Rand Simberg thoroughly dismantles it: An Examiner Hit Piece on SpaceX
No quotes, because his response is wedded to excerpts from the original and is best read in full (i.e.: Read the Whole Thing™).
As I mentioned on Twitter (and then didn’t have time to follow up on myself), I heard some scuttlebutt about this at CPAC Colorado last week (along with the James O’Keefe voter registration expose and the Obama campaign’s questionable credit card donations). The implication was that Musk is getting new attention from watchdog and media organizations on the right because of his green energy businesses and his donations to and occasional chumminess with Barack Obama.
Which in itself is a reasonable thing – given the strange frequency of late for green energy businesses owned by Obama friends and fundraisers to get subsidies, lax oversight, stimulus funds, etc. (and to then go bankrupt, stiffing the taxpayers), a watchdog group would be remiss if it didn’t look into a campaign donor who might potentially fit that same pattern. As for the center-right media, there is obvious story potential in digging up and exposing “the next Solyndra” if they can find one, and when you see advertising like this (seen at the Home Depot near my house) it’s natural to wonder whether Musk’s Solar City might or might not be it:
In each case, these things are as they should be: the news media and watchdog organizations, however partisan their interests might be, can serve a useful role in keeping public figures, civic organizations, lobbyists, and the like (a little more) honest via transparency. I say “can”, because of course it doesn’t always work that way – obviously media and watchdogs alike will have less incentive to investigate people and organizations with whom they share a common political persuasion or worldview (which is why the overwhelming left bias seen in both institutions is unhealthy), and when they are so determined to find some dirt on their political enemies that they resort to incompetent hack pieces like this one by Richard Pollock in the Examiner, their efforts at transparency are easily dismissed as partisan BS without substance.