Gigapress
Trying to be less wrong
Lip service and press events barely mean anything, insulting though they may be.
If the US Govt and current executive branch actually hated Tesla, then the BBB bill would have a cap on the number of credits that can be applied to vehicles from each manufacturer, like the last EV tax credit that was capped at 200k. It is obvious to everyone that Tesla will be responsible for the majority of EV volume in America for the foreseeable future, if not forever. In its current form even the biased tax credit proposal would funnel the majority of the money to Tesla -- probably more than everyone else combined.
Furthermore, the UAW donated a grand total of $9 million to political campaigns, lobbying and PACs in 2020. This is a tiny drop in the bucket in American politics. The winner of the 2020 presidential election alone had raised $1 billion in direct campaign contributions; I think it's safe to say he could lose UAW's donations without blinking.
What no US politician can afford, especially a 1st-term President seeking reelection, is losing Michigan, Ohio and Georgia, which are three populous swing States with a heavy concentration of automotive manufacturing jobs. Moreover, no Democratic politician can afford to give the image of not being supportive of unions even when they know that proposed Union benefits are unlikely to actually pass Congress.
Ultimately, this circus is rooted in this country's long history of slavery and the first-mover disadvantages of being the world's earliest modern democracy. (France formed a similar democracy just a few years later, but they were different in the sense of having a long national identity, rather than being a loose collection of former English colonies trying to figure out what they wanted to be when they grew up.) In the Constitutional Convention held in the 1787 there was lengthy debate about how to elect the President. They also struggled to agree over how many slaves to count in population determinations, because the Southern States with slaves did not want them to be allowed to vote but did want them to be counted to increase their power, so they opposed a national popular vote. Also, the fledgling nation had recently fought off a tyrannical monarch and had to guess about the best way to prevent that from happening again. They did not have the advantage of modern game theory and political science to tell them that their Electoral College compromise was a terrible plan. Two and a half centuries later we are still stuck with this crap, and it leads to all sorts of silly nationally (and internationally) unpopular support for swing States.
The only thing that is surprising to me about this situation is that there is not more support for what is soon to be the largest and best paying manufacturing employer in Texas, considering that Texas is trending to become a swing State right around the same time Tesla begins producing at a annual rate of 10 million cars and a couple hundred gigawatt-hours of batteries.
www.opensecrets.org
www.opensecrets.org
www.history.com
If the US Govt and current executive branch actually hated Tesla, then the BBB bill would have a cap on the number of credits that can be applied to vehicles from each manufacturer, like the last EV tax credit that was capped at 200k. It is obvious to everyone that Tesla will be responsible for the majority of EV volume in America for the foreseeable future, if not forever. In its current form even the biased tax credit proposal would funnel the majority of the money to Tesla -- probably more than everyone else combined.
Furthermore, the UAW donated a grand total of $9 million to political campaigns, lobbying and PACs in 2020. This is a tiny drop in the bucket in American politics. The winner of the 2020 presidential election alone had raised $1 billion in direct campaign contributions; I think it's safe to say he could lose UAW's donations without blinking.
What no US politician can afford, especially a 1st-term President seeking reelection, is losing Michigan, Ohio and Georgia, which are three populous swing States with a heavy concentration of automotive manufacturing jobs. Moreover, no Democratic politician can afford to give the image of not being supportive of unions even when they know that proposed Union benefits are unlikely to actually pass Congress.
Ultimately, this circus is rooted in this country's long history of slavery and the first-mover disadvantages of being the world's earliest modern democracy. (France formed a similar democracy just a few years later, but they were different in the sense of having a long national identity, rather than being a loose collection of former English colonies trying to figure out what they wanted to be when they grew up.) In the Constitutional Convention held in the 1787 there was lengthy debate about how to elect the President. They also struggled to agree over how many slaves to count in population determinations, because the Southern States with slaves did not want them to be allowed to vote but did want them to be counted to increase their power, so they opposed a national popular vote. Also, the fledgling nation had recently fought off a tyrannical monarch and had to guess about the best way to prevent that from happening again. They did not have the advantage of modern game theory and political science to tell them that their Electoral College compromise was a terrible plan. Two and a half centuries later we are still stuck with this crap, and it leads to all sorts of silly nationally (and internationally) unpopular support for swing States.
The only thing that is surprising to me about this situation is that there is not more support for what is soon to be the largest and best paying manufacturing employer in Texas, considering that Texas is trending to become a swing State right around the same time Tesla begins producing at a annual rate of 10 million cars and a couple hundred gigawatt-hours of batteries.
United Auto Workers Profile: Summary
United Auto Workers organization profile. Contributions in the 2022 cycle: $5,892,004. Lobbying in 2021: $762,000. Outside Spending in the 2022 cycle: $0.
www.opensecrets.org
2020 Presidential Race
As we inch closer to the 2020 election, we begin to see groups working on behalf of each of the most serious White House hopefuls – leadership PACs, super PACs, 501(c)(4) dark money outlets and more – crop up and start spending in support of their favored candidates.
www.opensecrets.org
Why Was the Electoral College Created? | HISTORY
The Founding Fathers had to compromise when it came to devising a system to elect the president.
www.history.com
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