Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Toyota apologist
February 24, 2010
by shf
JACKSON, Miss. (FASTLAUGH.com) — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour elaborated on assertions made in his Toyota op-ed piece appearing in The Washington Post this morning, directly placing full blame for the Toyota fiasco on President Obama and his cadre of liberal lawmakers in Congress for their continued insistance on having any safety standards whatsoever for vehicles sold in the United States.
Barbour commented in his op-ed piece, “I hope that our so-called President and his socialist majority in Congress will resist the temptation to attack Toyota simply to advance the interests of American competitors. With two House committees and one in the Senate preparing for hearings on Toyota’s safety issues, I worry that there has been a rush to judgment. The way that Congress and the Obama administration respond to this controversy will have real economic consequences for my state. If Toyota has to adhere to any safety standards whatsoever, then that sets a dangerous precedent for all employers in Mississippi.”
Barbour continued, “Toyota is investing $1.3 billion to build a Prius assembly plant in Mississippi that will provide good jobs to more than 2,000 new Toyota team workers plus some 2,500 supplier jobs. I’m term-limited from running for Governor of this backwater state again, and I’m banking heavily on the ill-informed voters of Mississippi sending me to Washington to represent them in Congress — and better yet, The White House — in a couple of years on an economic platform of jobs over safety. That’s how we do it in Mississippi, and what’s good for Mississippi is good for America.”