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.
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.
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.
I want to offer that cars have always involved government corruption. The invention of jaywalking, the corrupt development of the highways for “national security” while simultaneously hampering development of real public transit, the wars started for fuel, the extrajudicial killings of people threatening the fossil fuel industry with electric cars (historically), political corruption is the life blood of cars.
Its deeper than that, too. The nazis tried to ban bicycles in the netherlands going as far as confiscating them to melt them down.
I dunno, there isn’t much more “fuck cars” than this particular “fuck these cars”. Thanks for leaving it up either way.
there isn’t much more “fuck cars” than this particular “fuck these cars”.
On the contrary, I believe that in a lot of cases (not necessarily this case, but others) trying to single out particular kinds of cars to oppose is a divide-and-conquer tactic by car-apologists. If they get us frothing about ‘swastikars’ (or, more often, ‘bro-dozers’) in particular, they distract us from e.g. the fact that all cars, even down to the humblest hatchback economy car, take up the same amount of space (1 parking space each) and thus contribute equally to things like driving demand for subsidized parking and wrecking walkability. I see the fuck cars movement as being about the detrimental effect car dependency has on urbanism, climate change, public health, etc. in a macro sense, not hate for cars as individual devices.
In other words, I think “particular ‘fuck these cars’” is 100% missing the point of “fuck cars.”
I hope this isn’t one of those instances where I 90% agree with you, but you’re gonna be angry with me over the 10% difference.
Aren’t parking spaces smaller in Europe than the US? There is value is having smaller cars.
To go farther into the 10%, there’s a lot of rural America that needs cars. It’s not practical to lay track literally everywhere. And Park n’ Rides are much, much more tolerable if the demand and use for them is much smaller. I don’t expect places like nowhere Ohio to give up their cars. I just want all towns to be more walkable, and I want the biggest transformation to be in the cities.
Aren’t parking spaces smaller in Europe than the US? There is value is having smaller cars.
Maybe, but if so, it’s only a marginal difference. First of all, keep in mind that you have to design spaces for the biggest cars (or at least the 90th percentile or something, excluding outliers), not the average. Second and more importantly, the big win for urbanism isn’t shaving a foot off the width of a space; it’s having fewer spaces to begin with. It’s also an issue of the proportion of people doing trips in cars vs. other modes, and things like that. If you’re building with the expectation that everybody is entitled to free and abundant parking at their destination, you’re going to destroy walkability regardless of whether they show up in Smart Cars or Suburbans.
To go farther into the 10%…
100% agreed with the whole paragraph. And that’s another reason why I think dog-piling about pickup trucks and other specific automobile makes/models/styles is unhelpful: it often gives ammunition for those special-snowflake types who really do need that kind of vehicle an excuse to claim their exception disproves the rule and dismiss us all as irrational truck-hating reactionaries instead of urbanists with legitimate concerns.
I think a point could be made that larger cars are environmentally more damaging as well as more dangerous to pedestrians and other road users, in both cases due to there being a lot more weight of metal being moved around in larger cars (so, more fuel consumption - which in the case of electric cars is still indirectly causing some polution - and more momentum that needs to be removed to stop a collision or involved in the actual collision).
Not really the way the other poster was making his point but still provides a “Fuck cars” reason to complain about “government buys lots of large cars”.
I’ve also made an argument elsewhere about how the higher values involved in corruption in the Procurement of Car Fleets compared to non-Car options might be incentivising state officials to go for cars and car-friendly policies, but that’s not relevant for this specific thread.
I think a point could be made that larger cars are environmentally more damaging as well as more dangerous to pedestrians and other road users
The margin between a large car and a small car is negligible compared to the margin between any car and a bus or bicycle. To dwell on large cars is to give small cars a pass that they do not deserve.
I don’t think criticizing large cars in a post or two qualifies as “dwelling” on large cars.
Also the margin is irrelevant for a vehicle’s danger to pedestrians or its consumption, only its mass and velocity (because the energy of a moving object is proportional to the mass and to the square of the velocity), which is why even a bicycle can be deadly to a pedestrian if going at a high enough speed.
My point is that large cars are generally worse than small cars (significantly so when the mass is 3x or 4x), not that small cars are not bad or that use of small cars can be excused by there being people using large cars.
I can get it if your detesting of cars is an absolute thing with no specific reason, but I suspect that for most of us our detesting of cars is anchored on various very concrete reasons, and personally danger to pedestrians and other road users such as cyclists and polution are two of the biggest ones for me, in which case it makes sense to detest even more a trend in car use that makes them more dangerous and more poluting (and even electric cars are poluting because of tire microparticle emission - which by the way is proportional to weight - and energy generation still not being 100% renewable so indirectly cars fueled by electricity still polute)
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.
Now this is the corruption that we thought we would be getting not the dumb shit with the Treasury dept
Please use one of these vehicles as the presidential limo
We can get a very funny timeline 🤭
Where the panels fall off from looking at it, the accelerator gets stuck down, and it spontaneously bursts into flames?
Yeah I agree. 😂
Is this a bailout?
Wow, what a stunning coincidence! The State Department, those champions of transparency and accountability, just happen to have an arms deal for $400 million worth of ‘armored’ Teslas from none other than Elon Musk. How convenient for the billionaire entrepreneur who’s been quietly gutting government agencies left and right. It’s not like he has a vested interest in lining his pockets with taxpayer dollars or anything.
Meanwhile, our so-called leaders are too busy patting themselves on the back for their ‘fiscal responsibility’ to notice the glaring favoritism at play here. The Cybertruck, that tech-savvy publicity stunt gone wrong, just happens to tick all the boxes for the feds’ needs. It’s like it was designed specifically with their corrupt wallets in mind.
Let’s be real folks, this ‘gift’ from Elon Musk is nothing more than a cash injection into his already overflowing bank account. The State Department’s official story is a thinly veiled attempt to whitewash the deal as some sort of public service. But we’re not buying it (pun intended). This is just another example of crony capitalism and corruption in action.
We knew this was coming. Hopefully the shitty engineering comes back to bite them.
Who could have possibly foreseen this level of corruption happening?
I mean, other than anyone with 2 or more brain cells to rub together.
There has always been lots of Corruption in the US (IMHO), but now there is also a feeling of impunity and no shame, so both more Corruption and it being done in more visible ways.
Yeah at least before imwe were placated with “Tsk tsk! How could you? Time to respectfully step down and hang your head in embarrassment!”
Now they just shrug at us and go “LOL do something about it. Dare you. Thought so. LOL.”
I mean, I expected corruption. I didn’t expect this level of corruption.
On the bright side, that 400m might not be worth much after they’re done with the economy. Wait… fuck.
In the future that would be the price of apartment rent per month.
That was naive of you.
Even my orange tabby cat could see it coming.
And it’s ORANGE!!
Hehehe I love tabbies. :D
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.
Yup. Guarantee Musk gets Trump to replace The Beast with an armored Tesla.
Which then spontaneously combusts killing Trump, but luckily just before that Trump passes an executive order naming Musk his successor.
If only they heeded your warning, FireRetardant.
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.
“I’ve got diplomatic immunity, so Hammer, you can’t sue!”
–Peter Griffin parodying “Hammertime”
No worries the hosting country can just revoke the diplomatic protection and arrest them.
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 EV” marketing thing.
Now that’s peak government efficiency. Directly in his pockets.
The state exists to serve capital.
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.
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?
Carl’s Jr. — Fuck you, I’m eating.
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.
So we can’t have a consumer protection agency but we can spend half a billion on shitty cars
1 Billion stolen from the department of education.
half a billion in food/aid they refused to deliver that went bad.
half a billion to this fuck’s pocket.
Wait, I think we should add the first two to the total so it’s 2 Billion total to this fuck’s pocket.
… Because seriously where else would it be going?
That screenshot is fantastic. It captures multiple broken promises at once. The unbreakable windows work great and the starting price miraculously doubled.
Oh jeez, just shove it into your face in front of everyone why don’t ya.
Fucking corrupt bastards.
