Stone Age Chronicles

stfuconservatives:

quickhits:

Republicans love free enterprise, the entrepreneurial spirit — right up until they hate it.

Slate: From the state that brought you the nation’s first ban on climate science comes another legislative gem: a bill that would prohibit automakers from selling their cars in the state.

The proposal, which the Raleigh News & Observer reports was unanimously approved by the state’s Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, would apply to all car manufacturers, but the intended target is clear. It’s aimed at Tesla, the only U.S. automaker whose business model relies on selling cars directly to consumers, rather than through a network of third-party dealerships.

The bill is being pushed by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group representing the state’s franchised dealerships. Its sponsor is state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Henderson, who has said the goal is to prevent unfair competition between manufacturers and dealers. What makes it “unfair competition” as opposed to plain-old “competition”—something Republicans are typically inclined to favor—is not entirely clear. After all, North Carolina doesn’t seem to have a problem with Apple selling its computers online or via its own Apple Stores.

Still, it’s easy to understand why some car dealers might feel a little threatened: Tesla’s Model S outsold the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 Series, and Audi A8 last quarter without any help from them. If its business model were to catch on, consumers might find that they don’t need the middle-men as much as they thought.

According to the report, “Apodaca received $8,000 in campaign contributions from the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association last year, the maximum amount allowed by state law.” He has not responded to a request for comment.

Ironically, this sort of thing is almost exactly what Ayn Rand complained about in her novel Atlas Shrugged — a business group and the government were forcing an industrialist to share his process for producing a new alloy, using “unfair competition” as their reasoning. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to her that they could ban it for the same reason.

The GOP has taken to praising Rand in recent years — especially post-Tea Party. Like so much else Republicans say, that praise is obviously horseshit.

Free markets, amirite?

quickhits:

See, now that’s your problem right there…

While the RNC was busy trying (and failing) to get together a Celebrity Task Force in Hollywood, something else was going on in Georgia. See if you can figure out which might be a bigger impediment to voter outreach.

Raw Story: Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has refused through a spokesperson to endorse one town’s first-ever integrated high school prom, saying that he would rather not take sides on the issue. According to Atlanta’s WMAZ Channel 13, politicians from both parties have stated their support for black and white students from Wilcox, Georgia, but Deal declined to join them.

Raw Story spoke to activist Bryan Long of the progressive group Better Georgia, whose group has asked Georgia elected officials “to publicly support the students of Wilcox County who are fighting to end a ‘separate-but-equal’ high school prom.”

“We thought it would be nice if our elected officials would support these students,” said Long. “They’re taking a great stand in their community. We thought that officials all across the state should send a message to the nation that we’ve moved beyond the racial divisions of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.”

He added, “We were surprised to read that the governor’s spokesperson said that he wouldn’t be ‘taking sides’ on this issue. I didn’t know that there were sides to take.”

Of course there are sides to take. There’s the racist side and there’s the non-racist side. It should be a no-brainer — you take the non-racist side. But Deal refuses to do that; whether because he’s a racist himself, because he’s afraid of alienating racist voters, or both is pretty much irrelevant. When the party can’t be counted on to stand up to honest-to-goodness racism — and segregation is blatant racism — then you’re going to have yourself a little trouble convincing minority voters they should vote for you.

If Deal’s not a racist, then he’s a coward. Worse, by saying he’s not going to take sides, he takes sides with the racists by default, since this is conceding — without actually saying it outright — that the segregationists have a valid argument. Racism isn’t something you can “stay out of.” By fleeing from the argument in cowardice, Nathan Deal has chosen his side and that choice does not redound to his glory.

RNC head Reince Priebus should personally fly down to Georgia and kick Deal in the ass — if not as a Republican, then as a Wisconsinite. We don’t have a history of putting up with this shit. At the very least, he ought to realize that the problems the GOP faces aren’t caused by a lack of celebrity endorsements, but by cowardly morons like Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.

(via silas216)