I watched the CEO of General Motors testify in front of congress today. She did a good job and I was impressed. Right now we are dealing with a defective ignition switch that caused 13 deaths and who knows how many injuries.
One of the sad parts of reaching 65 years of age is that one can remember things over 50 years ago. In 1960 General Motors produced a car called the Corvair to compete with the Volkswagen Beatle. The GM small car was rushed into production without careful engineering. Numerous fatalities resulted including the comedian Ernie Kovacs. Ralph Nader became famous with his expose on the Corvair; "Unsafe At Any Speed."
In the late 1970's a substantial number of Ford Pintos had gas tank fires after a rear end collision. There were numerous fatalities.
We have the massive recalls of Toyota a couple of years ago. Now we have the General Motors recall scandal.
What is common in all of these cases is that the auto companies knew of the defects. They did some very cold-blooded calculations. They decided that it was cheaper to let a few people die than to pay the millions of dollars to fix the defects.
A former US attorney is investigating what went wrong at General Motors. Somewhere in this investigation he is going to find the group of managers and support personnel who made the cold-blooded calculations and decisions to let people die to save the company money.
Enough is enough! When these people at GM are identified I feel that murder charges in US District Court should follow. If I was the prosecutor handling this case, I would seek the death penalty.
One of the sad parts of reaching 65 years of age is that one can remember things over 50 years ago. In 1960 General Motors produced a car called the Corvair to compete with the Volkswagen Beatle. The GM small car was rushed into production without careful engineering. Numerous fatalities resulted including the comedian Ernie Kovacs. Ralph Nader became famous with his expose on the Corvair; "Unsafe At Any Speed."
In the late 1970's a substantial number of Ford Pintos had gas tank fires after a rear end collision. There were numerous fatalities.
We have the massive recalls of Toyota a couple of years ago. Now we have the General Motors recall scandal.
What is common in all of these cases is that the auto companies knew of the defects. They did some very cold-blooded calculations. They decided that it was cheaper to let a few people die than to pay the millions of dollars to fix the defects.
A former US attorney is investigating what went wrong at General Motors. Somewhere in this investigation he is going to find the group of managers and support personnel who made the cold-blooded calculations and decisions to let people die to save the company money.
Enough is enough! When these people at GM are identified I feel that murder charges in US District Court should follow. If I was the prosecutor handling this case, I would seek the death penalty.
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