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?
Bad math. That would be about $700 billion.
I am thrilled. We buy 1/4 million junkers and junk them for $4,500 each. Sheer genius. If that program is supposed to save the economy. We are in for deep trouble. My God. What imbeciles.
and then take the still working, still running, still decent trade ins and put glass in their engines and run them till they are ruined .............what absolute numbskulls.............
I need some other number. How many cars were sold last month that didn’t qualify for that $4500 nifty “scr** you and me” bonus.
And the newspoopers trumpet it as a HUGE success. People lining up and going nuts for “free money’..here it is come and get it..FREE MONEY. Even better than Free food and Free healthcare. FREE MONEY. Bypass the buerocracy and save free money by eliminating the middleman.
This was all about getting better mileage, right?? Except, you’ll probably drive that newer car a lot more than that “supposed” junker...Not only will you use more fuel, you’ll have a big fat payment that you didn’t have.
I need a kitchen update. Let’s get a granite/stainless bill going. Wonder how much Obama’s magic money tree would pay for my old cabinets?
Liberal (Progressives) never were very good at math.
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.
It is like the old “overproduction” bogeyman of the depression, when the government slaughtered pigs and buried them to raise the price of pork, while a quarter of the country was hungry.
$10,000 a day down the toilet since Christ was born is still worth mentioning.
Remember, only dumbocraps come up with stupid ideas such as this.
It has nothing to do with money. They are not imbeciles. The socialists know exactly what they are doing. The purpose of any of these socialists program is to exert more control over people. The money is irrelevant. It is only a means to achieve their goal of complete domination.
1) I traded in my 04’ PT Cruiser with 75K which got 23 mpg for a 09 PT Cruiser that received 26 mpg.
2) My company shreds cars. We are shredding perfectly good autos. A relatively new Lincoln Continental with only 30k. The list goes on. Surely some one can use it.
3)Some cars we are shredding have not been disabled, (chemicals in the trans and engine causing them to ‘freeze’ ). They are like brand new and could be driven off the lot.
What a waste of tax payer money. DUCKMAN
It is a great idea. I am going to Home Depot this morning. If there was a FREE MONEY ATM I would buy a lot more. It would be a lot faster in stimulating the economy than the Fed printing money and giving it to the banks with all the red tape.
This is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. We ar bailing out Hummer owners now. Congress is quite insane.
A very nice little bonus - cuts the cost of one down tremendously....how many people legitimately met the qualifications? Hard to say.....it is very easy to set up a 'paper' business......
They probably can, and the Ward Churchill, Skippy Gates, Alinski styled "professors" are probably jumping for joy and cheering them on.
While presently a small amount, I would suspect they are probably screwing up the secondary used-parts market. If they keep it up, they surely will.
The best of a bad case scenario would have the pols writing the bill so that only cash sales would qualify, in order to get some savings spent. They cannot understand that putting people further into debt, or moving their purchases up a year or two is good economic policy. Absolute imbeciles.
In southern PA, some dealers are advertising a $4,500 discount even if your car isn’t a clunker. Betcha they don’t budge from the list price.
I helped my nephew deliver a newly-sold car to another dealer, and while waiting, looked about the showroom. Only one car had an estimated 28 mpg sticker - all the others were in the 15 city, 20 highway category. Hell, my old ‘94 Chevy and 2005 Ford vans gets 24 mpg on the highway.
I once saw a bumper sticker that espoused my philosophy - “Out of date, but out of debt”.
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