Is Toyota being targeted by the Democrats and the unions?

It could be, the way the Ancient Media (New York Times, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Newsweek etc.) have been treating the Japanese carmaker as if it were a terrorist.

It is impossible at this time to compare the so-called Toyota accelerator problem to other defects in the past like the detonating Ford Pinto gas tanks of the 1970s or dozens of other automotive failures that have caused deaths and led to recalls. Because we do not even know what the real problem is.

The media are so anxious to run negative stories about corporations that the Dateline NBC TV show once even staged a phony ‘exploding pickup truck’ segment after an allegedly faulty GM vehicle would not fail on cue on camera.  Are they now sabotaging Toyota?

Could be. Toyotas are said to be accelerating on their own. It has been blamed on everything from the floor mats to the gas pedal to the car’s computer’s software. But nobody, including Toyota, can pinpoint the problem. Isn’t this suspicious? After all, they’re pretty smart people at Toyota.

Tens of millions of Americans have driven their Toyotas many trillions of accumulated passenger-miles with complete satisfaction. Thus we should not allow this so-called acceleration problem to paralyze the company, particularly since 200,000 Americans are employed either directly or indirectly by Toyota’s American operations, including manufacturing.

So what is really going on with this story? Is it being grossly exaggerated?

The Ancient Media and its Democrat friends in Congress and in the American auto unions certainly would be amenable to targeting Toyota because it is a foreign, non-union company that makes great cars. And most Toyota workers want it to remain non-union because they are happy with their pay, benefits and pensions and have seen how labor unions strong-arm companies, create workplace strife and kill jobs. So isn’t it curious that the Toyota story has emerged after pro-union Obama’s brief time in office?

And since Toyota has been making better cars than the unionized companies like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler and outselling them, then those unions certainly would like to bring Toyota down. And now that opportunity seems to have arisen. This is where the media and the Democrat politicians step in. Attack, attack, attack.

This is akin to the ongoing media attempts to collectively assassinate the characters of perfectly decent people like Sarah Palin. Those media have lied about or misreported on everyone from Bush to Limbaugh to Reagan to Cheney to Iraq to Tom DeLay to ‘global warming’ to ACORN to stolen elections and on and on. Why not misreport about Toyota? Or lie?

How many of the acceleration problems are actually elderly people stomping on the gas when they think they are hitting the brakes, as we see routinely in accidents across the country? Or is this acceleration trouble perhaps a real glitch in just a few cars that is being trumped up or falsified by Toyota-haters?

And don’t think for a second that the United Auto Workers union and its friends would not do such a thing. They absolutely would. This union is corrupt through and through and will stop at nothing to promote its interests. Lying is just a baby step for the average hardball union functionary. Think about Jimmy Hoffa and a thousand other union thugs who have suddenly, well, ended up in the hospital or disappeared altogether.

Just think… the GM/Ford/Chrysler unions would LOVE to drive Toyota out of business and steal its huge market share. Is this a coincidence that is just too obvious to ignore?

What about the California driver James Sikes whose Toyota Prius recently was said to have accelerated uncontrollably up to 94 miles per hour for more than 20 minutes until he was able to stop the car using the emergency brake. Why didn’t he step on the emergency brake right away? How did he have so much time and composure to call 911 during his car’s high-speed runaway, conveniently ending up with so much media coverage? Why didn’t he drop the car into neutral after the 911 operator suggested it? Or into low gear? Or into park? Or shut the car off? Could this all have been an anti-Toyota stunt?

What about the story he is telling, that he took the car to the dealer after receiving a recall notice but that the dealer told him to go away?

Doesn’t all this sound unlikely, even suspicious since it is happening right when there is maximum focus on Toyota? Are routine accidents being blamed on the so-called acceleration problem in an anti-Toyota campaign? Are a small number of actual Toyota acceleration problems being hyped by the media into a national panic the same way that a few warm winters in the 1990s were morphed into a planetary crisis called ‘global warming’?

And if Toyota itself can’t find and fix the problem – which they certainly would do as quickly as possible if they could – is it really the problem that it is being made out to be? Or is it just another highly embellished media fiction?

Anti-Toyota forces have seized on the work of David Gilbert, an auto technology professor at Southern Illinois University who told a congressional hearing February 23 that he re-created the acceleration problem in a Toyota Tundra truck by purposely short-circuiting the electronics.

But Chris Gerdes, director of Stanford University’s Center for Automotive Research, said that the experiment is bogus. “There is no evidence that I’ve seen to indicate that this situation is happening at all in the real world,” said Gerdes, adding that Gilbert’s  work “could result in misguided policy and unwarranted fear.”

Toyota owners now are even filing class-action lawsuits against the company saying that the resale value of their cars has fallen.

So who would be handling those lawsuits? Could it be Democrat trial lawyers out to enrich themselves at the expense of a company that they and their political allies hate? And where have we seen this movie before?

Yes, in suits against the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, the tobacco companies, doctors, nurses, hospitals etc.

These falling-value lawsuits are more ominous for Toyota than the accidental-death litigation because they can spread to every single Toyota owner. Kelley Blue Book, a used-car pricing bible, recently lowered  the resale value of recalled Toyotas an average of 3.5%. One attorney estimated that such suits alone could cost Toyota $3 billion. Actions like this could ruin the entire company.

That is music to the ears of Toyota-haters, the left-wing media, and UAW union activists. And so perhaps we should look more closely at their motivations in this case, and scrutinize the real facts and personalities involved before we allow the destruction of a fine company.

Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more. You can print out for free my book, Right Is Right, which explains why only conservatism can maintain our freedom and prosperity.