Britain operated without tuition fees until 1998, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Iraq war was started on a lie.

The USA has wasted a lot of money on war that would have been better spent on the health & education of its citizens.

FYI, the defense budget is as large as the next dozen top spenders - almost all of whom are allies. What is all that money being spent on? Preparing for an invasion from Mexico & Canada? (Too late in the case of the former)

So they're zombies? Are they about to start World War Z?

A well-traveled friend who speaks several languages fluently says you can't learn proper Russian without staying out late at night drinking vodka.

Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into a mental hospital.
So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby... That's the Democrats.
  And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers and civil war re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal.

Bill Maher, New Rules "White Men Can't Harrumph", Jun 2009

That 1st line should have read " wrt single payer, Obama's support has always been somewhat conditional"

I'd have to go back and check what he ACTUALLY promised vs what we THINK he promised but I do admit to being somewhat disappointed.
But despite what rightwing media says, he's not an Emperor and change is difficult or impossible if Congress isn't on board.

WRT to single-payer, Obama's support has somewhat hesitant.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

In other statements, Obama has spoken favorably of single-payer in concept, but always adding qualifiers.

In February 2004, about a month before the primary election in the U.S. Senate race, the Associated Press reported the stance of all the candidates on universal health care. "Obama says he supports the idea of universal health care but does not think a single-payer government system is feasible. He says the government should be the health care provider of last resort for the uninsured." In a rundown of all the candidates' positions, the Associated Press summarized Obama's position as "Support, but 'probably not at this stage,' a single-payer government system."
In his book The Audacity of Hope , published in October 2006 when he was a U.S. senator, Obama described single-payer as the hope of the left, while those on the right wanted a market-based approach. "It's time we broke this impasse by acknowledging a few simple truths," Obama wrote, suggesting a system much like the one he supports today.
In April 2007, a few months after he declared his candidacy for presidency, the Chicago Tribune reported, "Obama has pledged that, if elected, all Americans would have health-care coverage by the end of his first term. He has said he is reluctant to switch to a 'single-payer' national health insurance system because of the difficulty in making a quick transition from the employer-based private system."
At his town halls as president, he routinely answers questions about single-payer by saying he would favor it if he were starting a system "from scratch." But he consistently adds that's not the goal of the current reform. "For us to transition completely from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system could be hugely disruptive, and my attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free-market system," Obama said in Annandale, Va., on July 1, 2009.

Obama isn't a socialist or even much of a progressive; from what I recall, he's somewhere between Eisenhower & Nixon on most issues.

"I am really getting tired having to verify your figures"
Then work on verifying your own; you've gotten more than a few things wrong where Tesla is concerned.

And how did we suddenly get to 300,000 DIRECT jobs wrt GM, when just a few posts ago, it was 216,000? I can accept a bit of rounding but that's an error of ~30% :-)

I hadn't given much thought to the bailout stuff in several years but I'm not convinced that letting Big Auto save themselves - or die - would have been the catastrophe that the fearmongers were screaming about.
It's not as if all the cars & trucks were going to stop working overnight and the parts manufacturers would still have lots of work. And there were other car companies that needed far less help or none at all.
The people who really needed to be bailed out were homeowners.

Economy of scale only goes so far since there's such great variety in automobiles. And it's not as if the automakers are making all the parts themselves.

I understand tax incentives but to give it to a behemoth that too ponderous to change seems like a waste when you have the great infallible hand of the free market to guide these paladins of enterprise.
And when California's CARB threw the ZEV mandate rules at them, GM & Toyota came up with the EV-1 and the RAV4 EV pretty damn quick, no government money required.

Foreign government direct financial support for alternative EVs may be a question but from what I'm able to find about Nissan & Toyota, the likely answer is NO.

And I can't believe that Chrysler got bailed out again - just let them DIE.

I've been meaning to give that one a trial. Has anyone used it?
What about OCS-NG?

You want a link

Read and enjoy. It may not be strictly correct to say what the Bush administration intended but they did TRIPLE the deduction one fell swoop and when the SUV stories started to make the rounds, they didn't go along with any attempts to curb misuse.

The problem with your depreciation point, as I've already explained is that you are under NO obligation to keep the vehicle once you get the all-in-one-shot deduction.

Those tax breaks and the unfunded wars are a big component of the country's mess and it all hinges on the stuff that Tesla (and others) want us to get off of as soon as possible.
And that's oil.

My point is that your base numbers for Tesla's is WRONG and therefore so are all numbers derived from it.

  Tesla's 2014 revenue was a bit over $3 billion - much smaller than GM, true - but that's FOUR times bigger than your claim and it's growing and moving quickly.
You do realize the more you point out how big & powerful GM is, the weaker the case for it getting a subsidy for developing a car that's essentially a modification of what had been done 15 years ago by 2 foreign automakers?

Maybe we'd be better served by having more gnats than ponderous giants that have trouble making a profit selling something that Americans want more than oxygen.

Seriously?? Check your figures, mmkay.

What's $881.67M divided by 36,000??

So GM was getting all that support to stay in business PLUS fantastic breaks on future profits and STILL needed a handout for the Volt? Ridiculous.
So much for the free market.

Only the P85D has a smaller front motor - and small-er doesn't mean small.
It's 221 HP - I've driven V6 pickup trucks that didn't have as much power.
And I doubt that Tesla is stocking multiple sizes of motors, they may have only 1 or 2 and may be software-limiting the output ( or through the inverter?)

Tesla's footprint extends well beyond the Fremont factory. They are a major consumer of lithium batteries and that will take a big jump once the Model X starts shipping and even more so with the PowerWall.
With the rapid build-out of Supercharger stations, there are a bunch of electrical jobs that would be impacted if they went away. Already 440 stations with a total of ~2400 chargers and expected to increase by 50% by 2017.
They also use quite a bit of aluminum but probably not enough to have a noticeable impact global demand.
As it stands, if Tesla collapsed, the ripples would extend to SpaceX and possibly Solar City - and, more importantly, the stock market.
In that arena, Tesla is 50% the size of GM, not 0.03%. Grossly overvalued but it is what it is.

The original law dates back to '96 and has been amended several times.
Have a look also at section 280F.

The text you linked to now has specific language regarding SUVs - see (5) Limitation on cost taken into account for certain passenger vehicles

But I don't know when that was introduced.

In any case this was a small part of a huge tax break bill that Dubya & the GOP used as lube for handjobbing the nation around the same time they launched the Iraq War, a fiasco that will haunt America more profoundly than Vietnam.

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