Please, Republicans, don’t give Elon Musk a bunch more corporate welfare
If you were producing the last, touching episode of a Tv set drama termed The Obama Many years, your temper tunes may be the New York Moments column on Dec. 5, 2016, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, headlined “Want to Convey Back again Jobs, Mr. President-Elect? Connect with Elon Musk.”
An ever-expanding executive department doing the job collaboratively with enlightened, long run-oriented, large-IQ moguls to increase earlier mentioned the unattractive canine-eats-canine competition of capitalism was the desire of Obamanomics. Elon Musk, “the true-everyday living Tony Stark,” was a going for walks totem of Obamanomics.
“Mr. Musk, 45, is arguably the 1 human being in the nation additional liable than any person else for generating a eyesight for the re-emergence of manufacturing in the United States en masse,” wrote Sorkin. “And he is revered amongst most of his peers here in Silicon Valley and in other places.”
Musk was, as Sorkin wrote in the sunset several hours of the Obama yrs, “a key illustration of all the things we want our business leaders to be.”
Musk was a champion of small business-govt collaboration, which most of the time meant corporate welfare. He was a confront of the Obama-era Export-Import Bank, showing onstage at the agency’s yearly meeting, grateful for the taxpayer-backed loan guarantees that boosted his several firms.
The Obama administration larded on subsidies for Musk’s photo voltaic corporations and for Tesla. They handed out contracts to his rocket company, SpaceX, and Obama toured the plant. Musk was the professional-business, pro-government Democrat who was heading to get the long run. Heck, he was even an immigrant!
A couple of yrs later, Musk is now a Republican or some thing.
That implies that anyone who dislikes crony capitalism and corporate welfare demands to retain an even closer eye on Republican lawmakers and governors — mainly because we know what arrives upcoming. Someone’s going to propose a law or give a handout to benefit Musk in some way. Possibly different GOP officers will do so.
Will Texas, which has a lengthy record of GOP governors bribing large firms, give specific tax breaks or handouts to some Musk corporation? Who in Congress will go some bill to give Musk specific benefits? What will Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis do?
If Musk is truly now devoted to free of charge speech and pluralism, he must be a Republican since the Democrats’ current strategy is to model everything they dislike as “disinformation” that does not have earned Very first Amendment protection. Also, the GOP could stand to be a little bit more dedicated to totally free expression. If Musk is definitely concerned about slipping birthrates, he should really come to be a Republican, for the reason that on the Remaining, they’ve significantly decided that it really is racist to care about that.
But if Musk is coming looking to an ascendant GOP for exclusive favors, perfectly — he’ll almost certainly get them, which will be lousy for the Republican soul.