1534 Car-ma

1534 Car-ma

What goes around, etc.  Volkswagen, “the people’s car,” was the brainchild of well known and vicious dictator and now has been hit with a time- release curse of its own making.

Automakers in general would rather live with their flaws than admit them even when people die.  But Ford recovered from the famous exploding Pinto. And it looks like GM is recovering from its death- dealing self- deactivating ignition switches.

Can VW do the same now that we’ve found out about its toxic diesels?  Exploding Pintos and faulty switches are mistakes.  Corrected badly and way too late, yet still mistakes.

But rigging a car that follows orders about when and how to behave and when to belch out hazardous fumes and not to -- like when it’s being tested -- is something else.

While the class action lawyers circle like buzzards, and the dealers looking to cover their eventual losses  circle like vultures, we have to ask “what is the right thing to do now.”

The obvious answers are:

The factory buys back the faulty cars.

The various affected countries fine VW.

The guy who caused creation of the shyster software goes to jail, along with the rest of the executives who knew what was happening and failed to stop it.

No one will die as a direct result of these belching fumes, at least not right away.  No trees will fall over tomorrow.  No species will be wiped out instantly.  And the creep of the east coast toward its new home in Cincinnati won’t happen any faster.

The long term damage to air, water, plants and animals?  Too early to say and anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or lying.  Half a million cars -- the estimated number of emissions lawbreakers -- will not make a whole lot of difference.  We need to send a message.

You’ve read this here before: In this country, at least, vehicle making is the single most important of our remaining few industries and the largest buyer of metals, plastics, electronics, upholstery, glass and rubber.

The country can’t afford to allow this kind of damage. Even Adolf might agree.

Shrapnel:

--Headline: Iraq to share intelligence on ISIS with Iran, Syria and Russia.  That means the NSA will have to concentrate its hacking efforts on those countries, rather than its more important target, terrorists like you.  But intelligence -- by either popular definition -- is not what we need over there, and you know it.

--Outgoing House Speaker Boehner is taking a page from the playbook of his alleged arch rival, President Obama. John-boy is showing some spine by slamming the tea bags he’s been unable to herd, calling them “false prophets.”  Where were you, John, when you could have done something about this?

--The thumb-on-the-scale geniuses at Whole Foods have decided to open one of their new “bargain” mini stores in Los Angeles instead of the “full service” version they had announced.  This is getting all the neighborhood yuppies in a twist.  Don’t worry, kids, it’s not a slam against the up-scale-itude of your neighborhood.  Besides, there already are all kinds of places already open where you can pay more than you should for worse than you expect.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1422 You're Nobody 'til Somebody Hacks You

Let’s face it: you’re not Sony.  You’re not Target. You’re not Home Despot.   

While identity theft is rampant, major hackings go only to the majors.  

The only exception is the NSA which knows which side of the bed you sleep on and your blood pressure, but won’t sell or publish your social security or bank account numbers unless it’s in a bad mood.

No, the true malice is reserved for the mighty.  Usually, it’s a collective mighty.  Like Sony or Target or Home Despot. Or some gigunda bank.

But there is a sense of status about a hack.  You ARE someone.

Do we really care about the email exchanges at Sony? Nah. It’s just gossip.  We love to peek.  And the hacking helped us.  

The retail hackers are more significant because of the potential harm they can do to customers.  And being part of a hacked group is trouble, not status.

If you’d like to join the upper ranks of the hacked, just announce that you’ve become a victim of some vicious nerd in Bulgaria or Belarus or Beijing.

Offshore hacks are far more exotic sounding than a vicious nerd operating out of an attic in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

But if it’s status you want, self hacking is the way to go.   Copy and paste a love email on Facebook.  Then claim that someone has stolen both your email and your facebook accounts.

We love to know about extraordinary events in the lives of ordinary people, good and bad:  the in-flight birth of a baby… a rapper who hires a hit man to shoot at him because it’s street cred… a lone sailor lost at sea who makes a radio antenna out of a coathanger and is thereby found and then rescued.  And hacking -- real or fake -- still is an extraordinary event.

So self-hack away.  But don’t make it too outrageous or no one will believe your lie.  Tell your Facebook friends you lost some of -- but not all of -- your life savings.  Be credible:  say someone stole your identity and maxed out your MasterCard.  Then, max out your MasterCard.

Post a Youtube video telling your tale of woe.  Chances are it’ll go viral.  Everything “goes viral” and you’ll be a star.  Like Ebola, only probably less deadly.

In our celebrity crazed culture, everyone wants to be famous.  Well, here’s your chance.

But you’d better act fast.  Others who hadn’t thought of this path to stardom will be nipping at your heels.

Grapeshot:

--Question for Jeff Bezos: When Amazon doesn’t make a profit, which is pretty much all the time, how did you get so rich?

--Question for Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Lush Rimbaugh and Ted Cruz: Would you please step out of the limelight?

--Question for the entire cast of “Shark Tank:” Will you give us advance notice when all of you jump into a real one?

--Question for Aaron Sorkin: Why do all of your characters have to speak like Paddy Chayefsky-esque college professors?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

Will someone please talk to Google about allowing macros in “Drive?”

© WJR 2014

1243 Voter Fraud

We have customized cars, customized kitchens, customized computer programs.  We have custom made suits and formal gowns.  We have customized furniture, customized cookies, customized blends of coffee or tea.   So what’s all this fuss about customized election districts?

You hate congress, right?  Everyone does.  But you like your own Representative, right?  Almost everyone does.

So why surprise and anger at customizing the voting district to reward that likable fellow with what amounts to a lifetime job?

Look at John Dingell (D-Michigan) who has served for just under 58 years.  Or Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) with almost 42 years in the House and Senate.

Dingell is #1 and turns 87 this year.  Cochran is #37 and will be 76 before year’s end.

These two are each the longest “serving” members of their parties at the moment.

In between, there are some household names, names you know because all, though they’re dead, retired or lost their most recent election, have had their names in print and on the air forever.

Robert Byrd.  Strom Thurmond.

Those figures in the 30-40-50- years?  They’re just too long.

Of course, you have to forget the senate because senators don’t have districts. But representatives serve in two year clips.  And many if not most of the districts are customized just as carefully as a hand made suit from a Savile Row tailor.

The suit wears out in a couple of dozen wearings.  The district lives on for at least ten years… until the next census, maybe longer.

If all this isn’t voter fraud enough for you, consider what the Republicans in states like Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are trying to pull.  

State issued photo voter ID cards are just a way from keeping Democrats from voting.  The state governments say they’re only trying to prevent fraud.

Voter fraud in this country --scarcer than Polio -- is minimal to infinitesimal.  And there is no recorded instance in which it changed an election result since the invention of the photograph.

So between the ID card thing and the custom tailored districts, who is perpetrating the fraud?

Shrapnel (High Tech Robbery edition):

--Oh boy, new versions of the iPad, just in time for holiday shopping and Apple’s bottom line.  Faster, sleeker, more HD than if Johnny Depp made his next movie in your living room, and still pretty much chained to Apple products and services.  Incremental changes no one needed, and not for the first time.

--Oh boy, new version of Amazon’s “free” shipping, just in time for holiday shopping and Amazon’s bottom line.  Instead of a $25 minimum purchase, the fee jumps to $35. Object: get people to pay for their “Prime service,” which brings in money upfront but gives you both a cheaper “free shipping” and a leaf-bag full of emails that you don’t need.

--The NSA says it has data from 70 million French phone calls and emails.  France is in a total twist about that.  But folks in the agency’s secret hideout have dozens of new recipes to try -- deep fried snails and frogs’ legs for example -- and a blueprint for the sewers of Paris, even those below ground.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013