His leader is Trump. Elon wants a seat in government should Trump win.

Trump is supposedly also a billionaire. How much has he contributed to the disaster relief in hard cash? Close to if not equal to zero. His trip to Georgia was a PR Stunt. The aid was coming from a different charity.

Elon could donate a billion or two (and mark it as a tax relief) without noticing a real dent in his net worth but he won't. He's content to sit at Trumps side like a good little doggy in the hope that he will get fed after 20th Jan 2025.

Don't let Trump anywhere near the White House... Send him to the Big House in an Orange Jumpsuit.

>His leader is Trump

That's the best possible option.

More likely is that Musk's leader is Musk, together with Thiel

Trump gets elected and within a few months is reported on Twitter to have had a stroke and is bundled off to a private golf-course leaving President Vance, carefully advises by Musk/Thiel/etc to run things their way.

Imagine an evil version of Donald Rumsfeld behind Bush.

> Imagine an evil version of Donald Rumsfeld behind Bush.

Isn't that just Donald Rumsfeld?

Imagine an evil er version of Donald Rumsfeld...

Let's go for a bit of history (I'm good on this topic):

What Musk is playing at is an over century-old game, let's call it the "Carnegie shuffle".

Be absolutely cutthroat, ruthless, heartless and a general bastard for most of your [business] life, including being involved in one of the greatest disasters of the age (Johnstown flood). But whitewash the public's memory, and your legacy, by donating the money that you ruthlessly plundered from others to shower locales with gifts that make you seem 'caring' (libraries throughout small America including the aforementioned Johnstown, NYC's Carnegie Hall, etc).

Musk is simply doing what Carnegie did over a century ago by trying to ingratiate himself with the general public by seeming to be magnanimous on one hand, an untrustworthy bastard on the other (but hoping you forget that hand). It's the old two-handed shuffle. The general public, of course, having both no interest in knowing any history and having the attention span of a goldfish, never learns their lessons.

We have Carnegie libraries over here in the UK. Still serving the community in splendid buildings. Outlasting many miserable modern ones. I'm sure Carnegie was a bit of a b*stard but I wonder what concrete legacy of Elon's will be serving the community a century hence (on this planet or the next)?

Instead of worrying about the Billionaires and their next fortunes,just go and do your best for yourself and your family/neighbours and be proud of it. Writing articles about Musk is not helping you or anyone else, you're just giving free publicity to someone that thrives on just that.

Obviously for the immediate situation, but also for being turned into a sacrificial pawn in a political game. It is understandably frustrating, and writing an article such as this is a step toward relieving the frustration.

I hope you can restore as much of your pre-disaster life as possible, both physically (basic necessities of shelter/home, food, water, electricity, etc.) and emotionally.

An article like this is important.

It establishes that despite the headlines seen in the general press, the on-the-ground experience shows how hollow the actual offer was.

Also, burying heads in sand and saying "la la la" won't make the problem go away. Casting the harsh light of day on it might.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Musk is the one who got the free publicity by announcing he was helping, the author wrote this article about how Musk wasn't, in fact, helping.

Or are people with first-hand evidence supposed to know their place and say nothing while a billionaire compulsive liar lies yet again with the aim of deceiving the impressionable?

Instead of worrying about the Billionaires...

... tax them. They're a natural resource that can be exploited with very little upfront investment.

Always worth remembering that the "Good Olde Days" that the [U.S.] conservatives always dream about reinventing - the 1950's - businesses and millionaires (billionaires did not yet exist) were taxed at their highest rate in history.

And yet the world did not cease to function.

Amazing, no?

If everybody stopped talking about him, he'd still pull the same crap without anybody knowing because nobody would talk about it. Articles like this one remove the veil of showmanship and reveal what Mr. Musk is really all about.

Why does Elon Musk have such importance in your daily lies, I just dont get it .

If peoples lives are so influenced by Musk then the real problem lies elsewhere. E Musk is just another of those Billionaires, Gates, Zuckerberg, Besos etc that couldn't give a shit about you, so why do you care about him or anything he does. Instead of waking up thinking what stupid shit can I write about Musk today, just get on with your lifes, enjoy what you have and stop hating what you don't.

All and any publicity for or about Musk is good for Musk and yet people here seem to hate him and still give him endless articles, that's just unbelievably ironic.

He must mean a great deal to you because you put so much effort into defending him. To the best of my knowledge Gates and Bezos have not spread lies that led to a riot. Bill was a complete pest when he was younger. These days his [1]charity makes the world a better place. It is not simply some headline grabbing words with no real follow through.

Sometimes news articles are published that say things you do not want to hear. By all means piss and whine that they should be silenced. It tells others exactly who you are.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation

> "He must mean a great deal to you because you put so much effort into defending him."

The El Reg forums are text-only, so imagine that meme of Apu from the Simpsons repurposed to make Apu the 'weird nerd' sacrificing himself to save 'Elon Musk' from 'valid criticism'.

That's Khaptain, that is.

I very much doubt that you will ever see me defending Elon Musk or Trump.. I don't care for either of them.

But he's in the tech business, so are we, it's interesting to read what Billionaires do with their money/projects but every single article just ends up being a sesspit of childish Ad Hominems towards a man that no-one here knows. If they were funny then that would be fine but the overall feeling generated is one of absolute hate and that to me just doesn't make sense.

There's truth in your words but conversely it is always worth remembering that those billionaires *are* billionaires due to us - the money in their pocket is made from the excess of buying / building something at cost and selling on to their customers at a markup. If they are billionaires either they are doing incredibly massive volumes of trade, incredible margins on each trade...or all of the above.

They have money because, essentially, *we* gave it to them. If they are quiet and on the down-low about it, that's fair, but Musk makes it a point to be in the public eye, makes it a point to be a famous individual with money.

You play, you pay. Musk wants to be world-famous about his achievements? Then, as a public-facing individual, you pay the price by being open to criticism as well as accolades for your actions. Deal with it, you get the poop as well as the prizes.

Don't want Musk to be a target of criticism? Then simply tell him to live a quiet life of a Poor Little Rich Boy.

You are defending Musk with that very comment. The article is not an ad hominem attack. It points out that Musk's words do not match reality. This is a common theme in articles about Musk. Pretending the articles are a sesspit of childish Ad Hominems shows you care for him a great deal.

"Elon Musk's promises on anything, ever: Should we believe the hype? No."

Just a reminder [1] for the El Reg Musk Lovers about what he failed to do.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYUr-5PYA7s

Which part of that was him? Was he cosplaying as a rocket booster now? Oh wait, you're giving him credit for the work of people employed by him, aren't you?

I expect he thinks he has done a bang-up job and has his sycophants crow about it when his cleaners get his toilet nice and clean too.

Ah, so it's ok to blame him directly when Tesla/SpaceX etc does something you don't like but not to give him credit when something good happens.

That to me is the very definition of hypocrite.

Nice projection you've got there.

Please give an example of me blaming him for something SpaceX/Tesla/etc. has done, that wasn't directly caused by him, or is this just one massive fucking ridiculous straw-man you're building?

Elmo is perfectly fair game when he does something stupid in his role as the owner of these companies, and he has all the usual responsibilities for governance that this entails.

Here's the thing, though, take a counter-example of Microsoft for example. Here's a company that often makes questionable choices. Why don't I criticise Bill Gates for this? Because, unlike Space Karen, Bill Gates isn't publicly making claims about Microsoft and he takes a completely hands-off role. Those bad choices are mostly made by marketing people some level below him. A lot of them may not even be "bad" per se from a business point of view, they're just shitty choices from a user's perspective. This doesn't mean I don't think there are valid things to criticise Bill for, either, but he sure doesn't make continuous and very public bad personal choices like Elon.

Meanwhile, Musk is publicly doing and saying things that are perfectly valid points for criticism. The people running his companies, when he doesn't interfere, generally do a fairly decent job of it, but pretty much every time he involves himself, for instance by deciding to fire all the moderation staff from Twitter and then give it a stupid name, based on his own ego-trip obsession with the letter X, it's a poor choice, made directly by him. He's a fucking massive man-child who, for some reason, people with cognitive difficulties seem to think is a "genius".

Well, there was also the part about locking people in need into an expensive subscription too, so there was more than a hint of opportunistically extracting profits from the needy.

If Musk had started out with nothing instead of his big inheritance, he is the sort of person that might have set up a hot dog stand outside a funeral.

As someone who was through their first serious natural disaster 35 years ago and has known people who have been through pretty much every big natural disaster you care to mention over the last 50 years I am well used to the initial BS that comes out in the media. First rule is, the closer the people / media source to the devastation the more factually correct the stories. Everything outside the immediate area is mostly / all incorrect / untrue. So Ashville maybe be closer than say Charlotte and a hell of a lot closer than DC or NYC but I'll still give more credence to ordinary folk doing the relief work/ people living in the worst hit areas up in the mountains than someone who lives a bit further out. Flooded but not utterly devastated.

First. The Starlinks delivered in the mountains by helicopters / ATV's were free with 90 days free a/c's. Might be different down in Ashville. But you guys mostly have your cell / power back already based on the most recent coverage maps. At least in the close in metro area. And based on previous disasters when the 90 days are up I expect the worst hit areas to get a rollover on their free Starlink a/c. The areas that wont have cell / etc for many months.

FEMA on the ground Day 1. I dont think so. For a start you dont seem to have a clue how Disaster Response actually works. Did you have your full 3/5 days (absolute minimum) prep supplies before this happened. I've had my 7/10 days prep supplies for decades. Get Home Bag / Go Bags etc. Because I've lived in major natural disaster risk zones most of my life. Its city/county and state who are responsible for initial response. FEMA just ride into town days / weeks later to write checks. They dont do initial response. Read your state / city Disaster Prep guide (if they have one) to discover how disaster response actually works.

Plus regional FEMA HQ is down in Atlanta and state HQ is in Raleigh. There have been no major structural changes in FEMA role / responsibilities since the first time I saw them up-close in action in 1989. In the weeks following the disaster. Sending their guys out to look at damaged infrastructure that was going to need big Federal checks to fix. And their regional HQ is very local. So thats why the guys with the FEMA high-vis vests and baseball hats only showed up in the worst disaster areas in NC many days / weeks later. Because thats what FEMA always does. And is suppose to do.

Now the story about the incompetence of the state disaster prep and initial recovery in quite a few counties is a very different story. The guys in Raleigh really screwed up by all accounts. The failure in the NC Govs office regarding immediate mobilization of NG and DOD resources being particularly bad. If you knew how the disaster response chain of command works you would know who is really to blame. It starts with the Gov.

Why do I get the feeling that if this was a Zuckerberg et al doing the donating a very different article would have been written. Not something that reads very like a politically motivated hit piece. After all you do live in Ashville. Which by all accounts is slightly to the left of Berkeley politically. I have heard far more and far worse really sleazy stories about Musk. Going back decades. Not my favorite person. By a very wide margin. But why do I think that if Musk was toeing the DNC line and donating to all the "right" causes your article would have taken a very different tack.

Yes, the purely political motivation for writing this piece is that patently obvious.

It will take years for even the lightly hit areas to return to any kind of normalcy. And for people who have been through a really big natural disaster, one that causes widespread devastation, life, and your view of life, will never be the same again. You will see the very best in people. And sometimes the very worst. But at least in my experience natural disasters mostly bring out the best in people.

Best if luck. Its going to be a very long road to recovery.

Are you sure that you really want to be telling facts on a thread that is trying to knock down Musk ?

Kudos to you for taking the time to write that post, as you know you'll be joining me in the "persona non grata" club.

Khaptain: "I very much doubt that you will ever see me defending Elon Musk or Trump.. I don't care for either of them."

Khaptain in response to an article by a journalist: "Writing articles about Musk is not helping you or anyone else, you're just giving free publicity to someone that thrives on just that."

Khaptain in response to an AC: "Are you sure that you really want to be telling facts on a thread that is trying to knock down Musk ?"

The cognitive dissonance is real.