House of Eratosthenes

The California owner of a Honda Civic Hybrid car has won her unusual small-claims court lawsuit against the auto giant over the vehicle’s failure to deliver the promised mileage.

A Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner has awarded Heather Peters $9,867.

Peters opted out of a class-action lawsuit so she could try to claim a higher payment for the failure of her Civic to deliver the 50 miles per gallon (21.26 kilometers per liter) that was promised when she bought it.

Informed of the decision by The Associated Press, Peters exulted, “Wow! Fantastic.”

“I am absolutely thrilled. Sometimes big justice comes in small packages,” she said. “This is a victory for Honda Civic owners everywhere.”
:
Peters claimed her car never came close to the promised 50 mpg (21.26 kpl) and that it got no more than 30 miles per gallon (12.75 kilometers per liter) when the battery began deteriorating. She still owns the car and wanted to be compensated for money lost on gas, as well as punitive damages, amounting to $10,000.

That part doesn’t faze me much. Thirty is less than fifty; I’ve not had much experience with this problem — my cars have all performed more-or-less in the neighborhood of their advertised gas mileage, sometimes even a bit beyond that — but if I’m only getting sixty percent, I’m pissed. Probably not suing over it, but then again, it’s a litigatory world, and I must bow to the plain fact that everyone isn’t exactly like me, however many problems that may cause from time to time…

No, this made me do a double-take.

Peters, a former lawyer, hoped to inspire a flood of such lawsuits by the other 200,000 owners of the Hybrid Honda Civic model sold in 2006. She said that if all 200,000 owners of the cars sued and won in small claims cost, it could Honda Motor Co. $2 billion. [think they meant to say “in small claims court, it could cost Honda the two billion” or something.]

I wish they interviewed for this story a bit better. Did she hope to inspire a flood of such lawsuits in order to legitimize her own claim? Or, now that the case has been decided in her favor, she hopes to make it as expensive as possible for the defendant. Because the way the story reads, it sounds like the latter…like I said, bizarre…it ends up looking like she doesn’t care that much how well she’s compensated for her own complaint, she’s on a campaign to make sure Honda pays and pays and pays. If that’s the case, how am I expected to identify with her and her battle-for-the-underdog? This is what motivates you? This is what makes it worthwhile to get out of bed in the morning?

I know this feeling exists out there. We’re having a big ol’ back-and-forth right now about taxing the rich, and I’ve made the acquaintance & come to be aware of many who carry around and boast of great exuberance and excitement about this. Yeah, make ’em pay! Ostensibly to make the treasury more solvent…but they don’t know anything about the public debt, what it’s doing in relation to GDP, how big our government’s annual budget deficits are, how they’ve changed in the last few years and why.

In short, they do not care who gets what. They say they do, but they don’t. They care that large amounts of money are taken away from certain targeted people. Where the money goes, is strictly off their radar — they put on a big show of making sure things are “properly funded,” but the truth is the money could disappear into a hole as far as they’re concerned. They’re not all about creation, they’re all about destruction.

I’ve had girlfriends like this. Buy them something, they’re pleased as punch — until they find out it didn’t cost as much as they thought it did, and then there’s a problem.

There’s another issue here worthy of observation. These liberals are out there, with this taste for destruction. These scorpions from the frog-and-scorpion story. Don’t care who benefits, only care about who’s destroyed; don’t care if I live, as long as you die. The other issue of which I speak, is how they select a target to put in the crosshairs. We’re well acquainted with the pattern by now:

“Millionaires and billionaires flying around in their corporate jets.” Target.

Oil and gas companies. Target.

Government that nets a dozen times as much loot, or more, off each gallon compared to said oil companies: Not a target.

Banks, with their absurd fifty cent ATM fees: Target.

Government that taxed the money you’re taking out of the ATM: Not a target.

Kid that shoots up your kid’s school: Not a target.

His gun: Target.

Policeman who risks his life to save your kid from the kid shooting up the school: Target.

Terrorist who wants to kill you: Not a target.

Soldier fighting the terrorist over there so you don’t have to worry about the terrorist over here: Target.

I have commented before, with regard to human relationships, that the species seems to be split more-or-less down the middle between a) people who are nice to people who are nice to them, and dicks to people who are dicks to them; and b) the other kind who have it all bass-ackwards, being dicks to people who have been nice to them, and (making up for it by?) being nice to people who are dicks. I have also said, further, that these a) people and b) people should not meet — most of the difficulties we have come from these two kinds of people coming in contact with each other.

These are the people with crossed wires and messed up circuitry. If you follow them around all day and night, you’ll find they’re pretty consistent with their Stockholm Syndrome and their Narcissistic Personality Disorder and their other…well, let’s call ’em what they really are…mental problems. And the one sure-fire way to get on their bad side is to provide them with something they want or need. There the trouble starts.

This is why The Captain’s words make sense to me. Based on what I have managed to observe about modern liberalism…and I’ve collected a lot of notes on it by now, some written, some I carry around in my head, but they all make an impression on me…this has a lot to do with what liberalism is right now. Being dicks to people who make your life, and your way of living, possible. If someone provides you with the things you need and want, satisfies your demands, well, it’s curtains for them. How do they think they can get away with that? You’ll show ’em. Teach ’em a thing or three.

Now, I do not mean to say these other kinds of people, the ones who make an obsession out of the “be a dick back to whoever is a dick to me” thing, are all that. That’s some dysfunctional behavior right there…that’s not what keeps a society humming along. We honor and respect saints for a reason. But those people, those “be a dick to whoever’s a dick to me” people, are light years ahead of those other people, the ones with the crossed wiring, who reward kindness with dickish behavior and vice-versa.

If I had to choose between the two of them, and have just one kind running everything, I’d pick the vengeful dick type people. I really would. They’d bollux it all up for sure up at the top, but elsewhere there’d at least be a way for others to prosper, thrive, and co-exist in a more-or-less functional society. Plus there’d be some shenanigans going on that we could read about and it would be funny. Besides of which, we’ve had those kinds of people in charge before, quite a few places and quite a few times. Society can limp onward after that…but the crossed-wiring people, they’re just nuts. The real danger with them is that the damage, by its very nature, cannot be contained. If they make a mission out of destroying someone who was nice to them and provided them with what they needed, it just spikes their appetite and then they want more. They’re like sharks picking up the scent of blood, that way.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Doing Business with LiberalsSaturday, February 4th, 2012

Doing Business with Liberals
Saturday, February 4th, 2012