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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vryuHqV0MA
Posted on YouTube: February 23, 2010
By YouTube Member: NancyPelosi
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-doroshow/toyota-finally-gets-aroun_b_500621.htmlJoanne Doroshow
Executive Director, Center for Justice & Democracy
Posted: March 16, 2010 09:52 AM
Toyota Finally Gets Around to Blaming the Victim
We all like a good thriller, especially true stories about powerful institutions that respond to problems with disinformation and smears. The Insider (Big Tobacco vs. Jeffrey Wigand) and Silkwood (Kerr McGee vs. Karen Silkwood) are great thriller movies. I haven't seen The Green Zone yet (although I hear it's good) and the Valerie Plame movie won't be out until August, but you get the idea.
Then there's Erin Brockovich. Her smearing wasn't really in the movie but it came later. It was largely through the efforts of right-wing fringe activists like Michael Fumento, who basically called the whole chromium contamination thing a hoax. Fumento has also distinguished himself by describing as myths heterosexual AIDS, gulf war syndrome and most kinds of pollution.
He is now on the "Toyota's sudden acceleration problem is a hoax" bandwagon, or at least describing the whole thing as a lot of unbridled "hysteria." He's not alone. Others have been raising questions about everything from the age of drivers (out of 56 deaths confirmed by the Los Angeles Times, apparently most were over age 55) to their immigration status (immigrants supposedly disproportionately represented).
When you listen to the tragic the 911 call of California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor, who was killed along with his wife, daughter and brother-in-law when he could not stop his out of control Toyota, you wonder, "How exactly is this helpful"?
This week, Toyota itself broke out with its own alleged hoax story, that of last week's runaway Prius incident involving driver James Sikes, whom Mr. Fumento analogized to Balloon Boy (even though the driver, Mr. Sikes, had no motive to lie about this). Toyota says that although it still has no idea what happened, its investigation of the incident has resulted in findings "inconsistent" with the driver's account. In other words, it could not replicate the incident. This seems an odd explanation, because the problem with these cases is that Toyota has never been able to reproduce any of them.
FULL story at link.