By Brian Moench

Opinion Piece in Salt Lake Tribune

Published: January 8, 2011 01:01AM

In December 1952, an episode of London smog killed more than 12,000 people in less than a month, most within the first four days. It changed forever how the world regarded air pollution. As thick winter smog once again smothers the Wasatch Front, a review of research published in 2010 should be the next milestone in how Utahns regard air pollution.

In May, the American Heart Association published the AHA’s Updated Scientific Statement on Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease. Based on hundreds of research papers, it suggested a formula for calculating the number of premature deaths in a community based on the concentrations of PM2.5 (particles smaller than 2.5 microns).

This formula produces the same conclusions that the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment have been stating since 2007. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people in Utah die prematurely every year because of our air pollution.

In 2010, numerous studies added Alzheimer’s, autism, diabetes and breast cancer to an already long list of health consequences that showed significant increases with air pollution. The exclamation point to all this research came with a remarkable study published (more…)

By Paul Beebe

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: January 14, 2011 07:56PM

The leaders of Utah’s two largest newspapers on Friday staked out strikingly different views of where their publications are going as more readers migrate to online sources for news and advertising revenue remains weak.

On one side, the Deseret News increasingly is practicing “values-based” journalism written by fewer reporters and charted out by academics and businesspeople who came late to news-gathering and in many cases previously held top positions at online and technology companies. The paper is looking ahead to a time when it ceases to publish a print edition.

The Huffington Post was purchased by AOL for $315 million. In just six years Arianna Huffington turned a blog into an online newspaper and it made money last year for the first time on revenue of $30 million. Meanwhile, the value of the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune has been slipping.

Is there room for a hard copy daily newspaper in the tech era? Time will tell.  We wish them both well. Newspapers are the foundation of a community, a state, and the nation.

“Whether it’s 10 years or 15 years, I don’t know. But at some point the printed newspaper is going to die,” said Mark Willes, who heads Deseret Management Co., the for-profit arm of the Mormon Church, which owns the News.

Willes and Nancy Conway, The Salt Lake Tribune’s top editor, spoke at length and answered questions at a legislative policy summit held in advance of the start of the 2011 legislative session on Jan. 24.

The Tribune places greater faith in the staying power of traditional print newspapers. Utah’s largest daily paper guards its (more…)

By MICHELLE CONLIN

and ANDREW VANACORE

The Associated Press

Published: February 7, 2011 07:21PM

New York • Tim Armstrong has looked like the unluckiest man in media for the past year. He used to be Google’s ad sales maestro, the definition of digital success. But ever since May 2009, when he took the job of turning around AOL, he has overseen abysmal earnings, wretched morale and a local news strategy that has been slammed as a money-losing Web sweatshop.

Then, in a move that not even the most gossipy of media obsessives saw coming, Armstrong announced at the Super Bowl in Texas that AOL was buying The Huffington Post, the Internet news darling, for $315 million. Armstrong went from looking lame to looking awfully sharp. And awfully lucky.

In a matter of just six years the charismatic Arianna Huffington started a blog worth almost nothing and has turned it into a value of $315 million.  She had significant money of her own and used it well and was willing to invest heavily in making continual improvements in her blog—and look what it has reaped for her.

Part of the attraction to blogs has been their independence from corporate influence. The purchase by AOL will undoubtedly change that, although AOL plans to keep her in charge of the blog.

Perhaps no online property was lusted after by media moguls like the one Arianna Huffington founded six years ago. Its traffic rivals The New York Times. Its infrastructure is virtually zero-cost. Its social media strategy is practically perfect. Oh, and it turned its first profit last year on $30 million in revenue. HuffPo expects to triple revenue by 2012.

Huffington’s original vision was to create the political left’s answer to the right-leaning Drudge Report, minus the venom. When it launched (more…)

COMBINED NEWS SERVICES

Published: February 8, 2011 05:51PM.

China’s central bank raised interest rates for the second time in just over a month in a bid to ease high inflation and guide blistering economic growth to a sustainable level.

The People’s Bank of China announced Tuesday on its website that the benchmark 1-year deposit rate would rise by a quarter percentage point, to 3 percent, and the 1-year lending rate would increase by the same amount, to 6.06 percent. The increases are effective Wednesday.

Its previous rate hike came on Christmas Day, when the bank raised both benchmark rates by a quarter point. China’s leaders have sought to (more…)

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

The Associated Press

Published: February 7, 2011 07:03PM

Washington • Taxes too high?

Actually, as a share of the nation’s economy, Uncle Sam’s take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way.

And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike.

Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The poor economy is largely to blame, with corporate profits down and unemployment up. But so is a tax code that grows each year with new deductions, credits and exemptions. The result is that families making as much as $50,000 can avoid paying federal income taxes, if it has at least two dependent children. Low-income families can actually make a profit from the income tax, and the wealthy can significantly cut their payments.

“The current state of the tax code is simply indefensible,” says Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “It is hemorrhaging revenue.”

In the next few years, many can expect to pay more in taxes. Some increases were enacted as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. And many states have raised taxes because — unlike the federal government — they have to balance their budgets each year. State tax receipts are projected to increase in all but seven states this year, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

But in the third year of Obama’s presidency, federal taxes are at historic lows. Tax receipts dropped sharply in 2009 as the economy sank into recession. They have since stabilized and are expected to grow by 3 percent this year. But federal tax revenues won’t rebound to pre-recession levels until next year, according to CBO projections.

In the current budget year, federal tax receipts will be equal to 14.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, the lowest level since Harry Truman was president. In Bush’s last year (more…)

By EDWARD WYATT

The New York Times

Published: February 7, 2011 10:03AM

Washington • If a company’s financial reporting were so bad that its auditor had pointed out significant weaknesses in its accounting for seven years running, the Securities and Exchange Commission would most likely be all over it.

But what if the company were the SEC itself?

Since the commission began producing audited statements in 2004, the Government Accountability Office has faulted its reporting almost every year. In November, the GAO said the commission’s books were in such disarray that it had failed at some of the agency’s most fundamental tasks: accurately tracking income from fines, filing fees and the return of ill-gotten profits.

“A reasonable possibility exists that a material misstatement of SEC’s financial statements would not be prevented, or detected and corrected on a timely basis,” the auditor concluded.

The auditor did not accuse the SEC of cooking its books, and the mistakes were corrected before its latest financial statements were completed. But the fact that basic accounting continually bedevils the agency responsible for guaranteeing the soundness of U.S. financial markets could prove especially awkward just as the SEC is saying it desperately needs money to increase its regulatory power.

When we have businesses and especially banks that are too big to fail we need a regulatory agency that is big enough and competent enough to protect us. Let’s not be penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to strict regulation of Wall Street. They have failed us too many times.

Like the rest of the federal government, the SEC is operating without an increase in its budget, which was $1.1 billion last year. With President Barack Obama talking about extending the freeze (more…)

Global Crisis Strengthens WSF’s Legitimacy

by Julio Godoy

Published on CommonDreams.org

BERLIN – European non-governmental organisations combating neo-liberal globalisation find their position vindicated by the ongoing socio-economic and environmental crisis upsetting the world.

The legitimacy of the demands of the European members of the World Social Forum (WSF) is not only founded in the massive support they enjoy from workers and peasants groups across the globe. Now, it enjoys the endorsement of governments which not long ago were supporters of neo- liberal globalisation. [1]

“The endorsement by European governments of our basic demands, such as the transaction tax, constitutes a great satisfaction,” Hugo Braun, of the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC), told IPS.

The financial crisis that has devastated the world has awakened the masses to the failure of capitalism and alternative forms of commerce or at least significant modifications are destined to take seed.

What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt is only the beginning. It will not stop there, and it will spread beyond the Arab world and into Europe, and America will not escape untouched.

The problems in Egypt are not so different than the problems everywhere. The unequal distribution of enormous wealth at the top of the food chain while the masses remain in poverty. The pr0phets of capitalism have always preached that wealth trickles down, but they have proven to be false prophets. The opposite (more…)

Tribune Public Forum letter by Mike Coronella, Moab

Re “Utah not a colony of Washington, D.C., Herbert says ” (Tribune, Jan. 27):

Gov. Gary Herbert is crying (again) about our federal government. Does he have a clue what he’s talking about? Consider this from Article I of the Utah State Constitution: “The State of Utah is an inseparable part of the Federal Union and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.”

How is it that extreme Utah partisans believe such a radically different interpretation of our founding Constitution? Herbert seems (more…)

combined news services

Published: February 3, 2011 04:51PM

Rome • A U.N. agency reported Thursday that world food prices have reached a historic peak, but good harvests are — for now — forestalling the kind of food emergency felt in many places in 2008.

Rising food prices have been among the triggers for protests in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere.

“What is happening in northern Africa seems to be more political in nature,” said U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) economist and grain expert Abdolreza Abbassian. “Of course, we cannot ignore the food inflation as one of the elements of discontent.”

FAO said its food price index was up 3.4 percent in December from a month earlier — the seventh straight month of world food price increases.

“What will probably be identified as a major difference is the duration of the rise. It has been a long one, accompanied by strong volatility,” Abbassian said.

But he said the situation is “moderately more comfortable” than the crisis of 2008 because of strong harvests, which potentially “can help countries carry on until, hopefully, world markets settle down to normal levels.”

These escalating food prices could have been one of the catalysts that triggered the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. When the price of food is beyond the reach of the poor it is certainly going to cause dissatisfaction.

Still, Oxfam International, a confederation of organizations working to find solutions to poverty and injustice around the globe, said the FAO index “should ring alarm bells in (more…)

By Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 4, 2011 08:08AM

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff handed legislative leaders two checks totaling $3.5 million on Thursday — money recouped through a legal settlement with prescription drug makers alleged to have overcharged Medicaid.

Congratulations for this diligent work. It takes time and effort to sort through all the requirements to build a case, which is way so many drug companies get away with it. Utah has collected an average of $9 million per year for the past five years.

However, once again there are no criminal charges for corporate executives. There is a different standard of justice for corporate executives and large companies. Attorney General Shurtleff thinks this ‘will teach them a lesson,’ but he knows and they know that the stockholders will pay the loss on the corporate gamble that they wouldn’t get caught. The corporate executives haven’t learned anything and won’t until their own hands get slapped.

Also, this is another example of the need for government. The corporately owned, anti-regulation legislatures at both the state and federal levels want to gut the staffs of all regulatory bodies and would prefer outright elimination of many.

Courtesy of Mylan Inc., Shering Corp. and Warrick Pharmaceutical Corp., the cash infusion comes as small, but welcome, relief to lawmakers who are looking to trim 7 percent from the state’s $11 billion budget. A good chunk of that spending, about $1.8 billion, is on Medicaid, with $155 million going for drugs.

But Shurtleff hopes it serves as a warning and “bitter pill” to drug (more…)

Justice courts rake in the money; critics say some courts just interested in collecting fines

By Lori Prichard and Kelly Just

KSL 5 News

Published: Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011 10:18 p.m. MST

SALT LAKE CITY — It was a shocking experience for Dena Long-Christensen, sitting in a cell in the Salt Lake County Jail for nearly two weeks among people charged with serious crimes.

Her cellmate, for example, was spending time on charges of aggravated assault. Long-Christensen’s crime? Selling flower baskets from her home.

“Instead of being further in shock, it was like, there’s something wrong with our country,” said the West Jordan woman.

Congratulations to the Deseret News on a well researched effort to inform the public about a chronic sore in the system. We usually have to rely on The Tribune for journalistic efforts that take time and talent to research and write, and so a special kudo to the Deseret News. It looks like the effort to combine news reports with KSL-TV has worked in this instance as the credit for the story is by-lined by KSL reporters. Since we seldom watch KSL it was good to get this report in the newspaper. It was also interesting to note the name of one of the reporters, ironically named Just.

Long-Christensen, 44, was sent to jail by a justice of West Jordan’s Municipal Court after a dispute over whether she had the proper permits under zoning law to operate her small nursery business out of her home.

A four-month investigation by KSL-TV discovered Long-Christensen’s case is but one of several examples of questionable activities (more…)

By Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 2, 2011 08:24AM

Few, if any, of the hundreds of patients who check into the Huntsman Cancer Institute for surgery or chemotherapy will give a moment’s thought to whether the hospital’s medicine cabinet is stocked.

The Tribune is always coming up with interesting stories and bringing attention to problems that exist. This problem shows the complexity of commerce. As a society we take too many things for granted and a constant and steady flow of products is one of them. We don’t appreciate the work of all the hands involved in the manufacturing, selling, and transportation of all the products we are desperately in need of—-until there is a breakdown somewhere along the chain of commerce. Thanks Kirsten, for a reminder of the marvelous coordinated effort it takes to keep us all alive and living in harmony with one another.

That’s as it should be, says Huntsman pharmacy Director Scott Silverstein, who does the worrying for them, freeing patients to focus on healing.

But a worsening national drug shortage has Silverstein anticipating the day he has to interrupt a patient’s therapy to say: “We can’t deliver on a drug. We can’t treat you.”

He’s in a privileged position. Providers across the United States (more…)

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/01/28/financial-crisis-the-greatest-hits.aspx

Morgan Housel
January 28, 2011

“We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable,” says the official report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, released yesterday. “The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire.”

The committee’s report, two years in the making, is a 623-page tome of everything you could ever want to know about the financial crisis. Most of it is dry repetition of standard stuff reported ad nauseum over the past three years: Housing prices went up. Banks were idiots. The bubble popped. Hell broke loose.

But a few quotes caught my attention. Hopefully they will catch yours, too.

On regulation: We do not accept the view that regulators lacked the power to protect the financial system. They had ample power in many arenas and they chose not to use it. To give just three examples: the Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup’s excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not. Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not.

On trustworthy advice: More than 200,000 new mortgage brokers (more…)

Published on Friday, January 28, 2011 by CommonDreams.org Corporate Crime and No Punishment

by Russell Mokhiber

Leandro Andrade, 52, sits in Ironwood State Prison, about 200 miles east of Los Angeles, California.

He’s there for life.

What did Leandro do wrong?

In 1995, he stole five videotapes from a K-Mart in Ontario, California.

Under the state’s three strikes law, Andrade was sentenced to life in prison.

The first two offenses were for non violent home burglaries.

In 2003, 60 Minutes ran a profile of the Andrade case.

Andrade appealed his sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2003, in a 5-4 decision, the Court decided that the sentence wasn’t cruel and unusual.

And upheld the sentence.

Okay, let’s give the justice system it’s due.

Let’s say you can be sent away for life for stealing $153.54 worth of videotapes – a misdemeanor – if your first two convictions were felonies.

Question – what about the individual CEOs who headed the nation’s largest Wall Street firms and banks?

The ones involved in tanking the country’s economy and sending it into the great recession? What about them?

Leandro Adrade is in prison for life for stealing five videotapes.

What about the CEOs of the big Wall Street firms?

Why do they go free?

To find out, I went down to George Washington University this morning.

There, the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States was holding a press conference to release its final report.

Throughout the presentation, the members of the Commission were using words like – reckless, irresponsible, risky, and imprudent – to describe the actions of these Wall Street firms and their CEOs.

But nothing about crime.

Nothing about corporate (more…)

By DANIEL WAGNER and MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writers Daniel Wagner And Marcy Gordon, Ap Business Writers – Thu Jan 27, 6:30 pm ET

WASHINGTON – A government panel’s failure to reach a firm conclusion about what caused the financial crisis shows how complex Wall Street has become and how partisan Washington has grown.

The blurriness of its report comes months after a new law already has begun tightening financial rules to prevent another crisis.

All of which raises a question: Do the findings of the 633-page report matter?

In its report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blames a range of obvious culprits: Banks that made reckless bets. Credit rating agencies that endorsed risky mortgage bonds. Government regulators who overlooked danger signs until they threatened the global financial system.

This report is a big deal and should be carefully read with an open mind by everyone who cares about good government. This must never happen again and it is and was a foregone conclusion that lack of oversight and deregulation will reap the same damn catastrophe in the future. Those with a deregulation mind set should not be in charge of regulation. The financial crisis is a damning result of  ‘the religion of unregulated laissez faire capitalism.’

Until the Ayn Rand radicals get a grip on reality this nation must be en garde constantly.

It concludes that the crisis might have been prevented if banks had been more careful and regulators had asked tougher questions.

Those views have long since become mainstream in the more than two years since the crisis peaked. Yet among panel members, they sowed dissension. In the end, the commission’s six Democratic appointees embraced its conclusions. The four named by Republicans did not; they offered their own reasons for (more…)

Mitchell Bard

Writer and Filmmaker

Posted: January 23, 2011 01:59 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email AlertsBloggers’ Index

A Tribute to Olbermann: Why He Is Different From the Pundits at Fox News

Read More: Bill O’Reilly , Countdown , Countdown With Keith Olbermann , Daily Beast , Fair And Balanced , Fox News , George W. Bush , Glenn Beck , Jeffery Smith , Keith Olbermann , Msnbc , Olbermann Special Comment , Rush Limbaugh , Sarah Palin , Sean Hannity , Media News

Black and white is easy; nuance is hard. Which is why it’s much easier to just lump media outlets and personalities into simple boxes: left v. right, or partisan v. objective, for example.

So if you want to play that game, it’s easy to dismiss Keith Olbermann, who broadcast his final episode of Countdown on MSNBC Friday. It’s simple to dash off a hack piece (like this one in the Daily Beast, which revealed its simple-minded bona fides by invoking the right’s favorite jab at Olbermann: he used to work in — gasp! — sports) that lumps Olbermann in with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, as if they all do the same thing just because they are all loud and aggressive.

I know nuance is less popular, but I feel compelled to try and give Olbermann his due.

This is very good commentary on the difference between Keith Olberman and the creepy crawlies on Faux News. That there needs to be an explanation of the difference is only because those listening to Faux are unwilling to ferret out the truth. Lies, distortions and manipulations serve their purposes better.

The right hates Olberman because of the truth. The left hates Fox News because of the lies. Therein is the difference.

An analysis of how MSNBC (which uses a traditional journalistic approach to report facts, but then, ditching objectivity, critically assesses how the facts compare with the progressive take on issues) differs from Fox News (essentially a right-wing propaganda operation pretending to practice journalism, with no allegiance to facts) is a book-length endeavor (more…)

The following letter was sent by Common Cause to Attorney General Eric Holder regarding ethical issues surrounding two United States Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

This is a very important letter and doesn’t even mention two other very significant issues, (1) that Justice Thomas did not properly disclose his wife’s income on the required disclosure filing forms, and (2) that Justice Scalia attended a closed meeting of a select group of Congressmen to discuss constitutional issues that well may come before the court.

The conduct of these Supreme Court justices, as clearly explained in the letter, is appallingly partisan and puts a serious stain on the credibility of the court.

The Tea Party, the supposed lovers of the constitution, seem to be hell bent on destroying it in order to save it in the form in their own version of it.

Congratulations to Common Cause for trying to force this issue with the Attorney General. Good luck! This attorney general seems to have no interest (more…)

(Letter published in the Tribune Public Forum submitted by Paul and Teri Jewell of Salt Lake City.)

Great letter from the Jewell’s. Thanks Paul and Teri.

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee and now state Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, all want a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We have a better idea: Propose an actual balanced federal budget right now!

The proposed 2011 federal budget is $3.8 trillion. That includes $2.4 trillion for Social Security, Medicare, interest payments and other mandatory expenses; $0.9 trillion for defense; and $0.5 trillion for all other discretionary spending (everything from farm subsidies to national parks). The deficit is projected to be $1.3 trillion.

A freeze on discretionary spending and elimination of earmarks (more…)

Salt Lake Tribune Editorial

Published: January 24, 2011 06:20AM

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. … I do not know who has told you that we have it.”

— Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia University, September 2007

Legislators in Utah don’t quite have their heads in the same sand as the Iranian president when it comes to homosexuality. Most would admit that gays, lesbians and transgender Utahns do exist. But many Republican members of the Legislature ignore reality in another way: They don’t admit that LGBT Utahns are the victims of discrimination or that they deserve protection from those who would deny them their rights.

Like Ahmadinejad, these legislators, whether they admit it or not, are leaning on their religious convictions as justification for failing to extend government protections to these Utahns in the same way that ethnic and racial minorities, both genders, the elderly and religious groups are protected.

That kind of hurtful bias has got to end.

For the past two legislative sessions, Republicans have refused to seriously consider statewide laws banning discrimination in housing and employment. Fortunately, 10 city and county councils and several school boards have stepped up to do just that in the absence of a legislative conscience. A Salt Lake Tribune poll shows two-thirds of Utahns support a state-wide anti-discrimination law, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endorsed the law passed by the Salt Lake City Council in 2009.

Despite the fact that ten city and county councils have passed this ordinance already, (in many cases by unanimous votes of the councils) and despite the fact that 66% of all Utahns are in favor, and despite the blessing of the LDS Church, the fact remains that Utah’s legislature is not a microcosm of Utah’s cities and towns, or even (more…)

Toyota to pay $32.4M in extra fines

By Ken Thomas And Tomoko A. Hosaka

Associated Press

Published: Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010 8:40 p.m. MST

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to pay the U.S. government a record $32.4 million in additional fines to settle an investigation into its handling of two recalls at the heart of its safety crisis.

The civil penalties will settle investigations into how Toyota dealt with recalls over accelerator pedals that could get trapped in floor mats and steering relay rods that could break and lead to drivers losing control.

The latest settlement, on top of a $16.4 million fine Toyota paid earlier in a related investigation, brings the total penalties levied on the company to $48.8 million. It caps a difficult year for the world’s No. 1 automaker, which recalled more than 11 million vehicles globally since the fall of 2009 as it scrambled to protect its reputation for safety and reliability.

Toyota’s board of directors agreed to pay the fines on Tuesday at the company’s board meeting in Japan, according to an official familiar with the case, and the company said it agreed to the penalties without admitting to any violations of U.S. laws. However, that does not free Toyota from potential civil and criminal penalties in private lawsuits and other federal investigations.

The person had spoken Monday on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement.

Steve St. Angelo, Toyota’s chief quality officer for North America, said in a statement that the company has “worked very hard over the past year to put these issues behind us and set a new standard of responsiveness to our customers. These agreements are an opportunity to turn the page to an even more constructive relationship with NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration).”

He said Toyota was grateful to its customers for “their confidence in the quality and reliability of our vehicles.”

In April, Toyota agreed to pay the maximum fine allowed under law for a single case — $16.4 million — for failing to promptly alert U.S. regulators to safety problems over sticking accelerator pedals. Under federal law, automakers must notify the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration within five days of determining that a safety defect exists and promptly conduct a recall.

At the time, Toyota denied attempting to hide a safety defect and said it agreed to the penalty to avoid a lengthy legal battle with the government.

Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insight at TrueCar, an automotive consulting firm in Santa Monica, California, said Toyota was trying to put its recalls behind it at a time when the company’s U.S. sales have been flat while many rivals have taken advantage of a recovering auto landscape. But he said the rebuilding of the trust would take time.

“It’s going to be a far lengthier process. Consumer loyalty is not what it used to be. The choices are plentiful now,” he said.

Investors have soured on Toyota shares this year, sending them tumbling 17 percent compared with a less than 2 percent fall in the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average. Reaction Tuesday was muted, however, with the issue finishing up 0.6 percent at 3,250 yen in Tokyo.

Analysts said the new fines — small considering Toyota’s 98.7 billion yen profit ($1.2 billion) in the first half alone — would have virtually no impact on the company’s earnings.

Mizuho Investors Securities auto analyst Ryoichi Saito described the payment as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to regain customer confidence.

“It is one positive step forward for the company to move on from the recall crisis,” he said.

Seperately, Toyota said Tuesday it aims to boost global sales 3 percent to 7.7 million vehicles next year with global demand offsetting an expected drop in purchases in Japan.

The latest fines involve two separate safety problems affecting certain Toyota passenger cars and trucks.

The first case deals with recalls in 2009 and 2010 of about 5 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles with gas pedals that could become entrapped in floor mats. Toyota had recalled 55,000 all-weather floor mats in 2007 to address pedal entrapment, but the government said its investigation found that simply removing the floor mats was insufficient.

A high-speed crash involving a Lexus in August 2009 killed four people near San Diego, prompting the government to investigate the recall. After reviewing crash evidence and other data, NHTSA investigators concluded that Toyota failed to notify the government about a known safety defect within five days.

In the second case, Toyota conducted a recall in 2004 of Hilux trucks in Japan with steering relay rods that could break and affect steering. Toyota told U.S. regulators in 2004 that the safety problem was limited to vehicles in Japan and the company had not received similar complaints in the U.S.

But a year later, Toyota told NHTSA the steering defect was also found in several U.S. models and recalled nearly 1 million vehicles. NHTSA said in May 2010 it learned about complaints from U.S. consumers that Toyota failed to disclose to the government when it conducted the recall in Japan in 2004.

Toyota turned over thousands of documents to the government as part of the investigation. The two most recent fines are also the maximum allowed under law, and are adjusted for inflation.

“Safety is our top priority and we take our responsibility to protect consumers seriously,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “I am pleased that Toyota agreed to pay the maximum possible penalty and I expect Toyota to work cooperatively in the future to ensure consumers’ safety.”

The Japanese automaker faces dozens of lawsuits from families of people killed or injured in crashes linked to unintended acceleration. The government’s safety agency has received about 3,000 reports of sudden acceleration incidents involving Toyota vehicles during the past decade, including 93 deaths. NHTSA, however, has confirmed only the four deaths from the California crash.

Toyota says their recalls have directly addressed the safety problems with their vehicles and the company is making progress in responding to concerns. The company has established engineering teams to examine cars that are the subject of consumer complaints and appointed a chief quality officer for North America, giving its U.S. offices a larger role in safety related decisions.

Toyota has found no link to electronic problems, an issue raised by safety groups as a potential cause of the vehicle problems. A separate investigation by the Transportation Department and NASA has not uncovered any electronic problems, but the probe is expected to continue into 2011.

The National Academy of Sciences is reviewing potential causes of unintended acceleration in vehicles across the entire auto industry and expects to issue its findings in the fall of 2011.

Before Toyota’s recall crisis, the largest automaker fine was $1 million paid by General Motors in 2004 for a slow response to a recall of nearly 600,000 vehicles with faulty windshield wipers.