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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28003 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Commissioner Brendan Carr of the FCC provided a good writeup here (p14 of the "Order on Review", or the "Carr Statement") of why he believes that his committee's decision was driven by anti-Musk sentiment. (I also recommend reading the Simington statement: "...the majority today lays bare just how thoroughly and lawlessly arbitrary [this decision] was.").

Key quotes:

President Biden stood at a podium adorned with the official seal of the President of the United States, and expressed his view that Elon Musk “is worth being looked at.”

...

Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote that “the volume of government investigations into his businesses makes us wonder if the Biden Administration is targeting him for regulatory harassment.”

...

Indeed, the Commission’s decision today...cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts, or policy.

Here is a story of the White House denouncing him after he "endorsed a post on X".

And-- why do you think elon musk is somehow especially and irrationally persecuted?

I don't think either of those things. It's bog-standard waging the culture war, which is instrumentally rational for the perpetrators.

I think it's bad.

Thank you for these informative and interesting links. I'd wager that the starlink decision specifically has more to do with elon musk's behavior re: threatening to cut service to ukraine (and other related ukranian-russian war shenanigans) but will otherwise concede the point.

I found a much clearer example this morning: California officials cite Elon Musk’s politics in rejecting SpaceX launches (via here):

The California Coastal Commission on Thursday rejected the Air Force’s plan to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

“Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” Commissioner Gretchen Newsom said at the meeting in San Diego.

I'm not saying personal antipathy didn't play a role, but that same news article provides a list of other arguments. "Mean tweets" is just the attention-grabbing headline-- the meat of the dispute is a bog-standard environmental/bureaucratic power struggle.

“I do believe that the Space Force has failed to establish that SpaceX is a part of the federal government, part of our defense,” said Commissioner Dayna Bochco.

Things came to a head in August when commissioners unloaded on DOD for resisting their recommendations for reducing the impacts of the launches — which disturb wildlife like threatened snowy plovers as well as people, who often have to evacuate nearby Jalama Beach.

Commissioner Justin Cummings voted to approve the plan but said he was still uncomfortable about a lack of data on the effects of launches and that he shared concerns about SpaceX’s classification as a military contractor.

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