In Texas, where Musk moved his headquarters to flee California’s safety and pollution regulations, a Wall Street Journal investigation discovered that Tesla’s Austin plant has been secretly dumping poisons into the Colorado River, the city’s water supply. Skol!
...
How to Put Musk Out of Business: End Tariff Terrorism
How would you like to own a new Tesla Model 3 that can go 353 miles on a charge, jump from a standstill to 62mph in 3.8 seconds — and costs less than $25,000? Sure, you’d buy. But you can’t. Because Tesla doesn’t make one. But Chinese manufacturer BYD does. How do you get one? You can’t. Because the US imposes a 100% tariff on all Chinese EVs.
...
Willing to give up some range and size? You can get a BYD Seagull EV for $10,000 — just $2,500 after the $7,500 federal EV rebate. Let me repeat that: without government-imposed tariffs and restrictions, you could buy a 100% electric compact for $2,500. (Note: It’s estimated that transport and changes to meet US safety rules would add $2,000 — offset in many states by tax rebates and utility subsidies.)
...
Yes, I am aware that opening the gates to dirt-cheap Chinese cars would lead to closures of US auto plants. But we keep claiming there’s a climate emergency. Either we have an emergency or we don’t. If this is a real emergency, we should welcome a nation helping us get to “net zero” by Thursday. Then, we should help auto workers as FDR did in the 1930s — create jobs we need at full union wages. (But that’s for yet another column.) Instead, Biden purchased the UAW’s endorsement by making Americans wildly overpay for cars. But, in the end, that didn’t work out too well for Joe nor Kamala. Nearly half of union households voted for Trump. I must note that, recently, days after BYD announced new price cuts, Trump said he’ll add an additional 20% tariff (to 120%!) on Chinese EVs to make sure you are pushed into buying a Musk-mobile.

For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Towards a Moment of Judgement
by Peter Baker - New York Times
October 20, 2024

When the history of the 2024 election is written, one of the iconic images illustrating it will surely be the mug shot taken of Donald J. Trump after one of his four indictments, staring into the camera with his signature glare. It is an image not of shame but of defiance, the image of a man who would be a convicted felon before Election Day and yet possibly president of the United States again afterward.

Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”

In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.

His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at his rallies where he says “they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.” But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.