Ron Fournier, Kimberly Strassel, Charles Lane, and Karl Rove discuss N.J. governor Chris Christie’s attempts to move beyond investigations into the scandals plaguing his office. Chris Wallace moderates.
A power-player in N.J. politics and Christie mentor, Samson’s connection to Bridgegate remains unclear
     |
Elon Musk wrote a blog post about Tesla’s troubles in New Jersey.
Tesla’s direct-to-consumer sales model was banned in the state this week. The ban starts April 1.
Musk’s post basically echos what he said last year about fighting the dealers.
He doesn’t want Tesla to sell cars through auto dealerships because the dealers will have no incentive to sell electric cars. He says that all other cars that tried the dealership model have gone bust.
In this post he has pointed language for Chris Christie:
On Tuesday, under pressure from the New Jersey auto dealer lobby to protect its monopoly, the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, composed of political appointees of the Governor, ended your right to purchase vehicles at a manufacturer store within the state. Governor Christie had promised that this would be put to a vote of the elected state legislature, which is the appropriate way to change the law. When it became apparent to the auto dealer lobby that this approach would not succeed, they cut a backroom deal with the Governor to circumvent the legislative process and pass a regulation that is fundamentally contrary to the intent of the law.
And later, he adds:
The rationale given for the regulation change that requires auto companies to sell through dealers is that it ensures “consumer protection”. If you believe this, Gov. Christie has a bridge closure he wants to sell you! Unless they are referring to the mafia version of “protection”, this is obviously untrue. As anyone who has been through the conventional auto dealer purchase process knows, consumer protection is pretty much the furthest thing from the typical car dealer’s mind.
Here’s the whole thing:
On Tuesday, under pressure from the New Jersey auto dealer lobby to protect its monopoly, the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, composed of political appointees of the Governor, ended your right to purchase vehicles at a manufacturer store within the state. Governor Christie had promised that this would be put to a vote of the elected state legislature, which is the appropriate way to change the law. When it became apparent to the auto dealer lobby that this approach would not succeed, they cut a backroom deal with the Governor to circumvent the legislative process and pass a regulation that is fundamentally contrary to the intent of the law.
It is worth examining the history of these laws to understand why they exist, as the auto dealer franchise laws were originally put in place for a just cause and are now being twisted to an unjust purpose. Many decades ago, the incumbent auto manufacturers sold franchises to generate capital and gain a salesforce. The franchisees then further invested a lot of their money and time in building up the dealerships. That’s a fair deal and it should not be broken. However, some of the big auto companies later engaged in pressure tactics to get the franchisees to sell their dealerships back at a low price. The franchisees rightly sought protection from their state legislatures, which resulted in the laws on the books today throughout the United States (these laws are not present anywhere else in the world).
The intent was simply to prevent a fair and longstanding deal between an existing auto company and its dealers from being broken, not to prevent a new company that has no franchisees from selling directly to consumers. In most states, the laws are reasonable and clear. In a handful of states, the laws were written in an overzealous or ambiguous manner. When all auto companies sold through franchises, this didn’t really matter. However, when Tesla came along as a new company with no existing franchisees, the auto dealers, who possess vastly more resources and influence than Tesla, nonetheless sought to force us to sell through them.
The reason that we did not choose to do this is that the auto dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between promoting gasoline cars, which constitute virtually all of their revenue, and electric cars, which constitute virtually none. Moreover, it is much harder to sell a new technology car from a new company when people are so used to the old. Inevitably, they revert to selling what’s easy and it is game over for the new company.
The evidence is clear: when has an American startup auto company ever succeeded by selling through auto dealers? The last successful American car company was Chrysler, which was founded almost a century ago, and even they went bankrupt a few years ago, along with General Motors. Since the founding of Chrysler, there have been dozens of failures, Tucker and DeLorean being simply the most well-known. In recent years, electric car startups, such as Fisker, Coda, and many others, attempted to use auto dealers and all failed.
An even bigger conflict of interest with auto dealers is that they make most of their profit from service, but electric cars require much less service than gasoline cars. There are no oil, spark plug or fuel filter changes, no tune-ups and no smog checks needed for an electric car. Also, all Tesla Model S vehicles are capable of over-the-air updates to upgrade the software, just like your phone or computer, so no visit to the service center is required for that either.
Going a step further, I have made it a principle within Tesla that we should never attempt to make servicing a profit center. It does not seem right to me that companies try to make a profit off customers when their product breaks. Overcharging people for unneeded servicing (often not even fixing the original problem) is rampant within the industry and happened to me personally on several occasions when I drove gasoline cars. I resolved that we would endeavor never to do such a thing at Tesla, as described in the Tesla service blog post I wrote last year.
Why Did They Claim That This Change Was Necessary?
The rationale given for the regulation change that requires auto companies to sell through dealers is that it ensures “consumer protection”. If you believe this, Gov. Christie has a bridge closure he wants to sell you! Unless they are referring to the mafia version of “protection”, this is obviously untrue. As anyone who has been through the conventional auto dealer purchase process knows, consumer protection is pretty much the furthest thing from the typical car dealer’s mind.
There are other ways to assess the premise that auto dealers take better care of customers than Tesla does. Consumer Reports conducts an annual survey of 1.1 million subscribers, which factors in quality, reliability and consumer satisfaction. The Tesla Model S was the top overall pick of any vehicle in the world, scoring 99 out of 100. This is the highest score any car has ever received. By comparison, in theindustry report card, Ford, which sells their cars through franchise dealers, received a score of 50. BMW, which makes competing premium sedans, received a score of 66.
Consumers across the country have also voiced their opinion on the sales model they prefer. In North Carolina, a Triangle Business Journal poll found that 97 percent of people polled said Tesla should be allowed to sell cars directly. A poll by the Austin Business Journal showed that 86 percent of respondents were in favor of direct sales, and in a Los Angeles Times poll 99 percent of respondents came to the same conclusion. These aren’t polls that we commissioned and there are many more like them. We have not seen a single poll that didn’t result in an overwhelming majority saying they preferred the direct model to the traditional dealer model. Democracy is supposed to reflect the will of the people. When a politician acts in a manner so radically opposed to the will of the people who elected him, the only explanation is that there are other factors at play.
Going Forward
Some reassurances are also in order. Until at least April 1, everything is business as usual for Tesla in New Jersey. It should also be noted that this regulation deals only with sales, so our service centers will not be affected. Our stores will transition to being galleries, where you can see the car and ask questions of our staff, but we will not be able to discuss price or complete a sale in the store. However, that can still be done at our Manhattan store just over the river in Chelsea or our King of Prussia store near Philadelphia.
Most importantly, even after April 1, you will still be able to order vehicles from New Jersey for delivery in New Jersey on our TeslaMotors.com website.
We are evaluating judicial remedies to correct the situation. Also, if you believe that your right to buy direct at a Tesla store should be restored, please contact your state senator & assemblyman:www.njleg.state.nj.us/districts/districtnumbers.asp.
Finally, we would like to thank the many people who showed up in Trenton on Tuesday to support Tesla and speak out against the MVC’s back-door tactics in passing this regulation change without public consultation or due process. It was an amazing response at very short notice and much appreciated.
Elon
Join the conversation about this story »
| |
Just when you thought the list of things New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is now associated with couldn’t get worse, it gets worse:
For a state that lost hundreds of lives on Sept. 11, the gifts were emotionally resonant: pieces of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center. They were presented by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to 20 carefully chosen New Jersey mayors who sat atop a list of 100 whose endorsements Gov. Chris Christie hoped to win.At photo opportunities around the mangled pieces of steel, Bill Baroni, Mr. Christie’s top staff appointee at the Port Authority, told audiences how many people wanted a similar remnant of the destroyed buildings, and how special these mayors were.
Can you imagine the scandal that would have erupted if President Obama had given pieces of the Pentagon rubble to Republicans he was trying to woo in his re-election battle? The outrage from the right would be so fierce that Darrell Issa wouldn’t be able to work in a word edgewise about the IRS or Benghazi. Yet when Christie does it, not a peep.
During his address to the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called on Republicans to start talking about what they are for rather than what they are against. (Photo: AP)
Thanks for checking us out. Please take a look at the rest of our videos and articles.
To stay in the loop, bookmark our homepage.
Bill Maher may have broken up with MSNBC, but he’s still paying close attention to just how much coverage the network gives to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).
Maher brought MSNBC host Rachel Maddow onto his HBO show Friday night and pressed her to explain why the network gives so much airtime to the scandal surrounding the Christie administration’s involvement in closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge.
“I am totally obsessed with the Christie story, unapologetically,” Maddow said, comparing it to her past coverage of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Maher wrote in what he called a earlier this month that he was going to “start seeing other news organizations” in protest of the network’s wall-to-wall coverage of Christie. He added that MSNBC had become like Fox News and that the so-called Bridgegate scandal had become the network’s version of Benghazi.
“I should have said that, yes, this is not the same as Benghazi,” Maher said. “I made that analogy, I said ‘This is your Benghazi.’ Benghazi is nothing. There is no scandal there. This is an actual scandal. It’s just that it’s not Watergate.”
“When there are gonzo political corruption stories, you cover them,” Maddow responded. “The most interesting thing about the Christie one is that we still don’t know what happened. It’s still not resolved. We still don’t have an explanation.”
National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke ventured another theory about why MSNBC has hammered Christie in recent weeks: to “get rid of Chris Christie” from the 2016 presidential field.
“So you think that I’ve created the bridge story out of whole cloth in order to elect a Democrat in 2016?” Maddow asked with a mocking laugh, concluding that the bridge scandal was simply “an ongoing story worth covering.”
Watch below:
h/t Raw Story
FILE – In this Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009 file photograph, Hoboken Mayor, Dawn Zimmer speaks to the media as she stands near the Hudson River in Hoboken, N.J. Zimmer, mayor of a New Jersey city that sustained severe flooding from Hurricane Sandy claims the Christie administration withheld millions of dollars in recovery grants because she refused to sign off on a politically connected development. MSNBC first reported her comments Saturday. (AP Photo/Mel Evans,file)
FILE – In this Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009 file photograph, Hoboken Mayor, Dawn Zimmer speaks to the media as she stands near the Hudson River in Hoboken, N.J. Zimmer, mayor of a New Jersey city that sustained severe flooding from Hurricane Sandy claims the Christie administration withheld millions of dollars in recovery grants because she refused to sign off on a politically connected development. MSNBC first reported her comments Saturday. (AP Photo/Mel Evans,file)
| Buy AP Photo Reprints | ||
|
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The mayor of a New Jersey city that sustained severe flooding from Hurricane Sandy claims the Christie administration withheld millions of dollars in recovery grants because she refused to sign off on a politically connected development.
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer tells The Associated Press that Gov. Chris Christie’s lieutenant governor and a top community development official said recovery funds would flow to her city if the commercial development went forward. MSNBC first reported her comments Saturday.
Zimmer says Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno (gwah-DON-yo) pulled her aside at a May event and told her unless the project is approved “we are not going to be able to help you.”
Christie is embroiled in another scandal involving traffic jams apparently manufactured to settle a political score.
Christie’s office did not return messages from the AP. Spokesman Michael Drewniak called Zimmer’s claims “outlandishly false” in a statement to MSNBC.
Rom-denfreude (noun) — The pleasure Mitt Romney loyalists are taking in the struggles of Chris Christie.
The condition is prevalent, stemming from a range of perceived Christie slights towards Romney during the 2012 campaign, which several Romney loyalists ticked off quickly — and with still-evident bitterness.
There was the New Jersey governor’s barring Romney from raising money in the Garden State, his unwillingness to answer vice presidential vetting questions and his highly autobiographical convention keynote speech. Most of all, though, Romney allies remain resentful of Christie’s embrace of President Barack Obama as the two worked together on Superstorm Sandy relief in the waning days of the campaign, which Romney backers believe boosted Obama’s bipartisan bona fides and cost Romney valuable swing votes.
(QUIZ: How well do you know Chris Christie?)
Several former Romney donors and staff told POLITICO that their alumni network has been buzzing over revelations that Christie’s staff was involved in lane closures on the George Washington Bridge that caused massive traffic jams, and were allegedly politically motivated. Some view it as a vindication of Romney’s decision not to tap Christie as his running mate, while others have merely watched in amusement.
The sniping is not insignificant. Christie is not well-liked among tea party activists and leaders, where he is seen as a big-government moderate. So, in order to build a coalition that could give him a chance at the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, he’ll most likely need strong support from Republican establishment types, like those who formed the core of Romney’s formidable operation. And as the party’s last presidential nominee, his alumni network remains influential in the GOP professional and donor classes.
Frank VanderSloot, one of Romney’s national finance chairman, said he found it “peculiar” that Christie declared he “could care less about” presidential politics in the week before Election Day, when he was dealing with the fallout from Sandy.
(PHOTOS: Mitt Romney through the years)
“I could understand him saying ‘right now, this is more important to me than that,’ but that’s not what he said,” VanderSloot said. “That wouldn’t cause me not to vote for him, of course. But this other deal would,” he said of the bridge scandal. “It suggests that he made some really bad choices as to some people that he appointed into positions of responsibility, at the very least. I think it’s really bad news.”
Even those inclined to give Christie the benefit of the doubt concede the scandal hits a nerve for Romney backers.
“I suppose it would be a little understandable that some people would have feelings about this,” said real estate developer Harlan Crow, who hosted Romney for a fundraiser at his Dallas estate in 2012. “But I believe most would grasp the larger picture and examine the question from the point of view of the candidate most able to win. It seems to me that, in that context, it would be best to put the Christie/Obama/Sandy episode into the past.”
Few are willing to publicly discuss their Christie schadenfreude, for fear of being seen as bad party soldiers or of kicking the governor while he’s down. Besides, Christie could still be the 2016 GOP standard-bearer — making vocal criticism risky for any Republican hoping to play a role in 2016.
(PHOTOS: Who’s who in the Christie bridge flap)
One operative who helped Romney during both of his presidential campaigns said that, even though Christie has denied any knowledge of his aides’ involvement in the lane closures, his staff’s involvement raises questions about his judgment, which dovetail with concerns flagged by Romney’s vice presidential vetters.
“There is a concern that where there is smoke there is fire,” the operative said. “And this isn’t just one plume of smoke, this is several.”
A former Romney staffer called Christie’s handling of the scandal part of a pattern of behavior by the governor. “There’s a level of arrogance that people I talk to find really just unacceptable,” the ex-staffer said, pointing to Christie’s chronic tardiness for high-dollar fundraisers he did with Romney. “Those are little things, but when you have these very important people waiting, it sends a signal.”
A Christie consultant declined to comment for this story.
(Also on POLITICO: Chris Christie’s high-stakes weekend)
The governor has worked to make inroads with Romney’s network, and particularly his robust finance operation, which remains intact. In June, Christie spoke at a retreat of major Romney donors in Park City, Utah, hosted by Romney himself and sponsored by a private equity firm run by one of Romney’s sons and the finance director for his campaign, Spencer Zwick. While Christie had a private sit-down with Romney and got a standing ovation from his supporters, not everyone was ready to forgive and forget. One Romney bundler told The New York Times “there’s a large group of people in that room who are N.O.P.E. on Chris Christie — not one penny ever.”
Months later, Christie met with Zwick, who told POLITICO this week that Christie “absolutely has a shot” at winning over those Romney backers still sore about the 2012 campaign.
“Gov. Christie has already won the support of many major financial backers from the Romney campaign,” Zwick said.
Ron Kaufman, a longtime top Romney adviser, asserted that the majority of Romney loyalists have set aside their grudges “mostly because of the way that Gov. Romney has treated it. He has a good forgettary. He doesn’t hold a grudge.”
(Also on POLITICO: Jay Rockefeller knocks Chris Christie Bridgegate ‘traffic study’)
Romney’s deputy campaign manager, Katie Packer Gage, said intra-party divisions don’t help. “We’re all Republicans, and it doesn’t do any of us any good to be kind of gleeful when anybody else is going through a tough time,” she said, later adding, “I think anyone who is gleeful about this doesn’t really understand the ebb and flow of this business.”
Christie has also antagonized some tea partiers and grass-roots conservatives with his support for immigration reform and his clashes with movement favorite Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. They too are taking glee in his struggles.
The“Republican Party establishment’s chosen champion for 2016 is in the cross hairs of the liberal media,” influential Iowa talk radio host Steve Deace said. “You can’t take out the Democrats until you take out the Republican establishment.”
He added, “I’ve never been happier to watch the liberal news media tear down a Republican because he’s one of their own.”
