Richard Morrison, Jeremy Lott, and William Yeatman bring you Episode 86 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We cover the unfolding Obama agenda on Capitol Hill, Wayne Crew on manufacturing and innovation, roadblocks for U.S. companies in China, the Toyota sudden acceleration story and a media roundup from Human Achievement Hour.
January 2012
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGhZZwYaxrc 285 234]
If you think I was tough for embedding in Iraq’s meanest city a year after having my guts blown out in another part of the country, that was nothing compared to listening to the C-SPAN video of the 2-hour plus Star Chamber interrogation of Toyota Sales CEO James Lentz at the February 23rd. Twice I had to stop the video to pop Xanax.
I thought if Rep. Joe Barton, in his interrogation, pronounced Toyota as “Toyotoe” one more time I was going to scream.
Rep. Bobby Rush read aloud a letter about an Avalon accident in the Dallas area that stated, “Police said there was no evidence of any braking, giving rise to the idea that it was an accelerator problem.”
Hello?
And I couldn’t believe my ears as Rep. Jerry McNerney essentially openly blackmailed Lentz regarding a plant in his district that had been co-owned by GM and Toyota, but GM pulled out. “You’re having a public relations nightmare right now,” McNerney told Lentz. “If you work with us to keep that open, it will be a real plus for your public relations issues.”
Presumably if that plant doesn’t stay open, Lentz will wake up with a horse’s head in his bed or at least receive a fish wrapped in newspaper.
You’ll hear more about this interrogation get gleanings of it in an upcoming article, but this should be taught for future generations as a textbook case of congressional demagoguery.
It was the Camry in a car wash nightmare. With her two grandchildren in the car, Doris Dresner went through the wash in Columbia, Mo., with the gear in neutral. At the end, she stepped on the brake and put the car in drive. Suddenly it lunged forward. She slammed the brake, but the car just went faster.
Dresner swerved to avoid a fire hydrant, but nonetheless it ripped off her left fender. Still accelerating, the car shot across the street, jumped the curb and went airborne before landing in a parking lot. Fortunately everybody was OK.
A columnist who only wrote about this a few weeks ago (though the accident happened in 2005) declared, “I suspect there were people like Doris all over the country—one here, one there.” And he’s right. But for all the wrong reasons.
Toyota should be ashamed for building cars that pick on seniors citizens!
Doris Dresner, you see, is 80. The columnist claimed her long driving record should allay suspicions that she hit the accelerator instead of the brake. In fact, her age supports that suspicion. Data regarding fatal accidents “connected to” Toyota sudden-acceleration complaints show that the trial lawyers really should be suing the company for age discrimination. That or as I write in my Forbes Online article “Why Do Toyotas Hate the Elderly,” something else important is happening that might explain much of the sudden acceleration phenomenon.
Shortly after the House approved the massive, historic health-care legislation and sent it to President Obama for his signature, the president declared the vote “proved that this government – a government of the people and by the people – still works for the people.”
In fact, according to Pollster.com, which tracks surveys, eight non-partisan polls surveyed Americans about attitudes towards the legislation just before the vote. None showed a majority of support. In fact, Obama’s “the people” is closer to a third of the electorate.
But when you dig deeper, looking at specific responses such as those showing “strong” support or “strong” disapproval, it looks even worse.
Americans want health care reform, but they clearly didn’t want this bill. Why didn’t Congress go back to the drawing board to present more palatable legislation? Read about it in my NRO piece, “The People Speak.”
Government does more wacky things than anyone could possibly write about in any detail. Listed here are just a few that I dug up over the course of the week. If you have more, I’d love to hear about them.
- 206 occupations require licenses in New Jersey.
- Federal money is paying for a museum exhibit called “Race to the End of the Earth.” (Note: the earth is round.)
- In the market for a new air conditioner? Act fast, because new regulations are on the way.
- The federal government pays for a website that monitors jellyfish sightings.
- Fear not: the federal government has a Potato Research and Promotion Plan.
- Last year, the feds started a Dairy Industry Advisory Committee. Let the rent-seeking begin!
- And finally: 2,000 House staffers make $100,000 or more per year.
In its story on Human Achievement Hour today, USA Today says we will be celebrating breakthrough technologies “such as the Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb.”
Hmmm. What Michelle actually told the reporter was that even people who celebrate the CFL should celebrate Thomas Edison and the incandescent lightbulb, because it was that technological breakthrough that eventually made the CFL possible. Earth Hour, however, represents a repudiation of technological advancement, the incandescent bulb and the energy that powers it. [click to continue…]
For three days, James Sikes held America’s highest honor: victim. The nation had been transfixed by his almost half-hour-long 94-mph horror ride in his runaway Toyota Prius. He burned his brakes right down to the metal, unable to even slow the vehicle. Only his prescience in calling 911, followed by a highway patrol officer providing assistance, saved his life.
Then my article “Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax” at Forbes.com brought it crashing down. But lest you get false impressions from that title, the real hoaxter wasn’t Jim Sikes, but the media. Red flags about his story were popping up from the start. Yet the entire Fourth Estate systematically ignored them. As one reader put it to me in an e-mail: “I weep for the state of American journalism.”Read about it in my Investor’s Business Daily article.
According to a study published in the International Journal of Obesity, artist portrayals of the Last Supper show increasingly larger meals as we moved through the ages. Researchers analyzed 52 paintings produced over 1,000 years. USA Today reports: “Over that 1,000 year period, the main course size increased by 69%, the plate size by 66% and the loaves of bread by 23%. The biggest size increases came after 1500.”
The study authors concluded that portions increased because food became more plentiful and less expensive. The increase of food supply through the ages is a positive trend. After all for most of history–including during the 1,000 years in this study–humans suffered from with a constant struggle to produce and secure enough food to simply subsist. The biggest gains in wealth and food supply emerged rather recently with the development of modern market economies, reducing malnourishment dramatically–one of mankind’s greatest achievements. CEI and other lovers of liberty will celebrate that achievement, and many others, this year on Human Achievement Hour.
Yet the study is being used to lament today’s “obesity crisis,” which is really silly. It’s not as if obesity was the problem in 1585! It is more likely that most people were lucky to meet their basic food needs. In any case, it is not clear why the authors stopped in 1585. Later images like the one by Philippe de Champaigne and the modern version by Salvador Dali show very sparse meals. And surely, there are more than 52 paintings of the Last Supper during the time studied and after.
New York University nutrition researcher Lisa R. Young explained it well in the Los Angeles Times, which paraphrases her noting: “[s]he also pointed to the three decades that ended the millennium as a ‘tipping point’ for humankind. There is scant evidence that the body mass index of people in developed societies soared into unhealthy ranges for most of the 1,000 years studied, Young said. But there is little doubt, she added, that that changed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — coincidentally, when portion sizes began a dramatic run-up.”
While obesity is indeed a problem for many people, it is, ultimately, is very recent issue and a better problem than living near starvation or even at mere subsistence.
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