What’s next? A unicorn captured in Tennessee? The world I grew up in has changed. American Universities are handing out Play-Doh to comfort distraught liberals and “Never Trump” students. Protestors defaced a Thomas Jefferson statueat the University of Virginia due to his slave ownership. Race baiters attacked Hobby Lobby for displaying raw cotton in vases. The P.C. Police have continually demonstrated their desire to attack the America many of us love.
Now, the snowflake class is writing articles stating Ron Paul – the former Texas congressman that made a career out of criticizing bloated defense budgets and hawkish foreign policy decisions – is shilling for the defense industry. Their “evidence” is that he received five-year-old campaign contributions from some employees of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which they falsely credited with coming directly from the companies themselves.
Dr. Paul’s alleged wrongdoing was writing an op-ed mildly critical of Elon Musk, a government subsidy-eating machine and poster boy for left-wing environmental causes.
In the article, Paul, an Air Force veteran, expressed his opposition to Section 1615 of the National Defense Authorization Agreement (NDAA), which many speculate was written with the congressional intent of quietly extinguishing all serious competition to Musk’s SpaceX.
Section 1615 would bar the Air Force from funding any new launch vehicles. Coincidentally, in just a few short years, there will only be one established launch vehicle left in the marketplace -- Musk’s SpaceX.
If the NDAA is passed as is, it will stay that way for a long while.
Talk about a get-rich quick scheme.
This provision has the potential of putting a lot of taxpayer money in Elon Musk’s already fat pockets. As Dr. Paul already noted, “government contracts account for about 70 percent of SpaceX’s contracts. U.S. taxpayers have provided SpaceX more than $5.5 billion in the form of Air Force and NASA contracts.” Should Section 1615 be passed by the Senate today, that percentage will likely increase exponentially.
The P.C. Police are easy prey for the cult of personality that is Elon Musk. They reject even the possibility of Musk, one of their heroes having ulterior motives – whether it’s support of the carbon tax, support for the Paris Accords which he indirectly profits from, or now – you guessed it – possibly pushing 1615 through to passage.
Since 2003, Musk has given over $500,000 to Washington politicians, almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. SpaceX has even handed money to lobbying firms to work on pushing through past NDAAs, which contained language that would have seemingly benefitted his company – including expediting the already-planned-on government Russian engine ban, which SpaceX’s only serious competitor relies on.
All this Washington meddling is really sad when considering that the whole beauty of SpaceX’s founding was how it cut into what was once the unchecked market share of an industry giant and proceeded to cut costs by sizeable margins. Now, the founder of that same company may be working to bring the industry back to its glum past -- muscling out not just established veterans. Musk has shown himself to be a merciless competitor, claiming scalps throughout the industry and even not ruling out martians’ interference for his failures.
Musk’s blogging army points to how Section 1615 still allows for the funding of new rocket engines as push back that it will create a de facto SpaceX monopoly, claiming that it will keep his Russian engine-dependent revival afloat. And it might – on paper. But, as Pentagon officials have said time and time again, replacing the engine will lead to significant cost increases, making Musk’s company the only affordable option left for use in the United States.
Even if 1615 didn’t jeopardize the security of established market participants, would that make it an admirable provision? Is that what the followers of Musk, the so-called free market visionary, have resorted to -- keeping the status quo intact, but shutting the door on anyone else that may come next?
The Musk followers see no wrong in their leader. He is the man that has promised to take them to the stars. He can do no wrong.
The Trump administration agrees with Dr. Paul, saying 1615 would “restrict development of new space launch systems, including those whose development is significantly funded by industry … [limiting] domestic competition, which will increase taxpayer costs by several billions of dollars through FY 2027 and stifle innovation.”
Dr. Paul is the antithesis of a crony. It’s as absurd as believing a craft store is racist for publicly displaying cotton arrangements. It’s time for the Musk sycophants, and the rest of the P.C. police, to take a step off Fantasy Island. If anyone is a risk to America’s national security, it’s Elon Musk, not Dr. Paul.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-18/elon-musk-sycophants-attack-ron-paul-shill-defense-industry
