This special feature is produced by Democracy at Work for Worker Independent News (WIN).

Well the last few days have been full of reports about two global car companies, VW out of Germany and Mitsubishi out of Japan. These are among the handful of companies dominating the world automobile production process. And both of these companies have been in the news for the same reason. They got caught, cheating on emission tests. Deliberately installing on their machines devices that would fool testers into thinking they weren’t emitting into the air the terrible disease causing particulates, they’re called, that come out of the exhaust pipe of your car or your truck or your bus. 

Let's review quickly, VW it was caught months ago. And the headlines of the last week were about the fact that it is looking to pay $5000 to each person who bought such a defective car and maybe pay for the repairs if the owners want them and so on. They are hoping to pay billions in this way to put this terrible publicity for them, being caught as liars, cheaters, polluters, driven by profit, to really hurt the whole world they live in.

Mitsubishi, well they haven’t been in the news before but now they are. They got caught. Doing what? Doing the same thing and they produces a million cars last year. Yup, they put in software that fools the testing equipment so it is not revealed they are pumping dangerous materials into the air we all breathe. Common folks, join with me in recognizing that just as we saw in recent years that the big banks violated the public trust, took us to the cleaners to make money, that is what the car companies are doing. Leaving important industries in the hands of private capitalist like this is damaging for our health. Profit trumps decent behavior and what’s good for the public.