printHelp me understand what hitherto no cable commentator has, and I include the formidable Judge Andrew Napolitano: Under what law or warrant does Congress get to summons Toyota executives for an inquisition? I’m curious.
So too is the “U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking documents related to unintended acceleration as well as to Toyota’s disclosure policies and practices,” says this newspaper.
Judge Napoiltano of FoxNews didn’t touch on the legal basis for Congress running interference with Toyota—and even seemed to think the first should put the second on notice.
Shouldn’t the matter of the car manufacturer’s malfunctioning accelerators fall to the courts and those harmed? Shouldn’t the injured parties hammer out a settlement in private or in the courts, rather than before our elected buffoons in Congress?
Personally, if I see one more weak, sobbing American begging for The Regulator and the burdened nation to feel her pain; I’ll explode.
(“Shame on you,” Rhonda Smith, of Sevierville, Tenn., said at a congressional hearing.)
What a nation of spineless crybabies. Get a lawyer, join a class-action lawsuit. Go to Haiti. Cry in private. But spare us your imagined near-death experience as your Lexus got ahead of you.
Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., ought to have reminded the American political ponces of how many of their countrymen he employs and promised politely to fix his company’s problems.
Moreover, Toyoda could have achieved the brevity much-admired in his culture had he borrowed from that clever commie (and rapier sharp wit) Bernard Shaw, who too was forced to decline an invitation from “a collector of social scalps”:
The House Oversight committee’s invitation to Mr. Toyoda: “We will be sitting between four and six o’clock.”
Toyoda: “Akio Toyoda likewise.”
Update I (Feb. 24): Reader “ryan” echoes my thought exactly. Sean and I were discussing the point “ryan” makes. Only in America, were dumbness is elevated to an art, would a vehicle with an ignition key become a self-propelled lethal weapon.
I drive a 2006 Volkswagen GTI, with a high-tech 200-horsepower, 2.0-liter turbocharged engine. The “pocket rocket” has a spectacularly smooth six-speed manual transmission. (I won’t drive an automatic, never have; never will.) If the gas pedal took on a life of its own, I’d automatically—without even thinking—indicate, take the car off the road, put it in neutral and switch off the ignition.
If you can’t do this small thing, ryan is right: you are the lethal weapon, not the vehicle.
As for the comment postulating that Toyota might be in the business of hoodwinking the American buyer: I remind those who profess their love of freedom and markets that such utterances mean that the Demopublican Regulators are winning.
Toyota would not be in business for as long as it has, producing quality cars, if this was its purpose. The car manufacturer relies for its bread and butter on pleasing consumers, not politicians. Profit? Since when is that anything but a blessing? Profits and prices are the street signs of the economy. Without them there is nothing—no incentive to produce and invent and no signal as to when production must be accelerated or decelerated.
Well-taken too are Robert’s observations about the Japanese. Having just traveled to a mystical city named Nara, to do high-tech, Sean would second that. Modernity has not changed this homogeneous nation’s genteel nature.
“Like, what can I get you guys” is not a refrain you’ll hear in a Japanese restaurant. Sean was taken aback by the gentility and graciousness of the Japanese ladies. Sure, the youth sports all the technological and sartorial trappings; but they respect their elders. This makes for a more refined atmosphere. After all, generational demarcations are necessary to ordered liberty.
If you do the polite thing and bow slightly—no need to touch your toes like this guy does—as you enter an establishment, faces light up and the courtesy is more than returned.
I do believe that the US, a multicultural toilet, is working hard to impress upon the Japanese the need to open up their country to immigration.
Update II: To Haym (and others): The comment (hereunder) is completely off-topic and won’t be further pursued on this post. But I suppose Japanese warriors are not supposed to be as ruthless as their American enemy—also the only power to have ever, in the history of mankind, stooped to nuke innocent civilians. When will Americans apply equal thinking to all sides?!
I wonder what the average Japanese must be thinking as they watch the US turn into a bunch of politically correct whiners.
Members of Congress are full of themselves. They are the last group of people that should be questioning anyone about fiscal responsibility or incompetence.
The scariest thing about this whole accelerator problem is the number of people who are too stupid to gear down or put the car in neutral.
Instead they call 911 and babble incoherently about going too fast and then yell AAAAieeeeeeeee!!!!!!
Maybe some people should not be driving in the first place.
This is nothing more than congress grandstanding for the public and taking a great opportunity to extend control over the private sector. Maybe Toyota is a bunch of profit grubbing jerks sacrificing the public’s safety for a quick buck, (they certainly wouldn’t be the first) or maybe not. But congress is the last to trust in a matter like this. This has to do with what is good for the public. When is the last time politicians acted on anything other than what is good for them?
The Japanese are an honorable people with long memories. In 1853, Congress sent the US Navy to threaten to invade Japan, if the Japanese did not capitulate to American interests. They sucked up their pride, bent the knee and opened their country, 88 years later after building an army, they retaliated. Toyota has a two hundred year business plan that this incident will be placed into. Toyota and Japan are bending the knee now, but Congress just sounded Government Motors death knell
As with the media and Tiger Woods, the mediocrities in Congress want to snicker and talk down to their betters. Rand said it well: “When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.”
Before we all fall over ourselves fawning over the gentility of the Japanese people, maybe we should speak to a few WWII Pacific Vets who were in Japanese prison camps, or who know of the “death marches” or perhaps with some Korean women who survived the brutality of the invading Japanese armies.
[See update in post.]