Another Government Coverup To Protect GM? Posted 03/12/2014 07:12 PM ET Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, left, and the NHTSAs David Strickland led the charge against Toyota in 2010. AP Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, left, and the NHTSAs David Strickland led the charge against Toyota in 2010. AP View Enlarged Image Corruption: Are auto recalls nothing more than political tools now? The Obama administrations failure to act on reports of GM accelerator defects as the bodies piled up suggests that safety took a back seat to politics. Next to ObamaCare, there isnt any accomplishment President Obama is prouder of than his $800 million automobile industry bailout. GM is back, touted the president. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive, crowed Vice President Joe Biden during their 2012 re-election campaign. Not so fast. Turns out the Obama administration has been sitting on evidence that some of these widely touted Government Motors vehicles are death traps due to faulty accelerators that slow or stop without warning, according to a report by Liz Peek of the Fiscal Times. The problem has left at least 13 people dead and as many as 2,000 injured since 2003, according to reports. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has launched a probe to get to the bottom of it. It needs to be done because the Obama administration had a political stake in claiming GMs success even as it was supposed to protect the public as the auto industrys regulator. Thats a conflict of interest if there ever was one. Was there a cover-up of GMs problems? Starting in 2003, more than 200 reports rolled in about sudden deceleration problems, particularly in the Chevy Cobalt. But the chief regulator of automobile industry safety standards, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, led by David Strickland, a former Obama Senate staffer, did nothing. NHTSA even dismissed inquiries from powerful Democrats, such as then-Rep. Barney Frank, who was told that there was insufficient evidence to warrant opening a safety defect investigation, Peek reported. Instead, Strickland and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood led a phony marquee campaign to vilify GM rival Toyota over supposedly faulty accelerators, hauling in its executives from Japan to apologize, forcing the automaker to recall 9 million vehicles, and issuing the largest fine ever on an automaker. My advice is if you have one of these vehicles, if you have a doubt, take it to Toyota today, LaHood said at the time, an appallingly biased statement from a supposedly impartial regulator he was forced to walk back. That entire campaign fell apart after more than 50% of the instances were found to be driver error, not manufacturing defects — but the damage to Toyota was done. LaHood swept it under the rug, Peek reported. Strickland, meanwhile, not only went after Toyota, he also sat on the investigation of reports of Tesla Motors exploding batteries on its Model S cars, as well as more battery explosions on the Chevy Volt. He left office in December 2013 with a lot of unfinished business. The inaction let the NHTSA issue a five-star safety rating on the politically connected green car company, which is known to be an Obama favorite. As for Strickland, he moved on to a job at Venable LLP, a government relations firm that lobbies on behalf of the automotive industry, including presumably GM. So when NHTSA — an agency whose budget has risen 30% over the past decade — denies theres anything political about its inaction on GM, we find it hard to believe. In light of the ongoing safety enforcement failures that just happen to benefit the president politically while endangering the public, the publics trust in government again has been damaged. Congress should get to the bottom of this now. © 2014 Investors Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. Investors Business Daily, IBD and CAN SLIM and their corresponding logos are registered trademarks of Investors Business Daily, Inc. Copyright and Trademark Notice | Privacy Statement
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 11:07:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015