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Elon Musk loves to claim Libertarian inclinations. Unfortunately, his company could not grow or remain viable without government welfare.
Elon Musk, a parasitic, privileged example of the corporate class
Stephanie Ruhle was discussing Elon Musk‘s latest silly act. He changed NPR’s Twitter label to “Government Funded Media” after drawing heavy criticism for first relabeling them as state-affiliated media. NPR published the following in response.
Twitter added a “state-affiliated media” tag to NPR’s main account on Tuesday, applying the same label to the nonprofit media company that Twitter uses to designate official state mouthpieces and propaganda outlets in countries such as Russia and China.
NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.
Noting the millions of listeners who support and rely upon NPR for “independent, fact-based journalism,” NPR CEO John Lansing stated, “NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable. It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy.”
NPR officials have asked Twitter to remove the label. They initially assumed it was applied by mistake, NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara said. “We were not warned. It happened quite suddenly last night,” Lara said.
NPR has subsequently quit Twitter.
NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.
Stephanie’s guest Kara Swisher, Editor-At-Large at New York Magazine, pointed out an inconvenient truth.
“When you say government funded, there is actually someone I can think of who is government funded,” Swisher said. “It’s Elon Mush and Twitter. He got his first funding that saved the company from the government. … So, as he does, SpaceX is also government funded. Lots of things that Tesla does gets all kinds of government funding and subsidies. So, he should know about government funding.”
Given the billions that we-the-people — the government — has given to Elon and his company, he needs to sit back and thank Americans for their generosity. Moreover, he is recycling and profiting from technologies we created decades ago to get to the moon and beyond. And he barely made it to the beginning of space. He is on the dole more so than any other American.
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