Washington owes every American an apology. And quite honestly, Political affiliation, race, nor gender has anything to do with it. If the founding fathers were alive today, they'd be labeled terrorists. I've lost faith in our political system. I'm waiting for the next Constitutional Convention

Washington owes nothing to Toyota. go forth and research. the fines were assessed / charged / levied based on the _LAW_ that specific defects issues MUST be reported.

Federal law requires incidences of failure in specific "safety" related "systems" be reported so the government - like 'em or not - can investigate and determine if there is or is not a real problem.

Toyota was fined - should have been three or four hundred times that amount, imho - for not only not reporting the potential safety related issues but actively conspiring to "cover up" the consumer reported issues.

if you lie to the IRS, not only do you have to pay the taxes owed, you get hit with penalties up to and including jail time. Toyota lied, cheated and concealed. they forthrightly owe all the fines and then some.

You offer a compelling perspective Dil- but I am not persuaded. No biggy, there's room for two trains of thought.

it's not really a question of perspective.

Federal law requires reporting specific defects / suspected defects. there's a couple of other instances: Corsair, Pinto, Explorer.

various Toyota employees and executives not only failed to report, they actively engaged in a campaign to minimize, reclassify, deny, and other overt actions to preclude an investigation. it's called "obstruction of justice."

if you are called to testify before a Grand Jury and lie / evade providing truthful information - whether you are / are not personally involved / liable in the alleged wrong-doing or simply know about it, that's obstruction.

that's the basis of the Toyota fines. it's representative of the political and business leadership focus of today. Lie&Deny until you get caught and hopefully you don't get caught and financially it's a better deal even if you do get caught.

which is the basis of my opinion that the fines need to be about 300x the actual - it needs to become so expensive to lie&hope to not get caught that crime doesn't pay.

think about it,,,, as the technical reports now support - right or wrong, du'jour - if Toyota had fessed up, followed the law, been honest and reported "heh we have reports of XYZ and we're looking into it" they could have saved themselves $48.8 million in fines and been.

they tried to 'beat the system' - didn't work - and as the technical reports stand today, all for naught.