[Cardfan1]

Musk paid 0 in federal income tax in 2018 and then received almost $100,000,000 in federal money for his internet venture.

That's quite an allegation. Is there any evidence that Elon Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018 and that Elon Musk received almost $100,000,000 for "his" internet venture? If so, how did that dastardly scoundrel justify the windfall and escape the clutches of the IRS? I'm just curious.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-paid-0-in-federal-income-tax-in-2018-report-1847051810

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/08/bezos-musk-buffett-bloomberg-icahn-and-soros-pay-little-in-taxes.html

https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/sta...-fund.html

So, Musk is following our tax law and has paid well over a billion dollars in income taxes ($1.4 million on $6.5 billion of income from 2006 through 2018 alone) but it is not enough. To make Musk into a bigger deadbeat, liberals have concocted a "true tax rate," which combines Musk's taxable income with the increase in the value of his stock holdings for the same time period. The "true tax rate" is nonsense intended to demonize wealthy Americans who are just following the law. Musk pays taxes on income as he sells his stock, which means that in some years, he has very little reportable income, and in other years he pays many millions of dollars in taxes.

As for the federal money paid to Musk's Starlink, anybody who has a beef with the federal government determining that Starlink can provide cost-effective internet to rural users should take up the issue with their elected officials. It is very expensive to provide terrestrial infrastructure to provide internet service in sparsely populated areas of the country. The same is true for mobile phone service. The Slate article that you posted decries the fact that poor people will not be able to afford the cost of a satellite dish and the monthly subscription for the service. My suggestion is for those poor people to learn to program or to perform another marketable service to pay for good internet service. Starlink will offer many people the opportunity to telework from home - from an area with a lower cost of living, cleaner air, and better views than their city counterparts. When you factor in the potential savings for telecommuters and the environmental benefits, Starlink's cost is a tremendous bargain.

Musk is a visionary who has risked his fortune several times on unproven technologies that nobody else had tried to develop on a commercial scale. Tesla is now the world's most valuable automobile manufacturer. Other Musk companies are on the cutting edge of technologies in batteries, tunneling, reusable rockets, and satellite-linked internet. The jobs that these companies created did not exist before Musk came along because he pioneered commercial development of each of the technologies.

Dislike Musk all you want. He sounds like a horrible guy to have as an immediate boss, but Musk is still an American hero. He has not grown wealthy through government subsidies or through hostile takeovers of competing companies. He has not grown wealthy by becoming a crooked elected official exploiting insider information and extorting payments from wealth creators. Musk has created innovative products and technologies and has overcome an extreme amount of bureaucratic red tape in the process.

The argument is the law.  The tax code is wrong and when common Conservatives hold up the GOP platform they vote against what is best for America.  

I agree Musk is a visionary.  Not an American Hero just a billionaire businessman like Gates, Bezos, Bloomberg, Buffet (I'm sure you wouldn't call those guys American heroes, Hoot)   Musk is a man who has benefitted from our failure to hold the rich accountable.  That responsibility falls on the politicians we elect and it turns out both sides are guilty of putting crooked poltiicians in office.