The Galling, Appalling Waste of “Cash for Clunkers”
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 2, 2009
I’m a die-hard frugalista. I can make four or five dinners (and several lunches) for my family of four from one baked chicken (save those bones!). I wash and reuse ziplock bags, shop for clothes almost exclusively at Goodwill, and don’t own a cell phone, don’t have cable TV, nor do I get my nails done professionally. I have cut back on or eliminated so many non-essentials in our family’s lives, if it weren’t for my beloved high-speed Internet, you’d think I had an Amish upbringing. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” as my “chic to be cheap” hero and fellow waste-avoider Ben Franklin noted a few centuries back.
Families across America are doing so much to keep “the wolves at bay” with their increased financial turmoil and shattered family budgets. With unemployment and “under-employment” continuing to rise, frugal measures in the home are one of the few ways any of us feel we have a sliver of control over what is happening to our nation’s economy. Cutting out family vacations, selling family heirlooms, learning to cook from scratch, reusing and recycling more than ever, decreasing or eliminating costly entertainment and recreational activities, staggering the payment of bills… the list goes on and on…
So stories like this one about the “Cash for Clunkers” program by pundit Doug Powers really torques my frugal sensibilities (but I’m not a bit surprised, considering all the other stupid wastefulness of taxpayer dollars by this administration). It’s galling and appalling:
From The Powers That Be: More Cash for Clunkers Insanity:
So what happens after you turn in your old “clunker” in the name of saving the environment? The engine is disabled and the car is junked. Somehow landfills loaded with trashed formerly operational vehicles is supposed to save the planet. But that’s just the tip of the polluted iceberg.
Another problem that’s being reported quite a bit is that a customer will turn in their “clunker,” get a new car, then the government will reject their “clunker” as a non-clunker (thanks in no small part to the EPA re-calculating MPG estimates after the program had already begun), and the dealer takes back the new car… after the customer’s old car has already been destroyed. Sure, I suppose the customer could still get their old car back, but it won’t be exactly the way it was when they turned it in…
Excerpt from Bill Dupray, DC Republican Examiner: Video: The (Vaguely Disturbing) Death of a Clunker:
The Cash for Clunkers program is stupid for a lot of reasons. Not only is it just another tax-payer bailout of the
unionsautomakers, who can sell more cars at artificially depressed prices so they can keep the doors open. It also screws with the free-market (big surprise there) by pulling forward demand that isn’t there now, only to kill demand over the next 1-2 years. Killing off the clunkers also hurts the used car market, the spare parts market, and the auto repair business. If there aren’t any old cars to buy or fix, those guys are all out of a job.But one of the most asinine parts of the plan is that they take old cars, many of which were being used as functional day-to-day transportation the day before, and destroy them. A perfectly good and useful machine destroyed for political reasons…
One of many other stories about “Cash for Clunkers” in the following video. As YouTube user pwarr3n wisely noted in his video summary, “The traded in vehicle is then destroyed, even if there’s nothing wrong with it and it could be used by families in places like Guatemala to dramatically improve their lives… What a shameful expensive waste.” Just another example of flagrant waste in the Obama administration:
Cash For Clunkers – The Untold Story
Snippet from Hot Air:
Rarely do you encounter a wealth-destroying green measure that literally destroys wealth but this is an exception and therefore a sweet, sweet metaphor for Obamanomics. I think some people are under the impression that C4C is just a trade-in program, where the dealer gets to keep the buyer’s old ride and sell it for parts or to a used-car dealer, etc. Not so. The whole point is to get fuel-inefficient vehicles off the road, which means the engines — the most valuable part — have to be destroyed.
Waste beyond belief… what kind of waste can we expect with ObamaCare?
Additional “Cash for Clunkers” reading:
Pundit & Pundette: What a waste
The Blaque Professor: “Cash for Clunkers” is a Potential Waste
P.J. Gladnick, NewsBusters: Cash for Clunkers Video Sparks Outrage Over Wasteful Government Programs
Riehl World View: Cash For Clunkers, Sodium Silicate For Mechanics
AOL News: A Clunker for Taxpayers?
Hot Air Green Room: Because when these cars are gone, …um, we’ll sell you some more!
Evangelical Gateway: Morning Report, Weekend Edition: Is Cash for Clunkers Clunked? Are Obama’s Numbers Tanking? Is Our Health Care Free? Does McCain Regret Palin?
Stop Socialism Now: Gov’t computers crash in race for “Clunker” cash… Schumer seeks billions more…
FoxPolitics.net: What kind of country can afford to just wreck good stuff?
RedState: Cash for Clunkers (for Democrats)
Radio Vice Online: Cash for clunkers breaks down
Hot Air: Just a reminder: Cash for Clunkers requires destroying perfectly usable cars and Glenn Beck: Cash For Clunkers may be a government scheme to take over your computer and The ObamaCare-CRA-TARP-Clunker lesson and Cash for clunkers runs out of money … after one week; Update: Feds scramble to save program and Surprise: Stimulus not stimulating construction industry, infrastructure repair
Sister Toldjah: Great news: Cash for clunkers won’t have any real impact on the climate
Urban Grounds: Rep Lloyd Dogget Admits That He Doesn’t Care What His Constituents Want
Ztower: Support “Cash For Clunkers!” Give Each Member Of Congress $10,000,000 If They Agree To Retire At The End Of Their Current Term.
The Family Technology Blog: Glenn Beck: Cars.gov allows government to takeover your computer.
Wake Up Black America: If government can’t even run a simple automobile incentive program right, why should they be trusted with your healthcare?
Jeffrey Jena, Big Hollywood: Stand Up Notes From Flyover Country: CARS Program Previews Obamacare
Wall Street Journal: More Cash for Clunkers?
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Glenn Beck Warns ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Website As Government Scam to Gain Access to Everything–Yes, EVERYTHING–on Your Computer and “Cash for Clunkers” Complicated, Money Running Out: Mark Levin Asks, “If This Simple Program Is So Complicated, What Will Happen with Government Running Health Care?”
Doug Powers, Michelle Malkin: Did ‘Cash for Clunkers’ just put Obamacare on the junk heap? Update: House adds $2 billion more to re-start the program
Carpe Diem: Cash for Clunkers: 136 Pages of Rules and Regs; How Many Pages for Government Health Care?
Michelle Malkin: And now: Cash for Kitchen Appliances and Cash for Clunkers, R.I.P. – for now and Roll call vote: Senate rejects Cash-for-Clunkers aid to charities and poor and Obama lied, transparency died, Pt. 10,001: No Cash for Clunkers disclosure and Coming next: Planned Grandparenthood Centers and Grass-roots revolt in Austin, TX: “Just say no!” to Obamacare; Pennsylvanians boo Sebelius & Specter, “How can you manage health care when you can’t manage Cash For Clunkers?” and Cash for clunkers junked… but dealer ads still running
Carpe Diem: Cash for Clunkers: 136 Pages of Rules and Regs; How Many Pages for Government Health Care?
The Patriot Room: That was fast: Cash for Clunkers junked
Queer Stuff: Cash for Clunkers: subsidizing the automobile industry or improving the environment?
Innocent Bystanders: Cash for Clunkers Takes Effect. Maybe.
About the author
Would you be so kind as to explain what a ping back is? I just received one from your site, I don’t believe I’ve ever been on it, we have posted an identical article, how does ping back work? Thanks for your help, ps and what’s the purpose, Thanks, Jim
Aw, Jim, the wondrous mysteries built into WordPress to help each other out in the blogosphere!
A pingback/trackback is a feature that reciprocates one WordPress blogger to another WordPress blogger for referring them or listing them as a site to also go visit. It’s like a handshake between blogs.
It helps everyone out – I look smarter by listing other blogs that corroborate or dispute the topic at hand, you receive a link to your site listed for free on another site, thus offering more exposure for you. Likewise, many sites are setup to list the trackbacks, so more exposure to more readers that you may not have ever had, if you just rely on Google or Yahoo for traffic. The more external links you have, the better your rankings are with the search engines. The algorithm places you higher, based on the presumption that if other sites think you have information of value, the search engines will give you more “brownie points.”
Anyway, I recently discovered your site, loved your piece, it dovetailed with my piece, and Ta-dah! Now we’re on our way to being blogging buddies.
For a more detailed explanation, WordPress explains it on its site. A similar setup exists at Blogger.
A penny saved is two pennies earned – you forgot taxes which eat up about 50% of what you earn.
How Stupid is Our Government – Better Yet, How Stupid Are We?
Cash For Clunkers
1. The government is using OUR money to bribe us.
2. Our Tax dollars are being used to reward some at the expense of others.
3. Those that bought gas guzzlers benefit while those that bought economic cars are penalized twice – first taxed then told they don’t qualify for their own money.
4. More tax dollars are going to companies that have already received bail outs
5. Sold as an environmental program, the energy/cost to destroy perfectly useable vehicles may be more than the so called savings – how’s this being measured.
6. The paper work associated with the program adds to the bureaucracy and cost of doing business/adds to cost of government
7. Useable cars are being destroyed by people who now have acquired debt they may not be able to afford.
8. American tax dollars are being used to benefit non-American companies
Answer – Give the hastily appropriated original 1 billion and the additional 2 billion being discussed back to the people. Reduce everyone’s taxes by $4,500 to spend as they wish. Those that already got $4,500 for clunkers can not apply.
Excellent points and refreshing ideas… bravo! Now if only one of the congressional dunderheads who authored this mess would listen to you…
I agree – what a terrible waste the “Clunkers” program is. Not only the billions of dollars being given away, but especially the destruction of so many still usable vehicles.
Last night I was at church and a lady stood up and said, “Please pray for my husband and me. We desperately need any type of working vehicle.” I thought to mysellf how they would be thrilled to have one of these clunkers that is being destroyed.