Was Cash For Clunkers A Clunker?

Was Cash For Clunkers A Clunker?

That's the question that Ezra Klein of The Washington Post asks if you go here. 

To even ask that question is to answer it. 

Yes, the program was a clunker.  It was a clunker of such magnitude that to even ask the question is to answer it.  If you're pay more for something than it is worth, or to expedite or reward a lopsided trade of that type, then you are participating in Clunkerite behavior. 

Good Lord in heaven, this thing made me crazy back in the day.  Now even the Official Newsletter Of The Obama Vandalism Team is almost admitting that the program was dumber than a box of rocks.  Here's Klein:

For one thing, the fuel-economy requirements were fairly lax: A person could, in theory, trade in a Hummer that got 14 mpg and get a $3,500 voucher for a new 18-mpg SUV. What’s more, that slight gain in efficiency would be partially offset by the energy costs involved in manufacturing the new car. And on the economic front, critics argued, the program might just move up purchases that would’ve happened anyway — thereby providing little actual stimulus.

And that's exactly the type of thing that the smarter people among us did.
 
My employer, Jukt Micronics, participated in a similar Texas program for forklifts.  It was supposedly about lowering carbon emissions, but in reality it was about using up some of the Texas government's 2009 budget.  Hit this link.  The forklift giveaway was pure, undiluted, insane, government mandated greatness.  I can't thank you good taxpayers enough for giving me these forklifts , by the way.  Oh, and we're letting these things idle all night so that the government inspectors will see that they're getting enough hours, which is the only way they can prove that I really needed them. 
Long story.  Hit the link.  I'm begging you. 
Go ahead.  Hit this link. 
You'll continue to vote for Democrat or Republican idiots unless you hit this link. 

But that's enough chatter about how I'm letting forklifts idle all night so the odometers will prove that I really did need the forklifts that you gave me so that I could help reduce carbon emissions.....Back to Ezra Klein at the WaPo:

So were the naysayers right? It seems so. A newly updated analysis from economists at Resources for the Future finds that the actual benefits of the program were pretty meager. The paper examined U.S. car sales using trends in Canada as a control group, and estimated that about 45 percent of cash-for-clunker vouchers went to consumers who would have bought new cars anyway. In the end, the program boosted U.S. vehicle sales by just 360,000 in July and August of 2009 and provided no stimulus thereafter. What’s more, the program increased average fuel economy in the United States by just 0.65 miles per gallon.

Ezra, you ignorant slut. 
The program was not about stimulus, or fuel economy.  I don't know why this is so hard to admit.   
The program was a political favor to Detroit which harmed most of the rest of us.  It annihilated the used car and used parts market.  Mission accomplished on that score. 

Now, there’s a case to be made that that’s better than nothing. For one, handing $3,500 vouchers to people who would’ve bought cars anyway still counts as stimulus. What’s more, as the RFF paper found, the program reduced overall U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by between 9 million and 28.4 million tons. But even so, that implies that it cost between $91 and $288 per ton to get those reductions — a pretty lousy bargain as far as carbon policy goes. Even if the program did have some benefits, it’s hard to argue that it was an efficient way to dole out cash.

Oh for Christ's sake !!!   It doesn't count as "stimulus".  Ezra, if I take money from you and give it to a forklift manufacturer, it doesn't stimulate anything but my do-gooder credentials.  You won't get to spend the money the way you wanted to, and the forklift manufacturer gets to spend it the way he wants to.  Net gain: Zero. 

And chances are, the manufacturer is going to spend some of it on campaign contributions for the person who took away your money, you idiot.  

Here's one of my least favorite videos of all time. 

Suggestion for an October political ad

Here's an idea for a great Libertarian political ad for October. 
The text is from The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, on the Cash For Clunkers travesty. 

IN THE market for a used car? Good luck finding a bargain: The price of “pre-owned’’ vehicles has climbed considerably over the past year. According to Edmunds.com, a website for car buyers, a three-year-old automobile today will set you back, on average, close to $20,000 — a spike of more than 10 percent since last summer. For some popular models, the increase has been much steeper. In July, a used Cadillac Escalade was going for around $35,000, or nearly 36 percent over last July’s price.



Hit the video.  Seriously.  Hit the video of these guys pumping Sodium Silicate into the engine of a Volvo, under orders from our President.  You don't have to watch, just listen while you read the rest. 
Now, back to our commentary from Mr. Jacoby. 

....Part of the answer is that the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System — or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers. That was the program under which the government paid consumers up to $4,500 when they traded in an old car and bought a new one with better gas mileage. The traded-in cars — which had to be in drivable condition to qualify for the rebate — were then demolished: Dealers were required to chemically wreck each car’s engine, and send the car to be crushed or shredded.


Crank up the volume on the video.  Hear the whine?  Does it sound like vandals destroying a car?  Destroying the economy?  Destroying employment?  DO YOU HEAR THE NOISE OF BARACKAGANDAN LUNACY?????
Congress and the Obama administration trumpeted Cash for Clunkers as a triumph — the president pronounced it “successful beyond anybody’s imagination.’’ Which it was, if you define success as getting people to take “free’’ money to make a purchase most of them are going to make anyway, while simultaneously wiping out productive assets that could provide value to many other consumers for years to come. By any rational standard, however, this program was sheer folly.

Briefly cut away to a clip of some obviously low-income people wandering through a used car lot.  Then go back to the shrieking Volvo. 

Of the 700,000 cars purchased during the clunkers frenzy, the estimated net increase in sales was only 125,000. Each incremental sale thus ended up costing the taxpayers a profligate $24,000.

Show a Cash For Clunkers-era clip of some Yuppies driving a new Prius out of a parking lot.  Be sure they've transferred their Obama bumpersticker from the Clunker to the Prius.  Then go back to the whining Volvo. 

Even on environmental grounds, Cash for Clunkers was an exorbitant dud. Researchers at the University of California-Davis calculated that the reduction of carbon dioxide attributable to the program cost no less than $237 per ton. In contrast, carbon emissions credits cost about $20 per ton in international markets.


The whole carbon credits scam is environmentalist bullshit, but some people believe in it.  Kinda like Catholics used to believe in purchasing Indulgences.  Let it stay in the ad. 

Using Department of Transportation figures, the Associated Press calculated that replacing inefficient clunkers with new cars getting higher mileage would reduce CO2 emissions by around 700,000 tons a year — less than Americans emit in a single hour. Likewise, the projected reduction in gasoline use amounted to about as much as Americans go through in 4 hours. (And that’s only if you assume — contrary to historical experience — that fuel consumption decreases when fuel efficiency rises.)

When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success.

Cut to the 3:55 mark on the video.  Watch the guy with the fire extinguisher.  Listen to the vandals giggle.  Cut to a graph of declining employment.  Cut to a quick graph of declining home sales.  Cut to a quick graph of increased automobile prices.  Then go to one more voiceover.

Do you really want to send the people who did this back to Washington? 
My name is The Whited Sepulchre, and I approved this message. 

Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Eminent Domain

During my recent Arizona gig, I had the privilege of visiting Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's house, studio, architectural intern boot camp, and place where he built lots of stuff and then tore it down, just to stay in practice. 

It was a great experience, and if you ever find yourself in Phoenix, I hope you'll make time to visit.  Wright was a genius. 

Now....imagine that you're an architectural genius who has been diagnosed with bronchitis and pneumonia, and you need to find a new winter home, someplace far away from the near-arctic weather in Wisconsin.  Imagine that you settle on a place near Phoenix/Scottsdale, and you buy enough acreage to control the view from your house. 

The view is why you chose the site, built the house, and started the architecture school at that site.  The view of YOUR property.  Remember, you're a genius, and you think buildings should fit their surroundings, both in materials and placement. 

You whip out a masterpiece.  It's exactly what you want. 

The next part I have to piece together from our tour guide and from the internet.  Some government dweeb, long forgotten except for this solitary act of vandalism, decides to invoke his Eminent Domain privileges and run powerlines across your property.  You fight it, you even go to Harry Truman to try to get him to intervene.  The powerlines totally ruin the view. 

(The powerlines erected during Wright's lifetime were much smaller than these monsters, but they were enough to piss Frank off for the rest of his life.) 

The wall to the left was once almost 100% window.  Wright bricked it in halfway up so he wouldn't have to see the powerlines in the distance. 

He changed the main entrance from the front of the house to the back of the house, all to avoid looking at the reminder of the theft of his property. 

This is the man who built Fallingwater, recently voted as the most architecturally significant building of the 20th century.  And even he had to put up with that kind of crap from his government. 

Oh well.  That's enough ranting about Eminent Domain.  A tour of the house, the meeting rooms, concert halls, grounds, and architecture school only costs $24.00, and it's well worth it. 

The guides won't let you take pictures in the living quarters for some reason.  But at one point, our tour leader asked if there was a pianist in the house, someone who could show off the acoustics of the den.  I volunteered, and therefore was able to get my picture taken playing Frank's Steinway.  A rare privilege.
(Organic, natural, architectural materials look great, by the way.  But they are no good at keeping pianos in tune.  I'm just sayin'.....)

I can now say that I've played The Electric Light Orchestra's "Evil Woman" on Frank Lloyd Wright's Steinway, and "Dixie" on Robert E. Lee's piano at Arlington House (See pic below. Long story). 

Taliesin West, in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Go there. 

Pics came from here and here and here and here and me. 

Joseph Stack destroys Austin Tx IRS building with airplane; creates and/or saves hundreds of jobs

A reader of Radley Balko's Agitator blog took him to task for not commenting on the libertarian who flew a plane into an IRS building.  Here's Mr. Balko's response:

Sorry for my silence. It’s just that yesterday’s events have stunned me into a moral crisis. I’ve been up all night recontemplating my entire political philosophy. It’s so clear now how a philosophy that espouses nonviolence and peaceful, voluntary exchange could drive a man to fly a plane into a building in a murderous, suicidal act of hate.


I can’t believe I didn’t see it all along.

Well said, Mr. Balko. 

It's too soon to be posting anything glib or flippant about this, and I apologize ahead of time for being insensitive.  But....
This guy did a huge amount of damage to a building, and it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to repair it. 
Just think of the jobs created or saved....
Here's a video from the Cash For Clunkers era, illustrating the same flawed concept.  Let's destroy things to stimulate the economy. 




Pic came from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

The Dumbest Fools That God Put Guts In

This is freakin' criminal.
The thing that makes the world better now, compared to 100 years ago, is our "stuff".
Once "stuff" is created, it doesn't have to be re-created for each new user.
Outside of Washington, this is called Progress.
These really are the dumbest fools that God put guts in.

This is a video of how the "clunkers" are destroyed.
Has anyone on that Ship Of Fools considered what this practice does to the used car market, the market that poor people rely on? (As supply drops, prices rise, etc. ?)
Has anyone in that Parliament Of Whores considered the value to the environment of saving 5 mpg, vs the environmental costs of destroying and creating a perfectly good vehicle?

Make your kids leave the room, turn down the volume, and watch this (a fresh coat of Whitening to the GOC for the link.)



I've written 3 consecutive posts about this abortion, and every time I think I'm at a loss for words, something else about it comes to mind. Or I find that Denny at the GOC has posted some Vandal Porn like this.
Unbelieveable.