Toying with Toyota

Politics is politics so its not surprising that congressional committee members investigating the Toyota recall tried to make as much political hay as possible on national television during hearings into the way the whole recall situation was handled.
If you read the Sun Sentinel this morning and made to the editorial page, you might have seen a guest column from Ed Sheehy, president of Southeast Toyota and Colin Brown, the top guy at JM Family in which they defended Toyota and the company's actions.
Ed and Colin made good points – this is not a widespread problem and in fact its hard to say for certain if any of the accidents that have been cited as evidence of a problem are indeed the result of acceleration problems.
The preemptive shot was a noble effort but the truth is Toyota should have come out with this stuff weeks ago. At this point, the damage has been done.
Here's what you probably won't hear. There is a lot of political stuff happening here. If this was a GM or Ford product, Congressman Dingle from Michigan would be defending the company left and right, rather than attacking.
Toyota needs to make absolutely certain that the problem with acceleration isn't link to the electronic components and they need ot start rebuilding confidence. Congress, which was pretty silent when drug companies marketed medications that killed hundreds of patients, need to focus on getting some real work done.