Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Tangent: The Supremes Tell Musk... "Tell Your Story Walkin', Bub..."


Welp. This has turned out just as we said it would. When you lead a public company, and take the public's funding -- you are subject to certain very sensible duties -- like not lying -- about your stock.

Mr. Musk got off very easily after 2018-era tweets that misled the public, and his shareholders, about Tesla stock. In his settled action with the SEC Enforcement staffers, he agreed to do certain things, to avoid a worse outcome. Specifically, he agreed to a $20 million fine for making misleading tweets, related to his '34 Act registered stock -- and agreed to have his GC pre-approve all tweets that mentioned his stock.

Then, several years later, he tried to argue that his own agreement violated his free expression rights. Hilarious.

What a churlish cad.

He AGREED, in writing (while being advised by some of the best lawyers in the US) -- all to avoid a loss at trial (and an order removing him as an officer, director or any other role of power at Tesla); with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines possible (he had lied about a potential multi-billion Dollar buyout offer) -- and even a chance of jail time (sorta' like Martin Shkreli).

After losing on appeal in the Second Circuit, the Supremes. . . laughed at his petition for cert., thus:

. . .Musk's settlement resolved the SEC lawsuit accusing him of defrauding investors. Under the agreement, Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million fines and he gave up his role as the company's chairman. Musk also agreed to let a Tesla lawyer pre-approve some posts he made on the social media platform then called Twitter before Musk bought the company and renamed it X.

Musk later sought to terminate the pre-approval mandate, with his lawyers in a court filing calling it a "government-imposed muzzle" that amounted to an illegal prior restraint on his speech
. . . .


Now you know. This chucklehead. . . geez.

[More recently, he's been spouting whyte replacement paranoia themes / crazy conspiracy theories -- on his cash burning platform I call X-itter. Not exactly the kind of expression that we all should be rushing to protect, overall -- as it often strays very close to intentional hate crimes, against protected classes.]

Onward.

नमस्ते

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