Congressman caught selling defective cars (PA republican scumbag)

[yortsed snacilbuper]

dealers across the country are now proposing laws that safety groups say may make it easier to sell defective cars. In Kelly’s home state of Pennsylvania, state lawmakers last year passed a bill requiring car dealers to formally disclose any open safety recall on a car before it is sold to a consumer. Safety groups, pointing out that the bill received broad support from local dealers, said that disclosure laws just provide cover for dealers in the event that they are sued and may actually encourage more sales of recalled cars.

Sure enough, a new investigation by a local television news station has found that there were 17 cars with unrepaired safety recalls offered for sale at Kelly’s car dealerships across Pennsylvania in early March.

The vehicles were all under recall for potentially explosive airbags produced by the now-bankrupt Takata corporation. The Takata airbag recall is the auto industry's largest to date, causing backlogs at dealerships and forcing millions of consumers with defective airbags with no choice but to wait indefinitely. Officials have counted a total of 24 deaths worldwide due to the airbags exploding.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/congressman-who-said-car-dealerships-dont-sell-defective-cars-is-caught-selling-over-a-dozen-at-his-own-042919.html?link_id=5&can_id=6a15da47fc32715a08ee123e4c7ee3e3&source=email-morning-digest-republican-congressman-caught-selling-used-cars-recalled-for-deadly-airbags&email_referrer=email_546236&email_subject=morning-digest-republican-congressman-caught-selling-used-cars-recalled-for-deadly-airbags

[Soxfan58]

1. Not just defective

Deadly!!

[Ohiogal]

2. This scum bag's district

Is right across the state line from me. His political ads saturated the airwaves a couple years ago promising he would fight for small government.

[dewsgirl]

3. Grifters gotta grift.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

4. One such vehicle, a rental car, killed 26-year-old Jewel Brangman in 2014

PA-16: Republican Rep. Mike Kelly isn't just a member of Congress representing Pennsylvania—he's also an auto dealer, and, well, this headline from Consumer Affairs says it all:

Congressman who said car dealerships don't sell defective cars is caught selling over a dozen at his own
Credit, however, belongs to reporter Paul Van Osdol at Pittsburgh news station WTAE, who dug deep into a serious issue: used-car dealers who've been selling vehicles that have been recalled due to dangerous safety defects. One such vehicle, a rental car, killed 26-year-old Jewel Brangman in 2014, when a faulty airbag went off after a minor crash, firing a burst of metal fragments into her neck that severed her carotid artery.

Those airbags, made by a company called Takata, are responsible for at least 24 deaths worldwide. A recall began over a decade ago, but last year, Honda said that there were still more than 60,000 vehicles in the U.S. using those same defective airbags.
And how have used-car dealers responded? By pushing copycat laws in at least 11 states to allow them to sell vehicles that have been recalled—as long as they noted the recall "somewhere in a stack of sales documents," as an investigative report from USA Today, the Arizona Republic, and the Center for Public Integrity put it.

Two states have passed this so-called "model legislation" so far: Tennessee and Pennsylvania. Astoundingly, in the latter, this disastrous anti-consumer measure was approved by a Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, and Mike Kelly's been taking full advantage of it.

According to WTAE's Van Osdol, 17 unrepaired vehicles that were still under safety recalls were up for sale at Kelly's dealerships in early March, including two with the deadly Takata airbags. Kelly has refused to respond to any questions, but even after WTAE repeatedly tried to contact him, he was still selling multiple recalled vehicles as of late April. (Van Osdol also visited a Kelly dealership, only to get stonewalled by an employee who stood in front of a truck emblazoned with "Mike Kelly Congress" on the doors.)
And this is where we circle back to that headline we called out above. Van Osdol managed to unearth a speech Kelly made in the House in 2015 in support of an unsuccessful bill similar to the one Pennsylvania passed, except that it would have applied to rentals rather than sales. Declared Kelly, "There is not a single person in our business that would ever put one of our owners in a defective car or a car with a recall."

Not a single person, that is, except Mike Kelly.

[keithbvadu2]

5. Politician/car salesman... double the integrity. T-r-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-s-t me.

Politician/car salesman... double the integrity.

T-r-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-s-t me.