SpaceX moving to South Texas
Anyone who follows the local, national news on a regular basis already knows that one of the world’s three richest people, Elon Musk, 53, is saying adios to California, packing up all of his business interests and moving to Texas.
For the Lone Star State, at least with regard to tax revenue and jobs, this is a good thing. For people worried about what such development may do to the climate, private land, water usage, the opposite holds true.
In the Beginning
To say that the man born in South Africa in 1971 is a controversial public figure would indeed be an understatement. He’s reminiscent of Howard Hughes in so many ways. Some call it uncanny considering his spectacular rise to fame and fortune, which began when he was only 24 and started an online city guide software company with his brother in California, after dropping out of Stanford after only attending classes for two days.
Prior to making the move to the Golden State, Musk attended the University of Pennsylvania where he received bachelor’s degrees in both economics and physics.
Four years after starting the software company with his brother, the two sold the startup to the now-defunct computer manufacturer, Compaq, for a cool $307 million. He was only 28 at the time, but already he was off and running.
That same year, 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank, which then segued into PayPal. Three years later, he sold the company to eBay for $1.5 billion, and his fortune was made. He was only 31 years old at the time.
That same year, 2002, he used $100 million of his new-found wealth from the sale of PayPal to found SpaceX, and the rest, as they say, is history. He was up and away before the age of 33.
Two years later, to cement his name among business giants, he became an early investor in Tesla.
Along the way, though, while growing his empire, he got a few things wrong.
For example, Covid. In 2020, he stated, “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” and he predicted that children are basically immune to the virus, and that the whole so-called pandemic would be over by Easter (2020). He also called for the prosecution of CDC Director Anthony Fauci.
Today, Musk’s wealth, valued at $252 billion, approximately $37 billion more than Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is mainly tied up in SpaceX and Tesla stock, along with his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, in 2022.
Not bad for a kid who claims he has Asperger’s syndrome, although he has never been medically diagnosed to support his claim.
In a heated election year, the fact that Musk is a Donald Trump financial supporter, even though he’s claimed over the years that he’s a moderate and has supported both Republicans and Democrats (he voted for Hillary in 2016), has created controversy; but the real story currently making the news circuits is his decision to pick up his business stakes in California and move everything to Texas.
To say that Gov. Greg Abbott is happy would be an obvious understatement.
Why Leave California?
Most people don’t know that Musk, who became a U.S. citizen 22 years ago, has approximately a dozen kids. Because so many women are involved, it’s hard to keep count, and that’s not a slam, just a fact.
Two years ago, his eldest twin daughter officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman because she no longer wishes to be associated with her dad. (Source: AP.)
Musk blamed his daughter’s estrangement on the supposed takeover of the public schools and universities in the Golden State by “neo-Marxists,” and has pledged to destroy the mind of the “woke virus.” (Source: Financial Times.)
If there is a more colorful, controversial billionaire among the elite, Amazon’s Bezos isn’t it, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, by way of comparison, seems downright boring. No, for anyone looking for a colorful, controversial human, that would be Elon Musk, who turned only 53 last month.
For California, having Musk headquartered there was a big deal, but now he’s packing up everything and moving all of his operations, Tesla and SpaceX, X, formerly known as Twitter, to Texas, which includes land near Austin (Bastrop) and Starbase, a company town approximately 20 miles east of Brownsville near Boca Chica, a land once desolate for the most part.
So, already, much of Musk’s business interests are already planted in Texas, but after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new LGBTQ+ bill earlier this month, he’s cleaning out what still remains in California and moving everything to the Lone Star State. In a post made on X recently, Musk wrote that he warned Newsom last year that if the new controversial bill became law, he would leave the state.
Newsom didn’t listen, signed the controversial bill anyway, which brings us to 2024.
Cali’s New Law
Earlier this month, Newsom, backed by the majority of state lawmakers, signed Assembly 1955 into law.
It prohibits public school districts from drafting policies that require teachers or school staff to let parents know if their under-age children want to change sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
According to Newsom and his Democrat colleagues, parents shouldn’t be given the right to know this. If a child in high school or middle school wants to tell mom and dad that their son Bob is now Betty, or vice versa, it’s their right to keep them uninformed, out of the loop, so to speak.
Unless the student, not yet of legal age, 18, says it’s okay for the school to tell their parents of the sexual transition, then the school district, teachers and staff, will remain quiet, under threat of legal ramifications.
LGBTQ advocates have said the law, Assembly 1955, is a good step forward in protecting students when it comes to how they identify, male, female, or anything in between.
Musk, who identifies as a libertarian, told Gov. Newsom, et al, that they’re all nuts, in so many words, and that he’s now moving all of his wealth, business interests to Texas, where, by the way, there is no state income tax, thank you very much.
Staunch opponents of the new LGBTQ+ law, which includes the California Family Council, a conservative Christian public policy organization, said that Assembly 1955 will create a divide between parents and their children.
Musk obviously agrees with that stance, which is why South Texas and Central Texas will soon see new jobs created here, more capital flowing into the state by the millions if not billions, while California can say goodbye to all the money that SpaceX, Tesla, X, etc., helped create.
Odd in so many ways. Houston was/is the home of NASA, and now Texas is the complete home of Musk’s SpaceX.
What goes around, comes around. At least in this case. In fact, it was NASA’s decision to pump $8 billion into SpaceX in its earliest stages that really got the company off the ground.
According to the Liberty Justice Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in the Golden State: “Parents have a right to know what their own minor children are doing at school—and school officials have no right to keep secrets from parents. That’s true now, and it will still be true if the state passes this bill. (Which it did with Newsom’s support.)
“We will continue to stand with parents and the school districts that want to respect their rights—and we’ll continue to represent them free of charge, at no cost to taxpayers.”
Before announcing his companies’ move to Texas, Billionaire Elon Musk described the new California law, known colloquially as “The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act,” or “SAFETY Act, as one that “attacks both families and companies.”
California now becomes the first state in the U.S. to enact such a law.