How to get very rich - kill & injure your customers

It was very immoral for GM to hide this problem.
But it is disgustingly hypocritical for Republican Congress persons to join in the criticm. Republicans have worked to eliminate regulation of business, and have cut back on funding to regulatory agencies. According to them, we don't need regulation because business won't make dangerous products because it would be bad for business. This hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be false.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/02/223253/mccaskill-accuses-gm-chief-of.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/

By Greg Gordon
April 2, 2014

-----

Presiding over a second day of congressional hearings into lethal failures of GM’s Chevrolet Cobalt and other models, McCaskill waved a company document that she said proves engineer Ray DeGiorgio perjured himself last year in a lawsuit filed by survivors of a Georgia nurse killed in a 2010 crash.

The newly disclosed document shows that despite his denials, DeGiorgio approved a new design for the ignition switch in 2006. The change apparently wasn’t reported to federal highway safety regulators, because the GM part number remained the same, an irregularity that Mary Barra, GM’s new CEO, called “unacceptable.”

-----

Problems with the defective part culminated in a series of recalls of more than 2.5 million cars since Feb. 7.

-----

GM, the one bailed out by taxpayers in 2009

-----

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, a lawyer, said the failure to issue a new part number “is not a matter of acceptability. This is criminal deception.”

-----

Before the redesign, a slight bump or putting too many keys on a key ring could produce enough force to turn off the ignition, disabling power steering, power brakes and air bag deployment. Even with the change, GM has notified owners of the affected Chevrolet Cobalts and HHRs, Saturn Ions and Skys and Pontiac G5s and Solstices that driving over bumpy roads or sudden jarring still could trigger the problem.

McCaskill opened the hearing by tracing the discovery of the defect to litigation after the death of Brooke Melton, a 29-year-old pediatric nurse who was driving near Atlanta to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend on March, 10, 2010, when her 2005 Cobalt suddenly lost power.

The car “hydroplaned, crossed the center line and slammed into another vehicle at a speed of 58 miles per hour,” McCaskill said. “Her car ended up in a creek. The airbags never deployed.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/02/223253/mccaskill-accuses-gm-chief-of.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/#storylink=cpy