Elon Musk's Sardonicus poll

[If you're coming in late, take a minute and read Michael Hiltzik's column to get up to speed.]

We kinda knew this going in, but it definitely feels more pumpy-dumpy as the details come in.

UPDATE: Elon Musk continued to sel shares.

Here are all the SEC filings: https://t.co/TxT5T7HDUr

Per @business, Musk "unloaded $5 billion worth of stock."

— David Gura (@davidgura) November 11, 2021

no way that Kimbal wasn't aware, who dumped $120mm on Friday ahead of the start of Musk's pre-planned $TSLA share sales

Kimbal, o Kimbal

— luis carruthers (@orthereaboot) November 10, 2021

It has become increasingly obvious that the poll was last minute cover for a long planned sale. Musk called for a vote after he had already decided what the vote was supposed to determine. It reminds me a bit of the end of William Castle's Mr. Sardonicus. Castle claimed that the audience could vote on the final fate of the titular villain but he only filmed one ending. Like Musk, he was confident he could get the audience to do what he wanted. 

Hiltzik explains the latest chapter in the Tesla story

 I don't remember if I've mentioned this recently, but Michael Hiltzik is far better at his job than anyone the NYT has working this beat.

From the LA Times:

Musk’s approach earned brickbats from people who think seriously, not whimsically, about the social and economic implications of concentrated wealth.

One is Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who crafted the proposal that drew Musk’s ire. Wyden’s plan, which hasn’t survived the legislative give-and-take on Capitol Hill, would have taxed the unrealized gains in capital assets such as stock each year. Under current law, capital gains aren’t taxed until the asset is sold — providing wealthy people with convenient means to avoid the tax for years, decades and even forever.

“Whether or not the world’s richest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the result of a Twitter poll,” Wyden tweeted. He was seconded by UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman, who helped design a billionaires tax proposed during the last presidential campaign by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

...

As of June 30, Musk was reported to own 244 million shares of Tesla, or about 23% of its stock. That includes 73.5 million shares Musk is due from exercising 2012 stock options that expire at the end of August 2022.

The common estimation of Musk’s wealth is largely dependent on the price of Tesla shares, which were trading at about $1,181 as these words were being written. That placed a value of about $288 billion on Musk’s stake.

More than 88 million of those shares are pledged as collateral on debts Musk has accumulated, according to Tesla’s 2021 proxy statement. That’s a clue to how the ultrawealthy avoid paying more than a pittance of tax on their wealth: They borrow against it to cover living expenses. Loans like those aren’t reportable as taxable income, so it’s free and clear. Rich stockholders can wait to sell until conditions are most advantageous.

Even more troubling, if they hold the assets until their death, the embedded capital gains tax is extinguished entirely; their heirs will owe tax only on the gain in value between the date of death and when they sell, if ever.

Musk, moreover, may have reason to pare down his Tesla holdings unrelated to the Twitter vote. For one thing, Tesla shares are riding at record levels just now, so it might make sense for him to cash out at least some of them while the getting is good. Further, he actually does face what looks like an inescapable tax bill next year, when Musk exercises the options on 73.5 million shares.

At current prices, Musk’s gain on the exercise would come to more than $20 billion. At the top federal and California income tax rates, or 54.1%, he would owe about $11 billion. Selling 10% of even the 170.5 million shares he has in hand now, pre-exercise, would bring him more than $20 billion, more than enough to cover the looming tax bill and perhaps even to pay down some of his existing debt.

By pretending that his stock sales were mandated by his Twitter voters, Musk forestalls any speculation that they reflect his doubts about Tesla’s future or about its stratospheric stock market valuation. Tesla shares have fallen by more than 3% as of trading Monday midday, presumably because of the poll result, but they might have fallen even further if Musk’s stock sales came out of the blue.

And in case you're wondering how Elon Musk reacts when someone tries to raise his taxes, click on the following NSFW link. 

I genuinely couldn't believe Musk just said this moments ago, even though I am a massive Musk critic, and I went and checked his timeline and, yes, that's what the richest man on the planet, the supposed tech genius, said in response to a U.S. senator calling for higher taxes (!)

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 8, 2021

 

I'll take "Things That Never Happened" for $400 pic.twitter.com/ZC2yCmBfzx

— Tesla Tunnel (@TeslaTunnel) November 9, 2021

What we were saying in 2017. What we read in Talking Points Memo yesterday.

From Feb, 2017 -- "GOP Game Theory -- things are still different" [Emphasis added.]

However, while the relationship is simple in those terms, it is dauntingly complex in terms of the pros and cons of staying versus going. If the Republicans stand with Trump, he will probably sign any piece of legislation that comes across his desk (with this White House, "probably" is always a necessary qualifier). This comes at the cost of losing their ability to distance themselves from and increasingly unpopular and scandal-ridden administration.

Some of that distance might be clawed back by public criticism of the president and by high-profile hearings, but those steps bring even greater risks. Trump has no interest in the GOP's legislative agenda, no loyalty to the party, and no particular affection for its leaders. Worse still, as Josh Marshall has frequently noted, Trump has the bully's instinctive tendency to go after the vulnerable. There is a limit to the damage he can inflict on the Democrats, but he is in a position to literally destroy the Republican Party.

We often hear this framed in terms of Trump supporters making trouble in the primaries, but that's pre-2016 thinking. This goes far deeper. In addition to a seemingly total lack of interpersonal, temperamental, and rhetorical constraints, Trump is highly popular with a large segment of the base. In the event of an intra-party war, some of this support would undoubtedly peel away, but a substantial portion would stay.

From TPM -- "Fuming Trump Told RNC On Final Day As POTUS He Was Starting New Party, Book Says" [Emphasis added.]

According to an ABC News’ report on correspondent Jonathan Karl’s upcoming book “Betrayal,” Trump reportedly told Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel during his last Air Force One flight as president that he was leaving the GOP to start a new party.

It was a quest for revenge against a party that had failed to help Trump steal the 2020 election, Karlin wrote.

“You cannot do that,” McDaniel reportedly told Trump. “If you do, we will lose forever.”

“Exactly. You lose forever without me,” he responded, according to Karl. “I don’t care.”

The inevitable damage of him potentially leaving the party was what Republicans “deserve” for “not sticking up for me,” Trump reportedly told the RNC chair.

It wasn’t an empty threat, Karl wrote. Trump was “very adamant” that he was going to do it, a source told the reporter, and he considered it a done deal at that point.

But RNC leaders were actually prepared to strike back, according to the book.

They reportedly reminded Trump and his team that there were “a lot of things they still depended on the RNC for” — specifically, money.

For starters, the RNC would stop paying the mountain of legal fees Trump had racked up with his lawsuits in his crusade to overturn the election via the courts, RNC officials reportedly warned.

The RNC would also render the Trump campaign’s coveted email address list of forty million Trump supporters “worthless,” in Karl’s words. Trump had reportedly generated what RNC officials had estimated to be about $100 million by renting out the list to other GOP candidates.

 

After all, London is so much closer to California than New York is

Whatever the reason, this piece from the Guardian by Dani Anguiano is better and more substantial than anything I've seen from the NYT on the California housing crisis.

Fresno is the largest city in the agricultural Central Valley, and has historically been one of the most affordable places to live in California. But during the pandemic, rents began to rise dramatically, climbing by 26% over 12 months.

Locals attribute the surge to people seeking to escape the high cost of living in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. But even as life returns to pre-pandemic norms, those who live here say the situation isn’t getting any better. Rents, which had been steadily climbing for years before the pandemic, are still rising and, coupled with a shortage of homes, that’s hitting low-income residents hardest.

“During Covid, Fresno and Central Valley rents just kept increasing,” said Jovana Morales-Tilgren, a housing policy coordinator with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “Many people were struggling and are still struggling. Landlords keep raising rents and people have nowhere to go.”

With a median cost of $1,141 for a one-bedroom and $1,421 for a two-bedroom, Fresno rents are still below those of San Francisco or Los Angeles. But Fresno is among the most diverse cities in the US, and also one of the poorest. About 50% of households make less than $50,000 a year, while a quarter of residents are in poverty, according to US Census data.

Fifty per cent of Fresno’s population is Latino, and several residents told the Guardian they immigrated here decades ago from Mexico because of Fresno’s job opportunities and affordability – a reality that is quickly disappearing.

“In places like Fresno you have really high rates of poverty and a significant share of people who have really low incomes,” said Carolina Reid, a faculty research adviser with the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “The labor market in Fresno is not catching up to the price of housing.”

The situation has left families with few options, forcing them to stay in substandard housing, move in with other family members or even leave Fresno entirely, Morales-Tilgren said.

To Rug is now a verb (and sadly it has nothing to do with having sex on the floor)

OK, "rug" actually was a verb before (still not involving sex) but if you hear it these days it probably refers to the end of a crypto pump and dump.

Coffeezilla is a successful youtuber who specializes in exposing financial fraudsters and get-rich-quick schemes, particularly those involving crypto-currencies. In this episode on the rise and implosion of the Squid Game coin, he focuses most of his attention on the role of the mainstream media (CNBC, BBC) in helping pump the price up, then acting shocked when the obvious scam turned out to be a scam. 

Start with the fact we have something called meme coins and the rest starts to make a weird kind of sense

From Matt Novak:

The anonymous hucksters behind a Squid Game cryptocurrency have officially pulled the rug on the project, making off with an estimated $3.38 million. Remember on Friday morning when Gizmodo told you it was an obvious scam? It was only obvious because investors could purchase the crypto but couldn’t sell it. But plenty of people didn’t get the warning in time.

The SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at a price of $2,861 before plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. ET., according to the website CoinMarketCap. This kind of theft, commonly called a “rug pull” by crypto investors, happens when the creators of the crypto quickly cash out their coins for real money, draining the liquidity pool from the exchange.

...

But the biggest red flag was that no one who purchased the coin was able to sell. That didn’t stop mainstream news outlets like the BBC, Yahoo News, Business Insider, Fortune, and CNBC from running headlines about how the new Squid Game cryptocurrency had soared by 83,000% over just a few days.

When readers pointed out a major problem with his story, NYT's Peters graciously thanked them for their constructive criticism... I'm kidding, of course

“Unlike Trump, Youngkin won’t embarrass me or my state.” A Hillary-Biden voter & dad on why he can stomach voting GOP in the Virginia governor’s race. https://t.co/Iipt6ZsRlJ

— Jeremy W. Peters (@jwpetersNYT) November 1, 2021

Perhaps Hilary-Biden voter isn't the descriptive term... 

There's something wonderfully Timesian about "referred incompletely." pic.twitter.com/LZsJEGCy5w

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) November 2, 2021

This less-than-forceful correction came only after a number of readers such as Josh Marshall did some online fact-checking.

obviously could be a different guy. what's interesting is that this Glenn Miller did used to give some money to Dems. But seems to have shifted hard right over the last couple cycles and especially over the course of the 2020 cycle.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 1, 2021

Yes, most independents donate almost exclusively to Republicans and have their own tag on their local Republican Party’s website: https://t.co/kqDCq2YEW1

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) November 1, 2021

And lots where that came from.

Peters didn't seem to appreciate the help.

people who read your story googled the person you wrote about and found out he was a crt panic astroturfer in 10 seconds and you’re mad because you didn’t think to do that?

— Matt Negrin, HOST OF HARDBALL AT 7PM ON MSNBC (@MattNegrin) November 1, 2021

Those who've been following the NYT follies for a few years will remember that the justification for eliminating the position of public editor was that they would be getting all the feedback and criticism they needed from social media, especially Twitter. To a degree it seems to be working, but the people at the paper don't seem that happy about it.

Sahl for beginners

I've been going back and filling in some of the many gaps in my cultural education. One of the performers on my to-see list was the recently departed Mort Sahl, possibly the most influential political humorist of the 20th century. 

I asked my friend, Brian Phillips, to put together a playlist. Here are his recommendations and annotations. History buffs and political junkies will particularly want to check out the last clip for its 1967 view of RFK:

Start with Mort Sahl at Sunset. He disliked the LP because they sped his voice up to fit the full act on the LP, but the material is solid. It is his earliest recording, but it was issued AFTER his first for Verve:

If you don't want to hear him talk about politics and you want to see a picture of Joan Collins you haven't seen before there is "On Relationships"

His Verve stuff is all good, here is his first:

He had a show on Monitor TV, a failed cable channel of the Christian Science Monitor. All the shows are good. Look who the guest THIS week was, though!

Even though this was cut for the up-and-down in quality GNP Crescendo label, this is nice mid-period Sahl:

The, "But why was he considered funny?" clip to show neophytes:

What do disgraced turn-of-the-millennium politicians do for a second act?

[I'll admit I'm getting a little repetitive.]

Chekhov said a good ending should be surprising but, in retrospect, inevitable. The following is probably more the second than the first, but I will admit it caught me off guard.

FT's irreplaceable Jemima Kelly fills in the details:

The last time you heard of Newt Gingrich was probably when the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives was calling for the arrest of poll workers in his home state of Pennsylvania following the “corrupt, stolen election” of 2020, or when he was writing op-eds refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden as president. 

 Or maybe it was way back during his unsuccessful bid to become the Republicans’ presidential candidate in 2012. When he spent time telling supporters in Barack Obama’s home state that “we need an American president . . . with American values” and defending the Birther movement (all while his campaign was busy racking up debts of $4.6m that still, nine years later, haven’t been paid back). 

Well, guess what, Newt’s back, baby. 

 And where do unsuccessful Republican presidential hopefuls go when they’re all out of options? Well cryptoland, of course! (Remember fellow 2012 hopeful Rick Santorum’s crypto coin for Catholics? You’re welcome.) 

 But not just any crypto will do for Newt — as it turns out, he is something of a bitcoin maximalist. He has just become an adviser at the International Bitcoin Advisory Corporation (IBAC), a new Israel-based firm run by former banker and “futurist” Avi Ifergan. IBAC describes itself as “an outfit built to serve central banks and sovereign wealth funds with all their digital assets investment needs”; their “vision is to accelerate the rate of bitcoin and other digital assets adoption among governmental institutions”. What could possibly go wrong, etc. 

A short interview follows if Newt is someone you really want to hear more from.

The benefits of procrastination

Andrew Gelman left this comment a few weeks ago:

I think there's something else going on here that lots of people _want_ these people to be non-frauds, in part for ideological reasons. I think about that when reflecting on all the support for Gladwell among various media elites. It's no surprise that the New Yorker supports Gladwell---he's one of their stars!---but it's not just the New Yorker. Or all the fans of Elon Musk. People like Musk in part because he symbolizes something good: the Heinlein-like entrepreneur who's actually building something, etc.

Anyway, I'm not sure but I feel like there's something going on here. The issue isn't just the frauds and bullshitters out there, it's also the respected elites who endorse them.

 

I was going to respond to the comment at the time, but I got distracted which was perhaps for the best, since I couldn't have come up with an example as good as this.

 First, we need to address something important but not directly related to the point of this post. While Musk didn't actually "attempt to take the company private" (see below), even if he had taken Tesla private, there is no reason to believe that it would now be worth a trillion dollars. That market cap is based on a P/E of around 350, compared to, for example, a P/E of around 20 for Ford, despite the fact that the F-150 Lightning will very probably beat the Cybertruck (so much for first mover advantage). You could tell the same story about pretty much all the major car makers, comparable tech (supported by much larger R&D budgets) and far greater revenue trading for a fraction of the price. 

Simply based on profits and assets, taking Tesla private at $420 wouldn't have been "the deal of the century." It might not have been a deal at all.

But all of this is moot since we know (and have known from nearly the beginning) that "funding secured" was nothing more than a transparent lie to facilitate a crude market manipulation. 

Elon Musk was charged with securities fraud—charges he settled, leading to the fact that he is contractually forbidden to claim, outside of court, that he did not commit fraud. $TSLA was also charged with fraud, which the company also settled. https://t.co/gl4ttj8X3E

— PlainSite (@PlainSite) October 27, 2021

At the risk of hammering the obvious, the NYT's Aaron Ross Sorkin speaks for the establishment press and he is capable of, not just overlooking massive fraud but to actually doubling down on the lie behind it (something that Musk was "contractually forbidden" to do on his own). What's worse, this is more or less what we have come to expect.

Lessons from the Russian Steppe

This is Joseph

This paper explores the huge increase in mortality seen in Russa in the 1990's, when the old system was replaced by a new one. The most interesting piece was:

Age standardised mortality from all causes increased between 1998 and 2001 by 189/100 000 among men and 49/100 000 among women . .  Similar to the increase in mortality in 1991-4 and the decrease up to 1998, over 80% of the 1998-2001 increase was due to changes in those aged 35-69 years (middle age).

It is worth noting that the largest changes occurred among those residents who were old enough to be invested in the system and would need to start over when their whole economy change. While it is quite clear that alcohol was heavily involved, the key question is why was alcohol abuse suddenly so rampant in that age bracket.

Now look at the United States. In the 2000's we opened up trade with China, which the attached article notes was associated with a 17% permanent decline in US manufacturing jobs. Now we are discussing a declining life expectancy due to an opioid epidemic. This was a lesser economic shock then the fall of the Soviet Union, and so the expected consequences are less. But the winners of this bargain were not the blue collar workers in the US, even if gains over the US as a whole may have been realized. 

But, even just as a hypothesis, this would completely change my view of disruptive innovation that involves changing the rules in a way that disfavors the current market. For example, Uber destroyed the value of many Taxi medallions, but the reasons for its success are due to regulatory games. Consider this analysis:

 1) its ability to classify itself has a “technology company” instead of a transportation company, exempting Uber from expensive taxi laws and regulations, 2) the ability to classify their drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, which allows Uber to evade the costly protections and benefits guaranteed to workers in a standard employer-employee relationship, and 3) a depressed labor market in which workers  are willing to assume the burden of risks and costs associated with driving for the company.

Clearly, #3 applies to every large company. But #1 and #2 involve changing the regulatory framework in a way that benefits the oligarchs who run Uber at the cost of the previous Taxi workers. The deaths of despair narrative makes me wonder how much of the recent decline we are seeing is due to  these changes in the rules around which ordinary people have planned their lives. 

Finally, the last part of this whole puzzling mess that has become doctrine is that rich people are better at spending money and thus are job creators. This is logic we use in no other part of the economy. Do we really think the elite central planner is better than the free market? Why is it different if the central planner just happens to control a lot of resources? 

But I think the main point here is that economic disruption without some form of compensation on the losers of the new rules may have serious impacts including on health. The main benefit of the current system is the oligarchs who benefit from a windfall. 

While we were out...

The Tesla thread has been heating up a bit.

Tesla, a company that makes electric cars but not an electric truck or electric semi, hit a market capitalization of over $1 trillion earlier today as its stock soared on a spate of good and bad news for the company. One trillion dollars! That is almost in the same league as some other companies you may have heard of, like Google.

Well, not quite yet, as, as of this writing, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a market cap of a little over $1.8 trillion, while Tesla’s is just over $1 trillion. Tesla, in any case, is in the trillionaire’s club.

Making Musk the world's first quarter-trillionaire.

Elon Musk may soon become the first person with a net worth of $300 billion.

The Tesla CEO and world’s richest man added more than $36 billion to his fortune on Monday after the automaker’s shares spiked 12.7% following the announcement that Hertz is ordering 100,000 vehicles to build out its electric vehicle rental fleet by the end of 2022.

TESLA EXTENDS GAIN TO 9.6%, HITTING $1 TRILLION MARKET VALUE https://t.co/8yQFwUqLrf pic.twitter.com/BB5RHRjyqW

— Bloomberg (@business) October 25, 2021

About that deal...

So as of Jun. '21 Hertz has $1.8b cash, $8.5b debt, and just somehow placed an order for $4.2b in vehicles from $TSLA?

Am I missing anything here?

If it's a marketing stunt to remind the world that Hertz is semi-alive it seems to have worked.https://t.co/UyxGPSD3CG $HTZZ pic.twitter.com/2aHg85AjA5

— Nate Anderson (@ClarityToast) October 25, 2021

Thank goodness that the sober, critical journalists at the NYT aren't getting swept up in the hype.

I know this is a "that's the part that bothers you?!?" moment, but suggesting that the 420 tweet was actually an attempt to take the company private rather than to manipulate the market with false claim reflects poorly on Sorkin.https://t.co/ydA811JNYD

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) October 26, 2021

[note: LAT > NYT}

For final thoughts, check out this thread. It's short but the points in makes are absolutely essential. 

It sounds like a truism, but all of the truly super-rich have a cash-gushing business at the heart of their empires (FB, Amazon/AWS, Google, LVMH, Microsoft). They "won capitalism" on its traditional terms.

Elon Musk's ascent to the summit of wealth is fundamentally different .

— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) October 25, 2021

Institutional accountability

This is Joseph

EDIT: the context of this case is that Sarah Everard was murdered by a police officer, Wayne Couzens, who arrested her for an extremely minor charge. People in the UK were concerned about how they could trust arrests by police and the police communication was poor. 

I really liked this post by David Allen Green. He pointed out the absurdity of a post by the Metropolitan Police about the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens:

Try to seek some independent verification of what they say, if they have a radio ask to hear the voice of the operator, even ask to speak through the radio to the operator to say who you are and for them to verify you are with a genuine officer, acting legitimately.

All officers will, of course, know about this case and will be expecting in an interaction like that - rare as it may be - that members of the public may be understandably concerned and more distrusting than they previously would have been, and should and will expect to be asked more questions.

If you feel you are in real and imminent danger and you do not believe the officer is who they say they are seek assistance by shouting out to a passer-by or if you are in the position to do so call 999.

 The gaslighting is intense. Why? Because Wayne Couzens was an actual police officer at the time of the murder. Even worse, the advice actually changed without any edit note from the even more absurd:

If after all of that you feel in real and imminent danger and you do not believe the officer is who they say they are, for whatever reason, then I would say you must seek assistance – shouting out to a passer-by, running into a house, knocking on a door, waving a bus down or if you are in the position to do so calling 999.

Why did it change? Because it was a real police officer and some of the advice the police were giving was the sort of thing that could lead to a resisting arrest charge. They were so without ideas that they had to pretend that the person in question was a "fake officer". The best that this advice could do is get one criminally charged for resisting arrest after being hit by a Taser and not actually kidnapped by the rogue officer (who will be commended for dealing with a disruptive individual and be free to strike again). Remember, the officer was real and had actual arrest powers. The issue was that the arrest was under false pretenses, and how do you challenge that in real time without getting an actual charge for misbehavior? 

The release is so tone deaf that it actually brags about deploying more officers, instead of explaining how they will make the current force more accountable, When the officers are the predators that is hardly any sort of fix. Sarah was arrested under the pretense of breaching English Covid-19 regulations before she was horrifically assaulted. We have no mechanism for disputing the motives of a police officer at the time. The real problem was an officer using police powers in a rogue fashion and fixing that required examining the powers of arbitrary arrest and detention that we give police officers.  

Why is institutional accountability so hard? 

More on the Missy Cummings story

As Lora Kolodny points out, this sort of the thing has been happening to Tesla critics for years, particularly when the critics were women.  Just ask Business Insider's Linette Lopez.

I’d just like to point out that right now, right this very moment, @elonmusk is going through my Facebook history and screen grabbing things to share with his friends on the internet... if you’re investing in Tesla or in a Tesla you need to sit with that. $TSLA

— Linette Lopez (@lopezlinette) July 5, 2018

The big difference this time is people seem to be paying attention.

.@kirstenkorosec reports in today's @TechCrunch newsletter that Dr. Missy Cummings has received death threats, something I've heard from numerous sources over the last few days. pic.twitter.com/5tu0eBNkS4

— David Zipper (@DavidZipper) October 24, 2021

1/ This is the kind of toxic scum with whom @elonmusk associates: Omar Qazi.

Here, in a since deleted tweet, Qazi sprouts an idea of how to get @NHTSAgov to stop going after Tesla's dangerous Autopilot/FSD product: sending a gay Tesla rep to convince @SecretaryPete. $TSLAQ pic.twitter.com/SFvyrF3JlM

— Motörhead (@BradMunchen) October 23, 2021

To be clear - this is really well written and I’m very glad @DavidZipper is doing this analysis with fresh eyes on something most Tesla reporters & researchers have been dealing with for a long time.

— Lora Kolodny (@lorakolodny) October 23, 2021

From David Zipper's Slate article.

Many technologists and automotive experts are cheering a Cummings appointment to NHTSA. But an extremely online community of Tesla fans is furious. A couple of hours after the news broke, Omar Qazi, a Tesla booster with a large online following, tweeted, “If they try and take Autopilot away from us we will riot so hard January 6 will look like a day at Disneyland,” concluding with a laughing emoji. Qazi later deleted the tweet, issuing an apology and claiming it was a joke.

That may be true, but much of the online Tesla community seemed to be having a meltdown (including more than a few people who employed disturbing and misogynistic language). Within hours, a petition on Change.org called on the Biden administration to reconsider Cummings’ appointment, collecting more than 18,000 signatures in two days. Elon Musk himself tweeted, “Objectively, her track record is extremely biased against Tesla,” and then jokingly responded to a fake account created in Cummings’ name. On Thursday evening, after enduring two days of online harassment, Cummings seemingly deleted her Twitter account.

The hyperventilating reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the cultlike loyalty that Tesla has inculcated with its fans, especially those active on social media (who, to be fair, do not reflect all Tesla supporters). In reality, any senior adviser’s ability to set policy is constrained by the rigidities of the Department of Transportation’s org chart as well as the byzantine federal regulatory process. No one should expect a recall of Autopilot anytime soon, even if such steps appear warranted on safety grounds, as I’ve argued previously. (In a nutshell: Autopilot should have stronger driver-monitoring systems, be given a less misleading name, and only be accessible in safe highway environments.)

But could the Biden administration ultimately force Tesla to pull Autopilot or place constraints on its use? That seems increasingly plausible. Five-year-old guidance from NHTSA articulates the agency’s authority to intervene if autonomous driving systems show evidence of “predictable abuse,” a reasonable charge to levy at Tesla given the array of YouTube videos of drivers asleep or playing games in the driver’s seat, despite warnings in Tesla’s manual. Over the summer NHTSA launched an investigation into a pattern of Teslas striking stationary emergency vehicles, and the agency has challenged the automaker to explain why it didn’t issue a recall for a recent software update. Meanwhile, a growing number of fatalities has been tied to Autopilot, including one in California in which a Tesla Model 3 traveling at 60 mph crashed into a pickup truck and killed one of its occupants (the victim’s family has sued the company). Tesla’s defenders often point to the nearly 40,000 annual traffic fatalities in the United States, suggesting that Autopilot is safer than human drivers, but evidence for that claim is lacking.