With two Congressional hearings scheduled this week on the subject of Toyota recalls, we think it’s important that not just Congress, but the public too, give the company a fair hearing, allowing it to explain the circumstances and the steps it has taken to correct the problems.

A good place to start is an op-ed from Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Back to Basics for Toyota“:

The past several months have been humbling for all of us at Toyota. We are taking this experience to heart, making fundamental changes in the way our company does business. I can assure you that our response will be comprehensive.

The first step is taking care of vehicles on the road today. But it also means making even safer vehicles in the future—and being more open and transparent about any safety issues that arise.

Since last June, when I took over as president of the company, I have personally placed the highest priority on improving quality, not quantity. All Toyota vehicles bear my name. When cars are damaged, it is as though I am as well. I love cars, and I take the utmost pleasure in offering vehicles that our customers love. I, more than anyone, want Toyota’s cars to be safe, and for our customers to feel safe when they drive our vehicles.

Toyoda’s column summarizes the concrete steps the company has taken to respond to customers’ concerns, and he pledges that Toyota “will set a new standard for transparency and speed of response on safety issues.”

Earlier, in Feb. 9 Washington Post op-ed, Toyoda explained “Toyota’s plan to repair its public image.”

The company’s website, www.toyota.com, has more detail with lots of information for Toyota owners and drivers.

Congressional hearings start today at 11 a.m. with a meeting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “Response by Toyota and NHTSA to Incidents of Sudden Unintended Acceleration.” On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold its own hearing, “Toyota Gas Pedals: Is the Public at Risk?”

We’ve posted previously on the companies that have made contributions to Haiti relief efforts in the wake of the terrible Jan. 12 earthquake. The outpouring of aid continues.

• ConAgra: “ConAgra Foods, whose corporate headquarters is in Omaha, Nebraska, is joining in to help the cause and has just donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross for its International Relief Fund, to assist the Red Cross response in Haiti.”
• Cargill: “MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Cargill is responding to the devastating earthquake in Haiti with an initial corporate donation of $50,000 that will be directed to long-time Cargill partners CARE and the World Food Programme, which have significant operations in the country.  In the Twin Cities, Cargill volunteers at its headquarters facility will be packaging 20,000 meals on January 18 for the nonprofit Kids Against Hunger, which will be sent directly to people in Haiti; Cargill volunteers will be packaging an additional 30,000 meals over the next month.”
• General Mills Foundation: “The General Mills Foundation today announced a commitment of $250,000 to support disaster relief and rebuilding efforts in Haiti. The $250,000 commitment includes a $100,000 donation to the American Red Cross International Response Fund and a $150,000 donation to CARE International for long-term rebuilding efforts.”
• United HealthGroup: “MINNEAPOLIS (Jan. 15, 2010) UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which helps victims of countless crises around the world, including the recent earthquake in Haiti. In addition, the company will match employee contributions to charitable partner Global Impact, dollar for dollar up to $50,000.”
• Medtronic: “MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 15, 2010 – Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT) announced today that it has pledged $150,000 through the Medtronic Foundation to support earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. The Foundation will match employee donations up to $50,000, with matching funds directed to Partners in Health. An additional $100,000 grant will be directed to the rebuilding of community health clinics in Haiti.”
• Ecolab: “Ecolab said it will contribute $500,000 of cleaning and sanitation products to help meet needs in Haiti, including hand sanitizers and surface sanitizers. In addition to the product donation, the Ecolab Foundation has offered a global matching gift program, through which it will match all Ecolab associate contributions to the Red Cross up to $1,000 per associate up to a total of $25,000.”
• Pentair: “MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 15, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Pentair, Inc., a global water solutions provider, in coordination with its Foundation, is immediately donating $200,000 to fund portable water treatment systems and related supplies to Haiti. Working with the company’s charitable partner, Water Missions International (WMI), Pentair is able to provide 10 Living Water Treatment Systems (LWTS) and five chlorinators. These water systems can provide potable drinking water to approximately 100,000 total people daily.”
• Mosaic Corp. (potash and phosphate): “Mosaic announced it is contributing $500,000 for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.  Mosaic’s $500,000 contribution will provide both immediate and long-term assistance, supporting emergency medical services, triage and mobile communications.”
  Our accounting of these charitable efforts favors larger companies, which have the means and materiel to make large-scale contributions. We know there are also thousands of smaller manufacturers and their employees who are also concerned and caring in their donations.

  Earlier posts:

  •  Manufacturers and the Outpouring of Aid for Haiti
  •  Manufacturers Donate to Haiti Earthquake Relief

  Also, thanks to MinnPost.com for spotting several of these announcements from Twin Cities-based companies.

The Virginian Pilot has an excellent obituaries page. From Friday:

Robert A. Fuhrman, 1925-2009, “Lockhead executive led missile programs“:

Robert A. Fuhrman, a pioneering Lockheed engineer who played a central role in the creation of the Polaris and Poseidon missiles before rising to the top of the aeronautics and aerospace giant, died Saturday in Pebble Beach, Calif. He was 84.

Fuhrman, a longtime resident of Pebble Beach, had blood clotting in his lungs, said Sherman N. Mullin, former president of Lockheed’s Skunk Works, the division that produces top-secret military aircraft.

During more than three decades at Lockheed, Fuhrman served as president of three of its companies: Lockheed-Georgia, Lockheed-California and Lockheed Missiles & Space. He became president and chief operating officer of the corporation in 1986 and vice chairman in 1988 before retiring in 1990.

Lester Shubin, 1925-2009, “He showed that fabric meant for tires could stop bullets“:

Impressive news from Kraft, “Kraft Foods Reduces Global Plant Water Use By More Than 20% In Less Than Three Years“:

Over the past three years, Kraft Foods has reduced water used in manufacturing processes by more than 3 billion gallons (nearly 12 billion liters) - enough water to fill nearly 5,000 Olympic swimming pools. That’s a 21 percent reduction since 2005, exceeding the company’s goal two years early.

“We’re changing behavior and getting results,” said Steve Yucknut, Vice President, Sustainability. “Around the world, thousands of our employees are working on projects that help us reduce our environmental impact. We focus on manufacturing, since that’s where we use the most water for internal operations. And we pay particular attention to water-scarce areas, where the need is greatest.”

Signed up quite some time ago for the White House e-mail distribution service, that “Get Updates” box you can fill out at www.whitehouse.gov.

For news purposes it’s worse than useless, only occasionally distributing a general message sort of e-mail. For example, yesterday people on the list got an e-mail from White House homeland security adviser John O. Brennan passing on exhortations to prepare for flu season.

But now one finds the White House’s Twitter RSS feed, http://twitter.com/whitehouse_rss, which offers the latest update in news releases and statements. That’s where you go to get the White House news.

The e-mail distribution seems like more of a campaign-influenced approach, sending out good stuff to supporters. The RSS Twitter is the nuts and bolts media outreach of any professional operation.

The NAM’s Twitter feed is somewhere in-between. But you be the judge:

http://twitter.com/NAM_Shopfloor or in the protocol of the medium, @NAM_Shopfloor

An entertaining and looks-pretty-much-right post from Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic about Washington politics, “The Six Republicans Obama Listens To.”

Regardless of whether the President’s bipartisan outreach is producing legislative results, there is a handful of conservatives and Republicans that the president and his White House team respect. By respect, I mean, quite simply, the degree to which the White House responds to their worries and needs and believes that the time spent responding is useful and necessary. It is unclear whether the quality of this outreach differs from the respect accorded to Sen. Ben Nelson by the Bush White House.

Ambinder cites Sens. Collins and Snowe of Maine, Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, columnist David Brooks, and Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith. Rahm Emmanuel is frequent caller to Brooks, eh?

And there’s the rest of the class, NAM included.

Others: Sen. Chuck Grassley, on budget and health care matters, as well as government operations; Sen. Orrin Hatch on health care; Sen. Mel Martinez on immigration; Govs. Schwarzenegger and Crist on policy matters, the environment and the stimulus; George Will; the National Association of Manufacturers (much more bipartisan recently) on labor and taxes; Sen. Lindsey Graham on detainee issues; Sen. Judd Gregg (still); what of Charles Krauthammer, who dined with Obama pre-inaugural? He’s read…but not influential.

Wonder what Ambinder’s original list looked like. The url for his post gives an indication of his having planned a different commentary.

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/the_five_conservatives_obama_listens_to.php

P.S. We do the same thing all the time. You could probably find 20 posts on the blog that are on a different topic than the url indicates.

Jay Timmons, Executive Vice President, will have comments and analysis through the evening on the election results, focusing on the White House and Congress.

I’ll be taking a look at some of state races, governors and judiciary.

Wow. Interest must be really high. As the doors opened this morning, the line wound halfway around the block. Who knew that many people wanted to buy Lou Reed’s “Berlin: Live at St. Anne’s Warehouse” the day of its release?

What did you think we meant?

Anyway, at the Chevy Chase Community Center at 8 a.m., there were indeed long lines, but not for people whose last names begin with T-Z. Voting took a total of seven minutes. The precincts around here are remarkably diverse politically, at least by District standards. McCain will probably get a good 7, 8 percent of the vote.

Elsewhere among the auguries, right before we reached the polling place, a commuting bicyclist smacked right into a car, or vice versa. We spotted eight people calling in the accident on their cell phones. Civic involvement lives! (Ambulance and firetruck came within five minutes; the biker survived but injured.)

And at the intersection of Connecticut and M, NW this morning, 8:45 a.m., a dead deer, a buck. Deer in Rock Creek Park, absolutely, but at one of the busiest downtown interesections in the city? Couldn’t have been shopping at Burberry’s. The cabbie said he’d never seen anything like it in his 18 years in D.C. (Alas, no camera.)

Apropos dead animals on Election Day, we’d missed this news about yet another California ballot measure. From USA Today: “If passed Tuesday, Proposition 2 would prevent California farmers from confining egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs and veal calves in ways that don’t allow them to lie, stand and extend their limbs.”

Wonder if there’s an interview with any presidential candidate saying,  ”So if somebody wants to build a confined-animal feeding operation, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum to meet all the regulations we’re imposing.” Would that be news?

From today’s Washington Post:

Handing environmentalists a major victory, a federal judge yesterday overturned the Bush administration’s plan to allow hundreds more snowmobiles to traverse Yellowstone and other iconic national parks each winter.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan threw out the National Park Service’s 2007 plan, calling it “arbitrary and capricious, unsupported by the record, and contrary to law.”

That’s possible, we suppose, depending on the record of how courts interpret the Organic Act that created the National Park Service in 1916. The Bush Administration certainly went through the full process of issuing proposed regulations, taking public comment, etc., and there was extensive input from groups and individuals who opposed the ban on snowmobiles. 

You know what was really arbitrary and capricious? Again from the Post:

The Clinton administration published a rule in late January 2001 that would have phased out snowmobiles in Yellowstone in favor of a system of public snow coaches, but Bush cancelled that plan and pushed for expanded snowmobile access.

Late January, as in January 22, 2001, two days AFTER George W. Bush was sworn into office.  The snowmobile rule was part of a slew of Clinton administration “midnight regulations” designed to pay off constituencies, evade accountability, and set up the next administration to stumble politically. Mission accomplished.

You can bet if the Bush Administration does anything similar, environmentalists will scream and the Post’s Juliet Eilperin will write accusatory articles about the manipulation of the regulatory process.

But, to its credit, the White House has sworn off “midnight regulations.” On May 9th, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten issued a memo (a copy is here), setting the deadline for new regs on June 1, specifically trying to stop last-minute regulatory enactments. (See The New York Times in “Administration Moves to Avert a Late Rules Rush” and a Bloomberg column, “Bush Aims to Stop Midnight Surge of New Rules.”)

As we noted in a previous post, the Bush position is almost a unilateral surrender politically. The next time a pro-regulation administration takes office, midnight regulations expanding government control of the economy will return to fashion, we’re sure.

But for now, credit to the White House for bringing a little bit of good government practices to the regulatory state. Now if we could only get judges to do the same.

Just because members of Congress have returned to their home districts or other points beyond, does not mean that trade associations have closed up shop for the month. On the contrary, there’s much work getting done.

Why, just this morning at the NAM headquarters, 13th and F Street, NW…