Dedicated to 22winfag
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Well, now we know… how much Uncle’s persecution of VW is costing us – on top of the billions it has already cost Volkswagen.
Are you ready, Freddie?
About seven miles per gallon.
Continue reading “Well, Now We Know . . .”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
They only crucified Jesus once – and that was enough (so we are told) to atone for all mankind’s sins . . . in perpetuity.
And mankind did (and does) sin. In the moral sense. Murder, theft, rape and all the other uglies.
VW suffers crucifixion in perpetuity for its sins – which are of a purely statutory nature. Like failing to buckle-up for safety. So far, the German automaker has been godsmacked to the tune of $30.4 billion (not a typo) in fines and other levies for tuning its diesel-powered cars to pass government emissions certification tests.
To which the obvious rejoinder is – well, what’s the problem? They passed the tests, right?
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Shakespeare wrote about killing all the lawyers as the first order of business. But their clients are sometimes just as worthy candidates.
David Doar, for instance. He is demanding – through his lawyers – that Volkswagen pay him $725,000 plus pay his legal bills on account of the 2016 Jetta TDI he bought for $23,700 having been one of those which “cheated” the government’s exhaust emissions tests.
VW had offered to buy the car back at full value – the same offer it made to every other owner of one of the “affected” cars. The vast majority of the approximately 500,000 owners of the “affected” vehicles accepted VW’s offer. Doar and about 2,000 others did not.
He – and they – no doubt heard opportunity knocking. And called Saul.
But how does $23,700 in damages become $725,000 – plus the tab for the shyster to collect it?
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Volkswagen AG executive Oliver Schmidt is due to be sentenced this week for “cheating” Uncle. He faces seven years in federal prison and up to $400,000 in fines. His professional life is, of course, kaput. He will never work again.
Starbucks, perhaps.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Cancer is never cured – it merely goes into remission. You think it’s over and then . . .
Just so, the apparently never-ending diesel emissions “scandal.”
Mercedes-Benz, now. It has become the target of a criminal inquisition in Germany. Polizei in Stuttgart raided company offices there and seized materials which they plan to use as evidence that Benz engineers diddled with BlueTec diesel engines to make them – a la VW – temporarily compliant with government emissions tests.
The German Javerts accuse the company of that and false advertising, too – on account of having claimed that its line of BlueTec diesels were “clean.”
Which, of course, they are.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Late last week, it was revealed who squealed.
The Clover responsible for making it impossible for any of us to buy a diesel-powered Volkswagen henceforth – and a lot more – is Stuart Johnson, the former head of VW’s Engineering and Environmental Office in Auburn Hills, Michigan. He was outed in a book written about the VW “cheating” business by New York Times reporter Jack Ewing.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
After Winston had been taught to love Big Brother, you could find him sipping Victory Gin at the Chestnut Tree Cafe.
VW’s “cheating” diesels – now approved by Big Brother – can now be found available for sale at your local VW store.
But like Winston, they are not quite the same anymore.
These are brand-new 2015-2016 models – almost 70,000 pf them – which for the past two years have been strapped to gurneys deep within the bowels of the Ministry of Love, in Room 101. There, under the guidance of the EPA’s version of O’Brien, the cars have been . . . fixed.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
You’d think maybe he killed someone.
Oliver Schmidt is facing 169 years in prison.
Earlier this week, the 48-year-old German national was frog-marched before the judge who will preside over his coming criminal trail, shackled at the ankles and waist, wearing an orange, Hannibal Lector-style one-piece jumpsuit.
All that was missing, really, was the face mask.
That – and a victim.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
If you lived in the DC area during the ’80s, you will remember the Fall of the Greaseman.
Now living in obscurity – and, apparently, poverty – in a tiny West Virginia town, the Greaseman was one of the country’s best-known (and highest-paid) radio “shock jocks.” He ruled the morning drive at DC101 FM, at the time the most popular album rock radio station in the nation’s capital.
He was better-known than Howard Stern.
Today, he is unknown.
Because unlike Stern, the Grease . . . apologized.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
You’ve heard the saying that history repeats . . . as farce? Well, here we are. Not quite ten years after the government paid people to throw away perfectly good used cars to “stimulate” demand for new ones – the despicable Cash for Clunkers program – the government is doing the same thing again.
Only this time, the cars are not “clunkers” and the government is forcing VW to pay people to throw them away.
Almost 600,000 of them.
These cars are not high-miles and worn out, on their last legs. Many are only a year or two old. Nothing is wrong with any of them – other than their having been deemed “out of compliance” with Byzantine EPA emissions tests.
But only sometimes – and only slightly.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
The verbiage is interesting.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that government agents – FBI agents – arrested (i.e., dragged away in handcuffs, to a cage) Volkswagen Group executive Oliver Schmidt, who headed the company’s regulatory compliance office, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
How does one “conspire to defraud the U.S.”?
Or rather, if one does – so what?
Isn’t it like conspiring to defraud the tooth fairy?
It’s not a he or a she, an actual person, after all. A someone (or someones) who can be victimized. Like a corporation, the United States is a legal construct. It has no flesh and blood. You cannot hurt “the United States” any more than you can hurt a dictionary.
Or the tooth fairy.
“Conspiring to defraud the U.S.” is a religious affront against a deity – with the FBI in the role of bully-priests, a Jesuitical brotherhood.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
A VW engineer may be going to prison – and has already been professionally (and probably personally) ruined… for having “cheated” the EPA. Which is like expelling a picked-on kid who outsmarted the playground bully.
Which, of course, is what often happens now.
Whether it’s the schoolyard bully – or the EPA (or other “agencies” of Uncle) – we are supposed to take it, never resist it – and may the motor gods have mercy upon you if you ever “cheat” it.
The engineer’s name is James R. Liang. He’s worked for VW since 1983, but not anymore. Bye-bye career (and pension) and hello Federal prison. Which he’s facing on account of having been a member of the engineering team that developed “defeat” software for VW’s TDI diesel engines. The software made the engines “compliant” when emissions tested by Uncle but less-than-compliant when driven by customers.
Continue reading “Kill People, No Problem… Just Don’t “Cheat” Uncle”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
The trick is keeping your victim alive… so that the beatings can continue.
That was Lavrenti Beria’s dictum.
Beria was Stalin’s secret police chief, the Soviet version of Nazi Germany’s SS chief, Heinrich Himmler. (Stalin actually referred to Beria this way when he introduced him to Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, during the latter’s visit to Moscow to sign the NonAggression Pact that led to the dismemberment of Poland and WW II.)
Anyhow, the principle.
Make them suffer.
This is the policy of the U.S. Justice Department, which is “assessing how big a criminal fine it can extract from Volskwagen AG over emissions-cheating without putting the German carmaker out of business.”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
A moment came when Captain Smith knew the Titanic was doomed – and from that moment on, saving the ship was no longer important.
Surviving the inevitable sinking was.
This seems to be the case with VW. Like Titanic, the company is taking on water.
You can feel the list.
People are looking for the exits.
The trade publication Automotive News reports that about half the roughly half-million owners of diesel-powered Volkswagens fingered by Uncle want cash rather than their cars.
This is understandable, if regrettable.
First, there’s no fixing the “affected” cars. That is not the right word. To make them Uncle-compliant, it will be necessary to break them in some way. Whether it’s a new/reprogrammed ECU – the computer that controls the engine – or something more involved, such as physical modifications to the vehicle – it will not run better afterward.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
This VW business is a lot like the income tax business. And “business” is exactly the right word. It’s a business (albeit a perverted one) in both instances.
The victim is compelled to fund his own persecution.
Yes, VW “cheated.” It is like me using a radar detector to “cheat” a cop out of his quota.
In both cases, the underlying law is ridiculous; the “cheating” nothing more than an attempt to evade the ridiculous. No one is harmed by “speeding” unless the car strikes another car or another person, which happens only rarely. Think about it. Almost all of us “speed” virtually every time we drive and yet accidents happen maybe a couple of times in a lifetime if they ever happen at all
And when it does happen, the cause is more likely to be inattention or some other thing. Not velocity.
Continue reading “The EPA and the IRS… it’s the Same “Business””
Guest Post by Eric Peters
If you own a VW diesel guilty of “cheating” Uncle, you’d better scuttle on down to your local VW store. Not to “fix” it (they’re not broken) but to get your money before there’s none left.
On Tuesday, Uncle announced the most draconian punishment ever meted out to a car company over the TDI “cheating” scandal: $15 billion in forced buyback/loan forgiveness offers and funding for “environmental programs” and the promotion of electric/hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
On top of this, VW has agreed – been forced – to pay out another $600 million in separate settlements with 44 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.