This Land Is Musk's Land

You can't even start a conversation with "Did you hear what Elon Musk did recently?" because there are too many things it could be, usually on Twitter. 

But today I heard about one that's about SpaceX, and not anything about what the company is doing in space, which is all bad enough, too. No, this is about its actions in Texas.

The Cards Against Humanity company is suing SpaceX for $15 million because Musk's company has been egregiously trespassing on land that CAH owns near the other company's "Starbase" (gag me). 

CAH bought the land, which is located along the U.S.-Mexico border, in 2017 to prevent the Trump administration from building a border wall on it and to preserve it in its natural state. They carried out a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money.

What do I mean by "egregiously trespassing"? According to an NBC story,

SpaceX has been using the land without permission for about six months as a staging area for construction: clearing vegetation, parking vehicles, storing gravel and running generators.

After CAH complained about the trespassing, SpaceX proposed to buy the land for less than half its value and gave CAH 12 hours to respond. Their response was, not surprisingly, NO — though they did offer to trade the land for Twitter.

The NBC story ends with this gem:

SpaceX has also violated environmental regulations at its Texas launch facility by repeatedly releasing pollutants into or near bodies of water, a state agency said last month, according to CNBC. The facility is near the mouth of the Rio Grande, on the Gulf of Mexico.

All of this reminded me of Wilhoit's law, which Elon Musk exemplifies:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.