Daily Archives: August 1, 2009

Economy, Politics

It Would Be Funny If It Were Not So Serious

1 Comment

If you have no history or no experience on the capability of the federal government, and especially the Obama administration, to run things, all you need to do is look at what is happening with the Cash for Clunkers program.

laurel-and-hardy

Keep in mind that these are the same people who are trying to usurp 20% of the private sector of the US economy and control your and your family’s health care before your next haircut. Or to put it another way, before you even know what hit you.

Consumers are happy to take government rebates to buy new cars. Other than that, confusion reigned Friday. The fate of the $1 billion trade-in program was up in the air over concerns that it may have already burned through its funds less than a week after it was officially launched.

On Friday, the Obama administration said it was working with Congress to try to get more money and that Clunkers deal certificates would be honored through the weekend. {emphasis added}

Brian Benstock, president of Paragon Honda in Woodside, N.Y., said  he had already purchased advertising in Friday’s newspapers and he had sent out 176,000 direct mail cards to owners of qualifying Clunkers in his area. “Can you imagine the position we were in last night? We had 176,000 missiles in the air and we’re hearing it’s cancelled.”

So the $1 billion dollar program that was supposed to go until November 1 has run out of money in the first week in July.  Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said that the Michigan, Ohio and Indiana congressional delegations are working on a $2 billion extension of Clunkers program. Right off of the money tree I suppose.

Are you beginning to feel like the American people are unwitting, if not unwilling, characters in a Laurel and Hardy cartoon?

link: Obama administration scrambles to avoid Cash for Clunkers suspension

Economy, Fair Tax, Organized Labor, Politics

Cash For Clunkers, A Teachable Moment

It didn’t take more than a few days of the ‘cash for clunkers’ program to illustrate a few things.

  • When people have money in their hands, they will spend it. And consumers spending money is what drives the economy. In this case, it stimulated the auto industry.
  • The program has already had its meltdown in red tape for car dealers, and has run out of money. And Democrats are looking for TWO BILLION more dollars from our grand children’s future to hand out.
  • That the Obama administration believes that they have a right to choose the winners and losers in our economy, instead of the people. They do that by choosing who they want to bail out (with money that hasn’t been printed yet), and ‘everyone’ is not among those that they want to bail out.
  • This cash for clunkers program could have been done BEFORE the administration fired auto executives, put their own people (who’ve never run a business) on the boards of directors, gave a majority ownership stake of the company to the United Auto Workers ahead of secured creditors, thereby nationalizing the auto industry.
  • That this whole scheme was done more as payback to the UAW than it was to improve the auto industry’s bottom line.

Returning to the first point. Once you realize that the money you earn belongs to you and not the government to selectively dole out, what mechanism puts money in the economy without committing inter-generational theft? The answer is tax cuts.

An even better answer to cutting taxes would be to let the people (there’s that ‘everyone’ concept again) keep all the money they earn and finance the government with a consumption tax as proscribed by the Fair Tax.