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Who's To Blame For Rules That Block Tesla Sales In Most US States?
cartechboy writes The common assumption among Tesla fans seems to be that state auto-dealer lobbyists are working with Republican legislators to enact laws banning direct sales of Tesla's electric cars to retail buyers. Is it true? The New York Times published an article with some data points that assesses the supposition. While the article mainly focuses on the conflict between Uber and the Republican party, some quotes could be easily applied to Tesla. For instance, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Preibus said, "It should be consumers, not government bureaucrats or legislators, that deicde what companies get our business." The author of the article, Josh Barro, wrote that 22 states permit direct sales of automobiles by Tesla to retail buyers, and of those the majority--14 of them-- voted for President Obama. He suggested that Democratic California, Illinois, and New York "have freer markets in auto retailing than Texas," which is presently Republican. When looking at a five-year-old article by Nate Silver that looked at political donations by car dealers, fully 88 percent of those donations went to Republican candidates, and just 12 percent to Democrats. That possibly suggests a propensity among Republican state legislators to support the interests for car dealers over those of electric-car buyers. Is the small bit of evidence enough to make a case?
Good background on the current system of dealership sinecure can be found in this short 2009 Competition Advocacy Paper from the U.S. Department of Justice, which delves into the history and effects of the dealers-only system which still prevails.
The kind of power-hungry sociopaths who restrict our technology to create artificial scarcity?
The Auto industry obviously
How about the Liberal Democrat leaning unions back in the 1960's-1970's?
The reason these laws exist is dealers were getting shut down, jobs lost, and company owned dealerships were opening up, bringing down wages and sales commissions to what they think was fair. Labor unions came in hard, lobbied for laws to "protect" their workers, got these laws passed. Now years later, the words are twisted and it's those "Evil Republicans" fault somehow.
Truth of the matter it's not a political deal, blaming Republicans or Democrats makes no sense as the laws banning car manufactorers from owning their own dealerships benefits everyone but those buying cars. Workers are happy because Big-Boy Car Manufacturers can't come in and say a;; Toyota or Chevy dealer techs get minimum wage and be happy with it. (If you aren't aware techs and such cant just shoot over to a dfferent brand dealer down the road too easy. Yes, simple things like oil change, alignments, etc you can do on any car, but there are tons of little quarts and certifications and training per each brand before they let you touch the advanced stuff). The dealership owners and sales people are happy as the car maker can no longer force them to sell the car for X amount, so they can bump up the sticker prices, and get whatever percent commission they want.
When looking at a five-year-old article by Nate Silver that looked at political donations by car dealers, fully 88 percent of those donations went to Republican candidates, and just 12 percent to Democrats. That possibly suggests a propensity among Republican state legislators to support the interests for car dealers over those of electric-car buyers. Is the small bit of evidence enough to make a case?
But we have the best democracy you can fine anywhere. It doesn't matter if our legislators are being bribed indirectly, or get embroiled in obvious conflict of interest matters.
Welcome to the USA!
Ohh wait, let's preach to the world about free markets.
Who benefits from banning [X]? With near certainty those are the people who bought off whoever is in power (the partisan nonsense in TFS is a smokescreen to keep you distracted). It doesn't matter if it's the UAW or the Auto Dealer's Association that is behind the corruption - you should be disgusted that politicians deign to tell you what kinds of cars you may purchase. "Yes, massa."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
People with Turf will try to protect it.
They will spread the money around, contribute, etc. as needed to protect it. Since at this point in time the majority of the States are run by Republicans, then they are the ones that are being lobbied by the Dealership lobbyist the most. Make no mistake, the Democrats are also being lobbied in states they run.
This all amounts to a big "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" to the Republicans by the New York Times, which fighting to remain relevant.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The creation of the FCC came under FDR's watch in 1934. Actually FDR formed a commission to study communication regulation. The study recommended that a Federal agency regulate all communications. FDR pushed for the creation of such a body and 2 DEMOCRATIC Senators introduced a bill to form the FCC. The bill passed both Houses and FDR signed it into law.
And Democracy. And human rights. And liberty.
The fact of the matter is, America is consistently full of shit and hypocritical about such things.
The chastise other countries for not doing it, and the completely fail to do it themselves.
America is a nation of blowhards, who like to tell everyone they have all the answers, and then are mired in so much crap as to be laughable.
The sad thing, is most Americans are so fucking deluded by their own story they actually believe this crap.
Time to start putting those politicians into a landfill. When a politician decides to bend over in return for campaign money, they need to be placed into a landfill. Even if there's no special election to replace them, their constituency would be better off having a vacant seat than a legislator who has already sold them out.
Hold them accountable.
Now that the Republicans have won a few elections, we get use to seeing these daily attack ads being posted on web forums like Slashdot and such. Remember, Democrats are never responsible for anything....like the last 6 years. As a Conservative, I fully expect the Republican establishment to screw over their voter base and vote in line with the Democrats and over every single issue. I expect the Republicans will get kicked out in a short while and we'll watch the Democrats go back to screwing us over and we'll watch the process repeat every decade. Welcome to our so called Democracy.
Ergo Politicians suck, because they're ALL built on lies. See ANY MEDIA for details.
Fixed that for you. Seeing evil on only one side works for both sides.
It's no so much that Republicans lie. Rather it's more like there are two factions within the party. There's the conservative, state's rights, tea party wing that is in the minority. Then there's the crony capitalist, elite, professional politician wing that only pays lip service to conservative principles just to get the votes to maintain power. These guys spend more time fighting their conservatives that challenge their power than their Democratic rivals. The latter rule the party and pretty much will legislate to maintain power.
It depends on how "selfish" the state is. State lawmakers are always looking to increase revenue and income into their state. Since automobile dealers are local, and they get a cut of auto sales, it is beneficial, generically, for states to only allow dealerships to sell cars and get their local, in-state cut of the revenue. So it takes lawmakers that can see beyond that immediate income and have vision enough to embrace the future even if it has some cost to their state.
Then of course you have states like Texas, that produce oil and gasoline, who don't like Tesla and their new-fangled 'lectric cars, who of course want to make it hard on Tesla because that is a threat to revenue for their state.
Better known as 318230.
Republicans, Democrats..... A sellout is a sellout regardless of what political mantra they spew while they rent themselves out to the highest bidder.
by 50 years or more, and reflect the situations surrounding the time in which they were passed. One can hardly expect an existing dealership system to use legal means, especially those existing laws, to protect their interests. This ought to be obvious even if one disagrees with the premise of the laws. And by the way, these laws were passed in all states over decades of time, usually in response to some bad action by the manufacturers (such as forcing dealerships to accept cars they did order, so manufactures could offload dead inventory, or not reimbursing dealerships for warranty repairs).
You cannot simply point at today's lackey Republicans as the source for these laws, nor claim them to be "anti-Tesla" anymore than 50-year-old telecom laws are "anti-Google".
A far better resource than the source in the original posting is
http://faculty.som.yale.edu/Fi...
This is an analysis predating Tesla's trouble by a bit, focusing on the government-sanctioned decimation of dealerships through the TARP process, circa 2010, and includes a nice history of franchise protection laws.
For example:
The regulation of auto franchises arose as a response to car manufacturer he regulation of auto franchises arose as a response to car manufacturer
opportunism early in the twentieth century. According to Surowiecki (2006), in 1920, Henry Ford took advantage of its established dealer network by forcing
dealers to buy inventories of new cars that they were unlikely to sell. The reason that the company could “force” dealers to take the cars was that they had all made important investments in their facilities and reputation. Thus they had sunk costs that could be expropriated. Ford and General Motors used the same strategy again during the Great Depression. These episodes demonstrated to policymakers that the franchisor, with its greater information and financial resources, might exploit investments made by the franchisees. Federal regulation followed these periods.
The starting point for auto franchise regulation is the 1956 federal act generally known as the Automobile Dealer’s Day in Court Act (ADDICA), which
provides that a car dealer may recover damages if its manufacturer fails to act in good faith in complying with the terms of the franchise agreement, including on
issues of allocation of vehicles to dealers, or matters of termination, cancellation, or transfer of the franchise. However, by the time the ADDICA was enacted, 20 states had already passed auto franchise laws. Today, every state has a law governing car manufacturer/dealer auto franchise laws. Today, every state has a law governing car manufacturer/dealer relationships.
All states require that car dealers be licensed. Even 30 years ago, 44 states had such a requirement. This regulation prevents the manufacturer from retailing cars through other means. In particular, this regulation has been a major impediment to the development of Internet distribution of new cars.
The FCC was formed by the Communications Act of 1934 to replace the radio regulation functions of the Federal Radio Commission.
The Communications Act of 1934 is a United States federal law, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 19, 1934. I believe FDR was a Democrat. The law was passed by the 73rd Congress. Both chambers had a Democratic majority. Dems in the Senate enjoyed a 60-35 majority, while over in the House thing were even rosier with Dems holding about 312 seats to Republicans 115 or so (counts varied slightly over time).
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe delivered on his promise to billionaire Michael Bloomberg this week. The Democrat proposed the restoration of the state’s limitation on handgun sales to one a month, plus mandatory background checks on buyers — enforced by a police presence.
Of course, Michael Bloomberg, corporate mogul and billionaire, funded Mr. McAuliffe to the tune of millions. Nothing liek a bought-and-paid-for politician to do your bidding.
Pointing out that Democratic senators of the 1930s had something to do with this bill doesn't mean much - the composition and political thrust of the parties changed dramatically with the Republican southern strategy of the 60s. Before that you really couldn't think of them as the parties which we so love today.
The Republican Party has become a simple Rural Party. They protect rural interests, because they found a way to gerrymander rural districts into a majority of congressional districts, despite the majority of the population living in urban areas.
Car dealers are more rural than car manufacturers - as rural areas need more dealers per person than urban dealers, while car manufacturers in a single urban environment can supply the entire country.
As such, the GOP will support the car dealers at the expense of the car manufacturers.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
But This is happening in the "conservative, state's rights, tea party wing" areas, such as Texas more than the other area. In fact the "minority" group there is much much worse at subverting the constitution.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
First, let's remember that lawmaking politicians of influence of either party are typically what, 60+ years old? 70+? These guys still have their staff print their emails for them and are surprised when a someone says 'let's watch a movie' and it doesn't involve (at best) a VCR. Not super-quick at adapting to change.
Second, until pretty recently the "target demographic" of electric car buyers was some sprout-eating weirdo from the Bay Area, ie, someone who wouldn't piss on a Republican if they were on fire, ie not someone that ever, in a million years, would VOTE Republican. OTOH, Car Dealerships are relatively typical small businessmen, whose concerns about running a business tend to coincide with GOP viewpoints and platforms. Whether they vote Dem/Rep is irrelevant, it's that they [i]could[/i] vote Republican, so which group would a Republican politician reasonably spend their time serving?
-Styopa
There are two kinds of Repbulicans, NeoCons and Libertarians. Neocons are Simply Democrat Lite banded. These are the people who support Amnesty along with the Democrats, Support Government intervention into markets (too big to fail), and so on. The others are the Libertarian, limited government types that are a much smaller crowd, but tend to be louder and better at getting more attention.
The war in the Republican party is over who has more influence at a given time. Right now, you're seeing a large number of Libertarian types coming into the new congress, which is why Boehner (a neocon) quickly passed a budget that gave the (D) just about everything they wanted. A huge number of republicans are pissed off, and seriously thinking about building a credible 3rd party, something you'll never see democrats do.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There is a much fresher data-point for the political leanings of those states — we had elections a month ago. That this non-biased and bi-partisan article — the kind we've come to expect from the Newspaper of Record — chose to use the two year old data instead to illustrate its point, means, the point probably is not supported by the more recent poll...
Is it "freer markets" for everyone, or just for the "green" technology — which got a major government loan (on very sweet terms) to survive and ought to be helped to avoid embarrassing the Democratic administration? Would those Democratic bastions of free markets be as supporting of freedom, if it were about sale of, say, high-capacity toilets?
If you really care for free markets, you'll vote Libertarian — with anybody else you still need a bloody permit to do (or sell) almost anything. Splitting hairs about who is more likely to permit this vs. that is stupid — you have your right to pursue happiness. Selling cars the way you want certainly ought to be covered by that.
No, it is not. To show, which party supports freer markets, one would need to study the market-freedom across different goods and services. Cherry-picking one item, that is so dear to one party's heart, in an industry, that is heavily-regulated by all states (as well as Federal government) is meaningless and reveals nothing but bare partisanship.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Actually it kinda does. The ability to constantly abuse the system means there is a massive flaw in said system.
The flaw is how we use it. Freedom and liberty are hard to maintain, and we have allowed government to become something other than "we the people." It has become an entity unto itself, and as such it strives first and foremost to ensure its own survival. We have recast the role of statesman to celebrity, which guarantees ego rules the roost. Regulatory agencies within the executive branch are de facto law making bodies, and in the end we hinge our hopes on Supreme Court decisions, who amended their charter - at least in practice - to include filling in the legislative gaps left by Congress, who are too busy running their reelection campaigns.
If our government is car, we're passengers who are allowing a bunch of drunks to drive it. We are getting what we deserve, so long as we choose to not take the wheel.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
You can just look at the garbage that is the Affordable Care Act to see that negotiation and compromise is alive and well - all within the Democratic party. If they were united as a block (as Republicans were in 2000-2006 or so), we would have gotten a much better single-payer system out of the law. If Republicans were to just disappear, the various groups that make up the Democrats would likely fracture into a few parties - all admittedly to the center and left of today's America - and start to negotiate more on those differences.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
To be totally transparent, I'm one of the many who lost their investment in GM corporate bonds as the current administration rewrote bankruptcy law to screw secured (like me) creditors.
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
diff, blame, revert, you name it!