Cash for Clunkers

Here is a good example of just why one should hesitate to support a government run health care program. Let’s look at cash for clunkers.

So what is a clunker? In common usage a clunker is a car that does not run or is so beat as to be essentially undrivable. Not so the government. For bureaucratic purposes a clunker is redefined as any car made after 1984, gets less than 18 mpg, operational, and in your possession for at least a year.

Rules: 135 pages worth.

The program requires a dealer to register on a government website in order to participate. Many find out for the first time that there is a fourteen day waiting period.

The same dealers had to file each deal on same website. Because the government servers are so slow, many dealers were forced to keep employees on the computers well into the night to finish the previous days deals.

Each participate dealer had to sign an agreement that made their computer systems proxies of the government’s. Under this agreement the government reserves the right to access and audit their system at any time for any reason as long as the dealer’s network remains intact. Smart dealers jury-rigged a temporary network of isolated pc’s but most signed away access to their main (or only) system.

Each car taken must be operational. To prove so, the deal must drive each car on the road. Just around the dealership is not permitted. Why? Who knows–its government.

Each car’s title must be voided front and back with a special stamp.

Each car’s engine must be filled with a special metal fluid prior to sending to the scrap yard. Dealer’s must purchase the fluid at their own expense.

The program stated on the last week of this month, a time normally the busiest for dealers.

With 20,000 dealers nationwide, the average number of cars per dealer that $1 billion could cover is only 12. No mechanism is in place to keep track of the aggregate. Many dealers have over 20 cars taken in the system. Will they get reimbursed?

After the program started and deals made, titles ruined, new cars off the lot with new owners, the EPA changes its estimated milage for some cars, making some of the completed deals invalid for the program.

And people want these bureaucrats to determine your medical procedures.