Yesterday I wrote two long pieces about the need to raise CAFE standards. I wasn't nice to the auto companies in those posts. I feel like continuing my mean streak by linking to the main story at Commercial Alert :

Nader Criticizes Smithsonian Head For Proposed Naming Rights Deal With General Motors.

First graf is in R.N.'s best meateatin' style:

"Following a news report that the Smithsonian Institution has offered General Motors the right to name the museum's new transportation hall for $10 million, Ralph Nader said that Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small "seems to recognize no limits to the commercialization of this historic, non-profit, taxpayer-supported institution. To let GM pay for, be associated with and influential over a transportation exhibit, given its decades long record of criminal convictions, buying up and displacing mass transit systems, producing unsafe and polluting cars, is to confess to a complete abdication of any standards of museum integrity and independence."

But I do think Nader shouldn't be so upset at the GM deal - word is that Zurich Banks are going to be funding a funfilled Smithsonian exhibit on Swiss resistance to the holocaust in the Autumn season - followed of course by an Exxon funded exhibit, You are my sunshine: climate change and progress! in the spring. Remember to bring the kids - the motto of this latter is, inevitably, the future's so bright, you gotta wear shades!