You Shouldn’t Have To Be A Billionaire Like Elon Musk To Re-Open Your Business
By caving in to Elon Musk's demand to reopen, government officials showed their health orders have been arbitrary and ineffective all along.
Elon Musk won his game of chicken against local government bureaucrats last week. His company Tesla opted to reopen its assembly Monday in defiance of the Alameda County public health order. Now, Alameda County has agreed to the reopening. That bureaucrats caved to Musk reveals two important things: Government health orders are arbitrary, and authorities are willing to make exceptions for powerful billionaires, while squelching small businesses.
Back on March 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a shelter-in-place order with no end date in sight. Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has never been shy about voicing his opinion. He called the coronavirus panic “dumb” in a tweet and said “the panic will cause more harm than the virus, if that hasn’t happened already.”
He reluctantly shut down Tesla’s Fremont factory on March 23, after days of back-and-forth talks with Alameda County and California officials. Still, Musk couldn’t hide his disdain for the shelter-in-place orders in California and around the country. On a Tesla earnings call, Musk said, “To say that they cannot leave their house and they will be arrested if they do … this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their g-dd-mn freedom.”
Musk has been making noise about reopening Tesla factories lately, after a number of automakers reopened their assembly plants in recent weeks, including the Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama and BMW, Hyundai, and Kia plants in South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. Even the Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has issued one of the most strict stay-at-home orders among all 50 states, said she would allow GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler to reopen their assembly plants on May 18.
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A frustrated Musk took to Twitter. He first announced that Tesla had filed a lawsuit against Alameda County. Then he portended to move Tesla’s headquarters and future programs to Texas or Nevada. The Fremont Tesla plant employs more than 10,000 Californians.
Musk’s tweet received an angry response from California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, who sponsored the notorious job-killing AB5 bill that shattered the lives of freelance workers in the state. “F*ck Elon Musk,” Gonzales tweeted. This wasn’t the first time she used profanity in a public forum. Musk’s response was priceless. He tweeted, “Message received.”
Unwilling to wait any longer, Musk took the matter into his own hands. On May 11, he announced on Twitter, “Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.” His action received an enthusiastic endorsement from President Donald Trump.
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