The Volukas report, of course, was paid for by GM and its investigators were picked by GM. It goes out of its way to say that engineers were "baffled" about events plainly described in lawsuits against the company. The report fairly revels in explaining how people at GM who learned damaging information never shared it, or how computer documents illustrating the defects were never accessed. Four years ago, there had been enough deaths that GM's own lawyers started telling GM it would not only lose the cases, but be subject to large awards of punitive damages. Report at 140-42, 148-149. But we are led to believe by the Report that crippling awards of punitive damages simply do not reach responsible management at GM.
The report sums up what happened in classic bureaucratese: GM simply suffered from a "failure to understand" what was happening in its own cars. That's one way to put it. Sinclair wrote that "t is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." GM understood all right, because trial lawyers told it time and time again what was happening. But GM paid its people not to "understand" and it pays well.
Or should I say you paid them. We all paid them. The corporation that did this went bankrupt in 2008-09 and the American people bailed them out. While GM busied itself "not understanding" how Americans were being killed in its cars, no matter how many times it was told, We the People covered its empty bank accounts. After taking the bailout, according to Valukas, GM engineers were looking at actual photographs of Americans killed in their cars without any sense of "urgency":
Although he does not specifically remember, Sprague believed that fatalities were discussed; the deaths were apparent based on the files shared and pictures shown.681 The urgency of the situation should have been manifest . . . at the meeting, Wachtel, the Senior Manager of Product Investigations, expressed reluctance to take on the issue by opining that the incident rate was not high.
Report at 152. If only more Americans had the good sense to be killed in these cars, perhaps Mr. Wachtel could have brought himself to care. But it was not to be. And what does Mr. Wachtel have to say for himself, to the People who paid his lofty salary: "Wachtel denied attending the meeting at all, saying that he was told after the meeting to assign an investigator to the matter." Report at 152-53. At least mainstream reporting captured GM's name for its own indifference:Wachtel's conduct is a demonstration of what Mary Barra described as the "GM nod": When everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room and does little.
Report at 154. One thing you can learn in the executive summary is this: "hile the issue of the ignition switch passed through numerous hands at GM, from engineers to investigators to lawyers, nobody raised the problem to the highest levels of the company. As a result those in the best position to demand quick answers did not know questions needed to be asked." Report at 4. But this is not a mistake - it's not a "bug" in GM's programming that top people don't hear about problems like this. It's a feature. The top people all want to keep their jobs and to avoid embarrassment. So they are careful to make sure no one who works from them tells them anything they might have to answer for later. Likewise, GM's Valukas report curiously mentions mainly the names of its defense lawyers and corporate lawyers who assisted in the coverup. It never credits the lawyers for victims that brought this matter to GM's attention more than ten years ago. Mary Barra, GM's CEO, has scapegoated some middle managers, endured her Capitol Hill grilling and moved along. But GM doesn't have any intention of crediting the people who first warned it about what it was doing - trial lawyers - because it's going right back to its business of denying the next problem, starting today.
