Pimp My Ride

I'm just going to start this one off with the topic sentence from CNN's article:

“The federal government may suspend its $1 billion Cash for Clunkers program after less than a week over concerns that the plan may have already burned through its funds”

So, just give me a couple of seconds while I don my surprised look. Ah, there we are. Let me get this straight; the Federal Fraternal Order of the Magna Cum C-Average that is our Department of Transportation launched a program to shell out a finite amount of money to people with crappy cars, and were shocked to discover that the $1B they allocated only lasted a week.

Well. No shit. Go figure people will actually accept free money for a car they were going to get rid of anyway. This is probably the right time to implode the DOT.

This was their plan: They thought that if they gave people a credit for trading in a high mileage old car and buy a new one, that they would pull 1.2 metric ass-loads of gas guzzlers off the highway and save Mother Earth from the clutches of carbon strangulation. Whoever came up with this has to be clinically retarded. If this cranius magnamus was running hurdles in the Special Olympics he'd have a lot of bruises just above his knees. (Don't bother dressing me down for being insensitive. 'Retard' is one of my favorite words)

The threshold for what constitutes a planet killing perambulator is any vehicle that gets 18 miles to the gallon or less. Logically enough, any car that gets 18.1 MPG or more, is safe for children to respire directly from the exhaust pipe. So, you can trade in your 1995 POS that gets 17 MPG and walk out with a brand new planet friendly vehicle of peace that gets 19 MPG and $4500 extra in your pocket.

Let's work this out. If the average pay out is $4000, the program would pay out on a total of 250,000 vehicle trade-ins. (Whew, I can divided by four) Of course, that's being a bit generous, since there also has to be a budget to pay for the administration of the program; a program slated to run until November. (remember this is the government, if they hired staff and leased office space for a program of record through November, that bill will not change if the program ends in a week.) That administration will run nearly a quarter of a billion itself. So, these idiots are patting themselves on the back for spending $1.25B dollars to save 250,000 people (out of a population of 300M) about 10% on a new car they were already going to buy in an effort to save 4 MPG each. Just to be clear, That's $1.25B of YOUR money.

According to Rep Candice Miller (R-MI), "This is simply the most stimulative $1 billion the federal government has spent during the entire economic downturn."

That, right there, sums up the sadness of this myopic misadventure in government rescue better than any further words I could offer.

©Raymond Smith- 2009