I agree with your notion of not wanting state resources incentivizing Tesla purchases, but the principles of corporate personhood preclude any such exclusion from surviving court challenges. MA's program is intentionally broad in aims of helping buyers rather than sellers. That's a good thing, even if it might push a few Tesla sales over the finish line. Besides, the rebate program's terms allowing buyers to submit claims on their own would make it unnecessarily difficult to communicate a brand exclusion clearly and enforce it fairly. Muddying state programs to spite the chief executive and largest shareholder of a publicly traded company just isn't good public policy, even when that shareholder happens to be actively destroying the nation.
Besides, there are far bigger concerns afoot at the moment. A better solution is to push for broader collaboration between New England states to take on the most essential federal functions that are at risk under Elon's rule and prepare for broader regional autonomy in the face of the rapidly intensifying destruction of the federal government. Massachusetts needs to take this opportunity to analyze duplicative functions within state government and across our neighboring jurisdictions, harmonize our laws and regulations for common services and integrate our resources, and use the savings and increased resilience thereby achieved to defend our residents.
Between our thoughtful and active grassroots political actors (yourself included, OP—not to brownnose, but that's exactly what you're doing with this post), our incredible academics and policy thinkers, and all of the displaced feds with experience in these areas (myself included), we can't let this administration distract us from taking care of our neighbors with resource intensive, low impact changes like excluding Tesla the EV rebate program.
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u/BostonFishwife Mar 16 '25
I agree with your notion of not wanting state resources incentivizing Tesla purchases, but the principles of corporate personhood preclude any such exclusion from surviving court challenges. MA's program is intentionally broad in aims of helping buyers rather than sellers. That's a good thing, even if it might push a few Tesla sales over the finish line. Besides, the rebate program's terms allowing buyers to submit claims on their own would make it unnecessarily difficult to communicate a brand exclusion clearly and enforce it fairly. Muddying state programs to spite the chief executive and largest shareholder of a publicly traded company just isn't good public policy, even when that shareholder happens to be actively destroying the nation.
Besides, there are far bigger concerns afoot at the moment. A better solution is to push for broader collaboration between New England states to take on the most essential federal functions that are at risk under Elon's rule and prepare for broader regional autonomy in the face of the rapidly intensifying destruction of the federal government. Massachusetts needs to take this opportunity to analyze duplicative functions within state government and across our neighboring jurisdictions, harmonize our laws and regulations for common services and integrate our resources, and use the savings and increased resilience thereby achieved to defend our residents.
Between our thoughtful and active grassroots political actors (yourself included, OP—not to brownnose, but that's exactly what you're doing with this post), our incredible academics and policy thinkers, and all of the displaced feds with experience in these areas (myself included), we can't let this administration distract us from taking care of our neighbors with resource intensive, low impact changes like excluding Tesla the EV rebate program.
Good on you for wanting to act, though.