I want My Cash For My Clunker

More Political Incorrectness From On The Road...


We made it to suburban Pittsburgh yesterday without incident...if you don't count the check engine light on the Chrysler 300 coming on about an hour and one half out of Knoxville.

Isn't that the way things always go???

You take your car in for an oil change and tire rotation in anticipation of making a long cross county trip, and I think that sometimes the technician plants some sort of time bomb in the dashboard just to make you worry for all one thousand miles of your journey.

So any way, I popped the hood and fumbled around for a few minutes and couldn't find anything leaking or smoking or on fire so we continued on through the intermittent rain to our destination without incident.

After dinner and a good night's sleep, this morning I was Googling around the Internet catching up on news and I saw a story about how the new one billion dollar socialist government program called the "Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS)" a.k.a. "Cash for Clunkers" was already running out of money.

It seems that so many people have taken Uncle Sam up on the program ($3,500 for cars and $4,500 for trucks/SUV's) in THE FIRST WEEKS of the program that the elected idiots in Washington are now faced with closing the cash give-away down. The other option is to increase the funding...to possibly as much as FOUR BILLION DOLLARS.

Great...

Wonderful...

Not only am I paying the mortgages of total strangers so they can stay in houses bigger and newer than mine which they couldn't afford in the first place, but now I'm helping put a new car in their driveway to boot...under the guise of "stimulating" auto sales.

You'll have to excuse me if instead of buying a car I feel stimulated to grab one of my guns and head toward DC looking for a few answers and getting my opinions on national TV.

This is a perfect example of Washington budgeting and Washington math in general...apparently everyone including the "economists" and the "accountants" failed economics and algebra in high school AND college.

But then, just out of interest I checked the CARS websites and found out that the program is limited to vehicles that are not older than 25 years and have a gas mileage of less than 18 MPG.

But you know what?

My old 1995 2500 series 3/4 ton 4 wheel drive Chevy Suburban that got 11 MPG on the highway when it was new and only gets about 9 MPG today is....get ready...

NOT AN ELIGIBLE VEHICLE FOR THIS PROGRAM?

wtf?

So they're getting rid of SOME clunkers and SOME low mileage vehicles, but not the WORST low mileage vehicles.

The government has some reasoning I'm sure, but isn't the net effect that while saying that you have a very old vehicle means you should have to buy a new one and pay full price with no government rebate, the convoluted logic is that people with newer cars are rewarded with a huge cash incentive to buy a brand new car and you better bet that a bunch of idiots (the same ones with the mortgages they can't afford) are now running out and upgrading "ole' Bessy" the family SUV sitting in their three car garage...

AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE.

These new cars and trucks don't cost them anything from day one except taking on another five years of $300 per month (or $400 or $600) payments.

Wouldn't you agree with me that many if not most people don't deserve or most of the time need a new car until the can actually pay CASH for it?

Their OWN CASH...not yours and mine?

I have to go now and stop thinking about this now before my head explodes...

dammit.