A VW engineer may be going to prison – and has already been professionally (and probably personally) ruined… for having “cheated” the EPA. Which is like expelling a picked-on kid who outsmarted the playground bully.
Which, of course, is what often happens now.
Whether it’s the schoolyard bully – or the EPA (or other “agencies” of Uncle) – we are supposed to take it, never resist it – and may the motor gods have mercy upon you if you ever “cheat” it.
The engineer’s name is James R. Liang. He’s worked for VW since 1983, but not anymore. Bye-bye career (and pension) and hello Federal prison. Which he’s facing on account of having been a member of the engineering team that developed “defeat” software for VW’s TDI diesel engines. The software made the engines “compliant” when emissions tested by Uncle but less-than-compliant when driven by customers.
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As I’ve written about several times before, this sounds bad but really isn’t. The EPA’s tests are both arbitrary and Pecksniffian – meaning m
uch ado about not much. The media continues to parrot the line that VW’s diesel engines produced “up to 40 times” more pollution (specifically, oxides of nitrogen) than the EPA’s standards permitted.
Maybe so. But – so what?
It continues to boggle sensible minds (if any still exist) that EPA hasn’t had to produce any evidence that harm has been caused by this. Not one crying baby, even. Probably because the “up to 40 times more” the media keeps squawking about amounts to less than 1 percent’s difference in the composition of the “cheating” car’s exhaust gasses.
The only thing that’s been established is that VW “cheated” – which is a legalism.
The German officers who conspired to get rid of the Fuhrer in July of 1944 were certainly guilty under the law. But did they do wrong? History has vindicated them (too late for them, of course).
Maybe events will be kinder to Liang. Maybe it will occur to his lawyers to ask the Never Asked Question: Where is the victim of this alleged crime?
Just one.
Arguing anything else is a loser. VW, via painful-looking public hairshirted writhings, has already admitted to “cheating” EPA. Now it is just a question of begging for mercy – which will never be given. EPA is like Al Sharpton who has found a “racist.”
Never forgive. Never shut up.
