PrintMarch 4, 2025
Elon Musk: A case of 'don't hate the player, hate the game'
Elon Musk has become public enemy number one for the American Left.
A pretty high bar considering the “Great Orange Satan” is POTUS.
As Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) takes a chainsaw to government spending (corruption, fraud, waste, duplicity, etc.) the Left is whining like spoiled teenagers whose parents took away their iPhones.
One would hope politicians, of any party, would fully support any and all efforts to eliminate wasteful government spending. Even more so in a country that is $36 trillion in debt.
Alas, one would be hoping in vain.
One of their favorite talking points is that Musk should take his chainsaw to the government subsidies that have, arguably, gone a long way toward building his immense fortune.
The irony here is rich.
It was the Left that forced these subsidies down our throats in the first place in their Quixotic quest for carbon neutrality, not Elon Musk.
Here is a brief history of electric vehicle (EV) subsidies in the United States includes tax credits, manufacturing incentives, and other programs.
Tax credits:
- 2005
The U.S. Energy Policy Act established a tax credit of up to $3,400 for new hybrid vehicles.
- 2009–2010
A 50% reduction in annual automobile taxes for new electric vehicles.
- 2010
The federal government began offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 for BEVs and PHEVs.
- 2022
The Inflation Reduction Act amended the Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit, now known as the Clean Vehicle Credit.
Manufacturing incentives:
- Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Includes $6.135 billion for grants to process, manufacture, and recycle battery materials.
- Inflation Reduction Act
Includes $10 billion for a manufacturing tax credit for EVs, plus credits for battery and critical minerals facilities.
As the Left is so fond of pointing out, Elon Musk has never been elected.
Exactly. Elon Musk isn’t responsible for the litany of legislation cited above.
I must admit that until Mr. Musk purchased X (formerly Twitter,) to return it to its free speech roots, I wasn’t particularly a fan of his for the very reason that, to my mind, he had built his fortune largely on taxpayer dollars.
But that didn’t make me hate him. It just made me understand that he was much smarter than the chuckleheads that created the environment that he was able to leverage to his advantage; the U.S. Congress and presidents like Barack Obama and Joe Biden that championed the climate zealotry that led us down this path of zero carbon insanity.
So, as they say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
The left really needs to find an avenue of criticism of Mr. Musk that doesn’t lead back to themselves. Calling him an Apartheid-loving South African white racist appears to be their new strategy. That’s worked so well for them in the past.
I suppose when you represent a political movement that is bereft of ideas and reduced to defending government corruption on a massive scale, you’ll throw anything you can find at the wall to see if any of it sticks. Monkeys fling poop, shouting: “we will win, we will win!"
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