I know I’m not. I’ve disliked the posturing phony from day one, so it just confirms my suspicions to learn Musk has been a major Republican donor — he just keeps quiet about it.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been revealed as a top donor to a Republican PAC aimed at keeping control of Congress. Filings published by ProPublica this weekend show Musk contributed $38,900 to the Protect the House PAC, joining the likes of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair in the PAC’s top 50 donors. The PAC raised more than $8 million in the second quarter for Republican lawmakers hoping to fend off Democratic challengers. Musk has a history of donating to both parties, but contributions to the Republican Party raised eyebrows on Twitter, where many questioned how the “socially liberal” billionaire vowing to fight climate change could support the GOP’s platform.
I’m going to guess that Jon Rosenberg wasn’t fooled, either.
I’m also going to guess that people will pop into the comments to defend him by saying that the wealthy tend to donate to both parties all the time. I will ask…why? Doesn’t that tell you the system is broken already? It should also tell you that both parties tend to favor the rich, so the rich are happy to keep the wheels churning — they know that no matter who wins, the bankers and trust-fund babies and Wall Street will prosper, no matter how much the economy is wrecked otherwise.
Given that he has donated thousands to Democrats, is he also a Democrat? I think he’s an equal-opportunity opportunist. He has global businesses. It would be surprising to learn he had *not* donated to a particular party…
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1018211560026787840
Then there’s this: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/14/1780618/-Daily-Kos-Unmasked-as-Top-Purity-Tester
Forget the flying sandwich project. Her’s what the experts had to say about his cave rescue mini-sub.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-15/thai-cave-rescue-diver-says-elon-musk-mini-submarine-pr-stunt/9995624
–
F.T.F.Y.
of course I think the Republicans are the goto for the wealthy. People who struggle to survive look to the Democrats for assistance who willingly provide aid.
only me i guess
?
Well, it couldn’t possibly be that pointing out corruption means one isn’t hip and jaded enough, could it?
Nah, let’s just blame Trump. Introspection smacks of effort.
It really took only one comment for the prediction of a Musk defender to come true -.-
Donating to the republican party is immoral. No, donating to the democrats, especially if it’s the center democrats, does not equalize it. There is nothing to safe that guy.
Musk was part of the Trump government at one time. That he also supports these bunch of child torturers with money is indefensible, but not surprising.
I love that Daily Kos article’s feeble attempt at the “purity police” accusation. Look at that list of “good guy” things Musk has done: he’s said he is in favour of some milquetoast progressive ideas (Kos spins that as “promoting” them, I guess because Musk talks a lot?), and also “risked everything he owned” (something not actually borne out by the source they link, btw) to keep his own company running, which is apparently a selfless act now.
Not hoarding literal billions in wealth skimmed off other people’s labour doesn’t seem like such a crazy standard of “purity” — I mean, very nearly ever person who has ever lived manages to meet it. A political movement that pretends to care about the interests of ordinary people should not associate with billionaires, any more than you’d expect a democratic movement to seek promotion from monarchs and dictators, even “nice” ones. Elon Musk can’t exist in a just society. But no, this one’s got to be the mythical Good Billionaire who will save us all, we can’t afford to alienate him!
@6 And I can say the same thing. Leaving Elon aside (I just feel weird saying “leaving Musk aside”. Feels like I’m a Mephitologist or something) and doing a bit of Big Picturizing, we plainly see that both parties assiduously court the Wall Street elite (Goldman Sachs in particular) and both sides get results. This has been known for some little time. However, it is the mark of one’s naivety and poor breeding to point this out to mainstream Democratic backers who will readily state that “Of course, politics and politicians are corrupt. That’s just how things work”. At least, that’s what get said when the Democrats are (or might be) in power. When they’re not, it’s a different story but, “gosh darnit, we just can’t get the vote out any more. I wonder why”.
Well, I’m sure you know the answer but which one is better: (A) To buy off half of the political parties or (B) buy off 100% of political parties?
garydargan@3: “Her(e)’s what the experts had to say about his cave rescue mini-sub.”
You don’t need to be an experienced caver to understand that Musk’s idea is almost certainly nonsensical. You just have to have read some books (or even magazine articles) on caves and caving.
But if, on top of that, you have the word of someone who has done lots of caving, and cave diving at that, and who has also been through that particular cave, well that settles it.
re 8:
not to disagree.
I see a few democrats telling the DNC:
>
while GOP all say:
>
— and that is my liberal bias showing. just sharing my view, not arguing with you.
*sigh*
?
Oh, this just in: he just called the guy who helped rescue the kids stuck in a cave a after the man made fun of Elon’s dumb plan to the press: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1018497953051258880
Of course his fans are saying the diver by insulting Elon. I guess no depth is too low for them…
[gizmodo]
Musk is increasingly revealing himself to be a raging asshole.
@11 It’s entirely possible for two people to have frank exchanges of views without arguing. ;)
But you’re correct that the Democrats do talk more of reform and quite possibly are doing things that don’t make it into the media.
It’s called “hedging your bets.” It’s standard practice of most cynical, business goons. They donate to both parties so they can hold some influence over the one that wins. Raw, amoral capitalism. Elon Musk sounds more like a scheming opportunist than a devout republican.
I’m not sure I understand the distinction.
Demonizing all things Musk would be more credible if it didn’t incorporate the socialist fantasy embodied in Jon Rosenberg’s cartoon. “Enough money to feed all the children”? Really?? Even assuming throwing money at a problem would help, for how long? And when Musk’s money is used up, as it inevitably must, what then? How many undeserving Republican bazillionaires can be shamed before that well dries up? And while that one problem gets all the money, what of all the other global problems that “need food NOW”?
Giving a child a fish feeds him for only a day. That’s not a solution. Global problems require technical innovations to infrastructure. Even though Musk’s ideas are arguably self-promoting, his methods are more likely to find solutions than SJWs’ guilt-tripping.
@4,6,etc. It helps to remember what has happened to the composition of the Democrats and Republicans over the last 60ish years:
– blacks moved from the Republican to the Democratic party.
– their oppressors, the white racists (especially Southern) moved to the Republican party
– the Rockefeller Republicans (liberal Republicans, for those of you under 50) moved to the Democratic party.
People forget that last switch. The Clintons helped effectuate it, that’s part of how Bill won. It put pro-business liberals in the Democratic party leadership, where they remain. The Democratic party isn’t straight pro-labor any more, instead it’s torn between the pro-business and pro- worker wings.
So of course businesses give to both parties – but they don’t give to the pro-labor elements of the Democratic party.
It’s also why there’s been so much emphasis on the culture wars.
What the Musk defenders aren’t mentioning is that Musk’s donations to the Democratic Party have tended to be either to DINOs facing primary challenges or to races in which DINOs have won their primaries, like the 2016 presidential election. His donations to the Democratic Party, in other words, are very specifically designed to move the party rightward. The shift of the Overton Window is not some sort of mystical coincidence, it’s a deliberate, weaponized phenomenon.
Anybody who claims that the Democrats need to kowtow to billionaires because they need the money is either lying or mistaken. Whether you like it or not, Bernie Sanders demonstrated quite well that a candidate who actually listens to the base can raise a lot of money very quickly without even first winning a primary — it’s only the candidates who intend to ignore the base who can’t do that, and a Democrat who is going to ignore the base is not worth electing in the first place. Jimmy Carter gave an interview a while back where he was bemoaning the fact that he wouldn’t be able to become president in today’s climate because he wouldn’t be able to raise the kind of money which is necessary — which reveals that although Jimmy Carter wouldn’t be willing to kowtow to the rich, he also doesn’t give a damn about the rank and file of the Democratic Party and wouldn’t be able to appeal to them for donations, which says a lot.
@19 Consider the political spectrum as an oval instead of a line. One end of the oval is pro-worker, the other is pro-business. Each of the sides are the two sides of the culture wars — ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. It makes more sense to see donations like Musk’s as trying to shift power towards the business end of the oval, rather than a shift towards ‘conservatives’. (I put liberal and conservative in ‘ because the terms confuse as much as they clarify).
@17
what you seem to not understand is the nature of the problem.
Musk is just one example there are a few others 1% of the population is a number that is being used generally.
Yes you are correct that it is better to “teach a person to fish than to give them a fish”. The details you leave out tell a lot about who you are.
how did the “poor” become poor? how much money would it take to make them not poor?
better how much of the great wealth accumulated by the wealthy came from underpaying those who do the work that earned the profit? It has been the practice of the “job creators” to pay as little as possible to their employees in order to maximize their Multi-million dollar incomes.
if you own all the water the fish live in it is a little hard for anyone else to get a chance to catch any of them.
uncle frogy
As noted in @13, Musk is a completely deluded liar & troll, Elon Musk calls British diver in Thai cave rescue a in baseless attack:
I presume his idea of “solving” the problem in Flint is to kill all people who aren’t wealthy and white-skinned.
He should now be filed in the trash with hair furor & teh dalekocracy, the eejit “perfessor” in Canada, and the whole the UK & Polish “governments”.
@#20, daulnay
A slight quibble: “business”? No. The already-rich want policies which favor the already-rich. These policies are not necessarily “pro-business”, although they may be “pro-businesses-owned-by-the-already-rich”. Consider the attempt which was made in the EU just recently to require social media platforms to have automated copyright-infringement-detection software — this was something the rich were hoping for. It would not harm any of the current major players, because they can afford it, but it would be a profound barrier to entry for any new business attempting to empty the market, or even to open-source attempts to build distributed alternatives to things like Twitter and Facebook. A law which protects, say, Amazon, by hobbling any would-be competitors, is hardly “pro-business”, but that’s what they generally push.
(And the Trans-Pacific Partnership was more or less the same thing — a way to screw the poor over while pretending it was going to address trade imbalances, written in secret by CEOs. Any and every politician or commentator who supported or supports the TPP, which is legislatively not dead but resting, is either a fool or a shill for the 1% — and I strongly suggest you do a little looking around to see which candidates you’ve supported have done so, because the answers are surprising.)
@#23: whoops, that should be “enter the market”, not “empty the market”. Sorry, did not catch that in preview.
No, the fact that we allow people to bribe politicians with campaign “contributions” tells me the system is broken already.
@23 As you point out, ‘pro-business’ means pro established businesses. Established businesses do not generally like competitive, unrigged markets and work hard to eliminate them. The Republicans and pro-business Democrats have together removed or quit enforcing most of the laws that ensured competitive and unrigged markets over the last 30+ years. I do not think we actually disagree here.
@ck:
I see what you did there. Well played.
@blf:
Indeed.
I think the most appropriate response to Musk at this point is “Go fuck a spherical cow”.
I’m fine with him being a visionary asshole full of contradictions and irony, really. Most technology leaders have been exactly that and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. We should… just be honest about it. Don’t teach school kids that Thomas Edison was a good man, or that Steve Jobs was some kind of wonderful inspired human being. It’s also a moment to play “How much better would our technology be, if the leaders who created it could listen better and be more inclusive?” (Spoiler: A lot.)
ynot@17–
1. Rosenberg wasn’t satirising Musk for being a capitalist, he was satirising him for coming up with ridiculous engineering solutions to problems, and even more so for being a thin-skinned egotistical tantrum-thrower when his ill-advised and unsolicited “solution” is rejected by people on the ground with actual expertise. As the diver pointed out, a rigid 5’6″ tube was never going to be able to navigate the caves, and Musk’s response was to call him a paedophile and dump the sub in Thailand.
2. Just a heads up. Anyone who uses SJW as a pejorative is a self-identified fool with the moral awareness of a parasite. You can change!
Doubting Thomas@2–
I agree with you that Musk in not a Republican and not even socially conservative, but having said that he’s not thinking clearly about this.
In his own words he’s donating to the Republicans “so that they are willing to listen when I call to object about issues that negatively affect humanity.” But these donations from Musk are not going to make a shred of difference to the Republican denial of climate change. The only “listening” the Republicans will do is to keep quiet and nod their heads while he speaks, hoping to draw another donation out of him. Musk obviously believes he’s buying influence, but he’s really only throwing money at a party that is working feverishly to destroy all his environmental and social ideals.
Paying money to the national Republicans and Democrats is basically insurance. SpaceX relies on Commercial Crew funding from NASA, as well as contracting work doing launches for federal agencies. They’re not without enemies – Republicans in the Senate (especially Richard Shelby) have tried to heavily cut or cancel Commercial Crew funding before. But if he kicked them some money, then maybe the next time that comes up somebody in their caucus will say, “Don’t do that – the guy gave us money”.
brett@31–
But that’s not what Musk said. He didn’t say it was insurance for his future corporate plans, he said it was so Republicans would listen when he talks to them about “issues that negatively affect humanity”, which we already know the Republicans will not only NOT listen to him, but have actively muzzled government agencies that have a role in protecting humanity from malicious corporate interests.
The correct term is bribery.
Perhaps not surprising? Admitting to bribery is perhaps even too stupid for this supreme fool.
I know Elon Musk does good, but he’s still a bonehead (Gruaniad edits in {curly braces})::
Supporting links at the link.