Let’s start close to home, maybe too close, in my Souf Cackalacky. Souf Cack is on the cusp of pulling off one of the most Kafkaesque state policy moves maybe ever. It started, as is usually the case, with a tremendously bad idea. In March 2023 the state legislature overwhelmingly approved a $1.3 billion bribe to multinational car maker Volkswagen. In exchange VW agreed to build a $2 billion electric car factory that would pump out the company’s resuscitated Scout Motors name plate EVs. Some deets:
The $1.291 billion state incentive package includes building a railway bridge over Interstate 77 to the Blythewood industrial park site, building a new I-77 interchange to serve the eventual factory, additional road improvements, electrical work, and water and sewer infrastructure. The company also will be given $400 million for site construction as a part of the $1.3 billion package. Scout will also receive a $200 million loan for additional soil stabilization for the site.
Hiding in the weeds, however, was a VW plan to bypass their own dealerships and sell Scouts directly to consumers — the sales model EV competitor Tesla also uses. Slight problem:
Scout Motors plans to use direct sales to sell its vehicles. But that’s not allowed in South Carolina. State law requires cars be sold through third-party dealerships, a requirement that could add $7,000 to $10,000 to the suggested retail price, Scout officials said. … State Rep. Mark Smith, R-Berkeley, introduced a bill that would allow electric vehicle makers to sell directly to motorists in the state without having to go through a franchise dealership without changing how legacy automakers sell their vehicles. … Scout has no plans to allow franchise dealerships. Instead it plans to have direct sales through 100 locations planned in U.S. and Canada where people would purchase vehicles. Those locations would be owned by the company. “All Scout sales will be run through Scout Motors, or maybe to put it more succinctly, Scout Motors will sell Scout vehicles through Scout Motors owned retail locations to Scout consumers,” said Cody Thacker, Scout’s vice president of growth. “There will be no double marginalization from any third party or any middle man at any any point in that chain.”
Fast forward to this week:
A South Carolina House subcommittee meeting has stalled a bill that would have allowed electric vehicle manufacturers to sell directly to consumers—dealing a blow to companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Scout Motors.
Reading between the lines in Columbia, it certainly appears that the powerful S.C. Automobile Dealers Association has sidelined the direct to consumer idea, perhaps for good. If so that would mean SC taxpayers would have to drive to Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia or Florida to buy a car they have subsidized. Or as one legislator put it:
State Rep. Kambrell Garvin, D-Richland, who lives one-and-half miles from the Scout Motors site, is a supporter of allowing direct sales in South Carolina. He’s reserved a chance to buy a Scout once they start rolling off the assembly line 2027 and would much rather purchase the vehicle closer to home instead of going to another state. “It doesn’t make sense for me to drive hundreds of miles up to Virginia to buy a vehicle that was shipped a mile and a half from my home to Virginia, and then have to ship it back down,” Garvin said. “All that’s doing is raising the cost on South Carolinians.”
But more incredible is absent a change in state law the workers at the Scout plant in Blythewood would be barred from buying the cars they just built. VW had planned a $25 million “Scout Experience” center at the factory which would have functioned as a de facto sales window and showroom. No point in making that investment now if those sales are impossible.
Never change Souf Cack.
Been thinking about attempts to drive a wedge between Musk and Trump for some time. Alex makes some cogent points about why that could backfire, bigly.
Sorry, I do not believe any of this happened as described. I think it was all Deep State theater.
Clip - N - Sav quote from an increasingly dejected and desperate James Carville, who is seeing his life’s work — the national Democratic Party — begin to circle the drain:
Just let [Trump] swing away for five rounds. Because he can’t keep up with it. … I don’t think we need to contest everything, just let him throw haymakers. And just bob and weave and he’s going to punch himself totally out.
Say whatever you want about Trump but the idea that you are going to out stamina him has zero basis in reality given what we have seen over the last decade. It is even more delusional than denying that Joe Biden was mental free fall from 2020 on.
So, so many Russiagate documents that still have not seen the light of day. We need them to understand the serial coup plots.
Trying wrap my ahead around how or why classified info would play any role in the prosecution of a man arrested in broad daylight on a golf course about to draw down on the President. No complex investigation with a ton of moving parts uncovered his plot, he was behind a bush with a gun. Suggests that for some reason, he was under surveillance prior to his arrest. I guess we will never know.
State and local officials totally lied about their knowledge of violent Venezuelan gang ops in Colorado.
Fauci’s wife is still employed at NIH and remains very powerful. Why?
