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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100208/ap_on_bi_ge/as_toyota_recall (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100208/ap_on_bi_ge/as_toyota_recall)

TOKYO – Toyota plans to recall about 300,000 Prius hybrids worldwide over a brake problem and will notify the U.S. and Japanese governments Tuesday, a news report said, as a top executive will testify before U.S. lawmakers over recall woes that have tarnished its reputation for quality and safety.

300k fewer Prius' on the road...I think the left lane just got a little less congested ;D

This might open the door for some other car companies.

Check out Peter DeLorenzo's column about Toyota's lobbying efforts:

http://www.autoextremist.com/ (http://www.autoextremist.com/)

As senate inquiries loom regarding the quality issues, this bit about Toyota's relationships with certain D.C. lawmakers is interesting, to say the least.

Quote from the article:

"To wit: The Senate’s lead investigator is none other than West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller, whose ties to the Toyota family go back to the 1960s and who was so personally involved with the site selection for Toyota's Buffalo, W.Va., factory that he, “slogged through cornfields with Toyota executives scouting locations and still mentions his role in the 1990s deal to this day,” according to the AP story.

Then there’s California Rep. Jane Harman, who represents the district of Toyota's Torrance, Calif., U.S. headquarters and who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is also investigating Toyota's recall.

It’s not so much that Harman and her husband, Sidney, held at least $115,000 in Toyota stock according to her most recent financial disclosure report. It’s the fact that the company to which the couple owes much of their multi-million-dollar fortune, Harman International Industries (Harman Kardon anyone?), founded by Sidney Harman, sells vehicle audio and entertainment systems to Toyota. The two companies even teamed up on a charitable education project in 2003, according to the AP, when Sidney Harman was Harman International's executive chairman. He retired from the Harman board in December 2008."

Megacorporations buying politicians so they can make their own set of rules? Unheard-of! Toyota must've learned that trick from GM ;D

Noe Valley is gonna be absolutely barren of automobiles.  ('cept for all the Volvos).  

http://cbs5.com/politics/assembly.american.cars.2.1471704.html (http://cbs5.com/politics/assembly.american.cars.2.1471704.html)


Calif. Assembly Members Urged To Buy American Cars
Reporting
Hank Plante



In the basement parking garage of the State Capitol you see one Toyota after another. In fact 87 of the 133 vehicles in the Assembly's fleet are Toyota hybrids. But that may be about to change.

On Thursday, the powerful Assembly Rules Committee approved a new "Buy American" policy, that discourages members of the Assembly from buying vehicles that don't have at least half their parts made in America.

Clearly Toyota is the target.

"California has been very good to Toyota. We not only gave financial incentives to them to open the NUMMI plant in Northern California, we helped the Toyota Prius go into the carpool lane. We did a lot for Toyota and now Toyota is turning its back on California," said Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), who chairs the Rules Committee.

"It is shutting down the NUMMI plant. It is divesting from California, and worse they won't even sit down and talk to all the stakeholders, and that's not acceptable," Lieu said.

What's ironic is that Assemblyman Lieu represents Torrance, which is Toyota's U.S. headquarters.

"This was a company that I previously supported. I helped them while on the council, I've tried to help them in the Assembly. But this is not the Toyota that I know. They have changed," Lieu said. "They have engaged in a serious pattern of denials that I have not seen before. They, if you look at their safety incidents they kept blaming driver error. They knew about sudden acceleration problems for over 9 years and did nothing about it. And they finally took action because government forced them to. That's what we're doing today."

At the State Capitol they used to have a "Buy American" policy for cars. But they got rid of it in 2003 because not enough American cars at that time were hybrids.

But now, of course, there are American hybrid alternatives, that many legislators would like to see in those Capitol garage spaces.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

I'm glad this has occurred; however, I'm disappointed that it took such events to make this happen. I'm not one to say, "UR NOT A TRUE PATRIOT UNLESS YOU ONLY BUY AMERICAN" but I think in the case of our government funded/incentives I think we should have a 100% buy American policy. If our own Government doesn't have faith/support the products made by Americans how can any of us be expected to.

I still feel Hybrids are a short sighted band-aid for bigger issues such as American infrastructure and petrol optimization. We're trading smog for toxic battery byproducts... but hey those byproducts aren't in our country, we'll just let China and India have polluted ground water, yipppeeee... At least my air is clean.

clean air is important when trying to keep white boots clean  [roll]

There's something far more fundamental at work here. Hybrids are the ultimate incrementalist excuse for continuing an unsustainable lifestyle...they use less gas, but they still use gas. And the Prius does more to assuage yuppie guilt than it does to mitigate damage to the environment. The Buy American mantra rings hollow in light of this...and in light of the fact that the US just doesn't make very good vehicles anymore.

That said, I think the Prius deserves special scorn because of the people who drive 'em ;D