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Comment by andrewtbham | Hacker News Reader

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andrewtbham

There is a white house petition to allow tesla to sell directly to consumers in all 50 states. Please sign.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/allow-tesla-motors...

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Why make a petition that allows it for Tesla, and not one that allows the same thing for every constructor ?

Do these petition sites actually ever do anything? All I can think when I see them is "wow what a clever data mine".

The petition site here is WhiteHouse.gov and has done quite a few things in past.

Other sites though, I have similar thoughts!

Examples please? It's an honest question; I really can't think of anything.

The white house released the recipe for their honey ale in response to a petition:

http://m.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/09/01/ale-chief-white-hous...

Hahaha. I'm glad that one didn't require a FOIA req.

I'm a big Tesla fan, but is it really the job of the white house to tell states how to regulate commerce? I could be wrong but it doesn't seem like this is an interstate commerce issue if Tesla is trying to actually open shops in each state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause#Role_of_the_po...

If we assume that growing wheat on your own land for the purpose of eating it is interstate commerce, I would have no problem believing that a multi-state company selling cars in each state is interstate commerce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

I suppose due to precedent that decision can't be overturned since it was over 60 years ago. But it still blows my mind that the Court ruled that explicitly not engaging in interstate commerce, or commerce of any kind, is in itself, interstate commerce.

> I suppose due to precedent that decision can't be overturned since it was over 60 years ago.

It can be and the Supreme Court has done it before, but you will need a slate of judges that will willingly curtail their own reach and that of the rest of the federal government. Good luck with that.

Uh, the Rehnquist and Roberts courts have spent collectively two decades scaling back all the power the liberal courts decided for themselves in the 1960's and 1970's.

The Court, like many other parts of the government, has systematically increased its power and influence over the years.

No matter what your opinion is on the recent gay marriage rulings, you should read the dissenting opinions that warn of the new power the court has ruled for itself through the decisions.

Scalia’s dissent is wonderfully written and very much worth reading (whether or not you agree with him, as you say). I cannot offer the same praise for the other two.

Better yet, don't - they're talking a load of self-serving bullshit. Scalia and the other justices who wrote dissenting opinions in that case were quite happy to overrule Congress a day earlier and declare that the Voting Rights Act no longer necessary. Their interest in restricting the reach of the Supreme Court only applies to overturning laws they don't like.

Supreme Court precedent is much more fluid than that, though it operates on cycles measured in decades. Stare decisis doesn't mean that precedent can't be overturned, but that it takes a damn good reason to do so. Look at the date on the Wickard decision (1942). It was a World War II case, decided when the government was gearing up for a war that would ultimately eat up almost a third of US GDP (federal spending spiked from 20% of GDP before and after the war to well over 50%).

It is extremely unlikely that it would be upheld today. Indeed, I tend to think of the Roberts court as having overruled Wickard sub silentio in the Obamacare opinion. The Roberts court rejected the Commerce Clause justification for the individual mandate (the government had argued that not buying insurance effected interstate commerce). It was ultimately upheld on different grounds (that the government had power to tax people who didn't purchase insurance).

I agree, I have a philosophical reservation with tacitly granting the White House a power that I don't believe it should have (nor should it feel it has). Nevertheless, when I created my taskforce clone of this petition (ooh, another opportunity to spam my own activism site! [1]), I set the objective as simply hearing a clear message from representatives of the federal government to states. That doesn't solve the problem, but I think state governments need to feel some more pressure to stand up to the lobbying interests of car dealership associations.

[1] https://usa.brianstaskforce.com/task/383/prevent-states-from...

I am all for the free market, but this should really be hashed out on the state level. You really don't want the federal government involved.

Why not? You'd have to pass laws in every state, which would be extremely difficult. Why not just pass one federal law instead?

> Why not just pass one federal law instead?

You really think it'll be some simple thing like "no dealerships are ok" and that's that? No, that's not how things work in Washington. Everybody would get to add a little bit and more than likely it'll say "Tesla no dealerships are ok" or some other crap granting special rights to somebody. That's just how things go.

Pass.

I would rather existing state laws are overturned in court, so we're subtracting, not adding.

For the love of god, when will people realize that the vast majority of those petitions do absolutely nothing, except perhaps give the signers a nice warm feeling of having done something (when they actually haven't)?

The petition is quite awful too. The law should allow any manufacturer to sell directly. The petition won't do anything, but at least it gives this issue publicity.

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