Tesla Drops Lawsuit Against Alameda County Over Freemont Factory Reopening (techcrunch.com) 80
Tesla has officially dismissed a lawsuit filed earlier this month against Alameda County that sought to force the reopening of its factory in Fremont, Calif. TechCrunch reports: The dismissal, which was granted Wednesday, closes the loop on a battle between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and county health and law enforcement officials. The lawsuit, filed May 9 hours after Musk threatened to sue and move operations out of state, sought injunctive and declaratory relief against Alameda County. The lawsuit was filed after Tesla's plans to resume production at the Fremont factory were thwarted by the county's decision to extend a stay-at-home order issued to curb the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. The lawsuit has been dismissed at Tesla's request (PDF), and comes a week after Alameda County signaled that it wasn't going to try to stop the company from re-opening its Fremont factory despite their prolonged shelter-in-place order.
Because Fremont wasn't free enough (Score:3)
that second e was required
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Having lived there, Fremont city government was bad but not crazy bad. When they went broke and couldn't keep the streetlights on or fix potholes, they actually (eventually) started laying people off (e.g., combining police dispatch with neighboring cities, which they needed to do anyway), until they had the budget to be a functional local government again. Not brilliant, but not terrible either.
Alameda county government was just a mess though. Nothing good to say about them.
Cowards (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again proving that if you're rich enough, the government will roll over and let you do anything you want, regardless of what the law says.
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Re:Cowards (Score:5, Informative)
Last sentence in the article: "Alameda County signaled that it wasn't going to try to stop the company from re-opening its Fremont factory despite their prolonged shelter-in-place order." ...so the shelter-in-place order was still standing, but they weren't going to enforce it on Tesla or its employees.
The only reason they dropped the lawsuit was because the county threw in the towel and told them to do whatever they want.
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Elon Musk can offer all employees a TB inoculation https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/... [nypost.com]. Australia death tool from corona around 100 compare that to the USA tens of thousands (huge difference per capita deaths) and the only real difference, back when I was in primary school everyone got a TB and Tetanus inoculation in primary school.
If you have not had a TB inoculation don't wait, go out and get one as soon as possible, it wont hurt and all indication are it can save your life, the per capita death rates indi
Re: Cowards (Score:2)
Great if true, but the article doesn't mention any evidence for this yet, just an argument from inference. If it does work, that is fantastic, and not just because I had a TB vaccine before traveling to India and southeast Asia some years back (newer versions of vaccine confer immunity for some 20 years).
Re: Cowards (Score:5, Interesting)
BGC vaccine does some remarkable (and as yet unexplained) things to the immune system. For example it is also confers protection against bladder cancer.
One theory in support of efficacy against COVID19, is that COVID19 enables a proliferation of facultative and obligate anaerobes as a complication of the virus, just as Lemierre's Syndrome follows Epstein Barr Virus. BGC is known to provide partial protection against other kinds of anaerobes.
There may be another explanation for it working, or another explanation entirely, for the correlation.
BGC vaccine? (Score:2)
BGC vaccine
I think you mean BCG (bacille Calmette-Guerin) vaccine.
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TB is caused by a type of bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Why would having a TB vaccine do anything against COVID-19, a virus? That just makes no sense at all.
If the Covid-19 lung damage is being caused by an opportunistic bacterial infection, it might well be a cousin of TB .
TB conspiracy theory (Score:2)
What about the UK? I'm a 60yo British person, and everyone my age and older got BCG as a kid. It doesn't seem like the UK has a low rate of old people dying.
The hypothesis of the economist(!) who started this whole TB stuff is that your country did use a different strain for the vaccine than the countries where TB happens to correlate with less deaths (those country used a strain used in the Soviet block).
My personnal opinion is that the guys at best merely found a difference in nationnal health systems of which both the nationnal answer to COViD-19 and the nationnal vaccination campaign are manifestation, at worst just found some random coincidence in the stat
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Australia had better and earlier lockdowns than the US. That has more to do with it than TB vaccines or proximity to kangaroos.
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...the only real difference, back when I was in primary school everyone got a TB and Tetanus inoculation in primary school.
This doesn't even fit the, "causation does not equal causation" trope. This is just wild, unsubstantiated speculation.
Re:Cowards (Score:5, Informative)
Last sentence in the article: "Alameda County signaled that it wasn't going to try to stop the company from re-opening its Fremont factory despite their prolonged shelter-in-place order." ...so the shelter-in-place order was still standing, but they weren't going to enforce it on Tesla or its employees.
The only reason they dropped the lawsuit was because the county threw in the towel and told them to do whatever they want.
Alameda was in the process of issuing variances to companies that had filed plans for opening while protecting employees. Tesla's variance would have been issued officially about a week later... but Musk was unwilling to wait in line with everyone else.
The whole thing was a dick-waving exercise. "Look at me! I'm special!" I guess it is an example of the "no such thing as bad publicity" meme -people are talking abut Tesla.
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Musk is an objectivist, a follower of the ideas of Ayn Rand. He believes that because he is an entrepreneur he is special and the rules that apply to others should not apply to him. Taking your business elsewhere because you don't get on with the local government is a classic Randian fantasy.
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That may be the case, but the result was a factory that opened a week earlier, quite critical when all your competitors in other states are already operating.
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The whole thing was a dick-waving exercise. "Look at me! I'm special!"
When you actually are*Condolences??
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That was the fourth date dangled in front of Tesla for reopening. There had already been three other dates previously; Alameda kept extending their order and prohibiting Tesla from reopening at each of the past ones.
Regardless, both sides are playing nice now. Alameda did have a lot of pressure on them - I don't think they cared about pressure from the feds, but both Newsom and the city of Fremont had been pressuring them to reopen the factory. They decided to classify the rampup of the factory as "minimum
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That was the fourth date dangled in front of Tesla for reopening. There had already been three other dates previously; Alameda kept extending their order and prohibiting Tesla from reopening at each of the past ones.
But Tesla is special and shouldn't have to wait like everyone else when local government puts in place measures for public safety?
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Yeah, even though all other auto plants had already reopened or gotten a reopening date, Tesla's 5,3 million square foot / half square kilometre factory (in a county without a high infection rate) should have stayed shut against the will of the city and the state, while important essential businesses like dealing pot, housekeeping, selling cans of paint, grooming dogs, etc continued to operate. (/snark)
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In the US, of course.
Are you trying to imply that, say, Michigan had a lower infection rate than Alameda?
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The democratically elected city, state, and federal government officials supported opening it. An unelected county official opposed it.
Core services (Score:2)
But Tesla is special and shouldn't have to wait like everyone else when local government puts in place measures for public safety?
The thing is that Tesla is car company.
In most countries (and certainly here around in CH) during the shutdown, services which are deemed essentials were kept: This included communication and information of the public (and thus all radio, newspapers, and also delivery like post office even *increased* work force), health (only the non-urgent porcedure at the hospital got rescheduled), obtaining food (not only the grocery shops remained open, but home delivery even *increased* workforce) office equipment tha
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I'm pretty sure the reason he didn't follow through with the lawsuit is because there was no longer a need. It stated the county wasn't going to try to stop the company from re-opening after all.
But on the note with the wasting of courts time, I'm not sure I 100% agree that's a big issue here. I guess what I mean is, it's the only proper course of action when there is a disagreement like this. I say that without considering the current pandemic situation. It's well above my pay-grade to have much of an
Re: Cowards (Score:1)
At least read the summary. He gave up on his threat to sue.
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Alameda CAPITULATED, negating the need for Tesla to seek relief from the courts.
Tesla stood up to the government, and the government CAPITULATED.
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Re:Cowards (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. They were already on their way to getting the plant opened anyway on about the same timeline. So the only thing he really accomplished was burning some goodwill with the city for any future issues or negotiations that come up.
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I'm pretty sure the city where the plant is located, has little to no control over the county order that is the point of contention.
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I can tell you didn't even watch the clip.
It is precisely the success California has had in the past that has made their Democrat rulers (CA is a one-party system like so many others) so arrogant. They think they're top dog and nothing can touch them. That's the thing about ruining a country - it takes a long, long time. There's a lot of ruin in a country. Look at how long it took Venezuela to fall, and they've still got a long way to go before they hit bottom.
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I certainly agree that it isn't the kind of place I want to live, but "one long coastal slum"? What the hell parts did you visit? I have no doubt slum areas exist, but I spent 2 weeks in CA last year and didn't see one area that I would describe that way. We flew into Sacramento, hit a bunch of places north toward the Oregon border, across to Crescent City, down the San Francisco, then hit several areas in San Francisco and San Jose. The worst I saw was what I'd say was maybe bland suburban areas...packed a
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Never mind the huge gap between rich and poor
That's an America problem, not a CA problem. However, since you brought it up- California has a fantastic median income.
the laws that prevent affordable housing being built
That's more of a municipal problem- and one in almost all large cities with large demand for occupancy.
the voter fraud problems
Care to elaborate? In terms of actual instances of voter fraud, CA isn't a large blip on the radar.
the one party political system like China has
Now you're just being a dumbshit. Do I really need to google a CA electoral district map for you?
the tent cities
Literally a problem in ever big city with a large homeless population.
I've personally been t
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He could move to Oklahoma and see if anyone there could afford to buy what he makes.
Again, CA's output is growing. Perhaps sucking the cocks of the business owners isn't the way toward better sustainable growth.
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I think you're saying more about your internal bias than mine.
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California municipalities are already hostile to business, and this shows no signs of changing. Here's a clip from the Joe Rogan show with Jonathan Ward, a carmaker, on Californiaâ(TM)s horrible business environment [youtube.com]. It's an eye-popping testimony from someone in the front lines who has to deal with this every day. "No oneâ(TM)s self accountable but everyoneâ(TM)s liable." Brilliant statement.
"No one is self accountable but everyone is liable."
For slashcode? OR will this meme become a new slogan for the new and fantastic re-engineered coming Tesla Second Wave? Coming soon out of production lines of Tesla in SoCal? If the workers are smart they will be wearing masks and Elon will have decent sanitation and distancing practices applied to his production lines if not then we will see what happens in the next few weeks if the story is not buried with all the other spikes happening where people do no
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They were already on their way to getting the plant opened anyway on about the same timeline.
False. The plant opened earlier as a result. The whole dickwaving contest started due to delays in getting the plant reopened.
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>"They were already on their way to getting the plant opened anyway on about the same timeline."
So you think. They opened at least a week earlier. That is a lot. And how do you know they wouldn't have "extended" this "shutdown" order even longer. Many States and cities/counties have already been doing so. Promising an opening date, then chickening out at the last moment. For all we know, it could have been several more weeks.
>"So the only thing he really accomplished was burning some goodwill wi
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It was thew plan (Score:2)
Fremont always told them they could open on May 18th. The lawsuit was always sound and fury that would amount to nothing.
What law, Rizz? (Score:2)
Once again proving that if you're rich enough, the government will roll over and let you do anything you want, regardless of what the law says.
Not really.
If by "the law" you mean Gov. Newsom's executive order, and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and the California Constitution, it is Alameda County that is flouting the law.
If by "the law" you mean the criminal penalties threatened by Alameda County (which has no legal authority to impose such penalties), it is Musk that is flouting the law.
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You can write this as many times as you want. It continues to be false. [slashdot.org]
Musk did not start Tesla (Score:1)
Musk was not involved with Tesla until 6 months after it was incorporated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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Did the incorporated entity do anything consequential in those six months—other than searching for Elon Musk?
Re: Musk did not start Tesla (Score:2)
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Not entirely. You could make the case that, if the company ever causes the company to fail that he has caused the company to founder.
By definition, Musk is not the founder, regardless of whatever titles he gives himself.
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Hmm, I remember seeing the roadster in car mags before Musk's name was associated. No? Musk liked the roadster and bought the company, or my memory fails me (which, admittedly, is a real possibility).
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If you exclude the six months spent looking for capital, Musk was there from the very beginning. Before Musk, Telsa was just a couple of guys looking for capital. Musk WAS the capital. He was Tesla's very first investor and has always been Tesla's dominant shareholder.
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Hollywood disagrees. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'd agree with you if Tesla had done anything meaningful prior to Elon's involvement. Using your analogy, Tesla wasn't even a little backwater restaurant that got investment—it was just a couple of guys who thought it would be neat to make hamburgers.
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During that six months, did those "couple of guys" build a few working cars, though? Or did Musk actually fund an exiting powerpoint presentation?
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More precisely, Musk merged his own powerpoint presentation with their powerpoint presentation and funded it. He was was already working towards establishing an EV company at the time**, which is how he ended up getting put in contact with Eberhard, Tarpenning, and Wright in the first place. The latter had been doing some prep work, such as talks with Lotus and working on cost figures (which turned out to be totally bogus), but no engineering; their main focus was on getting funding.
And for the record, al
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Interesting. Musk was a known name then from PayPal; odd that when the only Tesla was the roadster people weren't talking about his connection to the company. But maybe back then he hadn't become the controversy-inspiring figure we know him as today, just another dot-com billionaire.
I do wish Tesla would make a sports care again that's not for billionaires.
Fremont, not Freemont (Score:2)
Correct spelling right there in the summary. Just sayin'...
Withdrew, not dismissed (Score:5, Informative)
Annoying abuse of terminology. Courts dismiss. Plaintiff withdraws.
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Annoying abuse of terminology. Courts dismiss. Plaintiff withdraws.
This is Elon Musk we're talking about... He doesn't withdraw LOL.
Kudos to Elon getting republicans to buy EVs (Score:1)
Bashing California and threatening to leave for Texas or Oklahoma was brilliant way to get republicans to ditch their gas guzzlers and buy EVs and stick it to the libs!. Also getting Californian developers/engineers/scientists to move to Texas or Oklahoma to make them more progressive and blue is another brilliant move.
Have you seen the amount of groveling OK and TX are doing to get Elon to move there? Frankly its embarrassing - total Beta moves by two states that claim to be super Trumpian.
I was going to