General Elon Musk Fukkery Thread
- Thread starter Armchair Militant
- Start date
Why?
Fired us, refused to pay severance (which any non-compete worth a damn is built on), and is claiming folks are stealing secrets?
Difference between being cheap and being frugal. Being cheap gonna cost Elon more than the $44B he paid.
twitter competitors have little to no debt and threads basically have billions backing them while twitter is billions in debt, it's over for them.
Pipe down. It’s a funny reference to what Gunna said in the YSL case. How much is Elon paying you to defend his honor around here anyway.
I was just honestly asking. I’m curious to know why some people want Twitter to be finished. I’m not trolling. I told you I’m here for the fukkery I don’t have a horse in the race (Elon/zuck) . Twitter is my homebase tho.
I want Twitter to go under as it's really a relic. It's really the only place where Right-Wingers can harass the Left, and not face punishment. Other sites don't let you get away with that shyt, as the Right doesn't want to go to Truth Social; they live to harass, bully people for the likes. With Twitter out of the way... there will still be harassment, but not at the levels one would see at Twitter.
The Left has already accepted other platforms, while the Right doesn't want change... all other places are Too PC/Woke for them.
Do you consider yourself “the left” ?
you got a couple thousand twitter followers tho, you got more than A horse in this race.
as a non-registered user of twitter, i can't even claim not to be losing something of interest to me.
you think 30 million people signed up because of politics?
What does this have to do with what I asked him?
BK The Great
Veteran
He’s actually suing Threads? 
He’s feeling the pressure of them outperforming Twitter.
He’s feeling the pressure of them outperforming Twitter.
I would consider myself on the Left, yes.
Gotta prop his grifting skills!
MALIK RAINEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’
New Tesla facility in Buffalo was supposed to house a huge solar-panel operation, but the project hasn’t turned out as planned.
Tesla’s factory in Buffalo was built by New York state.
By Julie Bykowicz and Ted Mann
July 6, 2023 10:04 am ET
BUFFALO, N.Y.—New York spent nearly $1 billion over the past decade on Elon Musk’s ambitious plan for what was supposed to be the largest solar-panel factory in the Western Hemisphere, one of the largest-ever public cash outlays of its kind.
“You almost have to pinch yourself, right?” New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a construction ceremony for the factory in 2015. “That this is too good to be true.”
Eight years later, that looks like a pretty good assessment.
New York state paid to build a quarter-mile-long facility with 1.2 million square feet of industrial space, which it now owns and leases to Tesla for $1 a year. It bought $240 million worth of solar-panel manufacturing equipment. Musk had said that by 2020 the Buffalo plant each week would churn out enough solar-panel shingles to cover 1,000 roofs.
The Tesla solar-energy unit behind the plan, however, is averaging just 21 installations a week, according to energy analysts at Wood Mackenzie who reviewed utility data. The building houses some factory workers, but also hundreds of lower-paid desk-bound data analysts working on other Tesla business.
The suppliers that Cuomo predicted would flock to a modern manufacturing hub never showed up. The only new nearby business is a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. Most of the solar-panel manufacturing equipment bought by the state has been sold at a discount or scrapped.
A state comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, which rose on the site of an old steel mill. External auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment.
“It was a bad deal,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents Buffalo. “A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
The former governor’s spokesman defended the project, saying the factory site has more jobs on it now than when it was an empty lot where a steel mill once stood.
Jason Conwall, a spokesman for the state agency overseeing the project, said: “Tesla has made substantial contributions to the local economy, aligning with the region’s overall economic revitalization.”
The state expected solar suppliers to flock to the development. So far, the only other new business nearby is a Tim Hortons. PHOTO: MALIK RAINEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The state has agreed to amend the terms of its subsidy 12 times over the years, including by reducing the number of jobs to be created in manufacturing and shifting deadlines to accommodate the company.
Although there aren’t as many manufacturing jobs as the company and politicians had forecast, Tesla reported in February it has created 1,700 positions there, enough to meet its obligations to the state and avoid a $41 million annual penalty.
Musk and Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Cuomo declined to be interviewed.
America’s governors are swept up in an arms race of awarding packages of taxpayer money to attract industrial megaprojects. Contributing are President Biden’s federal subsidies to build up U.S. manufacturing, particularly for electric-vehicle battery and semiconductor plants, some of which require states to kick in additional incentives.
Last year, states gave each of eight company facilities more than $1 billion in tax breaks and other aid, according to Good Jobs First, a subsidy tracker funded partly by labor unions. Until then, there had never been a year with more than three such deals.
In Wisconsin, a factory by Taiwan’s Foxconn that was to employ 13,000 workers in exchange for some $3 billion in state subsidies sits mostly empty. Suburban Virginia offered tax breaks to win a competition for Amazon.com’s “second headquarters,” but much of that project is on hold.
Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla and space-transportation company SpaceX have received more than $4 billion worth of tax breaks and other government subsidies since 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal review of state and federal records. Nevada has provided financial incentives, including a $330 million tax abatement this year, to help Tesla build and expand a vehicle factory complex outside Reno.
In Buffalo, the state spent cash to build the factory, instead of offering tax abatements that stretch out over years. Cuomo, a Democrat, billed it as the centerpiece of what he called the “Buffalo Billion.”
“In building and equipping the Tesla solar-panel plant, the state became a direct investor in that project under the worst possible terms,” said E.J. McMahon, founding senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank. “In terms of sheer direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.”
Solar roof tiles manufactured by Tesla. PHOTO: TESLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rather than the high-tech factory workers the state intended, more than 700 of those working at the site are data analysts who review “real-time driving data that trains the AI” for Tesla’s autonomous-vehicle software, the company reported to the state in February. Others assemble components for vehicle-charging stations and backup switches for battery systems. “Tesla continues to manufacture Solar Roof,” Tesla reported about the solar-panel shingles product, but it provided no specifics.
MALIK RAINEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’
New Tesla facility in Buffalo was supposed to house a huge solar-panel operation, but the project hasn’t turned out as planned.
Tesla’s factory in Buffalo was built by New York state.
By Julie Bykowicz and Ted Mann
July 6, 2023 10:04 am ET
BUFFALO, N.Y.—New York spent nearly $1 billion over the past decade on Elon Musk’s ambitious plan for what was supposed to be the largest solar-panel factory in the Western Hemisphere, one of the largest-ever public cash outlays of its kind.
“You almost have to pinch yourself, right?” New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a construction ceremony for the factory in 2015. “That this is too good to be true.”
Eight years later, that looks like a pretty good assessment.
New York state paid to build a quarter-mile-long facility with 1.2 million square feet of industrial space, which it now owns and leases to Tesla for $1 a year. It bought $240 million worth of solar-panel manufacturing equipment. Musk had said that by 2020 the Buffalo plant each week would churn out enough solar-panel shingles to cover 1,000 roofs.
The Tesla solar-energy unit behind the plan, however, is averaging just 21 installations a week, according to energy analysts at Wood Mackenzie who reviewed utility data. The building houses some factory workers, but also hundreds of lower-paid desk-bound data analysts working on other Tesla business.
The suppliers that Cuomo predicted would flock to a modern manufacturing hub never showed up. The only new nearby business is a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. Most of the solar-panel manufacturing equipment bought by the state has been sold at a discount or scrapped.
A state comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, which rose on the site of an old steel mill. External auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment.
“It was a bad deal,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents Buffalo. “A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
The former governor’s spokesman defended the project, saying the factory site has more jobs on it now than when it was an empty lot where a steel mill once stood.
Jason Conwall, a spokesman for the state agency overseeing the project, said: “Tesla has made substantial contributions to the local economy, aligning with the region’s overall economic revitalization.”
The state expected solar suppliers to flock to the development. So far, the only other new business nearby is a Tim Hortons. PHOTO: MALIK RAINEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The state has agreed to amend the terms of its subsidy 12 times over the years, including by reducing the number of jobs to be created in manufacturing and shifting deadlines to accommodate the company.
Although there aren’t as many manufacturing jobs as the company and politicians had forecast, Tesla reported in February it has created 1,700 positions there, enough to meet its obligations to the state and avoid a $41 million annual penalty.
Musk and Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Cuomo declined to be interviewed.
America’s governors are swept up in an arms race of awarding packages of taxpayer money to attract industrial megaprojects. Contributing are President Biden’s federal subsidies to build up U.S. manufacturing, particularly for electric-vehicle battery and semiconductor plants, some of which require states to kick in additional incentives.
Last year, states gave each of eight company facilities more than $1 billion in tax breaks and other aid, according to Good Jobs First, a subsidy tracker funded partly by labor unions. Until then, there had never been a year with more than three such deals.
In Wisconsin, a factory by Taiwan’s Foxconn that was to employ 13,000 workers in exchange for some $3 billion in state subsidies sits mostly empty. Suburban Virginia offered tax breaks to win a competition for Amazon.com’s “second headquarters,” but much of that project is on hold.
Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla and space-transportation company SpaceX have received more than $4 billion worth of tax breaks and other government subsidies since 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal review of state and federal records. Nevada has provided financial incentives, including a $330 million tax abatement this year, to help Tesla build and expand a vehicle factory complex outside Reno.
In Buffalo, the state spent cash to build the factory, instead of offering tax abatements that stretch out over years. Cuomo, a Democrat, billed it as the centerpiece of what he called the “Buffalo Billion.”
“In building and equipping the Tesla solar-panel plant, the state became a direct investor in that project under the worst possible terms,” said E.J. McMahon, founding senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank. “In terms of sheer direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.”
Solar roof tiles manufactured by Tesla. PHOTO: TESLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rather than the high-tech factory workers the state intended, more than 700 of those working at the site are data analysts who review “real-time driving data that trains the AI” for Tesla’s autonomous-vehicle software, the company reported to the state in February. Others assemble components for vehicle-charging stations and backup switches for battery systems. “Tesla continues to manufacture Solar Roof,” Tesla reported about the solar-panel shingles product, but it provided no specifics.
Con't
Empire State Development, the state agency overseeing the subsidies, doesn’t keep track of what is being produced at the Tesla factory, or any others the state has supported, said a spokeswoman, Pamm Lent.
Tesla’s deal with the state requires it to stay in the factory, for $1 a year, through 2029.
Buffalo, once an engine of manufacturing, has stagnated for generations as industrial companies headed south. Previous efforts at renewal largely fell flat. In 2012, Cuomo said he wanted to spend $1 billion in state taxpayer money to turn Buffalo around, and regional leaders tapped the think tank Brookings Institution to outline an investment strategy.
Central to the plan, laid out in a 2013 policy paper, was to avoid directing too much state aid to a few large companies. New York’s publicly stated goal was to incubate a handful of small startups in promising economic niches.
Cuomo’s adviser on the Buffalo project, State University of New York nanoscience professor Alain Kaloyeros, recruited solar-panel startup Silevo and LED lighting company Soraa to anchor the planned high-tech hub. The state said it would spend $100 million to build Silevo’s plant, in exchange for the company creating 1,300 jobs.
As it was finalizing that deal, Kaloyeros learned that SolarCity, then the country’s leading solar-panel installer, was considering acquiring Silevo. Musk was SolarCity’s chairman and largest investor. His cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive ran the company.
Elon Musk unveiled the solar roof at an event in Los Angeles in 2016. PHOTO: NICHOLA GROOM/REUTERS
Working the phones, Kaloyeros tried to ensure that SolarCity would commit to keeping Silevo in Buffalo when they announced the acquisition, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Without alerting Cuomo, Musk and his cousins wrote in a blog post that the Buffalo factory would manufacture enough panels annually to produce one gigawatt of electricity. That is the equivalent of more than three million solar panels, according to the Department of Energy. “We are in discussions with the state of New York to build the initial manufacturing plant,” Musk and his cousins wrote, vowing to start operating “one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world” within two years.
Cuomo was irate at being upstaged by Musk, according to the people familiar with the talks and email correspondence reviewed by The Journal. Kaloyeros told the governor’s staff in an email that Musk had “jumped the gun” in stating a goal of producing one gigawatt of power. Kaloyeros assured the administration that Cuomo would soon have his own news to break.
“The actual deal being considered is much bigger..5 GW to 10 GW..with 5,000 jobs..and that is being saved for the governor,” he wrote. Rather than scold Musk for frontrunning Cuomo, Kaloyeros wrote, “I prefer to shame Musk instead into joining the governor in announcing the much bigger deal asap.”
In September 2014, New York agreed to spend $750 million on the solar project, more than seven times its initial commitment.
Because the SolarCity project was to be so big, New York bumped its other original Buffalo tenant, Soraa, promising to find it another home. Soraa has since left New York.
At the August 2015 construction ceremony, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the new facility, called Riverbend, would soon churn out 10,000 solar panels a day and create 3,000 jobs.
That October, SolarCity persuaded the state to remove the term “high-tech” from the jobs agreement, and reduced, from 900 to 500, the number of jobs that would be required to be in “manufacturing operations” at the Buffalo plant.
By the summer of 2016, SolarCity was about $3 billion in debt and nearly out of cash. Tesla acquired it. Some Tesla shareholders sued, alleging Musk was using the carmaker to bail out another of his interests. A Delaware judge ruled in Musk’s favor last year, citing an increase in Tesla’s share price as evidence the SolarCity acquisition hadn’t harmed investors.
Musk departs a Delaware court in 2016 after testifying in a lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholder that alleged Musk used Tesla to bail out SolarCity. PHOTO: AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Empire State Development, the state agency overseeing the subsidies, doesn’t keep track of what is being produced at the Tesla factory, or any others the state has supported, said a spokeswoman, Pamm Lent.
Tesla’s deal with the state requires it to stay in the factory, for $1 a year, through 2029.
Buffalo, once an engine of manufacturing, has stagnated for generations as industrial companies headed south. Previous efforts at renewal largely fell flat. In 2012, Cuomo said he wanted to spend $1 billion in state taxpayer money to turn Buffalo around, and regional leaders tapped the think tank Brookings Institution to outline an investment strategy.
Central to the plan, laid out in a 2013 policy paper, was to avoid directing too much state aid to a few large companies. New York’s publicly stated goal was to incubate a handful of small startups in promising economic niches.
Cuomo’s adviser on the Buffalo project, State University of New York nanoscience professor Alain Kaloyeros, recruited solar-panel startup Silevo and LED lighting company Soraa to anchor the planned high-tech hub. The state said it would spend $100 million to build Silevo’s plant, in exchange for the company creating 1,300 jobs.
As it was finalizing that deal, Kaloyeros learned that SolarCity, then the country’s leading solar-panel installer, was considering acquiring Silevo. Musk was SolarCity’s chairman and largest investor. His cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive ran the company.
Elon Musk unveiled the solar roof at an event in Los Angeles in 2016. PHOTO: NICHOLA GROOM/REUTERS
Working the phones, Kaloyeros tried to ensure that SolarCity would commit to keeping Silevo in Buffalo when they announced the acquisition, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Without alerting Cuomo, Musk and his cousins wrote in a blog post that the Buffalo factory would manufacture enough panels annually to produce one gigawatt of electricity. That is the equivalent of more than three million solar panels, according to the Department of Energy. “We are in discussions with the state of New York to build the initial manufacturing plant,” Musk and his cousins wrote, vowing to start operating “one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world” within two years.
Cuomo was irate at being upstaged by Musk, according to the people familiar with the talks and email correspondence reviewed by The Journal. Kaloyeros told the governor’s staff in an email that Musk had “jumped the gun” in stating a goal of producing one gigawatt of power. Kaloyeros assured the administration that Cuomo would soon have his own news to break.
“The actual deal being considered is much bigger..5 GW to 10 GW..with 5,000 jobs..and that is being saved for the governor,” he wrote. Rather than scold Musk for frontrunning Cuomo, Kaloyeros wrote, “I prefer to shame Musk instead into joining the governor in announcing the much bigger deal asap.”
In September 2014, New York agreed to spend $750 million on the solar project, more than seven times its initial commitment.
Because the SolarCity project was to be so big, New York bumped its other original Buffalo tenant, Soraa, promising to find it another home. Soraa has since left New York.
At the August 2015 construction ceremony, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the new facility, called Riverbend, would soon churn out 10,000 solar panels a day and create 3,000 jobs.
That October, SolarCity persuaded the state to remove the term “high-tech” from the jobs agreement, and reduced, from 900 to 500, the number of jobs that would be required to be in “manufacturing operations” at the Buffalo plant.
By the summer of 2016, SolarCity was about $3 billion in debt and nearly out of cash. Tesla acquired it. Some Tesla shareholders sued, alleging Musk was using the carmaker to bail out another of his interests. A Delaware judge ruled in Musk’s favor last year, citing an increase in Tesla’s share price as evidence the SolarCity acquisition hadn’t harmed investors.
Musk departs a Delaware court in 2016 after testifying in a lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholder that alleged Musk used Tesla to bail out SolarCity. PHOTO: AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS