Just another freeloading beneficary of taxpayer support, exploitation of workers and big talking record of lying.
“F*ck, Elon Musk.”
By Mehdi Hasan
Deconstructed (5/14/20)
OVER THE WEEKEND, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to voice his frustrations about the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown in Alameda County, California. The billionaire entrepreneur threatened that he would take his auto factory to another state if it was not allowed to reopen immediately. On Monday, he announced that he would be resuming production at the facility in contravention of the lockdown. By Wednesday morning, the county had caved to Musk, announcing that his factory would be allowed to resume production under government supervision.
After Musk’s initial tweet threatening to leave the state, California Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez took to Twitter herself, saying succinctly, “F*ck Elon Musk.” She added: “So much of the clash our state is experiencing with the tech/Silicon Valley companies is of our own making. We let gig companies violate labor laws for over a decade. We subsidized Tesla as they operated with severe safety issues & actively union busted. They got used to it… It’s time that all companies, no matter how cool, abide by the same laws.”
On this week’s podcast, Gonzalez discusses the situation with Musk and Tesla. Then, tech and labor reporter Jack Crosbie joins Mehdi Hasan to give the backstory on the cultish billionaire.
Link To Story, Transcript And 36-Minute Audio
- Elon Musk’s Insanity Has Escaped Twitter — It happened — Elon Musk’s insanity has escaped twitter and found a bigger stage. John Iadarola and Madeline Peltz break it down on The Damage Report. Link To 11+-Minute Video
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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Here’s A Damn Good Idea Of How To Support Endangered Tesla Workers
“While it might be good for economic growth to have the Tesla factory in Fremont California open up without a safety plan, that would not be good for the workers. And there are other ways to make sure the workers in that factory have enough to pay their rent and buy food. We could tax Musk’s wealth and provide a safety net for the workers.”
— Cynthia Kaufman, Alternatives to Killing People for the Economy
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Elon Musk Made Me A Socialist
The quickest way to radicalization is covering big tech.
By Jack Crosbie
Discourse Blog (5/1/20)
In early 2016, I moved back to New York after spending most of a year working abroad. I was living on a friend’s couch and needed a job, and she hooked me up with a permalance gig working the night shift for a new digital media startup that covered technology, science, and entertainment. The site largely focused on the kind of stuff that would hit big with the content-hungry crowds of Facebook users interested in pages like “I Fucking Love Science,” Star Wars, and the Marvel and DC comic book universes. Above all, our readers fucking loved, and I mean LOVED, Elon Musk.
The top-performing social headlines we ran, for the most part, were ones that praised something Musk was doing. In 2016 (and, to a large extent, still), a not-insignificant part of Musk’s business relied on coverage like this — his companies enjoyed almost overwhelmingly positive coverage, allowing Musk to repeatedly brag about Tesla’s advertising-free business model. His companies didn’t actually make any money, of course, forcing him to consolidate Tesla and Solar City into one electric vehicles/ clean energy conglomerate, but his pop-culture exposure as a “real-life Tony Stark” was at its absolute zenith. He sent rockets into space and loved Rick and Morty. He played Overwatch in his spare time: the most exciting inventor in the world was a gamer too! His sleek, lightning fast electric cars went “ludicrous speed” and played the nyan cat meme.
Coverage like this was our bread and butter — and for the first few months I worked at the site, it was a breeze to write. …