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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 12 2020, @06:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the are-you-feeling-lucky dept.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/05/musk-dares-county-officials-to-arrest-him-as-he-re-opens-fremont-factory/

Elon Musk is planning to defy county officials as he battles to reopen Tesla's Fremont factory in the face of a continued shelter-in-place order in Alameda County, California, Musk announced on Twitter on Monday.

"Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules," Musk tweeted. "I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me."
[...]
On May 7, California public health officer Sonia Angell issued a new order lifting some statewide restrictions. The order stated that "a local health jurisdiction may implement or continue more restrictive public health measures if the jurisdiction's Local Health Officer believes conditions in that jurisdiction warrant it."

During a Monday press briefing, reporters peppered Newsom with questions about the dispute. Newsom answered like a politician, expressing admiration for both sides and confidence that they'd work out a deal. Speaking of Tesla, Newsom said he had "great reverence for their technology, for their innovative spirit, for their leadership."

But he also stressed that "it's county-led enforcement in these cases." He didn't endorse Tesla's view that Alameda County's order was inconsistent with Newsom's own order.

Tesla Fremont Factory: Alameda Deescalates Issue, Doesn’t Fall Into Elon Musk’s Martyr Trap:

May. 12th 2020 9:26 am ET

In [a] new comment, the Alameda county seems to have deescalated the issue around Tesla reopening its Fremont factory despite the county’s order as CEO Elon Musk set an obvious martyr trap.

As we reported yesterday, Tesla went ahead with the reopening of Fremont factory despite a local order from the Alameda County to wait until they approved a safe reopening plan.

CEO Elon Musk said that he would himself be on the production lines and he asked that if Alameda County were to enforce the rules and arrest anyone, it should be him:

“Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

But the county didn’t fall for the martyr trap set by Musk and didn’t go into Fremont factory to put anyone in handcuffs.

County officials claim to have been in continuous contact with Tesla last week to approve the automaker’s plan to reopen the factory by May 18, but Musk apparently wanted to do it sooner – leading to Tesla filling a lawsuit and stalling the talks.

The Sheriff’s Office instead issued a statement stating that they are aware Tesla is breaking the order and they will take the same action that they do for other businesses who have been violating the order:


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @09:23PM (#993937)

    Was it too subtle?

    "and if nothing is done about the Mexican and H1-B problem in California"

    So much of racism is born out of political anger. Sometimes there is a kernel of validity to the anger, but once it goes racist that part no longer matters. That is just their excuse to be hateful.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @05:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @05:14AM (#994114)

    Let's do a little thought experiment. Imagine you start with a perfectly equal society. But one group in society has an average of 2 kids per generation. And another group has 3 kids per generation. What happens over time?

    Gen 0: 50/50
    Gen 1: 75/50 (40%)
    Gen 2: 112.5/50 (30%)
    Gen .. 10: 2883/50 (1.7%)

    The group only having 2 kids predictably becomes a smaller and smaller chunk of society, though it's quite remarkable how quickly this happens. This [wikipedia.org] is a table of population change in California. And this [siliconvalleyindicators.org] is a table if incomes in Santa Clara/San Mateo county - also known as Silicon Valley.

    Hispanics in California right now are extremely poor, yet they're reproducing at an extremely high rate. And contrary to our little thought experiment, more well to do groups are not even reproducing at the replacement rate. For what it's worth this interesting little issue also generalizes to the US as a whole. Because of this behavior of poor groups reproducing at such high rates it turns poverty into something like a zombie virus. It leads to this 'paradox' where California was/is the richest state in the US, by a pretty wide margin, yet it has increasingly severe issues with widespread poverty, homelessness, and so forth. But it's being driven disproportionately by plain old fertility + immigration.

    However, as you inadvertently displayed - pointing this out is immediately called racist, somehow. Makes no sense to me. If you can't even acknowledge a problem, how do you plan on solving it? Because this is a *really* big deal and something that's never really been faced before in a developed nation. In past times, if you could not afford to feed your kids then your family line would likely end in short order. But now a days the growth of the welfare state and other programs means you can engage in reckless fertility and the rest of society will be forced to subsidize you. Undoubtedly vastly more humane, but it leads directly to this moral hazard that we're now facing the consequences of.

    I'll grant calling it the "Mexican problem" has all the tact you'd expect of Ethanol, but I would not call acknowledgement of this issue racist by any stretch of the imagination.