Rather than kudos to Tesla Motors, Inc. for paying off an almost half billion dollar government startup loan in a swift three years, a Wall Street Journal editorial took a swipe at the fast-growing electric car maker, notes Grumpy Editor.
Tesla wired a $451.8 million payment to the government on Wednesday. That sum, coupled with two prior payments, paid off a $465 million loan the company received from the Department of Energy in 2010 to foster development of advanced-technology vehicles.
The repayment came nine years early.
Despite the prompt payment (while other companies with recent government loans have defaulted or are about to) a WSJ editorial writer, in giving a bit of history on the California-based company, decided to “take apart Tesla by the numbers, if only to give our reader-taxpayers a better sense of what they’ve paid to make Tesla’s owners rich.”
Taking up one fourth of the editorial page on Friday, the material cited subsidies, windfalls, a brokerage report and a Los Angeles Times analysis. It even mentioned an environmentalist who noted “manufacturing and charging electric cars over their life cycle can produce more carbon than small, gas-powered vehicles.”
The negative editorial was contrary to the hefty applause WSJ’s auto writer Dan Neil recently gave Tesla after a comprehensive test drive.
And on Saturday’s The Journal Editorial Report on Fox, Kimberley Strassel, WSJ editorial board member, praised Tesla in the week’s hits or misses segment, giving the high-tech auto firm a solid hit in paying off the loan.
Meanwhile, those “rich owners” --- big and small investors of the publicly-held stock --- gave their answer to the WSJ editorial at the market close on Friday: Tesla jumped $4.35 a share, reaching $97.08, almost four times above its 52-week low.
Magazine hails TV as top creative medium
Catching Grumpy Editor’s eyes was some material in the June issue of Fast Company that lead off with: “Once a wasteland, TV is now the most thoughtful creative entertainment medium of them all.”
Then it added, “It’s a golden age for TV, where on any given night, viewers can find multiple examples of American comedic and dramatic genius.”
Huh?
Sounds like something that was written in the 1950s, not the current fare that includes easy-on-the-budget reality shows, unfunny comedies peppered with laugh tracks and a parade of reruns in prime time.
It’s hard to beat the TV menu of the 1950s. Among top shows was Playhouse 90, a 90-minute weekly drama series on Thursdays that ran from 1956 to 1960 on CBS. Playhouse 90 began as a live series, making a transition to tape in 1957.
On the comedy side was Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” on NBC from 1950 to 1954. The Saturday night “live” 90-minute variety program, which produced genuine laughs, also featured Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca.
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