Auto-Safety Bureaucrats Could Proft from the GM Recall Tragedy
Both GM's besieged new CEO Mary Barra and NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Agency) chief David
Friedman testified before Congress this week about the company's unfolding recall scandal.
But while Barra struck a contrite pose for knowingly releasing defective Cobalts and other cars on the roads, Friedman, whose agency also ignored some pretty big red flags, blamed his agency's tiny $800 million budget for its failure to do its job.
But far from telling him to go take a hike, lawmakers are contemplating bills, I note in my Washington Examiner column this morning, which will directly transfer cash from the pockets of car buyers to those of Friedman and his ilk. They want to assess a fee on every new vehicle sold in the country and hand the money to NHTSA.
Washington let a good tragedy go to waste? Never.
Go here to read the whole thing.
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Mr. Friedman, can you show us where in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution it authorizes the NHTSA?
JENURAL WELFARE!
The letters N,H,T,S, and A are in there so it’s authorized. Some kind of code like those Nick Cage movies.
They don’t actually read the Constitution. All they need is the summary:
“Congress can do anything necessary and proper to regulate commerce and promote the general welfare.”
That authorizes anything not forbidden by the Bill of Rights, which is largely ignored anyway.
Don’t forget about the taxing power! – John Roberts
Necessary and Proper Clause, General Welfare Clause, and, oh yes, Interstate Commerce Clause.
Really should be: “Congress can tax anything that moves, or doesn’t move, and can do anything necessary and proper to regulate commerce and promote the general welfare.”
+1 for you
+19 for me.
This government does not govern with the consent of the governed. One glance as the consent form, the constitution, and any half-honest person would have to admit it has become a giant criminal gang, ruling by decree, and keeping itself in power at the point of a gun.
I would argue that the government rules by dereliction of the governed. The government as now constituted would fall in November if people cared to exercise the will to make it happen. People simply don’t care, have time, etc. to see what the FedGov* is doing and stop it.
*I work for the FedGov. – full disclosure
See the article earlier today — “Another Ohio Libertarian Knocked Off the Ballot” — how exactly can you make the government fall if your ballot choices in the majority of races is limited to statist R v statist D?
Start at the state level. They are the ones that make the rules as to who will be on the ballot and how they get there.
Look what the national Republican apparatus is trying to do to those state apparatuses where Paulites are in the ascendancy.
It governs with the consent of a tiy minority of the governed — those who bothered to vote, AND voted for the winning candidate, AND that winning candidate was in the majority in the government, AND kept a significant portion of those campaign promises the individual voter cared about.
I thought this was going to be an expose of insider trading by regulators. They know when bad news is going to hit, so they are in an excellent position to do a little shorting.
You know it happens. And you know the SEC has zero interest in investigating it.
I mean, if they start investigating front-running by bureaucrats, they might stumble across front-running by elected officials. And we can’t have that (I mean, members of the Master Class getting caught for front-running, since obviously nobody gives a shit about front-running by our Master Class).
I think Hillary all but proved that decades ago from her “risky” venture into cattle futures
Government agencies have every incentive to screw up, because they will be “punished” with a larger budget and more power. Every time.
In DC, failure means you need more money to turn it around.
Corollary — success * means you need more money to be even more successful.
* For values of “success” that equate to “efficiently coercing”.
A successful program means you were too efficient. Your budget will be cut until your achieve total failure. That’s why it’s best never to try to succeed to begin with.
The government loves profiting from private screw ups, the nanny state never demands any less than more