Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Romney Disses Tesla as “Loser” at Debate

While political pundits will be chewing over the first Presidential debate last night, techies are more likely to be pondering Gov. Mitt Romney’s dismissal of Tesla.

The company is the maker of high-end electric cars, many of which have been bought by rich geeks in Silicon Valley. But the Republican candidate dubbed Tesla a “loser” in an attack on tax breaks President Barack Obama gave to green energy companies.

“You put $90 billion — like 50 years’ worth of breaks — into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1,” said Romney. “I mean, I had a friend who said, you don’t just pick the winners and losers; you pick the losers.”

Solyndra went bankrupt, while Ener1 and Fisker suffered definite financial distress.

And while Tesla has also seen its share of start-up troubles and had to cut 2012 forecasts, it seems to be recovering. In a blog post earlier yesterday, in fact, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla would start paying back hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from the Department of Energy early.

Not soon enough for Romney, it seems.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”