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Tesla Sues Michigan Over Sales Ban (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Electric automaker Tesla Motors filed a lawsuit Thursday against Michigan state officials, escalating its multi-year battle to sell vehicles directly to consumers. Tesla's action comes less than a week after Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson effectively rejected the automaker's application for dealership and service facilities by asking for proof that Tesla is a franchised dealer. Tesla, unlike other automakers, sells its cars directly to consumers through company-owned stores in other states. "Tesla Motors brings this lawsuit to vindicate its rights under the United States constitution to sell and service its critically-acclaimed, all-electric vehicles at Tesla owned facilities in the State of Michigan," the automaker said in its complaint in federal court. The California automaker named Johnson, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette as defendants. Tesla submitted an application for a dealership license in fall 2015 with a plan to open a retail gallery in Grand Rapids, Mich. In a Sept. 7 hearing, a panel of administrative law examiners heard arguments. Last Thursday, they rejected the license for Tesla. "The license was denied because state law explicitly requires a dealer to have a bona fide contract with an auto manufacturer to sell its vehicles," Johnson said in a statement. Tesla wants to sell its high-end battery-powered cars directly to consumers without a franchised dealer, much like Apple sells its products. The automaker's lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare that the state violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and the constitution's commerce clause. Snyder signed a law in October, 2014, that prohibited Tesla from selling cars directly to consumers by requiring all automakers to sell through a network of franchised dealers.
Actually, the US is more socialist than capitalist. The US tax payer covers cost of living for employees of the largest companies like Walmart and McDonalds. The government creates jobs under the guise of protecting the nation and employs directly or indirectly (by my highly suspicious estimates) 20-25% of the working population (DoD, DoE, CIA, FBI, DHS, TSA, NASA, etc... Lockheed, Boeing mostly, etc... plus the infrastructure to support them). When a person needs a job, the government makes one for them.
The voters decide otherwise every single day. They vote all the time for what they believe will serve their own interests. What's worse is they have no idea what their own interests are. We make most of out decisions without any real information or education.
Suppose that this forum represents a class of voters. We read a headline posted by someone with an obvious bias. The people reading this site tend to take one of two positions "I love Tesla" or "I hate Tesla". They voice their opinions like "I for one believe in the rights Tesla is fighting to uphold." and someone responds about how they don't understand what they're actually saying. Of course, the response will make no impact and the Tesla lover will still love and vote "Tesla is good, I support people who support Tesla". He has no real idea why Tesla is good... all he knows is that they make "clean" electric cars. He overlooks that Elon Musk and Tesla have set some extremely dangerous precedents in the name of doing good things. We justify it by saying too good outweighs the bad, and while Musk is probably a really great guy, and while we really want him to do the things he's doing, he's basically leaving a wake behind him of sheer disaster and destruction which will be colonized by the bottom feeders under the pretense of "You told Elon Musk it was ok... it must be ok for us too!!!".
I love the idea of Elon Musk, he's a dreamer and when I pick up the newspaper each day, I look forward to the stories about him as much as I looked forward to the comics as a child. The newspaper is full of just utter shit. "This politician is a dick, that one is a dick. The world is coming to and end. 14 pages of articles about last night's killings and battlefield crap."... then there's an article about a guy who seems to be building the world of the Jetson's. He'll make us zoom around in tubes as the speed of "Holy shit my face is peeling off" and fly us to the stars. He'll build our houses out of batteries and my grandchildren will glow because of him. His popularity and the way the press treats him makes me feel like there's still room for good news and hope for the human race. He's a real life Tony Stark and I can't get enough of him.
He'll poison us with massive quantities of lithium. He'll build cars with limited life spans and no real plan for how to recycle them. He'll move from metals to plastics, polymers, etc... which have no future but land fill. He'll do lots of awesome things that will simply shit all over the planet. He'll make the environmental disaster left behind by the big three in Michigan look like child's play. Everything the guy touches is basically toxic by the time he walks past it. But holy shit, I hope he doesn't stop! I LOVE HIS STUFF!
I just bought a BMW i3... I really wanted a Tesla, but the car is too f-ing big and frankly, Tesla drivers are generally dicks and I don't want to become one. I actually drive in the normal traffic instead of the taxi/carpool lanes because I don't want to negatively impact the other drivers. Electric cars don't need those "perks" anymore since they were there for the crappy pre-Tesla cars which couldn't get to and from work on a charge in stop and go.