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For several weeks, Fox News has declared war on the Chevy Volt in the name of belittling all so-called green energy initiatives. The attacks have been relatively trivial, ranging from ridicule by Bill O'Reilly over a recall to general guffaws at the idea of vehicles that don't consume huge amounts of fossil fuel energy. But that all changed today with this segment on Megyn Kelly's show Monday.

Kelly featured James Hohman from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Koch-funded think tank in Michigan. Much of Mackinac's focus is on right-to-work laws and union busting wherever possible, so what better target to focus on than a GM-manufactured green vehicle, right?

According to the Mackinac study, if all government subsidies are added up and divided by the number of vehicles sold, it adds up to $250,000 per vehicle. The included subsidies are everything from research and development credits for battery technology to purchaser credits for buying a green vehicle. Of course, the problem is that this number assumes only 7,000 Chevy Volts will ever be sold anywhere. Forever and ever. As more Volts are sold and as more models become available and are shown to be reliable, more people will buy them. As for traction, I would note that when the Toyota Prius was introduced in this country, it only sold 5,800 units in the first year it was sold in the United States. The Volt sales topped that and as the price comes down, sales will increase.

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I don't know why this is suddenly such big news. Car companies have been negotiating recall compromises with the government for decades, leading to such strange consumer "solutions" as the "hidden warranty", under which dealers don't have to inform you of a manufacturing defect (or pay for it) unless you specifically ask them: "Is there a hidden warranty on this?"

Toyota Motor Corp. officials took credit for saving hundreds of millions of dollars by persuading federal regulators to limit or avoid safety recalls and rules, a company document released Sunday shows.

The document, an internal company presentation, depicts an automaker focused on getting what it termed "favorable recall outcomes" from regulators, with a goal of saving money even as the death toll climbed from accidents in which Toyota vehicles accelerated uncontrollably.

The presentation by executives in the company's Washington, D.C., office was addressed to Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota's top U.S. executive, and dated July 6, 2009 -- months before the sudden-acceleration problem was widely known outside Toyota and the federal highway regulatory agency.

The document, released by congressional investigators, describes the automaker's regulatory agenda and highlights a wide-ranging string of "wins for Toyota."

As time goes by, more and more scandals will be exposed while George Bush was president.

Bloomberg:

At least four U.S. investigations into unintended acceleration by Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles were ended with the help of former regulators hired by the automaker, warding off possible recalls, court and government records show.

Christopher Tinto, vice president of regulatory affairs in Toyota’s Washington office, and Christopher Santucci, who works for Tinto, helped persuade the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to end probes including those of 2002-2003 Toyota Camrys and Solaras, court documents show. Both men joined Toyota directly from NHTSA, Tinto in 1994 and Santucci in 2003.

While all automakers have employees who handle NHTSA issues, Toyota may be alone among the major companies in employing former agency staffers to do so. Spokesmen for General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group LLC and Honda Motor Co. all say their companies have no ex-NHTSA people who deal with the agency on defects.

Possible links between Toyota and NHTSA may fuel mounting criticism of their handling of defects in Toyota and Lexus models tied to 19 deaths from 2004 to 2009. Three congressional committees have scheduled hearings on the recalls.

“Toyota bamboozled NHTSA or NHTSA was bamboozled by itself,” said Joan Claybrook, an auto safety advocate and former NHTSA administrator in the Jimmy Carter administration. “I think there is going to be a lot of heat on NHTSA over this...read on

Toyota has only lost almost 28 billion in market capitalization. The influence of former employees from government agencies directly tied to their new jobs is a disgrace.

Southern Beale writes:

It’s that revolving door between government agencies and those major corporations in the industries they are meant to regulate. Throw in a few lobbyists and a few million dollars in K Street money and you’ve got a very cozy scenario, indeed. It's all just so "Club For Growth," isn't it?

No wonder our government is broken: it’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America. And Corporate America doesn’t care about real Americans, just their money.

Hey Toyota: dead Americans don’t buy cars.

I'm sure Grover Norquist is happy that Tinto and Santucci did their best to stop the government from doing their job, because those government probes are just so bad for corporate America. I mean, the free markets will magically help raise the people that died because of Toyota's problems from the dead--probably on Halloween. That's always a good day for resurrections.

Hey conservatives: How's that "small government" thing working out for ya?

AfterDowningStreet: Lobbying top spenders

Michael Winship: From the annals of sno-cone science

The Big Picture: How is Toyota like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs?

Informed Comment: How the Iranian regime checkmated the Green dissidents on a crucial day

Prometheus 6: Lawyered up

Bic's Place: Mind Reading

So it isn't just poorly-made American cars that are feeling the pinch:

TOKYO — Toyota Motor will lose money in its core automaking business for the first time in 70 years this fiscal year, the company said Monday, in a sign of how the global economic crisis is hurting even the mightiest carmakers.

The Japanese auto giant, which has been neck and neck with General Motors to be the world’s largest vehicle-maker, said it still expects to eke out a narrow group net profit for the year, which ends March 31, 2009.

But the company, which just a few months ago appeared to be riding above the ills that have crippled Detroit, said it has seen plunging sales not only in North America but even in emerging markets, which initially seemed to be immune to the United States malaise.

“The change in the world economy is of a magnitude that comes once every hundred years,” Toyota’s president, Katsuaki Watanabe, told a press conference in Nagoya, Japan, near the company’s Toyota City headquarters. Sales last month dropped “far faster, wider and deeper than expected.”

While it's certainly a shame for the family (and frankly, I'd rather not examine stupid choices made by 20 year olds, because truly, how many of us would hold up to the scrutiny?), the thing that will be more interesting to me is how much airtime the complicit media will give to this story that they didn't give to Noelle Bush or Jenna and Barbara's antics.  Not in a Republican "...they did it too" kind of way, but just why Gore's son would be any more newsworthy than a Bush daughter.

Guardian UK:

The good news for Al Gore was that when his son was stopped by the police yesterday morning he was driving an environmentally friendly car, a hybrid Toyota Prius. The bad news was that Al Gore Jr was arrested on suspicion of possessing cannabis and drugs for which he apparently had no prescription.

I'm not holding my breath on this one. I truly believe that American companies are being typically short-sighted as ever. Considering there is a six month waiting list for Toyota and Honda hybrids in my area, I would imagine that the company on the forefront of offering an electric car would have consumers beating down their door, especially as gas prices go higher and higher and people want less and less to be dependent on foreign oil. Further, I simply cannot believe that we have the technology to create a space station, but we cannot figure out a working electric battery for a typical commuter car.

SJ MercuryNews:

The company that killed the electric car, at least according to the makers of a popular 2006 documentary film, intends to announce today that it's getting back into that business.

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Peter Vescey in the NY Post:

"Props to the NBA, by the way, for an All-Star mission accomplished: Tip-toeing thousands of people in and out of Texas (flak jackets had to be checked at the Toyota Center door) without a single one getting shot by Dick Cheney."

Given this unpromising context, Business Week reports that the army will spend more money on recruitment ads next year, about $320m up from $240m this year. As it helpfully points out this amounts to $4,000 per recruit if the army signs up 80,000 next year - more than twice what Toyota spends to woo a new customer....read on

Uncle Sam really needs you.

This isn't a satire.

Ken Ham has spent 11 years working on a museum that poses the big question — when and how did life begin? Ham hopes to soon offer an answer to that question in his still-unfinished Creation Museum in northern Kentucky.

Notice the headline of the Yahoo News Story:

Creation Museum Sparks Evolution Debate

I didn't know there was a debate going on, except in Wingnut Kansas.

Ham's beliefs are that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say; the Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks and that dinosaurs and man once coexisted, and dozens of the creatures — including Tyrannosaurus Rex — were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth.

Emailer Jerimiah says: I'm thinking of setting up a different fundamentalist museum of my own to battle both science, and religion. It's the museum of whatever thing I can Imagine, yet claim absolutist real. It'll be great, because it'll serve to reclaim all reality in terms of my own personal fantasies!!!

It's a giant step backward in science education," says Carolyn Chambers, chair of the biology department at Xavier University, which is operated by the Jesuit order of the Catholic church. The Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Pleasant Ridge, takes issue with Ham's views — and the man himself. "

Jerimiah says: "For example: Man does not come from sand like in the bible, or from primates for that matter. Man comes from MANnequins. Man was sparked to life in an ancient cave dwelling department store by the Toyota company before the fifteenth flooding of the world!!!! You see, I can bullshit anything, and claim it real!!!! I don't even have to test it; just claim it theoretical, as valid as any science theory out there!"