LaHood's scare tactics on Toyota recall

By Bill Zwerger

What was really behind Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood's initial knee-jerk reaction to Toyota's recall of vehicles with faulty accelerators? Just another off-the-cuff, irrational blunder from someone in the Obama camp perhaps?

From the Wall Street Journal:

"My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it," LaHood said.

Afterwards he told reporters that wasn't what he meant to say.

"What I said in there was obviously a misstatement," LaHood said outside of the hearing room. "My advice is if you have one of these vehicles, if you are in doubt, take it to the dealership today."

But let's not rush to judgment here. Maybe these folks aren't as moronic as assumed. I mean if you think about it, this is really quite an ingenious plan. Consider the benefits from such alleged buffoonery: discourage people from buying from a superior competitor (in this case Toyota, despite their excellent record of safety and customer satisfaction,) in order to prop up GM (aka Government Motors) sagging sales while at the same time giving a boost to Obama's cherished and oh so European high speed rail program. Brilliant, two birds with one socialist stone.

Of course he retracted his initial statement. That is standard operating procedure for this gang; say something outlandish that the MSM will publish without hesitation and then, after the damage is done, take it back. And when you add to the mix the fact that the MSM is making this recall out to be the next H1N1 or global warming scare, you've got yourself a nice little piece of propaganda-cum-public safety announcement. How very fascist of them.