NEVER received “STATE FUNDING”?
This isn’t about FULLY REPAYING OR NOT. It’s whether they RECEIVED STATE FUNDING.
Let’s not even start with CALIFORNIA STATE FUNDING
Doggydogworld
Active Member
Powerful facts. Do they contain any truth? Most "old GM" debt was converted to shares in the new GM during Chapter 11 (a very common practice). This included a big chunk of their government loans. The US Treasury was free to hold or sell their shares as they saw fit. They sold them all by 2013 or 2014 at an ~11b loss.
Some "old GM" debt was transferred to the new company. That included some government loans, which GM fully repaid more than a decade ago.
Automakers' Report Card: Who Still Owes Taxpayers Money? The Answer Might Surprise You
We remember the bailouts of GM and Chrysler. But Ford still owes us billions -- and it's about to start paying. Who else owes taxpayers money? And was it worth it?
www.forbes.com
Ford received a 5.9b DOE loan as part of the same program that funded Tesla's 465m loan. Ford fully repaid that loan in June 2022.
If you'd like to back up your "facts" with links I'd love to look into them.
Deals as bad as the Buffalo
Your own link says oil/gas are 16b. The other 4b is coal, which is used to generate electricity, some of which fuels...... oh, never mind.Which is still CHUMP CHANGE compared to the 20B in oil/gas subsidies EACH YEAR.
Which energy source is most subsidized in the US?
President Biden has committed to shifting the United States to renewable energies but the fossil fuel industry still receives billions of dollars every year.en.as.com
Most of that 16b is available to all extractive industries, e.g. copper mines, cobalt mines, lithium, etc. If Tesla subsidies don't count because they're available to other carmakers should depletion deductions and such also not count because they're available to EV suppliers? Hmmm.
Your link ignores that oil/gas generate 10x that much tax revenue. Gasoline and diesel pump taxes alone are ~100b. Then there are severance taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, royalties, etc.
There's also the issue of scale. That 16b is spread across 280 million vehicles, plus 40% of electricity generation plus a bunch of heating (including industrial process heat). What happens to the CHUMP CHANGE subsidies when EVs scale? Under the Inflation Augmentation Act taxpayers donate ~15k to each EV. At only 10m EVs/year (2030 mandate) that's $150 billion EACH YEAR. Almost 10x more than oil/gas.
It was a general grouping, but for details here are 2 articles.
Ford, still hasn't fully repaid their loan:
Ford took $6B government loan in 2009 — and debt still haunts company
Ford isn't alone in the struggle, but it entered 2020 reporting a much smaller-than-expected profit than its competitors.www.freep.com
GM, as you correctly state, was bailed out and all of that funding didn't come back, the Gov wrote off 10.6B.
In the five years since GM's bankruptcy it made $22.6 billion. But taxpayers lost $10.6 billion on bailout that saved the company.
In five years since bankruptcy GM made $22.6 billion while taxpayers lost $10.6 billion on bailout that saved the company.money.cnn.com
Compared to Tesla, who took an ~$450M loan, and repaid it in full, 9 years early, with interest:
So they RECEIVED STATE FUNDING….
Those $450 mil were turned into a profit which then bought Twatter…. No $450 mil from STATE FUNDING and Elon is probably in this forum trying to moderate “Free Speech”
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I think that's a bit of a reach given Tesla could have opted out of state funding too, but there is no good reason to do so.
We are straying further and further as to why Elon created the state funded label in the first place. It's because he didn't do basic research and had the "state affiliated" label applied to NPR, got egg on his face that it was not applicable according to Twitter's own standards, and had to apply some other similar label to try to save face, and didn't do basic research on that either (he probably assumed government funding is a large portion of NPR's funding as do probably most people given the format of their media)
On the subject of state funded, Saudi has a huge holding in Twitter itself:
Saudi Kingdom Holding Co. rolls over ownership of $1.89bn Twitter shares to Musk’s Twitter
RIYADH: Saudi Kingdom Holding Co. and the private office of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal announced the roll over of their ownership of the existing 34,948,975 shares in Twitter valued to the New Twitter, led by Elon Musk. KHC and PO are jointly the second largest investor after Elon Musk, the...
www.google.com
Norbert
TSLA will win
The idea that all subsidies should be removed, in principle, is an extreme minority political view, AFAIK (although maybe it has gained a little with MAGA and it's anti-federal-government tendencies).
Such a label is an insulting way to express a personal political opinion. There would be much better reasons to put negative labels on accounts, but fortunaly that's not a common practise, it would be a kind of ugly thing. NPR's (or BBC's) situation is not a reason to start extending that practice beyond non-democratic states who control media in a very direct way unless it would be about making Russia and China feel less lonely with such a moniker.
And pointing out the (obvious) hypocracy here is a way to highlight the arbitrary nature of the intent.
Has he figured out that HE IS THE MEDIA?
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Mostly because of the uncritical brown nosing of "Elon can do no wrong" sycophants.
I've actually learned alot on this thread, not much of it was especially useful, but, in no particular order:
1. Twitter is not speech, nor is it a "public square" - the public square is the internet, Twitter is a microblogging platform which allows people to either submit their own speech or amplify speech by others. That is all it is.
2. Given today's situation, I have seen not one example of an item of speech that, whatever twitters' algorithms are, wasn't out there in the public square anyway. The entire Hunter Biden laptop argument is not over the story, which was ultimately carried everywhere, but about Twitter's, for lack of a better word, failure to promote the story for something like 48 hours. Elon buying twitter may well have been the result of a bad joke which was ruled offensive, but not so offensive that the Babylon Bee didn't have the same joke on its website or on whatever else.
3. This shows how totally into twitter Elon is to even consider buying it, I mean, otherwise its hyper sensitive PR types obsessing on clicks, otherwise, who would care?
4. Aha, but now I know who cares. People who like to troll others, especially right wingers who like to troll liberals. That's because Twitter is the ultimate trolling platform, bar none. For this, one has to sidestep into the whole religion of "mainstream media lies." Why is that a religion?
Well, at some point between the 1960s and now, really, many points, conservatives discovered there was action to be had in simply taking the position that whatever any non-conservative outlet said was wrong. This was brilliant, because structurally it is much easier to label someone a "liar" then it is to point out separate lies and explain why such lie may actually be material to any argument that is supposed to be happening.
5. So you can see it in the structure of the posts here. The latest discussion is (1) Elon labels NPR state sponsored media, not really sure why, but the implication is clear, so that (a) whatever NPR says about anything is seen as biased, and (b) therefore you don't need to examine story by story. (2) when it turns out that very little of NPRs budget is from the "current" (read Democratic) state, and over the decades it gets the same funding whether its the Bush white house, the Obama white house, or the Trump white house, some back tracking has to occur, not the least of which is that the initial argument is flawed, just because an organization is funded in part by anyone, let alone Congress, does not automatically prove anything, not only does it not prove anything, it really doesn't even suggest anything, without more facts. It turns out "the government" whether Dem or Rep, has no influence on NPR, if anyone cared to look, the corporation for public broadcasting board is majority Republican. But that's too easy. And finally,
6. Note the structure: "By the way, Tesla itself has more gov funding than NPR." Answer: "GM has more government funding than Tesla." What? That's not an answer, that's just being contrary for no reason. The only response, the only logical response, to acknowledge it, which shouldn't be too hard, would be, I many not like NPR, but it I guess it has nothing to do with its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But the argument is still going.
7. We now know that Twitter is just a hobby for Elon, certainly his posting is a total hobby. He is now forced to actually run the business. You may not like his general drift on Twitter (obviously I don't) but you can't argue his posts are part of any plan for anything. They are not only not "well thought out" they are not even "thought out" its a pastime, a way of doing whatever he does in a spare minute. That's it.
8. This brings me back to how I felt months ago. I cannot believe Elon Musk has enough time to be a twitter aholic. But I must concede its true, he's just addicted to it, and he had $44 Billion to spend on his favorite hobby.
1. Twitter is not speech, nor is it a "public square" - the public square is the internet, Twitter is a microblogging platform which allows people to either submit their own speech or amplify speech by others. That is all it is.
2. Given today's situation, I have seen not one example of an item of speech that, whatever twitters' algorithms are, wasn't out there in the public square anyway. The entire Hunter Biden laptop argument is not over the story, which was ultimately carried everywhere, but about Twitter's, for lack of a better word, failure to promote the story for something like 48 hours. Elon buying twitter may well have been the result of a bad joke which was ruled offensive, but not so offensive that the Babylon Bee didn't have the same joke on its website or on whatever else.
3. This shows how totally into twitter Elon is to even consider buying it, I mean, otherwise its hyper sensitive PR types obsessing on clicks, otherwise, who would care?
4. Aha, but now I know who cares. People who like to troll others, especially right wingers who like to troll liberals. That's because Twitter is the ultimate trolling platform, bar none. For this, one has to sidestep into the whole religion of "mainstream media lies." Why is that a religion?
Well, at some point between the 1960s and now, really, many points, conservatives discovered there was action to be had in simply taking the position that whatever any non-conservative outlet said was wrong. This was brilliant, because structurally it is much easier to label someone a "liar" then it is to point out separate lies and explain why such lie may actually be material to any argument that is supposed to be happening.
5. So you can see it in the structure of the posts here. The latest discussion is (1) Elon labels NPR state sponsored media, not really sure why, but the implication is clear, so that (a) whatever NPR says about anything is seen as biased, and (b) therefore you don't need to examine story by story. (2) when it turns out that very little of NPRs budget is from the "current" (read Democratic) state, and over the decades it gets the same funding whether its the Bush white house, the Obama white house, or the Trump white house, some back tracking has to occur, not the least of which is that the initial argument is flawed, just because an organization is funded in part by anyone, let alone Congress, does not automatically prove anything, not only does it not prove anything, it really doesn't even suggest anything, without more facts. It turns out "the government" whether Dem or Rep, has no influence on NPR, if anyone cared to look, the corporation for public broadcasting board is majority Republican. But that's too easy. And finally,
6. Note the structure: "By the way, Tesla itself has more gov funding than NPR." Answer: "GM has more government funding than Tesla." What? That's not an answer, that's just being contrary for no reason. The only response, the only logical response, to acknowledge it, which shouldn't be too hard, would be, I many not like NPR, but it I guess it has nothing to do with its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But the argument is still going.
7. We now know that Twitter is just a hobby for Elon, certainly his posting is a total hobby. He is now forced to actually run the business. You may not like his general drift on Twitter (obviously I don't) but you can't argue his posts are part of any plan for anything. They are not only not "well thought out" they are not even "thought out" its a pastime, a way of doing whatever he does in a spare minute. That's it.
8. This brings me back to how I felt months ago. I cannot believe Elon Musk has enough time to be a twitter aholic. But I must concede its true, he's just addicted to it, and he had $44 Billion to spend on his favorite hobby.
Norbert
TSLA will win
And said by the guy who recently introduced the turd emoji to this thread.
I think that's a bit of a reach given Tesla could have opted out of state funding too, but there is no good reason to do so.
We are straying further and further as to why Elon created the state funded label in the first place. It's because he didn't do basic research and had the "state affiliated" label applied to NPR, got egg on his face that it was not applicable according to Twitter's own standards, and had to apply some other similar label to try to save face, and didn't do basic research on that either (he probably assumed government funding is a large portion of NPR's funding as do probably most people given the format of their media)
On the subject of state funded, Saudi has a huge holding in Twitter itself:
Saudi Kingdom Holding Co. rolls over ownership of $1.89bn Twitter shares to Musk’s Twitter
RIYADH: Saudi Kingdom Holding Co. and the private office of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal announced the roll over of their ownership of the existing 34,948,975 shares in Twitter valued to the New Twitter, led by Elon Musk. KHC and PO are jointly the second largest investor after Elon Musk, the...
Plus for something like a label like that you'd think there would be a set of qualifications for it. I didn't see anywhere where twitter told us what those qualifications for that label came from.
It seems to have come from Musk himself.
That he gets to decide and if you don't like it then you pack your bags.
One of the reasons I no longer own a Tesla is I felt like decisions being made weren't in the best interest of owners, and they made changes that irked quite a few owners like myself.
Elon just got called out by the SF DA for blabbing before the facts were out. He'd do himself a favor by simply STFU except for statements that relate directly to his job. The perpetrator is a tech worker/entrepreneur who knew Bob Lee.
Really? I haven't found a statistic about "violent crime" in general, but this one about the homicide rates in 2022 among the 75 largest cities in the US:
Chicago, New Orleans were the nation’s murder capitals in 2022 – A Wirepoints survey of America’s 75 largest cities | Wirepoints
Chicago and New Orleans were the nation’s murder capitals in 2022. They're just two of the local governments in America’s homicide hot-spots that continue to falter in their role as protectors of public safety more than two years removed from George Floyd’s murder and the covid pandemic. Chicago...wirepoints.org
San Francisco is, among the 75 largest cities, the 18th most safe (6.9 per 100k), right after Austin TX (6.8 per 100k).
One decimal difference.
What's your guess for the city with the highest homicide rate? Chicago?
No, New Orleans (74.3 per 100k).
Chicago is the 13th highest (27.7 per 100k).
So San Francisco and Austin are less than 1/10 of New Orleans, and a bit less than 1/4 of Chicago.
DA Calls Out Elon Musk Over San Francisco Crime Comments Following Killing of Bob Lee
And you can hardly find a better example of why a microblogging platform which rewards posts based on who knows what algorithm, totally un-edited, and treats completely unfounded opinions on a more or less equal basis is not a very good source for news. Take this.
We know Bob Lee was stabbed, we know it from traditional media. I have not surveyed all the media, but if its anything like the reporting on most murders, unless there is a suspect under arrest, traditional media does not speculate.
Not so with this guy "Jake Shields," who is not a reporter, not a writer, but as far as I can see so far a rather buff looking former MMA guy who probably trains people perhaps celebrities or rich guys, like perhaps Bob Lee.
Thanks in some part to Sheilds, the story gained traction, from an SF Gate article Man who fueled politicization of Bob Lee's death isn't backing down:
The next day, the story was everywhere. Shields’ Twitter thread was cited in write-ups by the New York Post and others, and also garnered a response from Twitter owner Elon Musk, one of many prominent individuals to engage with the thread.
At 8:24 a.m. Wednesday — 12 hours after Shields’ initial viral tweet — SFGATE sent a Twitter direct message to Shields asking for “more info on the details [he] shared that Bob was walking in the city and likely mugged when he was stabbed.” Eleven minutes later, Shields replied, “Honestly I don’t have many details. I just assumed mugging because Bob isn’t a guy with enemies so it had to be random.”
Of course he doesn't have "many details" he doesn't have ANY details. He's got a twitter account, and a nice 'tude, I will give him that -- from the same article:
Shields has spent most of his Thursday on Twitter responding to backlash over him writing, “We need to normalize fat shaming not body positivity.” One of these tweets reads, “I’ve realized I was wrong and would like to sincerely apologize to the millions of fat people I’ve offended[.] As a peace offering ill buy you a Big Mac, Fries, and a large milkshake.”
Oh my god, the comedic brilliance. I need sun glasses.
Anyway, I guess I am not cut out for twitter as since when uninformed people comment on uninformed other people I see no benefit to it. I'd rather waste time here, where at least most posts contain some semblance of research or at least actual experience.
Maybe not in this thread but generally.
No, I think someone hit the nail on the head when they said Twatter is nothing but a troll cesspool, they should change the name to Troller
Elon is living proof of how much society overrates executive officers. He's the CEO of, what, 5 companies? But he's choosing to waste hours and hours on Twitter - both tweeting and now running the company into the ground.
Just remember that the next time your boss demands 40 hours a week from you lol
Norbert
TSLA will win
In the original tweet (I think the one quoted by Elon) he wrote "and appeared to have been targeted in a random mugging/attack",
which made it sound more like some preliminary but professional assessment. Now he makes it sound like it was just his own personal unfounded speculation. However neither seems to mean as much.
At this point, maybe only few care anymore what actually happened (in the stabbing, that is).
Last edited:
- Status
