Trump team puts EV tax credit on the block, Tesla is on board: Report

Elon Musk is on record as saying it would hurt competitors more than Tesla.

See full article...

 

[jamesb2147]

Not that it changes how nakedly corrupt this is but I'm not really convinced this actually hurts the other EV manufacturers the way he thinks it will. For instance IIRC Hyundai/Kia has just been eating $7,500 per car to keep their cars competitive. If anything this will just put the other manufacturers on better footing since they don't have to deal with decisions like whether or not to eat the $7,500, or setting up American factories when all the inputs are gonna get whacked with tariffs regardless. Just assemble the car elsewhere and put the final thing product through the tariffs instead of doing it piecemeal on all the individual components.

Not only that, but that Equinox EV starts at $35k... before incentives. That's ~$5k less than an entry level Tesla right now.

Tesla doesn't make the cheapest practical EV's anymore. Others are successfully gunning for their position. Besides Kia/Hyundai as you mentioned, VW is betting the company on the EV transition, and the Equinox EV I mentioned is a GM product. Ford can't seem to figure out how to make EV's affordably, but they keep pouring money into it, as do a range of other manufacturers. I'm sure at least a couple of them will figure it out. And that's ignoring the elephant in the room: BYD is consistently outselling Tesla. Even if they're not available in the US, we aren't the world's largest automotive market, and scale matters for cost efficiency.

 

[jamesb2147]

I won't weasel around it. Before I do: you having to ask, "Do you think the new guy's genocide is gonna be worse than the genocide we have watched live-streamed for the past 12 months" says a lot in itself.

To answer your question directly:

(1) Ask Palestinians, and they say, "It doesn't matter who you vote for, Biden, Harris, Trump, they all want us dead". That is directly from the most recent interviews with Palestinians on the ground, posted by Bisan, a young Palestinian journalist who asked precisely your question to Palestinians. If you don't know who Bisan is, you should probably view her content before Israel kills her with a drone as Israel has killed hundreds of journalists as they work to prevent reporting of their ongoing genocide.

(2) My own opinion: I don't think it matters whether it is a Biden Administration or a Trump Administration, the goal of both will be to completely clear Gaza of any Palestinians and to settle the land. That has been the goal since the beginning of the conflict, and now we are hearing Israel say explicitly that Palestinians will not be allowed to return to Gaza, ever. It has been made clear by the actions of both administrations they both will support that goal, no matter the cost in human life.

So, there is very little difference between the two administrations when it comes to this topic, with one exception - one is actively committing genocide while pretending not to and promising not to stop, and the other has promised to continue the genocide if given the chance.

So, back to my original comment - if you are going to call Trump "the most corrupt administration in history", then you are agreeing that committing genocide in contravention of US and International law is not a form of corruption, and that committing genocide is a less corrupt act than fucking with EV tax credits.

I hope you are prepared to regret your current views. Whatever you convince anyone of right now is of absolutely no consequence; Trump is going to do what he's going to do come January 20.

If that results in an actual genocide because he pressures Bibi and Ben-Gvir to "end the conflict" and hands them 10x the usual munitions shipment... well, prepare yourself. I know I would absolutely fucking hate myself.

That said, Trump is nothing if not chaotic. Just as right after Oct 7 I thought there was an opening for peace through all that chaos if Bibi handled things right, Trump has a similar opportunity to upset the apple cart. He's already called Bibi's bluff once in the past, and I think there's a chance he'll do it again. I firmly believe the only political power in Israel greater than Bibi is Donald Trump, so he's probably the only person that could fuck with Bibi. (To be clear: I think Bibi is a failed leader and will be viewed that way by history. He doesn't seem to want peace, ever.)

Do I think Trump actually will upset the apple cart and create some unpredictable conditions for peace? No. But I can't rule it out, and that gives me some modicum of hope and solace in this very dark timeline.

 

[jamesb2147]

Biden is a monster, and his legacy will be genocide. Trump looks to be a monstern, and may continue the genocide, but it remains to be seen.

And, you see, I simply won't vote for genocide. Nor will many Americans, which is one key reason why Dem turnout was so low, and why Harris lost so resoundingly.

I voted third party, but many many many more people chose not to vote. Your entire diatribe above is really just an indictment of the two party system, and how undemocratic our "democracy" is. If the vote is between genocide and genocide? Do you support genocide or sit out?

Enough sat out.

Next time, maybe speak up instead of telling everyone to be "pragmatic".

Sounds to me like you should become a ranked choice voting activist. That would enable a 3rd popular party (or more) because votes for those candidates would no longer be "thrown away".

Seriously, if you want a more robust democracy, look into what you can do to make that happen!

 

[jamesb2147]

Agreed.


I’m not an expert on China, but I guess my response to this would be to ask why the US stopped wars of expansion after the post-WW2 economy really exploded into high gear here and apply a similar model to China.

At a certain point, it starts making more sense to dominate a region primarily economically and culturally rather than militarily, and China is solidly in that category. Are the Chinese going to embrace the US model of unilateral missile strikes or sending special forces units to go break some things an ocean away from home to flex their muscle? I don’t know. My general, inexpert sense of them is that seems kinda unlikely…but maybe?

I really can’t see China going hard on annexing North Korea or Laos or whatever, much less a bigger territory like eastern Russia or Japan. Why would they bother sending boots on the ground when they can keep sending suits carrying briefcases?

I think Taiwan is clearly a different thing because of their history with China, but I don’t see the same belligerent agitating from them that you see from Russia. Maybe if they let their economy implode like Putin has done to Russia they’ll need wars of conquest to keep the beast fed domestically, but other than that…I dunno.

Again, not an expert. I could be wildly off base.

I'm genuinely curious what is informing your opinion, because you are titanically uninformed on the topic. Just a couple of quick searches brought these up:

https://chinapower.csis.org/china-taiwan-joint-sword-2024b-coast-guard/
^ China didn't like Taiwan's election result, so they're ramping up threatening military presence around the island to send a message. Sounds an awful lot like what they did to Hong Kong.

https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/how-china-bending-rules-south-china-sea
^ Some legal-ish analysis of Chinese arguments about owning the South China Sea

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/16/world/asia/south-china-sea-ships.htmlhttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53397673
^ I can't find the like 50 page article from 10 years ago that I read on international cooperation (e.g. US and Australia) doing freedom of navigation exercises while Chinese ships aggressively threatened them, but these do give a tiny taste of the conflict. And it is a conflict. They use water cannons, they ram and sink ships, it's all very, extremely aggressive, nasty stuff. Be glad you don't work on a Filipino fishing vessel in "disputed" waters.

All that is to say that China is aggressive as fuck militarily, you just haven't noticed. I might add, they're also becoming more aggressive domestically. Uyghurs, Hong Kong protestors, literally any Chinese billionaire, recently college kids riding bicycles at night... all have suffered continually ratcheting oppression under Xi. In Hong Kong it's illegal to sing Les Mis' "Can you Hear The People Sing?" because it's considered a protest song. Literally all communications are censored.

PS - They're currently "deleting Microsoft" aka weaning the country off Windows. Now, ask yourself, why might that be..? Like, in what situation would you be concerned about having Windows on random computers in your country?

 

[jamesb2147]

I'm just going to point out that you are calling being anti-genocide a "pet issue". Like the murder of 200,000 people in my name and with MY fucking hundreds of thousands of tax dollars, instead of providing me with a basic social safety net is a pet issue.

The vast majority of your tax dollars go to fund shit all over the world exactly like what is happening in Gaza, and it is the biggest and most glaring reason you can't have nice things, and you think it's a pet issue.

And that's why you keep losing.

My dude. Just stop.

I'd buy that maybe it cost Kamala MI. But WI? PA? NV? AZ? Nuh-uh. You're making the classical error that those around you are representative of "most" people (or some sub-group, as in this case).

Honestly you read like an activist that's too online to realize the real world isn't the always-online one. Go take a walk, and leave your phone at home.

I get that you're upset. It comes through clearly. But to act like you know the key insight to the 2024 election that nobody else has, that pollsters are missing, that generations of politicians have overlooked, and if only they'd listen to you... I mean, it's not literally impossible, but damn, you think you are some hot shit. Check yourself, man.

 

[jamesb2147]

I know what they’re doing domestically, and none of it is good. That’s not really what I was responding to. The question was “Why would they stop?” and it was specifically in reference to seizing territory militarily.

I agree that they’re gonna go after Taiwan, and they may do it during the next four years. Are they going to invade Thailand? That seems unlikely to me, but who knows? Is there some faction in the Chinese government that wants to annex Indonesia? Are they massing troops and threatening North or South Korea? Do they want to overthrow the Philippines, or do they want the South China Sea? What territory do they want? What areas besides Taiwan and the South China Sea are they doing a Russian-style “this has always been our territory and we’re just gonna reclaim/liberate it” routine about? I said I don’t know, but it seems unlikely that they’re gearing up for ground invasions of their neighbors.

As for Windows? They’re ruled by a deeply isolationist, authoritarian, incredibly un-democratic regime that wants total control over their own populace and they’re worried about the free flow of information undermining their government. Why wouldn’t they want to get away from Windows? Why would them wanting to get away from Windows be a sign of a sinister plot to conquer the world and not just, y’know…them trying to lock their own people down even tighter?

The Windows thing is preparations for an invasion of Taiwan. They didn't start the process of stripping it out until after they watched Russia invade Ukraine and saw how that played out.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/05/asia/china-bhutan-border-dst-intl-hnk/index.html
^ Oh yes, they have such good relationships with their land border neighbors...

Do you have any actual basis for these opinions you've formed? Because I'm just not seeing it.

 

[jamesb2147]

I'd say Gates isn't. Blowing your cash on saving lives with no expectation of a return isn't a shit thing to do.

You don't build a monopoly without doing a LOT of damage, which we're still living with today.

That said, I tend to agree with you. I once made a shirt (for a graphic design course) with a quote from Larry Ellison about him being "the most dangerous man in the world." It had a bunch of mosquitos on it because it was around the time he released mosquitos into the audience to make a point about how underfunded malaria research and prevention was at the time. If malaria were a problem for rich people, there'd be more research into it...

 

[jamesb2147]

Literally nothing in Trump's history would even remotely suggest that.

As I explicitly said, I don't think it's likely.

However, he has had weird, unpredictable impacts in Israeli politics before: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news...election/0000017f-efea-df98-a5ff-efef538b0000

And he's repeatedly said the war in Gaza makes Israel look bad (and makes him look bad if he's supplying the bombs), and we all know if there's one thing he cares about, it's how he looks: https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump...za-war-over-by-time-he-enters-office-sources/

Just as only Nixon could open relations with those commies in the CCP, he has an extraordinary opportunity to shape Israel's, and possibly the region's, future. History is weird as fuck at the pivot points, and he certainly represents the expression of some fundamental, epoch defining shift in US politics for the next few decades. I don't see why it would be impossible he could do something similar to Israeli regional geopolitics.

Look, I voted for Harris. But, I need some hope to grab onto somewhere, and this actually fits that bill for now (though as I suggested, he could well decide that "ending the conflict" means wiping Gaza off the map - bad outcome, in my view). Just keep that in mind; maybe I could've done more to change the election outcome, but I used my hard, actual power (read: my vote) as best I knew how. Now I have to look for the silver linings, because my desired approach was that one that failed at the ballot box.

 

[jamesb2147]

I need to just…

So, I work in a public library. I teach computer literacy, bridging the digital divide, doing STEAM programming for kids, helping folks navigate job searches and locate support services and generally doing the ancillary tech things that libraries have taken on in addition to “traditional” library services.

Today has been busy. Really busy. About an hour ago, I had a tech support appointment with a sweet little old lady I’ve been helping for years. She’s a Spanish immigrant who speaks broken English, lives alone on public assistance and a small pension from her time as a private school teacher, and works 20 hours a week for one of our area’s aging/senior services & outreach orgs.

She came in last week to get help with her Lifeline phone from QLink, because she was getting messages from her carrier that she needed to swap SIMs because QLink recently got sold after their owner was convicted of massive fraud. She came in today to clean up some stuff and fret about how tech companies can see everything in her phone and to get help trying to set up (another) new Facebook account.

I finished helping her and we chatted. We always chat. It’s part of the job. My job is to care about you when you come in; to connect you with that shared humanity that we’ve privatized and corporatized and industrialized. People come in for a bit of help with email or something, but they become regulars because we’re the last place you can go in America where you don’t have to believe anything or pay anything or even do anything to be welcomed. You just can’t be a dick, and you gotta leave people in peace. Nothing else matters.

She leans in and she tells me in her piping little bird voice how happy she is that Donald Trump won because we need a big change. She says you can feel that we need a change when you are at the store.

I said I hoped she was right that this would work out for everyone, but that I was worried. I have a kid in high school right now and Trump is appointing someone to close down the Department of Education.

She said to me, very earnestly, very compassionately, with complete sincerity, that it would be okay because it would take time to close it, and my son would be done with school before it would affect us. She said that the next parents would have to worry about their own families.

This was meant to be a comfort. She didn’t have any illusions that it would be a good thing; she was just really, sincerely up front about how as long as I got mine, whatever happened to everyone else was their problem.

I said I’m not just worried about my son. I said I’m worried about what happens when he has kids. What happens to my neighbors kids. What happens to his friends.

She just kept reassuring me that it wouldn’t matter, because I wouldn’t personally be affected.

I’m

I just

What the fuck am I supposed to do with this world?

Can I just derail for a second to say I used to work at a public library as well, and I really wish we had more public institutions. It wasn't lawless, but we totally had homeless people come in to research job opportunities, because often you can't just fill out a paper application these days.

There were also the threatening folks, the kids running from cops, folks stealing stuff, etc. It's not perfect. But I just like living in a world where it's not a crime to be impoverished, and there are precious few areas of life where that remains true like it does in a library.