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Speaker 1: We are a bit worried about to resume production UM

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Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, and that should be identified as

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Speaker 1: a serious risk. UM. You know, we we only have

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Speaker 1: two cough factors right now, one in Shanghai and in area,

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Speaker 1: and the area produced with the vast majority of our cars,

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Speaker 1: vast majority of Tesla's made in the Bay Area of California,

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Speaker 1: and the county saying no, you can't make them up

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Speaker 1: until very recently. We're gonna get the latest on that.

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Speaker 1: As Ellen said, I'm opening the place back up with

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Speaker 1: you like it or not. It's a three way battle

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Speaker 1: slash discussion between Tesla, the county, and the state and

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Speaker 1: Rex Crumb, senior web editor of the Business section of

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Speaker 1: the Mercury News, San Jose Mercury News and Bay Area Newsgroup,

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Speaker 1: joins us He's been following the story. Rex, how are you.

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Speaker 1: I'm doing great. I love your intro music there. It

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Speaker 1: took me back to college with that, A little Susie

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Speaker 1: by lick from Tesla. There. We we rock hard around here, Rex,

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Speaker 1: all right, try to keep up. Hey, listen, we first

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Speaker 1: of all, we appreciate the time. But for folks who

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Speaker 1: have not been paying attention to the story, can you

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Speaker 1: give us just that like a thirty second recap. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean sure, in a nutshell, you know, we put

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Speaker 1: the shelter and place order around Alameda County, which is

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Speaker 1: where Tesla's factories located, and several other counties around the

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Speaker 1: Bay area. Almost two months ago. UH Tesla held off

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Speaker 1: for a few days closing its factory. Then it finally did,

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Speaker 1: and you know, like a lot of businesses, you know,

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Speaker 1: they've been closed, and they're one of the big last

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Speaker 1: big manufacturers around the Bay area. And finally Ellen Must

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Speaker 1: you know, said he'd had enough, and we're said, you know, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're going to reopen things here at least start doing

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Speaker 1: some kind of work because they gotta, you know, they

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Speaker 1: gotta get the assembly lines working, so to speak. And

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Speaker 1: beginning this week and some employees started coming back to

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Speaker 1: work and they started doing some some operations there, and

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Speaker 1: then as of last night, it seems like they've reached

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Speaker 1: an agreement with Alameda County to continue operations to at

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Speaker 1: least you know, to quote unquote legally UH start working

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Speaker 1: again next week. Who made the call for the county.

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Speaker 1: We've been confused by that is that is that a

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Speaker 1: one person decision or is there a board or how

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Speaker 1: does at work? Well, it's yeah, that is one of

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Speaker 1: the big, you know questions, because you've got the county,

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Speaker 1: you've got the sheriff's department, you've got the Health department,

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Speaker 1: you've got the city of Fremont where the plant actually is,

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Speaker 1: and you know and its board of uh, you know, supervisors,

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Speaker 1: directors and the police there. But it looks like it's

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Speaker 1: finally the final decision was you came down to the

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Speaker 1: Health department. County health officials said they've reached the deal

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Speaker 1: to end this you know, standoff. If you want to

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Speaker 1: call it, well, it's probably worth mentioning that Elon Musk

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Speaker 1: at one point declared he would be moving manufacturing out

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Speaker 1: of California or the headquarters at least out of California

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Speaker 1: to Nevada and or Texas, and Gavin Newsom responded at

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Speaker 1: the press conferences, softening his stand, saying, Hey, the disputes

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Speaker 1: with the county, California loves you, Elon. I'm paraphrasing here, X. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know you did. You did a good job of

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Speaker 1: paraphrasing there. And part of that, part of what you

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Speaker 1: gotta keep in mind is with with Elon Musk. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, he's like President Trump in a way. He

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Speaker 1: loves going on Twitter and saying speaking his mind on

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Speaker 1: just about anything. So and he says a lot of things. Um.

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Speaker 1: If you recall about two years ago as when he

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Speaker 1: said he was gonna surprise the world, said gonna take

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Speaker 1: ideal to take Tesla private at four and twenty dollars

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Speaker 1: a share, and that caused a big brew for about

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Speaker 1: six months. So the thing is, yeah, you can say,

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Speaker 1: you know, you're the CEO of a company, but you

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Speaker 1: still have your board of directors and even though you're

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk and you have a big you know, say

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Speaker 1: in the company's uh direction, you know, you can't just

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Speaker 1: do everything single handedly. That said, he has already come

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Speaker 1: out and said that they're exploring locations, you know, for

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Speaker 1: a new Giga factory here in the States. Hinted possibility

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Speaker 1: about Texas and there's no way they could just stop

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Speaker 1: operations here while they've built a new plant. Say, but

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Speaker 1: what they could do and you know, anything's possible. They

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Speaker 1: could start building their new factory and then eventually come

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Speaker 1: back to California and say, hey, you know, we got

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Speaker 1: this place and you know, outside of Austin, and it's

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Speaker 1: looking pretty good. So unless you guys, you know, cut

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Speaker 1: us some kind of deal or or we just had enough,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're just gonna start moving operations, move all

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Speaker 1: of our opera rations over there. So it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a tricky situation because nothing's going to happen overnight, but

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Speaker 1: stuff could then potentially happen in another year, two years

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Speaker 1: as we worked through all the rigamarole and all the

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Speaker 1: economic devast devastation of this crisis that we're in right now.

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Speaker 1: So well, so what's the latest Tesla half open? Open?

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Speaker 1: How open is it right now and running? Yeah, well

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Speaker 1: that's a good questions. No one's really sure is like

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Speaker 1: how open is open? Um? You know, I've I've heard

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Speaker 1: from a couple of employees they like they've been told

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Speaker 1: to come back to work, um doing some operations. Uh.

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Speaker 1: We've heard that they've been doing. Uh, they've been wanting

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Speaker 1: to do like some stamping of you know, say like

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Speaker 1: door panels and other other portions of the cars, getting

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Speaker 1: some painting done. Um, you know, because a lot of

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Speaker 1: their cars are already ordered and then they have to

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Speaker 1: fill the orders. So it's not like they just it's

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Speaker 1: not like they just make a bunch of cars and

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Speaker 1: they sit out on the lot and then when somebody

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Speaker 1: goes into a dealership to buy, when they ship it out,

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Speaker 1: you know, the like these cars are almost exclusively a

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Speaker 1: marked for you or or Joe or whoever you know

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Speaker 1: puts the order in. So they got to, you know

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Speaker 1: that they've got to get some at least preliminary operations

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Speaker 1: going on here. And you know it's you know, the

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Speaker 1: bombm lands. It's a business. They need to get their

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Speaker 1: operations back up and running well. And I need to

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Speaker 1: point out that Elon Musk did make it clear from

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Speaker 1: the beginning that they would reopen in a very safe

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Speaker 1: and smart way. They would not go back to full

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Speaker 1: capacity and the rest of it. They would take precautions

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Speaker 1: and follow the guidelines that the government has asked us to.

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Speaker 1: Rex Crumb, senior web editor to the Business section of

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Speaker 1: the Mercury News in the Bay Area newsgroup. Mercury News,

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Speaker 1: to my mind, the premier newspaper in northern Cala. We

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Speaker 1: have believe that for a long time we were honest,

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Speaker 1: honest to God. We always know the Mercury reporters are

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Speaker 1: gonna be the best, and they always turned out to be.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, how do you pronounce his kid's name? How

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Speaker 1: are you going with it? E x A one dash,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I j for right now on if

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Speaker 1: you're listening, No fans, I don't know how to see

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Speaker 1: your kid's name. But too clever, behalf as they say,

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Speaker 1: Rex Crumb, Hey Rex, great to talk to you. Well done,

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Speaker 1: let's stay in touch. No problem, good to talk to you. Thanks.

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Speaker 1: I do want one of the cybertruck trucks, and so

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Speaker 1: get to working on them. Oh yeah, go ahead, stamp

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Speaker 1: those doors. Get that paint and done. Ellen, and the

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Speaker 1: doors ain't getta stamp themselves. A cracker Herger A yeah,

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Speaker 1: I tell you what it's you know what bothers me

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Speaker 1: so much? Oh you're gonna you're gonna talk about something else.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna what? You know what

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Speaker 1: makes me? What makes me crazy? And it shouldn't. But

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Speaker 1: this is why I drink is so often. The actual

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Speaker 1: story is so much more interesting then the phony, dumbed down,

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Speaker 1: one sided one. I understand the mass media. The keyword

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Speaker 1: there is mass and they've got to appeal to the

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Speaker 1: nose picking ist, paste eating thist flits out there you know,

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Speaker 1: not a charitable view of a reader viewerging around, well,

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Speaker 1: a certain percentage of people. We've all run into them,

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Speaker 1: picking your nose and eating adhesives. Well. But but the

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Speaker 1: actual story is so interesting. This one has to do

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Speaker 1: with and and every business person knows this interlocking badly

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Speaker 1: and overlapping poorly layers of government with all sorts of

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Speaker 1: layers of regulation and authority and the rest of it.

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Speaker 1: I have a buddy who's a small businessman. He's busted

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Speaker 1: his ass his entire life and he's made a success

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Speaker 1: of it, and I congratulate him. Um, But he told

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Speaker 1: me the story about he had on consecutive days a

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Speaker 1: state official say if you do not do a you

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Speaker 1: will be closed down. And the next day a county

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Speaker 1: guy came and said, if you do not do the

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Speaker 1: opposite of A, I will close you down. And he

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Speaker 1: just he didn't know whether to poop or dance the

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Speaker 1: hoochie coop, and he had to go into a week's

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Speaker 1: long paperwork nightmare to sort out the regulatory clash between

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Speaker 1: his state and his county. Meanwhile, old Elan is just

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Speaker 1: trying to crank out his his space trucks that either

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Speaker 1: look like the coolest thing I've ever had, I've I've

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Speaker 1: ever seen, or are ridiculous