Friday, March 12, 2010

NHTSA Bought and Paid For By Toyota and Others

The post below has nothing whatsoever to do with the printing industry, so read at your own peril...

Ever wonder how many (not if, but how many) current or past employees of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) end up with cosy "Sweetheart" deals with those in the automotive industry they are supposed to regulate?

For all intents and purposes, Sec. of Transportation Ray Lahood was himself looked upon for years as nothing more than Caterpillar's convenient "bootblack," thanks in large measure to all the campaign contributions he received from same.

What galls me most was his fake indignation a few weeks ago when he appeared before a House Transportation Committee investigating the recalls by Toyota. When asked about the cozy relationships between employees of NHTSA and companies like Toyota he responded with great indignation.

The only indignation that ought to be raised would be if there was NO connection between current and former employees of NHTSA and companies like Toyota. Of course there are connections, but no one wants to take the time to investigate the revolving doors, the bribes, the kickbacks and the promises of jobs and contributions in return for favorable votes.

Do you realize that not once in its history has DOT or NHTSA ever sought and received a court-ordered recall against an automobile manufacturer - NOT ONCE! Every recall in the industry has ultimately been the result of self-policing by the industry itself, not the result of the federal agency charged with supervising the industry.

Quite honestly, the whole thing stinks!

Bounty for "Security Tool" Developers

To say I am furious would be a huge understatement.

Last night I discovered my home computer had suddenly been infected by a program called "Security Tool." This is an incredibly malicious program that basically takes over your computer, tells you that you have all types of trojams and other viruses and then promises it will remove all these infections for a fee!

If you choose not to pay the fee and say "Ignore" instead more windows just keep popping up....

I tried going to the Control Panel to use ADD or REMOVE and "Security Tool" prevents you from accessing this window..... I tried to go to I.E. or AOL so I could search out solutions and I couldn't even get these programs to down load because "Security Tool" Windows had literally taken over the computer.... they could not be minimized or deleted and thus prevented accessing any other desktop functions or programs.

I can't believe these folks (well documented on the Internet) get away with this type of criminal activity. These people are scum and don't deserve to live, and someone needs to get to these folks.

I will pay anyone $500 to get me the name and address of one or more principles of this company.... Actually, I don't care if it is a secretary, janitor or programmer... I just want a working phone number and good address that I can visit or send a package......

Somehow, I will get their kids, pets, or parents... and if the FBI sees this I don't give a shit!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Bemoaning Cut-throat Pricing

Just had an owner of a mailing company call me. He wanted to ask some questions about the 2009-2010 Mailing Industry Pricing Study. Within a few seconds it was apparent that most of the answers to his questions could be found on my website, so I suggested he visit site. He told me that he was already at the site, but just didn't have the time to read the stuff! Wow, this sounds like a good candidate to purchase a study. "He doesn't have time?????"

Well, at this point I am thinking to myself that I really don't have a lot of time nor the patience, nor the inclination to try and "sell him" a study. When he asked when the pricing data was gathered I told him in early 2009 and he laughed, saying, "Wow, that's pretty old, considering everything that has been happening, ya know." No, I really don't know.

I asked him what he meant when he said, "everything that has been happening," and he added, "Well, you know, all the price cutting, you know due to the economy."

I started to tell him that the "price cutting" he was referring to has been happening in the printing and mailing industry at least back as 1970 when I first got into the industry.

Well, he didn't want to hear anything about that, and I am sure he didn't want me to tell him why prices vary far more within individual markets than they do from one section of the country to the next. I wanted to tell him about the good, profitable companies out there that are not cutting their prices, but I figured those comments would simply fall on deaf ears!

I finally told him I had to go and quickly hung up on him. I really didn't feel too bad about that since during our brief conversation he had interrupted the call three times, twice to take two other phone calls and a third one in which he carried on a lengthy discussion with an employee who obviously entered his office.

Must be one of my bad days!

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