"Did regulators do their due diligence once problems were brought to their attention? Did Toyota raise potential safety problems with regulators as soon as they knew a problem existed?," said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the committee's ranking minority member. "But there are also questions involving what happened in between and whether Toyota was lobbying for less rigid actions from regulators to protect their bottom line. If anything but the safety of America's drivers influenced the decision-making process, the entire purpose of NHTSA will be undermined."
You see, Mr. Issa needs to read Mr. Pyle’s commentary, because if he did, he would have read this (emphasis mine):
That being the case, the answer to Mr. Issa is simple – Toyota put short term profits ahead of driver safety. They did their fiduciary duty, just as Enron did; just at Lehmann did; just as BofA did. They did not do their civic duty, and if the small government neocons succeed there will be no mechanisms to prevent Toyota, or BofA, or any other publicly held company from doing it again.A properly run business, especially a company that is owned by stockholders rather than by a family or proprietor who actually deals with his customers every day, exists for one purpose and one purpose only — to take your money away from you and give it to its stockholders. If it does anything — anything — that is destructive of those ends, it is the right of the stockholders to alter or abolish it.
If the managers of a big business put decency, morality, the environment, the workers or even the customers ahead of the interests of the stockholders — which by definition is often a short-term, profit-taking interest—they have broken their promise, failed to carry out their fiduciary responsibilities and opened themselves up not only to being fired but to being sued by their own stockholders.
What’s wrong with that? Nothing. As long as we face the facts.
And that is the real reason government needs to both exist, and have robust leadership. Too bad we’re in a climate where neither is seen as the good and necessary thing it is.
Posts
5 comments:
I've been contemplating this post for a number of reaons. One, Issa is my representative, loosely put. Two, my community is having a tea party rally this weekend, and three, two of the three organizers of this rally are people whose statements on climate change I've had to confront. These are the "it's fraud and conspiracy" types. (You've read the letter from one of them.) And last, the rumor mill at work posted an anonymous article citing whiskering in electronics as a possible cause to the Toyota accelorator problem. I'll see if I can find corroboration, but whiskering is a confirmed problem with electronics using non-lead solder, which in turn can be blamed on the RHOS standard for cleaning up electronic waste. If the fault is due to whiskering, people may use the accelerator problem to blame regulation. Your argument will still be valid but more difficult in light of an easy example of regulation that may introduced problems. If on the other hand, the whiskering appears to a rumor planted to shift blame,... well that would be interesting to follow to the source. Forgive my lack of solid references. I wanted to share this so I'm reminded to do some searching.
jg
Here's the source of the whisker claim. Some of the commenters seem skeptical of its validity.
http://www.techeye.net/chips/electronic-tin-whiskers-may-be-behind-toyota-recalls
jg
the rumor mill at work posted an anonymous article citing whiskering in electronics as a possible cause to the Toyota accelerator problem. I'll see if I can find corroboration, but whiskering is a confirmed problem with electronics using non-lead solder, which in turn can be blamed on the RHOS standard for cleaning up electronic waste. If the fault is due to whiskering, people may use the accelerator problem to blame regulation.
They MAY TRY to use this to blame regulation, but unless the regulation specified the type of solder to use, as well as the exact assembly procedure, the company still had leeway to meet the regulatory burden however it saw fit. Unless, of course, those same "people" (who are probably far-Right conservatives) are going to now abandon their "Strict Father" world view and say that people had do discretion to act here (and thus no private responsibility which they so often harp about).
What is so unfortunate about the tea partiers is that their movement seems to be just a generalized dislike of "The Government" with no specifics. It's always fun to bash politicians and their antics, but where is the substantive intellectual/ philosophical/ ideological alternative?
That would seem, after all, to be the stuff of which a legitimate political movement is made.
Would the average tea partier be willing to relinquish their precious Medicare? How about unemployment insurance that so many of them currently depend on? Do they really want to turn the governmental clock back 100 years? For some reason, I doubt it...
Secularist,
I think you are correct, but given how often (And how forcefully) mnay on the Right side of the political aisle bash "government" I don't expect a Right-of-Center movement to do anything less. What I find so hilarious about that bashing is this:
Article I of the OCNstitution lays out the existance of, and actions for Congress, thus expressly making it a PART OF GOVERNMENT. So the next time you hear a sitting Republican Congressman or Senator bashing "innefficient, wasteful government" make sure you remember that he or she is saying that he or she is ALSO wasteful and innefficient.
Post a Comment