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Tesla owner and Tesla protestor
I am a Tesla owner and an active participant in the weekly Boycott Tesla protest in Dublin. My driving a Tesla is not an endorsement of the actions of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, particularly his alarming intrusion into the functions of our government.
The nationwide protests against Tesla are not attacks on the cars or their owners. Instead, they are a peaceful and necessary response to Mr. Musk’s ambition to dismantle essential aspects of the U.S. government.
As a private individual, unqualified for public service, lacking understanding of our governmental structures and unvetted by the Senate, Mr. Musk’s influence in eliminating government agencies, defunding vital programs, and unjustifiably laying off thousands of federal employees is deeply concerning and, I believe, an overreach of power.
The consequences of these assumed actions are already being felt by our most vulnerable citizens, children, veterans, seniors and individuals with disabilities. Our elderly neighbors who rely on Meals on Wheels are now living with the fear that their next meal might be their last.
Having significantly benefited from government support himself, it is particularly galling to witness Mr. Musk state that all U.S. government aid funds and grants are “wasteful and fraudulent”. In total, Tesla has reportedly accepted an estimated $2.5 billion in government assistance (i.e. from us, the American taxpayers).
There is something fundamentally wrong in witnessing the wealthiest individual on the planet cutting the very life support systems that our most vulnerable populations depend upon. My participation in the Boycott Tesla protest is a stand against this overreach and a demand for accountability.
— Isabel Gomez
Stealing your power
Governor Newsom hamstrung the CA rooftop-solar industry because those small businesses were cutting into the profits of PG&E. That big-utilities company has donated millions to him. He’s let them get away with murder.
Now they want him to break your contract that you entered while installing rooftop solar. It wasn’t enough that his cronies in the California Public Utilities Commission slashed the incentives for all private solar installed after April 2023. They’re coming for those lucky ones who added photovoltaic cells before that date. You have an agreement that allows you to stay on net metering for 20 years, giving you a reasonable deal selling energy back to the grid. PG&E hates that.
While the PG&E monopoly jacks up its rates to funnel more money into the pockets of its CEO, shareholders and bought politicians, it blames homeowners with rooftop solar for those increases in pricing. Push back against this false narrative. Join the Solar Rights Alliance and call your California legislators. Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan has had our back and championed legislation to reverse the damage done to rooftop solar. Newsom vetoed it. Thank her and also tell our new Senator McNerney where you stand.
Studies have shown we will need both distributed solar and centralized, industrial solar to meet our needs in the 21st century. What we don’t need is a corporation willing to ruin half the solution and burn Californians alive for one more good quarterly earnings. March with the Utility Justice Campaign April 24 in Sacramento, demanding accountability from Newsom and utilities that are owned by and beholden to the public.
— Alan Marling
Mountain bikers took over Sierra Club
Mountain bikers in the San Francisco Bay Area think that the Sierra Club has influence over our East Bay Regional Park District. For some reason, the chapter’s executive committee allowed them to take over the East Bay Public Lands Committee, which the mountain bikers thought would put them into position to persuade the park district to open more trails to mountain bikes.
Actually, the Sierra Club’s mountain biking policy is a policy of no policy! It says that mountain biking is acceptable if the land manager says it is. Of course, it’s not!
Mountain biking destroys wildlife habitat, causes horrendous injuries and deaths, and drives hikers and equestrians off the trails and out of the parks — in other words, it’s incompatible with the Sierra Club’s mission.
The club’s policy is also invalid because it was created by an undemocratic procedure: REI sponsored a conference in Park City, Utah in 1994 from which anyone opposed to mountain biking (such as me) was excluded. It resulted in that disastrous mountain biking policy.
— Mike Vandeman
Why I dislike them
I am often asked by conservative friends on Facebook, “why do you hate Donald Trump so much?” Here is what I tell them…
My dislike for the man actually dovetails almost identically with my disdain for his primary donor. I disliked Trump when he was a pro-choice New York Democrat. Similarly, I disliked Elon Musk when he was a liberal environmentalist. The fact that both switched parties has nothing to do with my loathing for them and it has everything to do with it.
Both men illustrate a complete void in the qualities that I look for in leadership. Yes, they are both lacking in a moral or an ideological compass, making them unworthy of the public trust. Worse, they are utterly bereft of empathy, compassion, and even the more modest commodity of sympathy.
While their privilege makes them unable to relate to common men and women, their absence of emotional maturity makes it impossible for them to even conceive of helping other people. Who knows if I have policy differences with either of them; that ranks much further down the list.
This is why I dislike them.
— Rick Altman
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