I’m gonna leave this up because people are commenting on it, but IMO it’s borderline off-topic. This is an article about political corruption in Federal procurement, and only incidentally mentions cars because they happen to be the item being procured. Try to stick a little closer to “problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all” next time.
Edit: I just noticed that the person who posted this is the other mod, LOL. I guess we should have a chat to make sure we’re on the same page re: rule 4.
The superior yield for corruption in the procurement of fleets of cars for a State seems like a Fuck Cars issue to me.
I mean, I can see how there could be corruption in the procurement of State Bicycles or State Employee Walking Shoes, but the values involved would be way lower.
And this is without going into the whole point made by somebody else that Governments having and using fleets of cars (especially State officials) incentivises them to have pro-car policies.
You can try to pretend that this has nothing to do with car dependency. But try to imagine this story happening with bicycles. The state completely supports the car con. We wouldn’t be in this situation otherwise. This story is an excellent and important example.
Car dependency is an issue and a major one in the US, but this is almost completely separate. It’s all about the blatant corruption of the president’s leashholder’s company getting a sweet contract that’s actually trash for the government because Cybertrucks just plain suck even if you love cars.
The president literally put Musk in charge of reducing government spending… And then while people are getting laid off left and right, his company is getting a 400M contract for something it hasn’t even made to any real scale, whereas plenty of other companies have: armored cars.
Wow, you’re an asshole. People post fucking images of text all the time, and you do nothing.
Someone posts a link to an actual on topic article from a credible source and you say you almost ban it.
How about actually cleaning up all the low effort crap posted here? That’s where you should be focusing your efforts.
You shouldn’t insult people doing volunteer work, period. You look like someone who’d scream at referees in children’s football games.
So you’re saying that’s frowned upon?
Not if you’re loud enough
So you’re saying skip the referees and scream directly at the children?
That’ll get Timmy to cover the damn goal, for once!
I’d be less upset if they were absent. But when they only abuse their job, they deserve to be called out.
Weigh down a vehicle who’s performance harshly degrades as weight is added, and put it on the battlefield when those batteries have a habit of catching fire.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!
The State Department handles diplomacy. I would expect that the intention is for US diplomats (however many are left after all this) to drive around in these things. I’m sure that will help convince other countries that the US is not at all stupidly corrupt.
Too bad those cars are illegal in Europe.
So how are they going to do diplomacy over here?
Diplomats are exempt from most rules that apply to citizens.
No worries the hosting country can just revoke the diplomatic protection and arrest them.
“I’ve got diplomatic immunity, so Hammer, you can’t sue!”
–Peter Griffin parodying “Hammertime”
I’m just hoping they don’t have to tow anything…
I do!
The sooner it is a shit show the sooner I get to laugh about it.
Another handout for Musk. Not to mention all the repairs those pieces of trash will need.
Repairs? Hah! That’d be logical!
We know already these things are like rolling Chromebooks. Meant to be constructed cheaply, fall apart quickly, to get regularly thrown into a landfill and replaced as “service.”
…Then they try to turn around and do the whole greenwashed “EVs save the planet” marketing thing.
Oh, so kids don’t deserve an education but we need to blow money on obviously defective bullshit from the de facto president’s company.
That screenshot is fantastic. It captures multiple broken promises at once. The unbreakable windows work great and the starting price miraculously doubled.
This is it. Welcome to all-out, blatant oligarchy. Ready to donate your last food stamps so the State Department goons get to wear brand new swastika shirts?
Woah, hold up. I thought the government said All EVs are bad and we should stick to gas. Now Tesla EVs are okay? Oh, the hypocrisy! /s
I hate this timeline.
The silver lining is that the deathtraps will end up killing cops
So that’s why they were cutting the budget. It’s so they could afford all these new cars.
Now that’s peak government efficiency. Directly in his pockets.
Half the joke is in how none of these vehicles will get delivered.
Musk’s only penned in by his own limited vision, though. This could easily have been $400B. Next time I’m sure he’ll aim bigger.
The state exists to serve capital.
Is this a bailout?
@toaster lol. Got warehouses full of steel tanks? Checkout this one weird trick to make it through the next quarterly report.
Nailed it.
Would be a shame if they all happen to spontaneously combust at once. It’d be some pretty fireworks at least!
May every single one explode with a high ranking official inside.
Apparently this is being disputed. Biden started the ball rolling about getting an armoured EV fleet. Sounds like some document said Tesla on it but now it doesn’t.
Yep, seems like the posted headline jumped the gun
Removed by mod
