Using a procedure that prevented legislators and the public at large from knowing what was happening or allowing debate, Senator Joe Hune added new language in an attempt to lock Tesla out of the State. Unsurprisingly, Senator Hune counts the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association as one of his top financial contributors, and his wife’s firm lobbies for the dealers.
In the Netherlands, we call this corruption.
(It happens too, but so openly? Don't you guys have rules against this? Or media who like scandals?)
I live in Michigan, and was dishearten when I read about this story the other day. But not really that surprised.
A few observations:
- Tesla isn't a name brand here like Ford or GM. In fact, if you asked a lot of people if we should help the Big Three with this sort of legislation, you might be surprised by the answer. Remember, they generate a LOT of jobs in this state: not just the Big Three, but the tier 2 and tier 3 manufactors. While I think logic would win out in the day, I wouldn't assume that everybody in Michigan _wants_ Tesla. It isn't in their best interest.
- I haven't seen one media story about this yet, outside of social media.
- We're in the middle of an election cycle year, including a gubernatorial race. So, the special interests picked a good time to insert this language: there are a lot of problems the state is still dealing with, including Detroit going through bankruptcy. And people want the money to win races.
Personally, I'd love to see Telsa in the state, both the cars and charging stations. But, honestly, Telsa isn't going to get much traction here until they improve cold weather battery performance.
My retired father-in-law who lives in a suburb of Detroit got a car that was not manufactured by the by the Big Three a couple years ago. He felt so much social pressure that he quickly returned it and got one that was. He told me that some "foreign" cars would be egged in his neighborhood. I put foreign in quotes, as big three cars are not always manufactured in the US and sometimes other cars are manufactured here. But if you are from Detroit, where the headquarters is and the profits go back to matters most, and tangibly matters.
and friend of mine's father drives around Flint, MI in a Honda Civic with the license plate "GMLEFT." Needless to say, he has frequently had to deal with vandalism. The truth hurts.
I live in a Detroit suburb, a large number of the residents here are engineers, many for GM, Ford and Chrysler, but quite a few for Toyota, Hyundai and other foreign suppliers (like Bosch and Yazaki). I see many domestic, but almost as many imports here.
I think a lot of the stigma is gone, certainly there is considerable pressure for people to drive their employers vehicle to work, but at least in my (relatively upscale) neighborhood, I would feel no social pressure against, and I bet I would have a bunch of engineers come visit, if I dug up a 100k and put a Tesla in my driveway.
Agree. I worked for one of these three companies for a span. While I was there, they did have a rule that if you're not driving their car, you can't park it in the covered parking lot. That was the extent of the backlash, and I've lived in this area most of my life. I think a lot of these stories and anecdotes about tires getting slashed, and people being harassed for driving foreign are not accurate today.
I think part of that might be the crowds you hang with. I would expect petty vandalism more from blue collar types than I would engineers and other professional types.
I've been a contractor for one of the Big 3 at one point in the early 2000's. I was given a Kia at Enterprise to drive, and when I came out on my first day, it was encased with no less than 300 pallets and shrinkwrap.
Apparently, they forgot to tell me that you shouldn't drive a non-UAW vehicle onto the parking lot.
Enterprise's Roadside Assistance guy was not happy with me when he had to help me pull the pallets away so I could get my vehicle out.
I agree that there's not a stigma for driving a foreign car around Detroit anymore.
Interestingly, my father worked for Chrysler outside of Detroit from the late 1950s into the 1970s.
And oddly enough, he drove a VW Beetle in the 1960s. As you can imagine, when things were good, he was just viewed as the eccentric guy who drove a puny foreign car (why would anybody in their right mind do that?).
In the 1970s (and 1980s) doing something similar was probably a moderately dangerous move.
I've been back many times during my life and in the 1990s and onward, I see plenty of foreign cars.
I live in a very cold place with weather comparable to Norway. There are lots of problems when it comes to dealing with cars in the winter. I have no doubt that Tesla could be a decent choice for a car, but it makes perfect sense to be a bit wary about electric vehicles manufactured in California sunshine, especially if you don't have a garage to store the car in.
In addition to battery life and cabin heating issues, there can be lots of small problems. I'm a bit worried about the fancy electric door handles, for example. I've been locked out of my car because the locks were frozen and sometimes even the doors themselves frozen solid.
I have no doubt that Tesla can overcome these issues but they will have to do extensive testing as well as make it known to the public that their car is a reliable vehicle even in wintertime.
People up here in the north tend to favor simple and solid cars and marketing Teslas and other electric vehicles is going to be difficult. The issue is half technical and half marketing.
> "it makes perfect sense to be a bit wary about electric vehicles manufactured in California sunshine"
It makes no more sense than a Florida driver being wary of overheating a car made in Detroit. There may actually be some winter weather technical problems that Tesla has yet to resolve, I honestly don't know. But everything in your post is either speculation or a fallacy called argumentum ad populum [1].
If I were to speculate, I'd assume that an electric vehicle would be more reliable than a gas powered one in the winter, not less. Ignition is simpler, there are less moving parts, etc. But it's still speculation, and you can't make an argument from a point of ignorance.
Detroit manufacturers have desert proving grounds for hot weather. Tesla doesn't seem to have the same for the cold, having just done 'days' of pre-launch testing in the cold: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/cold-weather-climate-testing.... Even my parents' Prius, from a long-established manufacturer, runs far less efficiently in Wisconsin winter.
At no point did I intend to imply that Tesla is a bad car in the Winter. I've never owned one yet, I don't really know. But as this thread shows, many people do assume so.
Had I really speculated that it really is, you'd be right.
Tesla's challenge in the North is convincing people that it is a car that is reliable even in the winter. This is going to be a harder task than actually making the car reliable in the cold.
Even still, it's probably much less controversial to say that most drivers in cold-weather climates will have less certainty of how the car will perform and hold-up. Maybe it will be a better cold-weather car, maybe worse, maybe the same. I'm of the mindset that I were buying a car in a cold weather climate, I'd prefer to let everyone else learn those lessons first while I stick with something more predictable.
This was on Reddit a couple of days ago, it seems that the Tesla door handles are able to break through ice so you can still get into the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYXKY7fpHWA
> "Electric cars have been especially popular in Norway because of generous subsidies, free parking, government-provided re-charging stations, the right to use express lanes on highways and exemptions from tolls."
Yeah, Michigan has (almost) none of that.
Cold weather battery performance could be ignored here if there were charging stations all over. Sure, there are a handful of charging stations scattered around if you live in Ann Arbor or something, but it's not like I can drive from there to Traverse City and reliably find charging stations. Especially in cold weather where I couldn't make it on one charge without freezing in the cabin. And good luck in the Upper Peninsula.
I'd love to own a Tesla / other electric vehicle. But between the cost, the winter performance, and the current lack of infrastructure, it's just not smart IMHO.
Tromsø got 95 inches of snow from a single month in 1997. All 95 inches were during the month of December IIRC. On the average, Tromsø gets a ton more snow than that across its year.
Tromsø is one of the snowiest locations in the world.
No, I think I understood your point, and the point of the second article. (Thanks for that, by the way, I wasn't aware that Tesla had improved battery performance by keeping them warm. A neat idea.) I just didn't write my response very well, and for that I apologize.
What I was referring to was mostly the amount of energy the climate control system uses. Heating the cabin is going to suck some juice. I've talked to Chevy Volt owners about their winter performance and they say heating is their biggest problem in the winter. Even with the gasoline engine running to provide some waste heat for the cabin, they still get 50% of their normal range if they turn the heat on. If they're OK with driving to work wearing thick gloves and a winter parka while scraping the ice from the inside of their windshield, they only lose about 20% of their range which I presume is purely due to cold-weather battery performance at that point. Elon claims in the second article only 10% loss due to heating the cabin which frankly I don't believe and am chalking up to "MPG benchmarking nonsense." I admit I could be wrong, but I'd have to see some compelling numbers.
I believe my main point still stands though, which is that the government of Norway has built up the infrastructure and given people incentive to drive these cars. This doesn't exist in Michigan. Chargemap.com says that there are 1,416 charging stations in Norway. According to energy.gov, Michigan has 700. Meanwhile, according to the population density map on Wikipedia (1994 was the newest I could find, sadly) almost all the population in Norway is condensed into very small areas along the edges. Michigan is all over the place (except for the UP, which is noticeably lower). Assuming they only installed charging stations where there are people, this means that while in Norway, you likely have access to a charging station wherever you drive, unlike Michigan. So basically, we're comparing apples to kumquats here and you can't just point to the popularity of Tesla as proof of anything other than Norway's government was forward thinking.
Exactly this. I'm about to graduate with a BS in Computer Science from Oakland University. We're less than a mile away from Chrysler World HQ. I'd say about 90% of my classmates already are, or are going to, work for one of the Big 3 or Big 3 suppliers. If you explained this situation to most people you met on the street, they would probably be in favor of fucking over Tesla.
Cars are pretty much the backbone of the entire economy here in MI. It's getting better, but not fast enough. Apparently what happened to Flint and Detroit wasn't enough of a wakeup call for everyone.
- I haven't seen one media story about this yet, outside of social media.
I also live in michigan and both of the major detroit newspapers had this on the front page early this morning [0][1].
- Tesla isn't a name brand here like Ford or GM. In fact, if you asked a lot of people if we should help the Big Three with this sort of legislation, you might be surprised by the answer. Remember, they generate a LOT of jobs in this state: not just the Big Three, but the tier 2 and tier 3 manufactors. While I think logic would win out in the day, I wouldn't assume that everybody in Michigan _wants_ Tesla. It isn't in their best interest.
This is about helping dealerships, not manufacturers so you'd think that any support for the Big Three manufactures wouldn't correlate with support for this bill.
Yes, thanks, we know. One could even say this is the core reason for many of the USA's other problems: the continuing financial crisis, for-profit medical system, huge rates of incarceration, justice system inequalities based on money, ever-widening income disparity, obscenely massive government spending, I could go on.
The only solution is to have the legislators pass a law to stop it. Because they are huge beneficiaries of the current corruption, that is unlikely to happen and the American government and economy will continue to erode.
I watched the whole thing waiting for his proposed solution. There are plenty of people that at the end of that talk would be willing to give of themselves (time and money) to fix the problem. So what does he give us?
? I dunno, love or something
This is so disappointing. If we really cared, then wouldn't it be worth starting with a strategy, a plan with steps that could result in a solution? Drumming up enthusiasm to do "something" without a call to action is just raising awareness nonsense.
Of course, if we did have a plan to stop corruption, very powerful people would likely oppose it. The amount of money held by those that would be hurt by fixing campaign finance is staggering and they are probably not willing to to restrain themselves ethically from doing whatever it takes to prevent reform.
A friend of mine pointed out that the way US politicians have to campaign, they're always in need of donations for funding for electoral reasons. Even if you're not particularly prone to corruption, there's the problem that the only people you have time to give your ear to are the people who are going to give you money. It's a simplified view, but it does illustrate one problem with the way the US elects its officials.
I'm sure they have issues of their own, but I believe Japan has a uniform cap on what politicians can spend on election campaigns. Just one possible solution.
What I mean is after the financial crisis of 2008, the US has made no significant law changes, has not increased enforcement and all the key players are still in their cushy positions (and not in jail.) We have fixed nothing so it is only a matter of time before it happens again.
What about when campaign finance reform was passed? I thought that it was a fantastic idea, but we ended up with super PACs, which have seemingly unlimited funds. Even worse, the politicians they support can say that they don't have control and shed any liability.
I too want to hear ideas for fixing the system, but I think it is going to take more than just a few laws being passed.
If you say "I'm giving you $1M to pass this law", it's corruption, if you say "I'm giving you $1M, but if you don't pass this law i'm going to withdraw it", then it's lobbying.
You can't paint all lobbying with the same brush. There are beneficial lobbying groups out there helping to bring a voice to issues in an arena where they would otherwise normally be drowned out. We just focus on the bad ones because they tend to have greater influence. Absolutist positions such as this are rarely true and sensible.
If the question was whether or not to ban lobbying, how do the benefits of lobbying stack up against the damage? That whole cost-benefit analysis thing...
Solution: Only a candidate can pay for ads, campaigning, and the like. There is a campaign contribution cap reasonably low as your average citizen could reach it. None of these BS PACs, none of this "I'll make a large donation if you 'listen' to what I want".
What happens in the rich candidate vs poorer candidate elections then? The richer one would get a lot more viewership and exposure, increasing his chances to win.
The problem, of course, is that the courts have struck down similar (actually, less restrictive) laws. So it doesn't seem as though there is any path that would lead us to that from where we currently stand.
I am not a lobbyist, but I am aware of the fact that contacting your representative to do something you want him/her to do is, in fact lobbying them. It's literally the dictionary definition:
"seek to influence (a politician or public official) on an issue."
My personal opinion is that an individual calling their representative is not the same as tons of money being poured into campaigns, but the fact remains that it is, by definition, lobbying.
Therefore, doing away with ....all.... lobbying, as the original post suggested we do, removes our voices from the system as well.
Is there a name for the argumentative tactic of speaking for a fictitious group of people so one can say, "I believe the thing you're saying is wrong, therefore everyone believes the thing you're saying is wrong"?
What is your point, then, exactly? First of all, it's clear the original post wasn't talking about "lobbying" as you've quoted its definition but not its actual usage. So why bring it up at all, if not to discourage those who support campaign reform simply by browbeating them into submission?
Seriously, why discuss trivial definitional disagreement when it only serves to muddy the waters and decrease the SNR of the conversation?
Because when it comes to campaign reform, there is only one way to accomplish it; legislation. Word choice and accurate usage are the most important things when it comes to legislation. You've never experienced tedious noise until you've been involved in the process of drafting federal legislation.
It's not implied purpose that matters. If you leave ambiguity, someone will read ambiguity. That's why there are entire panels and institutions dedicated to interpreting the meaning of the law.
So, I brought it up, because if you say 'we should do away with all lobbying', that does, by definition, include contacts by citizens to representatives. The original question was whether the benefits from good lobbying outweighed the drain of bad lobbying. I put my two cents in because I felt it necessary to define lobbying to render the question null through poor word choice.
The real question is whether or not substantive campaign finance reform needs to occur. Businesses and citizens both should have access to their representatives. It's whether or not a business or wealthy enough citizen should be able to effectively buy an elected official.
The question is whether or not to ban lobbying is not a reasonable one, if only because lobbying would not be able to be banned just on a principle of free speech alone. People have a voice—good, bad, whatever—and lobbying provides an efficient means of communicating that voice. The question is rather how to reduce, if not obviate, the damage caused by the role of money in lobbying without violating free speech rights.
It doesn't matter how different it is: If money is not speech, why couldn't Congress prevent the Times from spending money to write and print articles about candidates?
Have a guess. I have one: the consumer pays up nicely in the end. Lobbying is done (most of the time) for the benefit of coorporations who wan't to expand their business volume.
There are beneficial lobbying groups out there helping to
bring a voice to issues in an arena where they would
otherwise normally be drowned out.
Lobbying is like advertising[1] in that it's a vicious cycle. If company A spends $100 on advertising, then they capture the market, and push out company B. In retaliation, company B spends $150, and company A spends $200...
In 2010, Coca-cola spent $2.9 billion on advertising. They only did that because Pepsi spent about the same amount.
"Good" lobbyists only exist because bad lobbyists exist. If you could cut the budget of every lobbying firm by 50% then nothing would change. The only thing that affects outcomes i proportional spend.
1: In fact it is advertising, to an audience segment of one.
Companies like coca cola and mcdonalds have to advertise that much because they offer poor quality products that would otherwise be irrelevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8344345
You know what's also a good way to bring issues into 'the arena'? People's initiatives. Democracy is only really a stable system that can protect civil rights if you go all the way with it. There shouldn't be a law that the people as a whole cannot throw out. Otherwise a political system is not worth being called 'democracy' (= reign of the people). The government is supposed to be serving the people as a whole, not just a few financially strong and powerful groups.
With all the communications and monitoring technology, I am surprised we still have the antiquated representative system. This system came about in an era where the travel time of a message was in days not milliseconds.
Lobbying in the form of "We think this is a good idea, and here's why you should vote for it" is fine, regardless of the issue. Lobbying in the form of "We think this is a good idea, and a million dollars says you should vote for it" is bad, regardless of the issue, even if the position they advocate is a good one.
How do you reconcile freedom of speech with restrictions on campaign contributions. The courts have been pretty consistent in finding the various campaign finance laws to be overly broad and restrictive when it comes to the 1st Amendment.
Sure, people can spend money on tools for speech, but that's not what causes problems. It's when people give money to a political group that things get nasty and voting power starts to shift to those with cash.
Money is speech. Freedom of speech doesn't mean standing on a soapbox in a public square denouncing King George. It covers most forms of communication; oral, print, radio, tv, internet, billboards, you name it. Just because the 1st Amendment doesn't explicitly protect PACs doesn't mean that they're not an extension of what the Founding Fathers meant to protect.
> Sure, people can spend money on tools for speech, but that's not what causes problems.
That is what PACs do. The problem is that people are spending too much money on advertising for candidates. Any solution in which people can spend unlimited money on tools for speech has not drawn a line between money and speech.
There's nothing corrupt about it. The voting citizens of Michigan like the auto industry the way it is and they have an understandable fear of disruptive new technologies. It makes good sense that someone representing a state known for producing automobiles would accept campaign contributions from automobile manufacturers. Many of the people he represents are employed by those companies in some way and it's his job to advocate for their interests and work with their lobbyists. It's good that a senator's campaign is funded by the businesses from his or her state, as opposed to being funded by organizations that have nothing to do with the concerns of the state's citizens. The people and their representatives are on the same team.
Representative democracies work the same in the US, the Netherlands and all over. If a majority of the people of Michigan were vocally demanding Tesla dealerships, they would get them. That might be the case in a few years, but all we can do now is let the system work. There's a midterm election coming up soon and all of the Michiganders on hn can vote and convince others to vote for Tesla, but change may take time.
>It makes good sense that someone representing a state known for producing automobiles would accept campaign contributions from automobile manufacturers
I, for one, agree with you wholeheartedly. This is politics in action. Just because you don't particularly agree with a decision doesn't mean it isn't working as intended.
When subjects like this are broached on this forum, we hear about lobbying and corruption, as if companies like Tesla-- who direct tax credits to rich people and play states off other for employment-- are above this. The tech industry in general is a huge lobby.
> It makes good sense that someone representing a state known for producing automobiles would accept campaign contributions from automobile manufacturers.
Except, you know, that the contributions weren't from automobile manufacturers, but from the dealerships, whose interests are in conflict with the manufacturers (the more one party earns, the less there is for the other).
They represent the corporations but in the case of an autodealer association they are probably claiming to represent their employees. Think of them similar to a union except they are lobbying legislators instead of corporations.
I never said auto dealerships but the autodealer associations in each state. The associations are the ones that are doing the lobbying on behalf of dealers. IIRC Ford tried to do direct sales to customers in the 90s maybe? The Ford dealers lobbied and shut Ford out.
In the Netherlands it's done via mutual favors, usually in the form of cushy and insanely overpaid jobs for former politicians and civil servants in exchange for favorable laws and government contracts. This happens openly in a way that would be called scandalous corruption in Germany.
In the Netherlands, we call what happens in other countries corruption and think our own shit doesn't smell. And because international corruption stats are usually self-reporting, we maintain the illusion we are squeaky clean. Bullshit.
There are fairly objective rankings of this sort of thing[1] and both The Netherlands and Germany score significantly better than the US.
That we also have corruption does not mean it is as bad as elsewhere and does not mean we don't get to call out blatant examples of it, especially blatant examples of the sort that are easy to get rid of by calling them out.
The issue is, the Netherlands, in it's firm believe that it's so much better than other countries, has created a warped perception of corruption, which makes us look good in those survey based rankings. Because we actually believe our own delusion.
Take for instance the recent German corruption scandal that forced President Wulff to resign. Receiving such favors is business as usual in the Netherlands, and simply doesn't count as corruption. The media don't care either, with the exception of shock-blog GeenStijl. But even when the latter presents cold hard evidence, nine out of ten times the entire establishment including the media just goes "meh".
Doing business in the Netherlands that involves government contracts or regulation usually means having to bribe people in some way.
I'm not saying it's that much worse than in other countries (but it tends to shock our German and Nordic friends), but we definitely don't have the moral right call out American corruption via campaign contributions when the only difference is the way politicians get paid off.
> we definitely don't have the moral right call out American corruption via campaign contributions when the only difference is the way politicians get paid off.
Why not? I'm not a politician. I didn't pass laws for favours. When I can't point at corruption when I see it, just because it also happens closer to me, aren't we just making the problem bigger?
In fact, what you're saying only underlines my point. Different countries are half-blind to the local flavour of corruption. How about we Dutch call out American corruption, and Americans call out ours? I realize nothing's really changing because all we're doing is arguing on the internet, but what in the world could be wrong with that?
Moral high ground, screw that. It's corruption, plain and simple.
That's rather dramatic but then again this is the sort of response the blog post is meant to elicit. Tesla has proven to be very adept at working with state governments for financial gain so it would appear that they're not complaining about the closeness of state government and automobile companies. Just that they came out on the losing end for now of this particular instance
- "Greater Phoenix Economic Council President and CEO Barry Broome said Nevada offers of upfront incentives and cash put it as much as $300 million ahead of other states bidding for the plant. Tesla considered Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and its home state of California"
So do you expect, now that Tesla's made people aware of this, that the politician will be prosecuted for corruption? Or do you think what's happening here is legal but it just makes you feel uncomfortable? And if it's the latter how do you think you'd feel about Tesla if you were privy to all the discussions and offers and horse trading that would have occurred over the location of their battery plant?
I can't speak for him, but I'm sure he won't be prosecuted, I don't refer to prosecutions to decide what qualifies as "corruption", and I'm sure I'd be fairly aghast at the crap Tesla did for their battery plant.
Your last question puzzles me. Are you under the impression that one can't complain about this guy unless one thinks everything Tesla does is wonderful?
Media only likes scandals about foreign enemies. Otherwise they are self-censoring in order not to loose faith in the economy which growth is just based on promise.
> Don't you guys have rules against this? Or media who like scandals?
Yes, but the rules are different for South African expats attempting to weild power as flashy know-it-all technocrats trying to boss around the home team. Understand that state and local governance attracts a strata of intellect that includes a broad swath ranging from high school gym coach all the way up to your brother-in-law's idiot nephew who needs a job.
Political corruption like this is seen as being so common place here that the media largely ignores it.
Also, the US is a BIG place. There are 4 states in the US with larger populations than the Netherlands. However, news is generally distributed at the national and local levels (local news stations and national media outlets). Very few people watch local news anymore, so local news tends to be more like Buzzfeed than informative. National news is headed that way as well.
Overall though, people aren't interested in stories about corruption. So the politicians get away with it, because stories about OMG EBOLA WILL KILL YOU draw more viewers than yet another political corruption story.
The reason it isnt counted as corruption is because they use it as campaign funds.
Domestic spying aside, this is the biggest problem I have with the my govt. How can you be representing your constituents when your pocket is filled by corporations.
i guess this is the actual section they talk about:
(i) Sell any new motor vehicle directly to a retail customer other than through franchised dealers, unless the retail customer is a nonprofit organization or a federal, state, or local government or agency. This subdivision does not prohibit a manufacturer from providing information to a consumer for the purpose of marketing or facilitating the sale of new motor vehicles or from establishing a program to sell or offer to sell new motor vehicles through franchised new motor vehicle dealers that sell and service new motor vehicles produced by the manufacturer.
In the Netherlands, we call this corruption.
(It happens too, but so openly? Don't you guys have rules against this? Or media who like scandals?)