John McCain and Elon Musk have had a business and political relationship
that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and businessman Elon Musk, creator of SpaceX,
Tesla Motors, and SolarCity, have enjoyed a long and close business and
political relationship that have helped support the senator while
enriching Musk at taxpayer expense. Musk and his companies have support
McCain and his McCain Institute while the senator has consistently
supported and advanced the legislative interests of Musk’s companies in
the Senate.
Despite being bolstered by the benefit of about $4.9 billion in government
funding, Musk’s companies have recently lost more than $3.5 billion in
value. This loss in stock value was calculated at about half the value of
Musk’s ownership in three companies. Despite the growing financial
challenges the companies face, Sen. McCain has remained firmly in support
of Musk and his business ventures.
SpaceX had a spectacular failure when it’s unmanned CRS-7 rocket exploded
last year, and earlier this year had its third failure when it failed to
land its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the sea. While a competing
provider of launch rockets has had a stellar record of success, Sen.
McCain has instead pushed for SpaceX to receive government contracts for
rocket launches. Even after those failures, McCain stood firmly with
SpaceX. While other members of Congress expressed doubts, and raised
questions about SpaceX, McCain remained firm in his support of Musk’s
space company.
McCain has consistently supported SpaceX and done everything he could, it
seems, to help the company win government space launch contracts. The
federal government had granted space launch contracts to United Launch
Alliance (ULA), a join venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. McCain
accused ULA of “cronyism” for having won those contracts in the past while
consistently supporting the government awarding space contracts to the
company owned by his crony Elon Musk – SpaceX....more:
https://www.redstate.com/diary/qstarweb/2016/04/20/john-mccain-bought-paid-elon-musk/
Who's that next to Musk?
LOL