Toyota Recalls 3.8M Sh*tboxes

[hhn]

Toyoda fights back
with a new calander
photo - Mar 2010

[Larry]

A timely little ditty from the Corrigan Brothers Band & Pete Creighton.


Lyrics

MY TOYOTA
Corrigan Brothers (Gerard Brian and Donncha Corrigan and Peter Creighton)

Oh my little pretty car
My pretty car
Super little green machine
Glad I own ya

But you started actin strange
Actin strange
When I use my breaks
I can't hold ya

Never Gonna Stop
Wish you'd stop
Wish you'd really stop
When you gonna stop for me

My my my Toyota

Red lights really scare me now
Scare me now
Never sure if I will stop
My motor

I just hope for green
Hope for green
So far I've been lucky
Way to go yah

Never Gonna Stop
Wish you'd stop
Wish you'd really stop
When you conna stop for me

My my my Toyota

Oh my little pretty car
My pretty car
Super little green machine
Glad I own ya

But you started actin strange
Actin strange
When I use my breaks
I can't hold ya

Never Gonna Stop
Wish you'd stop
Wish you'd really stop
When you gonna stop for me
My my my Toyota





Murphy was an optimist...

[Croozm]

Even though it's a Ford commercial, I love it! Who doesn't dig SNL??


http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/ ... l/1208877/

[hhn]

Washington Roulette

[Cyclone]

More douchebaggery from our friends at Toyota! What kills me (pun not intended) is that people really do defend these people, the company and thier products. I also don;t understand why they are still allowed to sell these products in the US!!!!!!!!!! WTF!

At any rate, this just in:


More SLIME from Mr. Toyoda's "House of Whores" ...... The fine corporate citizens that they are. F. U. Roundeye .....


People must be proud to drive these cars

Toyota to hand off pension bill to U.S.

BY GREG GARDNER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Toyota is leaving a $131-million pension shortfall to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. as it closes the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont, Calif., April 1, said Sergio Santos, president of UAW Local 2244.
But the PBGC, a federal corporation charged with protecting pension benefits of 44 million Americans, wants to discuss ways Toyota can reduce the gap.

The agency has taken legal action to gain control of the NUMMI pension plan. PBGC spokesman Gary Pastorius said the agency wants to talk to Toyota about alternatives to a takeover, "but it just hasn't happened yet. We still have questions."
NUMMI said it had met its obligations regarding the plan when the PBGC began court action, according to a memo issued by Tracy Wakefield, a human resources manager.

Toyota operated NUMMI jointly with General Motors from 1983 until GM's withdrawal last summer.
Santos said NUMMI and Toyota imposed a "gag order that I believe violates our First Amendment rights," preventing workers from commenting on the plant closure.
NUMMI spokesman Lance Tomasu said the union voluntarily pledged not to denigrate NUMMI or Toyota as part of the shutdown agreement.

In recent days, Toyota sweetened the severance offer from $253 million to $281 million for the about 4,500 NUMMI workers, Santos said. Each hourly worker will receive a base severance of $21,175, plus supplements that vary based on years of service, the union president said.

On March 3, the PBGC said it would cover $126 million of a $131-million underfunding in the pension covering NUMMI's UAW workers. The agency said $5 million of supplemental benefits are not insured.
Harley Shaiken, a University of California Berkeley professor and labor relations expert, said the pension shortfall adds to Toyota's public relations challenges.

"For the world's most profitable automaker to walk away from a pension covering people who, in some cases, worked for more than a quarter of a century doesn't look good," Shaiken said. "Especially in the wake of Toyota's recent recalls."

[KDB]

More of the "Toyota corporate lin"e.... American citizens have there free speech rights revoked by a foriegn company?... This is from a california paper. it seems that even the loyalists are getting pissed-off.


Opinion: The latest Toyota victim: free speech
By Art Pulaski and the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow


Special to the Mercury News

Posted: 03/30/2010 08:00:00 PM PDT


As the machinery at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. in Fremont — NUMMI to us Californians — goes silent today in the shutdown ordered by Toyota, so must the 4,700 autoworkers who have worked there every day.

This was a harsh condition extracted by the company in the middle of the night when the terms of the factory's closing were being finalized. Vulnerable workers, facing the hard reality of a long job hunt in an area where unemployment already averages about 16 percent, had to choose between their free speech rights and their families. In truth, they didn't have a choice. No matter how much we Americans value our free speech, it can't feed a family.

The gag rule bullied through by Toyota forbids NUMMI workers and their union from publicly questioning the wisdom of the company's action in shutting down the factory or even talking about the hardships it imposed on thousands of workers, families, and their communities.

These are people who have won award after award for the company for their high productivity and the quality of their products. They are now facing a crisis that will alter their lives forever. The company's ploy to silence their dissent is one more bitter pill. They deserve better.

Toyota's heavy-handed attempt to repair its image is likely to fail for one simple reason: What may have started as a local story didn't end there. Concerns about NUMMI's closing have been taken up across the state and


beyond. Leaders of business, the environmental and consumer movements, the faith community — all of them participants in the Blue Ribbon Commission convened by state Treasurer Bill Lockyer to study the impact of closing NUMMI — have spoken out about the grave economic, social and environmental consequences of Toyota's action.

As the commission's findings have become known — including the projection that shifting more of Toyota's production offshore will increase the U.S. trade deficit by some $2 billion — concern has grown into a broad public policy debate that reaches all the way to Washington. Those engaged in that debate will continue their criticism of Toyota even if the Fremont workers can't raise their voices with them.

In the recent public grillings before Congress, Toyota's leaders apologized repeatedly for sacrificing concern for consumer safety to rapid growth. Yet, how can we trust a company that cares so little for its own workers and community?

Toyota seems to have realized that the gag rule they insisted on makes the company look bad, and they have been trying to disown responsibility. They have even made the ludicrous claim that it was the union's idea to muzzle its members' own free speech rights.

The fact is that Toyota wanted much harsher restrictions. In addition to the sweeping ban on talking to the public and the press, the company also tried to forbid workers from communicating with their elected representatives — local, state, or federal.

Toyota now faces a choice. It can push ahead and risk being known as the heartless foreign company that trampled on American rights and values. Or it could reverse course, drop the gag rule, pledge to reopen the Fremont factory and build it into a hub of innovation and green technology — and become, once again, a leader for the auto industry.



ART PULASKI is executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. THE REV. BRUCE REYES-CHOW is Presbyterian pastor of Mission Bay Community Church, San Francisco, and a member of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. They wrote this article for this newspaper.

[Singlefinger]

Lutz: Toyota Has Fallen from Pedestal

Toyota Motor Corp. will recover from the backlash caused by its worldwide recalls of 8.5 million vehicles, but it has permanently lost its “exalted status,” says General Motors Co. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz.

Lutz, who will retire on May 1, has long contended that Toyota’s reputation for quality, manufacturing and technology excellence has been grossly inflated. Now that the company has been pulled off its sky-high pedestal, “they’ll be down on the floor slugging it out with the rest of us,” he says.

[hhn]

new excuse from Mr. Toyoda
...it must be the tainted drywall from
China we use for sound deadener

[Singlefinger]

The guys & gals at Yahoo.com have outed ANOTHER pack of lies from the scumbags @ Toyota. Apparently, even the US execs are NOT TO BE TRUSTED!!

Here's an excerpt:

Toyota official: 'We need to come clean'
By LARRY MARGASAK and KEN THOMAS,
WASHINGTON – Five days before Toyota announced a massive recall, a U.S. public relations executive at the automaker warned colleagues in an internal e-mail: "We need to come clean" about accelerator problems, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet," wrote Irv Miller, group vice president for environment and public affairs. "The time to hide on this one is over."

The recently retired Miller wrote the e-mail on Jan. 16, 2010, as Toyota officials were on their way to Washington to discuss the problems with federal regulators. On Jan. 21, Toyota announced it would recall 2.3 million vehicles to address sticking pedals in six vehicle models.

The e-mail reveals deep concerns within the company's leadership that Toyota wasn't dealing with the safety problems effectively and could damage the automaker's sterling reputation for producing safe and reliable vehicles. The company already had announced a recall of more than 4 million vehicles in late September 2009 to replace gas pedals that could get stuck in floor mats and cause sudden acceleration.

"We better just hope that they can get NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to work with us in coming (up) with a workable solution that does not put us out of business," Miller wrote.

The e-mail was addressed to Katsuhiko Koganei, executive coordinator for corporate communications for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc.

"I hate to break this to you but WE HAVE A tendency for MECHANICAL failure in accelerator pedals of a certain manufacturer on certain models," Miller's e-mail began with several words in capital letters.

In a memo earlier that day, Koganei wrote Mike Michels, vice president of external communications, "Now I talked with you on the phone, we should not mention about the mechanical failures of acc. pedal because we have not clarified the real cause of the sticking acc pedal formally, and the remedy for the matter has not been confirmed."

Even MORE disturbing is that Toyota informed the rest of the world before they came clean here!

Concerns about sticking gas pedals and complaints from Toyota owners in the U.S. were rising at the end of 2009, according to documents obtained by the AP. The documents show that on Sept. 29, Toyota's European division issued technical information "identifying a production improvement and repair procedure to address complaints by customers in those countries of sticking accelerator pedals, sudden rpm increase and/or sudden vehicle acceleration."

Distributors throughout Europe and in Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Israel received the technical information.

For the complete article go to:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100407/ap_ ... ota_recall

[hhn]

We all know in the past 20 plus years there has been a trend to have international graphics on the dash knobs. New Toyotas will have an addition shortly. This is the graphic design for a 'kill' switch. It is known as the UA botton [unintended acceleration] and is directly wired through the floor mats. The first delivery is planned for Iraq next month.