Posted on 08/02/2009 4:36:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
Imagine the government making an estimable promise of enormous proportion. Imagine the government pledging a promise so big that it would, in fact, as they would argue, actually save an entire sector of the economy. Imagine in doing so, that the same government promises blind fairness, trust, and integrity in the process. Imagine the government assuming the significant portion of funding such a program off of the hard sweat labor you and I commit to everyday. Imagine this program pledging complete utopia in helping to restore a struggling economy, even if the sector it was addressing was a largely insignificant part of the economy.
And imagine if, after promising this program would last for a long period of time, it ran out of actual cash in about 1/16th of the time they pledged it would work.
Now imagine if that program dealt with something as serious and intricate to the daily lives of Americans as the provision of our health care.
Oh, but not to worry, health care is still a ways off. No, we're talking about a program that uses our tax dollars to purchase cars that can not be resold, and that no one will drive, but instead be taken directly to the nearest junk yard and crushed.
That's how your government spent 1 Billion dollars in roughly six days.
They did so on a long list of promises...
No doubt some very clever chap, maybe Robert Gibbs or that smarty smart David Axelrod, came up with the ever effusive "Cash for Clunkers" brand. (Man if only their college marketing profs could see them now!)
No worries though, because while they promised there would be enough of our tax dollars--that we slaved at our jobs for, to feed our families with--to cause the program to last until November, maybe even through the end of the year, they blew it in not even one full week's time.
They called it an "economic stimulus" designed to boost the purchasing of American made, more fuel efficient vehicles. Of course they had to do this because instead of letting a company do what every other company has to do when it makes vehicles, products, or widgets that nobody wants--fold--they instead felt compelled to compel you to "buy" a vehicle that nobody was buying, and to then use our tax dollars to buy your lemon. Or as that Gibbs or maybe Axelrod fellow put it: your clunker.
So you and I bought 240,000 clunkers in six days, of which roughly 80% have already been eliminated from circulation at our local junk heaps.
Don't you feel great about it?
And did this 10% unemployed tax-paying society get a good deal on the cars they bought? Most likely, resoundingly NO! Because, instead of buying something that they had saved for, the vast majority of these "purchases" were actually extended indebtedness agreements between the buyer and the dealer. The dealer who is having to literally sell his soul to President Obama just to stay in business.
To top it off, Chuck Schumer in the Senate, and several Democrats in the House--like Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and others who think monopoly money is real--have commanded the gerbil-operated printing press in the basement of the White House to print up $2 billion more dollars so that you and I can hopefully buy somewhere in the vicinity of 750,000 lemons... uh I mean clunkers.
$3 billion dollars that belongs to "We The People," randomly and--if you ask the dealerships--quite selectively doled out for three quarters of a million dollars worth of junked cars.
Your current administration has promised that this little effort would save the auto industry. They've promised it will save the environment.
But what about saving my children's dinner?
Did you know that if you just flushed $1,000,000 a day down the toilet from the day that Jesus Christ was born until this, you would've barely spent more than $7 billion dollars?
The Obama administration, because it monkeyed around, or would it be better to say, "czarred" it's way into essentially half of that now in say, another two weeks or so.
And while the fearless leader of the "beer summit" will spout, "let me be clear" and issue another strong assurance that this same group of people can make "certain" that the "promise" of the American health care system will only "improve" in the days to come if we just trust them, many of us are wondering: "how do we know you will do any better by us than making us pay for junk, when through the fruits of our own labor we already have access to the finest health care around?"
Mr Gibbs, Mr. Axelrod, Mighty Beer Summit leader? Any of you wanna take a stab at that one?
The Nazis had their book burnings and the Obama Socialists have vehicle destructions!!!
Even worse, the most valuable parts of the purchased vehicles, their engines and transmissions, are destroyed, eliminating an economical source of spare parts for other vehicles. This is the first time I've seen deliberate vandalism and wanton destruction of valuable resources that are particularly useful to low income people enshrined as national policy.
One possible silver lining of this Trotskyist plot is that ordinary citizens will see radical, redistributionist, liberalism up close.
And yet it’s still less than the porkulus bill.
What a waste of tax payer money
I liken it to the wanton and willful destruction of military equipment bought and paid for by the labor of the American people. There should be no way for such destruction to take place, unless parting out, or salvage price is more than the sale price to the American people. Perfectly good jeeps will not be cut in half, weapons will not be rendered inoperative, except for nuclear of course, perfectly good aircraft will not be chopped up for salvage.
Right but this is a Government Program. Logic is irrelevent. This is just another attempt to prop up the falling house of cards. The way I see it. We are like the twin Towers on 9/11. Both planes have hit and we are burning. The only question is WHEN the collapse will occur and how many of us can escape. I am PLANNING on the collapse. I only hope my escape is successful.
“I propose a new type ATM. All you have to do is push a button and free money is dispensed. The economy would BOOM. Obama could put one in every store. Put it right before the checkout line.”
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The Obamanoughts would probably go for that but you would have to spend six hours filling out forms to get fifty dollars in “free” money.
True we need to streamline the program. How about internet downloads. We could go to a printer freindly version for 20’s 50’s and 1,000,000 Federal Reserve notes and print up our own free money. Kinkos could do it for those who do not have computers.
“It is only a means to achieve their goal of complete domination.”
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I think you are absolutely correct! My next thought is to ask what kind of a dead soul lives for no other purpose than to gain power over others even if the result is to make us all live in a hell on Earth? These people are ghouls.
The Toyota dealer across the street from my house has their cash for clunkers turn-ins parked at the empty lot next door. It’s very sad and depressing, and makes me very angry, at least 60 cars that look very new, usuable are being destroyed. I took pics and sent them to the local paper. More people should try to do this - get pics for evidence, I can’t believe that the greenie/recycle party is promoting the destruction of perfectly good vehicles.
oh, not to mention, i did a driveby survey of all the dealers in my neighborhood, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Dodge/Chrysler, Chevy on Saturday. All of the customers were at Toyota. All of the SCIONS are gone (completely built in Japan). Just who’s economy did we help? Oh, I also read a blogger that said they went to get the deal and tried to pay cash for the balance. They told this person the deal only applied to “financed” deals. What’s up with that?
“Multiply this by thousands and the Government is really sticking it to lower income citizens by denying them reliable, inexpensive transportation.”
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Not just low income people, I have a relative who is VERY well off, he won’t show up in fortune magazine but he is one of those who has retired very comfortably. He makes a lot of trips from Kannapolis, NC to Myrtle Beach and he made many of those trips in a Honda Accord that he bought used for $2000.00. It ran like a new car, I don’t know if he still has it but that sort of cost cutting is one of the reasons he is financially as comfortable as he is.
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Our "award-winning" "mainstream" news media does not want "average" Americans to know too many details.
I looked up the numbers of annual sales in America and found on the website of NADA National Automobile Dealers Association that 16.1 million "light duty vehicles" were sold in 2007, and 13 million in 2008.
So let us say that without any government programs of 'stimulus' at least 10 million vehicles would have been sold this year.
That works out to almost 200,000 vehicles every week.
U.S. Auto Sales May Reach 2009 High on ‘Clunkers’ Aid
July 31 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. auto sales may reach a 2009 high in July after the government’s $1 billion “cash-for- clunkers” incentives program lured shoppers back to showrooms.
Industrywide deliveries will run at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 10.1 million cars and light trucks, based on 7 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales will fall 24 percent at General Motors Co., 33 percent at Chrysler Group LLC and 6.1 percent at Ford Motor Co., according to 6 estimates.
A sales rate matching the analysts’ projections may signal a possible bottom to the worst slump in demand since at least 1976. Buyers drained most of the initial “clunkers” funding in less than a week, spurring the U.S. House to approve an emergency measure today to add $2 billion more.
“The incentives coupled with already high car company discounts have put a new automobile within reach of consumers that would have shopped for a used vehicle,” said Joe Barker, an analyst at consultant CSM Worldwide Inc. in Northville, Michigan.
Automakers report July sales on Aug. 3. The results will show the industry suffered its 21st consecutive month of declines. A 10.1 million annual rate would be 19 percent less than a year earlier.
I agree with you completely. Plus, in exchange for removing affordable “pre-owned” cars from the market, the govt is putting the new buyers into loans that they would not necessarily be wanting to make this summer.
Next summer I foresee a government plan to pay many of these loans so that the car dealers are not forced to repossess many of these ‘new’ cars.
Because I own a dearly loved 1993 car, I received a letter from a local dealership that I was eligible for one of these subsidies. All I could think of was the waste of advertising dollars for the dealer - and the bonus for whatever advertising company which made money on this fancy mailer.
The reason cash for clunkers is so popular is that it’s the only initiative the Obama Administration will allow that puts money in the pockets of mom & pop. The rest of the stimulus only puts money in the hands of bureaucrats.
” They told this person the deal only applied to “financed” deals. What’s up with that? “
Is this true?? I had not heard of it until now....
Something definitely rotten, here.....
the only thing I can think of is the stimulus money only applies to the poor - if you can afford to pay cash for a car then you don’t qualify
I respect my fellow citizens too much to take advantage of them. I respect the engineering and labor that went into building my “clunker” too much to allow the feds to destroy it. The clunker BTW runs fine. This government is bent upon destruction. They have not the intellect to build.
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