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F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

nytimes.com

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Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#131

Post by adventured »

JohnGB wrote: post #46

I wonder if the same would have happened to an American company in the USA. If so, what's the deal with the bankers that did orders of magnitude more damage?

You mean like Bernie Madoff, Raj Rajaratnam and Allen Stanford? Three of the most famous bankers / financiers of the last 20 years. Losing money isn't necessarily a crime, fraud is.

Your premise is a partial myth anyway.

"35 bankers were sent to prison for financial crisis crimes"

"There have been 59 bankers convicted of crimes"

http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/28/news/companies/bankers-priso...

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#132

Post by imagist »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #85
imagist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it's also justice being served. When a poor black man in America is arrested for a rape, it's racism and classism because a rich white man is far more likely to get away with that crime. But it's also justice. I don't think you would argue that we should let poor black men get away with rape just to make things more fair.

It's selective justice. Imagine driving down in a 2009 Toyota Camry with your well dressed family on a well paved highway in Alabama at 78 mph in a 65 mph zone on a nice, clear sunny Sunday a safe distance away from the preceding car at the same velocity as quite literally every other car in every other lane you see. Clearly not posing a safety threat, not lane-weaving indicating any form of compromised faculties or…

All this explanation amounts to stating positions in what seems like a fundamental disagreement, so I'm not sure how to dig deeper.

At some level I agree with you that justice unevenly served is not justice, but I guess what I'm arguing here is that justice is a spectrum rather than a binary. Justice served unevenly is less just than justice served evenly, but more just than justice not served.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#133

Post by imagist »

zipwitch wrote: post #82
imagist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it's also justice being served. When a poor black man in America is arrested for a rape, it's racism and classism because a rich white man is far more likely to get away with that crime. But it's also justice. I don't think you would argue that we should let poor black men get away with rape just to make things more fair.

When certain groups are exempt from the force of the law, while others feel its full weight, it is not justice, but rather a mockery of it.

See my response to your sibling comment.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#134

Post by hx87 »

mikeash wrote: post #129
disiplus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

diesels are popular in europe for one reason that probably somebody from us will not understand. the price of fuel. because the price of fuel is so much bigger fuel efficiency is the biggest concern

Not only the price of fuel, but the relative price of the two fuels. In the US, diesel is a fair bit more expensive than regular gasoline, which cuts down or eliminates any cost savings you get from higher efficiency.

It is cheaper than premium gas in most places though, and given the cars diesel engines are offered in, diesel tends to compete with premium, not regular. The obvious exception are 1/2-1 ton trucks, but in those, diesel engines serve a different purpose than the gasoline ones.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#135

Post by hx87 »

robin_reala wrote: post #9
Pyxl101 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not been closely following this scandal, so I was unaware that other car manufacturers have been indicted in emissions cheating. Could you share a source with more information about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#T... A French government report in 2016 investigated 86 different cars, and about 1/5th of those were found to comply with emission laws. Most did not.

How many of those are sold in the US?

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#136

Post by hx87 »

Nitramp wrote: post #94
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making cars is "statistical murder". Bad schools are "statistical murder". Selling cheesecake is "statistical murder". Yeah, the question is how much . Cheating on emissions tests is definitely more murder than selling cheesecake.

> Yeah, the question is how much. Cheating on emissions tests is definitely more murder than selling cheesecake. Is it? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0... > Scientists are asking people across the globe to lay off sugary drinks, linking the consumption to an estimated 184,000 adult deaths each year, including more than 25,000 Americans. I wouldn't expect cheesecake to fare much differentl…

Cheesecake =/= all sugary foods. It's not even a plurality.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#137

Post by cardiffspaceman »

troisx wrote: post #32
devoply wrote: post #3

Must not have invested money in lobbying DC. VW needs to spend a few million on lobbyists.

Exactly. Ships cause enormous amounts of pollution but are practically unregulated thanks to the lobbying influence of companies that import and export.

Maybe.

It was trivial to find this. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV%3...

In addition to that, the EU marine shipping system seems to be in some turmoil over some required major capital expenditures due to a double-hull regulation, which I also wanted to mention, but I can't quite find it.

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#138

Post by dba7dba »

bflesch wrote: post #114

This is way overdue. Unfortunately in Germany they don't touch VW executives at all. You could build the same cases here, but there is no political will. Our corrupt ministry of transportation even sends out their reports on the VW fraud scandal over to Volkswagen and lets them review/amend/retract passages of their report. You can't make that shit up. It's a disgrace to Germany and the EU that this company has so mu…

Everybody roots for their local boys.

The only court system that gave Apple a major win over Samsung in the patent case was in Silicon Valley, CA. Not in Germany, Japan, and other 3rd party countries...

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#139

Post by alistairSH »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #124
alistairSH wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall any arrests related to GM's ignition lock fiasco.

Did GM deliberately try to falsify test results, so as to provide incorrect information to the government? There's stupidity and incompetence, and then there's deliberately breaking the law and trying to hide that you're doing so. The latter gets you arrested, the former gets you shamed (and perhaps fined).

Did GM deliberately try to falsify test results, so as to provide incorrect information to the government?

Maybe. The Justice Department case against GM that was settled had two parts... a wire-fraud charge and a charge of "engaging in a scheme to conceal a deadly safety defect".

Of course, GM settled for $900 million (USD) with an agreement to drop the charges if GM fixes their recall process. So, we don't have a criminal conviction.

I do wonder if GM got off easy because they are American. Next to impossible to prove, lacking a smoking gun (email or similar), but GM actually killed people and got a small fine (relative to VW's fines).

Re: F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal

#140

Post by mikeash »

hx87 wrote: post #134
mikeash wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only the price of fuel, but the relative price of the two fuels. In the US, diesel is a fair bit more expensive than regular gasoline, which cuts down or eliminates any cost savings you get from higher efficiency.

It is cheaper than premium gas in most places though, and given the cars diesel engines are offered in, diesel tends to compete with premium, not regular. The obvious exception are 1/2-1 ton trucks, but in those, diesel engines serve a different purpose than the gasoline ones.

Seems to be true in the higher-end diesels, like the BMWs and Audis and Mercedeses, but the gas versions of cars like the Cruze and the Jetta use regular gas. For people who are cost conscious, I imagine that they'd be looking at the lower-end diesels where the gas equivalents use cheap gas.
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