Elon Musk's latest whinge is that the Biden administration is out to get him. In particular:
- This year Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into the seamy side of Musk's businesses.
- AT THE SAME TIME, Biden has awarded $300 million in federal contracts to Reuters!!!
I wouldn't normally waste time with this, but I am very, very bored sitting in my hospital bed waiting for my final dose of Tecvayli. So I got curious. As best I can tell, the story originated here and got picked up by Musk here:
WEAPONIZATION: Biden publicly ordered 11 federal agencies to 'look' into Elon Musk. All 11 opened investigations. Then all 11 funneled a total of $300M to Reuters who then who won a Pulitzer Prize for their relentless attack pieces against the billionaire.
Wow. Or, as Musk himself eloquently puts it:🤨
Anyway, not to keep you in suspense, but yes, the federal government has a lot of contracts with Reuters. More specifically, they are almost all with Thomson Reuters, a provider of commercial information, of which the Reuters news network is a small part. Luckily, USAspending.gov tells us the size and award date of every Thomson Reuters contract and handily presents it by month:
There you have it: $297 million in Reuters contracts under Joe Biden!!!
Compared to $449 million under Donald Trump, which, among many other things, includes about $60 million to ICE for help tracking down illegal immigrants via their CLEAR database.
This is Elon Musk these days. He's either a complete loon or else he just doesn't care anymore. Even Donald Trump is a little more careful about what he retweets.
It would be funny if they could laugh at themselves...otherwise, just very sad.
He's always been a complete loon. Why do people insist on giving the bullshit he says even the semblance of a benefit of the doubt?
He's always bullshitting, all the time. He should be fired into space aboard one of his rockets so he can ride his stupid car into the sun.
Guy has destroyed Tesla. I say let him do his thing.
Now remind me of how much money Musk's various companies are getting from the same Federal Government, and if that may give them the incentive to make sure how that money's being spent.
You have to google this title,
Elon Musk’s Net Worth Compared To The Total Household Wealth Of Various Countries
because WordPress won't let me post the link.
Up at the top Kevin has a quote from the Buddha, Happiness never decreases by being shared,
And I would add, ketamine doesn't cost that much.
Musk will be just as happy with 0.1% of that money.
To reiterate a point I've been making for the last 10 years:
Most of the people who claim to be free speech champions are actually looking to make speech inconsequential when they fuck up, make shit up, or hold opinions that are distasteful, racist, bigoted, etc. This free speech does not extend to people who criticize them for fucking up, making shit up, or holding opinions that are distasteful, racist, bigoted, etc.
Thin skin is at the core of this hypocrisy. That's how we get Trump suing people left and right for defamation even while he flat out makes shit up about people.
"Even Donald Trump is a little more careful about what he retweets." Since when?
"He's either a complete loon or else he just doesn't care anymore."
Neither.
Musk, Peter Thiel and a few others believe, as Thiel puts it, freedom is incompatible with democracy. By freedom, they mean their freedom to do whatever they want without regard to whom it hurts. They would prefer to replace democracy with oligarchy and they're damned close to succeeding.
For many years now, I've been calling this the Second Gilded Age. But it is even more extreme than the first one because income inequality between the robber baron class and the rest of us is even bigger than it was in the First Gilded Age.
Yup. This is it. And Musky's astounding brilliance has clued him in to the reichwing's propaganda methods, which he now deploys to his own advantage. Nothing loony or unthoughtful about it.; in fact, very deliberate. The only thing I'll add is the narcissistic, sociopathic, feral viciousness that lies at the core of who and what all these humanoids are and do. The poison of unfettered privilege and entitlement that are the whole of modern American 'conservatism.' At this point, all of them. Evey single one.
No he’s not
Is this part true?
Biden publicly ordered 11 federal agencies to 'look' into Elon Musk.
Maybe this? https://archive.is/HUe7p
...but yes, the federal government has a lot of contracts with Reuters.
The federal government has a lot of contracts with so many businesses it boggles the mind. If you're a large company providing products and services to business enterprises, it is highly likely that your largest single customer is the US federal government. Not just in the defense sector, but companies like Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, McKesson, IBM, Fluor, GE, Amazon, and many more. For many of the them the US is responsible for 1B+ per year. SpaceX has earned at least $20 billion since 2008 from government contracts. Tesla, about $10 billion since 2018. US taxpayers have made Elon Musk a rich man.
Musk is not an idiot (well, sometimes). He knows his Doge nonsense about cutting trillions of spending out of the US budget will mean severe cuts to revenues for some of the country's largest businesses. (Not to mention, it would tank the economy.) The Maga faithful and a few right-wing radicals might get excited about drowning the gov't in a bathtub. The corporate elite, not so much.
Something's gotta give.
So some government agencies looked at Musk's businesses and they gave some contracts to Reuters and Reuters won a prize?
And then what happened?
Reuters winning a prize doesn't seem to have affected Musk in any way at all. I think this is just an attempt to chime in supporting Trump's threatened lawsuit against the Pulitzer board.
Dear Kevin,
This has ALWAYS been Elon Musk.
People don’t change who they are. People reveal who they are.
Since Thomson Reuters owns Westlaw, I'd be willing to bet that a large majority of those contracts are to allow the DOJ's attorneys to have Westlaw access.