THE CARS, PART 2
How they killed the first one off...
Please visit: http://www.tuckerclub.org/
Unfortunately for the bad guys, this time around there are DOE whistle-blowers, Senate investigators, social media investigators, federal agency investigators, major news journalists, angry public, law enforcement specialists, past case FOIA documents and many others helping to get the matter resolved. Mr. Tucker caused a law to be created, called "The Tucker Law" which is assisting many of the filed, and in-preparation, cases. Thank you Preston Tucker!See The Movie: Get the movie at Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/Tucker-Man-Dream-Jeff-Bridges/dp/B00004Y62V/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1353268328&sr=1-1&keywords=tucker
Read about how they did it: http://www.economicthinking.org/Americanhistory/tucker-greg.html
Unfortunately for the bad guys, this time around there are DOE whistle-blowers, Senate investigators, social media investigators, federal agency investigators, major news journalists, angry public, law enforcement specialists, past case FOIA documents and many others helping to get the matter resolved. Mr. Tucker caused a law to be created, called "The Tucker Law" which is assisting many of the filed, and in-preparation, cases. Thank you Preston Tucker!See The Movie: Get the movie at Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/Tucker-Man-Dream-Jeff-Bridges/dp/B00004Y62V/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1353268328&sr=1-1&keywords=tucker
Read about how they did it: http://www.economicthinking.org/Americanhistory/tucker-greg.html
An example of one kind of Process Detroit uses to kill off alternative transportation:
Rail industry stops technology to prevent derailments
By Robert J. Ahern
The screech of a train derailment shattered the silence in the woods near New Unionville, Ind., last October. Fourteen cars filled with coal, weighing 140 tons each, went off the rails, another victim of a failed wheel bearing. Two years earlier, failed bearings caused a much larger accident near Portland, Ore. Derailed freight cars shredded 2 ½ miles of track before smashing into two parked fuel tankers carrying ethanol, which ignited and forced a community evacuation.
Failure of wheel bearings – the round, metal rods inside a railcar’s wheel assembly that help the wheels roll smoothly – are the nation’s third-largest cause of train derailments, according to a 2012 University of Illinois study. Only broken rails and track irregularities cause more accidents each year.
Rail travel, for both freight and passengers, is safer now than it has ever been. Yet problems persist. Bearing failure is one; accidental uncoupling is another. Innovative companies have devised solutions. Unfortunately, the railroad industry has been hostile to remedies that come from beyond its closed culture. This stonewalling puts American lives and freight at risk.
Companies such as Stage 8 Locking Fasteners of San Rafael, Calif., and Columbus Castings of Columbus, Ohio, have promising technologies and are hoping the federal government can help clear the way for them. Legislation is pending in Congress that would require the Federal Railroad Administration – the government agency that oversees the rail industry – to adopt and enforce mandatory safety standards that would ensure bearing failures, decoupling and other accidents do not happen. This would permit railroads to use any technology – from inside or outside the industry -- that meets the standards.
In the strange case of Columbus Castings, the Ohio firm – a railroad industry outsider, despite being the nation’s largest steel foundry – created a product called the Z-Knuckle, which prevents accidental uncoupling.
The Z-Knuckle met the railroad industry’s newly created standard for such devices. But in an remarkable twist, because the Z-Knuckle was the only device that met the standard, the industry refused to authorize its use. Instead, it chose not to enforce its own standard.
Bearing failure caused 257 U.S. derailments between 2001 and 2010, with more than 1,700 cars skipping the tracks, the University of Illinois researchers found. This led to millions of dollars in lost freight, cleanup and track repair costs, not to mention the tragic loss of life.
These derailments happen because the screws holding the bearing end caps -- which maintain proper tension in the bearing -- vibrate loose after thousands of miles of service.
The rail industry has tried for 50 years to devise a reliable screw-locking technology of its own, but to no avail. The best locking system the rail industry has been able to come up with still allows a failure rate of 23 percent, which means that nearly one out of every four wheel problems is caused by loosened screws.
In 2009, Stage 8 invented the Cap Screw Locking System designed to keep rail car wheel screws from vibrating loose. But then it ran into the rail-industry bureaucracy. All new products that companies want to market to the nation’s rail carriers must be approved by the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the freight rail industry’s powerful trade group.
The organization withheld approval for years, blocking the new product that would threaten the revenue stream of bearing-replacement suppliers.
Stage 8 continued to hack through the red tape until the AAR set up another hurdle: A field test intended to prove the device’s flaws. But after 150,000 miles of the AAR’s own testing on rail cars, the locking device showed no failures. It was a complete success.
In 2010, the railroad industry spent $223 million to repair and replace wheel sets because of screw loosening. The Stage 8 device would not only wipe out that expense, if it were installed on every freight car in the U.S. over a seven-year roll-out period, a reliable analysis shows that the rail industry would save nearly $1.1 billion.
Many companies have created groundbreaking solutions to problems that have dogged the railroad industry for years. Congress should act on their behalf – and on behalf of the railroads themselves and their many users – to help make America’s railroads safer. Passage of legislation would repair the railroad’s broken system.
Ahern is director and executive vice president of Stage 8 Locking Fasteners Inc.
Industrial researchers estimate that over 8000 new technologies, per year, are halted, destroyed, sabotaged, delayed and blockaded by "Trade Groups" working in direct complicity with U.S. Senators. Sound like a crime? It is, except for Senators. Write your elected officials. Make the prevention of life-saving, community-health-improving and society-enhancing technologies, by public officials, A FELONY!
By Robert J. Ahern
The screech of a train derailment shattered the silence in the woods near New Unionville, Ind., last October. Fourteen cars filled with coal, weighing 140 tons each, went off the rails, another victim of a failed wheel bearing. Two years earlier, failed bearings caused a much larger accident near Portland, Ore. Derailed freight cars shredded 2 ½ miles of track before smashing into two parked fuel tankers carrying ethanol, which ignited and forced a community evacuation.
Failure of wheel bearings – the round, metal rods inside a railcar’s wheel assembly that help the wheels roll smoothly – are the nation’s third-largest cause of train derailments, according to a 2012 University of Illinois study. Only broken rails and track irregularities cause more accidents each year.
Rail travel, for both freight and passengers, is safer now than it has ever been. Yet problems persist. Bearing failure is one; accidental uncoupling is another. Innovative companies have devised solutions. Unfortunately, the railroad industry has been hostile to remedies that come from beyond its closed culture. This stonewalling puts American lives and freight at risk.
Companies such as Stage 8 Locking Fasteners of San Rafael, Calif., and Columbus Castings of Columbus, Ohio, have promising technologies and are hoping the federal government can help clear the way for them. Legislation is pending in Congress that would require the Federal Railroad Administration – the government agency that oversees the rail industry – to adopt and enforce mandatory safety standards that would ensure bearing failures, decoupling and other accidents do not happen. This would permit railroads to use any technology – from inside or outside the industry -- that meets the standards.
In the strange case of Columbus Castings, the Ohio firm – a railroad industry outsider, despite being the nation’s largest steel foundry – created a product called the Z-Knuckle, which prevents accidental uncoupling.
The Z-Knuckle met the railroad industry’s newly created standard for such devices. But in an remarkable twist, because the Z-Knuckle was the only device that met the standard, the industry refused to authorize its use. Instead, it chose not to enforce its own standard.
Bearing failure caused 257 U.S. derailments between 2001 and 2010, with more than 1,700 cars skipping the tracks, the University of Illinois researchers found. This led to millions of dollars in lost freight, cleanup and track repair costs, not to mention the tragic loss of life.
These derailments happen because the screws holding the bearing end caps -- which maintain proper tension in the bearing -- vibrate loose after thousands of miles of service.
The rail industry has tried for 50 years to devise a reliable screw-locking technology of its own, but to no avail. The best locking system the rail industry has been able to come up with still allows a failure rate of 23 percent, which means that nearly one out of every four wheel problems is caused by loosened screws.
In 2009, Stage 8 invented the Cap Screw Locking System designed to keep rail car wheel screws from vibrating loose. But then it ran into the rail-industry bureaucracy. All new products that companies want to market to the nation’s rail carriers must be approved by the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the freight rail industry’s powerful trade group.
The organization withheld approval for years, blocking the new product that would threaten the revenue stream of bearing-replacement suppliers.
Stage 8 continued to hack through the red tape until the AAR set up another hurdle: A field test intended to prove the device’s flaws. But after 150,000 miles of the AAR’s own testing on rail cars, the locking device showed no failures. It was a complete success.
In 2010, the railroad industry spent $223 million to repair and replace wheel sets because of screw loosening. The Stage 8 device would not only wipe out that expense, if it were installed on every freight car in the U.S. over a seven-year roll-out period, a reliable analysis shows that the rail industry would save nearly $1.1 billion.
Many companies have created groundbreaking solutions to problems that have dogged the railroad industry for years. Congress should act on their behalf – and on behalf of the railroads themselves and their many users – to help make America’s railroads safer. Passage of legislation would repair the railroad’s broken system.
Ahern is director and executive vice president of Stage 8 Locking Fasteners Inc.
Industrial researchers estimate that over 8000 new technologies, per year, are halted, destroyed, sabotaged, delayed and blockaded by "Trade Groups" working in direct complicity with U.S. Senators. Sound like a crime? It is, except for Senators. Write your elected officials. Make the prevention of life-saving, community-health-improving and society-enhancing technologies, by public officials, A FELONY!
THE TAKEOVER GAME:
Almost every electric car company that starts to get traction has a hostile takeover attempt. Later stage parties create a dispute which causes the founder to be forced out, bought out, quit or otherwise stop providing the impetus to deliver a disruptive technology. The process has now occurred so many times that it is beginning to look like an intentionally crafted standardized strategy by third-parties who fear market diffusion. It happened to XP but they overcame it. The "new management" usually "accidentally" tanks the company. Let's try to guess who the "third-parties" might be...
And on and on...BUT:
What better way to control a market than to control all of the funding for that market and then have all that controlled funding administrated by "your people" who have been placed in, and around, a federal agency! It's the "Takeover Game" on a whole new level.
Just sayin...
Do people really do these sorts of things? Imagine megalomaniac car, energy and materials company heads with billions of dollars that want to control hundreds of billions of dollars...
What better way to control a market than to control all of the funding for that market and then have all that controlled funding administrated by "your people" who have been placed in, and around, a federal agency! It's the "Takeover Game" on a whole new level.
Just sayin...
Do people really do these sorts of things? Imagine megalomaniac car, energy and materials company heads with billions of dollars that want to control hundreds of billions of dollars...
From the many comments we receive in the mail comes this. We thought it to be of particular interest:
"Decoding Washington-speak
"Does not meet our qualification criteria" = "didn't bribe the right people"
"Outside of competitive ranges" = "your stuff is better than the stuff our friends companies make so we can't allow you in the market or you will blow the socks off our friends who pay us kickbacks"
"Due Diligence" = "We evaluated your material and then we ignored the evaluation results and changed the finish line so there could be no way you might look better than our friend's companies even if you are better"
“Broad applicant group” = “even though most of the applicants were American small businesses we didn’t give funding to a single one of them. We only gave money to the few biggest American and non American companies who had a published record of the
largest campaign funding.”
"Substantial review” = “we intentionally took years to do what most banks take weeks to do in order to force those who compete with our friends companies out of business”
“Complete evaluation” = (SEE “SUBSTANTIAL REVIEW”, above)
"Your candor is appreciated.." = Because you reported violations of the law by agency insiders, you are going to get punished.
"Solyndra" = "What investigation?.. huh.. why do you mention them...?"
"Tax credits" = Reverse kickbacks
"Call for a review" = Have our best friends write a report saying nothing is wrong
" Write a review" = Have our best friends write a report saying nothing is wrong
"Decoding Washington-speak
"Does not meet our qualification criteria" = "didn't bribe the right people"
"Outside of competitive ranges" = "your stuff is better than the stuff our friends companies make so we can't allow you in the market or you will blow the socks off our friends who pay us kickbacks"
"Due Diligence" = "We evaluated your material and then we ignored the evaluation results and changed the finish line so there could be no way you might look better than our friend's companies even if you are better"
“Broad applicant group” = “even though most of the applicants were American small businesses we didn’t give funding to a single one of them. We only gave money to the few biggest American and non American companies who had a published record of the
largest campaign funding.”
"Substantial review” = “we intentionally took years to do what most banks take weeks to do in order to force those who compete with our friends companies out of business”
“Complete evaluation” = (SEE “SUBSTANTIAL REVIEW”, above)
"Your candor is appreciated.." = Because you reported violations of the law by agency insiders, you are going to get punished.
"Solyndra" = "What investigation?.. huh.. why do you mention them...?"
"Tax credits" = Reverse kickbacks
"Call for a review" = Have our best friends write a report saying nothing is wrong
" Write a review" = Have our best friends write a report saying nothing is wrong
Intentional delays exposed.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-20/u-s-attorney-leaked-memo-to-undermine-operation-critic.html
GAO issues another interesting investigation
Feds: No more auto loans despite funds
Fisker & billionaires
Senate Probe
U.S. GAO - Department of Energy: Status of Loan ProgramsDOE leaves $51 billion in loan funds unused, oversight body reportsEnergy Department auto loan program sputtersFisker Founder Out In Electric Car China ShakeupUS Senator Stabenow and US Rep. Peters introduce Advanced Vehicle ...How Obama Should Spend a Big Green Energy Fundhttp://www.businessinsider.com/book-of-longing-kleiner-perkins-lawsuit-2012-http://freebeacon.com/picking-losers/House passes 'No More Solyndras Act'Bankrupt DOE Loan Recipient Abound Solar Under Investigation ...Congress, local authorities investigate Abound SolarLawmakers Question US Loans to Abound Despite Quality IssuesHouse committee investigates government loan for solar panels that ...
