Cash for Clunkers: the gift that keeps on giving

At the height of the Keynesian gimmick known as Cash for Clunkers, we noted that charities weren't too hot on the idea as the program succeeded in taking older, lower gas mileage, but certainly serviceable cars off the market. The very types of cars favored by lower-income folks to get back and forth to work.

It appears now that we are discovering one of the legacies of Cash for Clunkers.

For more than a century, efforts to help the disadvantaged have focused on education, healthcare, nutrition and housing. Almost nothing has been done to help the working poor afford cars, despite research that indicates it would help alleviate poverty.

About 1 in 4 needy U.S. families do not have a car, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. That's a serious handicap for the millions of Americans who don't have access to robust mass transit.

A nationwide survey of 353 people who bought cars with help from a nonprofit group called Ways to Work found that 72% reported an increase in income. Of those who were on public assistance when they acquired a car, 87% were no longer receiving it a few years later.

Other studies have found that low-income people were more involved in community activities and had better access to healthcare after getting cars, while their children participated more frequently in after-school programs.

"You're more likely to have a job and less likely to be fired," said Evelyn Blumenberg, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who studies transportation and poverty. "It's just a no-brainer that low-income families need cars."

Yet there are almost no state or federal programs to meet the need.

(italics, ours)

Let that last sentence sink in. Cash for Clunkers destroyed 700,000 cars. You don't think that a good chunk of that 700,000 cars, were they still around, could be meeting the needs of the poor and low income families in this country?

There was a federal program, alright. But it was a federal program that absolutely shafted people who need wheels to get to work, to go shopping, to take their children to the doctor, etc.

"Those cars could have been used for very needy working-class families," said Carolyn Hayden, a Glendarden, Md., transportation consultant. "It will go down in the annals as a missed opportunity."

More like a fantastically horrible idea. Think about it: $3 billion to essentially keep people unemployed. What's not to like about that?

The Keynesian gimmickry employed by the Obama administration to get us out of the recession were intended to be quick-hitters to boost the economy. What were finding, however, is that as short-lived as these programs were they have a legacy and a human cost that will be felt for years.

Biggest boondoggle ever update

Alternate post title: When you lose the Washington Post

Each year, the world demands more grain, and this year the world's farms will not produce it. World food prices have surged above the food crisis levels of 2008. Millions more people will be malnourished, and hundreds of millions who are already hungry will eat less or give up other necessities. Food riots have started again.

Nearly all assessments of the 2008 food crisis assigned biofuels a meaningful role, but much of academia and the media ultimately agreed that the scale of the crisis resulted from a "perfect storm" of causes. Yet this "perfect storm" has re-formed not three years later. We should recognize the ways in which biofuels are driving it.

Yes, things are tough all over so please note it's "contributes" and not "causes". "Contributes" on your tax dime and by legislative fiat, we might add.

Unforeseen (?) consequences

Another day, another… you know the rest.

We’re afraid we may have been overcome by "crappy idea fatigue", but persevere we must.

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.

Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president's Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.

(italics, ours)

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that was done with respect to the Patriot Act regarding governmental incursion into private matters, how is all this remotely any better? At least the Patriot Act had an expiration date. Now we are faced with the prospects of a ‘roid-raged Congress leveling confiscatory taxes at target groups they don’t like all in an attempt to cover for their monumental incompetence and this plan that would give a two-time tax cheat and someone on the President’s cabinet the power to decide what firms and institutions they will effectively take over.

What is the criteria for “qualifying” for a takeover? What is it exactly that Geithner and...Larry Summers(?)... Rahm Emanuel(?) will do once they take over these entities? And how will this arrangement not be subject to political chicanery?

What galls us more than anything, though, is that we feel compelled to ask these very specific questions when just the concept, the mere notion of this plan should be dismissed out of hand, no questions asked.

And everybody was up in arms over the expansion of Executive power during the Bush years?

B-Daddy predicted, years ago, that the expansion of Executive power, though passing legal muster and even for legitimate purposes of defending the country against foreign and domestic terror threats would prove to have disastrouus long-range consequences. We didn't want to believe him but our John the Baptist-Messiah/Bush-Obama meme appears to be fleshing out.

The Random-ideas-that-stink-generator at the White House is running quite smoothly, thank you very much.

Another day, another crappy idea to come out of the White House.

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.

The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report on some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month, as part of the stimulus package, Congress barred top executives at large banks getting rescue money from receiving bonuses exceeding one-third of their annual pay.

(Oh, really?)

(emphasis, ours)

Just so we're all on the same page, these "new rules" in whatever form, fit and function they will be applied, apply even to those private entities that are not receiving any bailout money. Someone inside the Federal government, be they from the Treasury Department or perhaps a Congressional committee will be passing judgement on executive pay and bonuses. Of course, doing this will not do one single thing towards actually solving the current crisis but it will allow the Administration to look like they are being "sensitive" to the public's apparent populist bloodlust.

Hey, while they are at it, why not print the names and addresses of those executives on the recovery.gov website. Congress would think that is a hell of an idea.

Yep. If there’s anyway to get the world of banking and finance back on its feet again while retaining any decent leadership at these institutions, it would be to regulate pay and bonuses and have the two-time tax cheat nosing around in everybody’s business .

We’ll hand it to the Obama Administration, though - just when you think they can’t come up any more crappy or crappier ideas, they hit the reset button on that generator and out pops another one.

Fumbling, bumbling, stumbling...

The President has appeared to have dropped the worst idea of all time. Prelude post here.

The Obama administration has abandoned a controversial plan to make veterans use private insurance to pay for costly treatments of combat-related injuries.
Stung by the angry reaction, the decision came following a meeting in the White House today between officials from 11 veterans advocacy groups and top White House officials.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the intent of the plan had been to "maximize the resources available for veterans." But he said President Barack Obama recognized the veterans’ concerns that it could "under certain circumstances, affect veterans and their families’ ability to access health care."

How exactly does making veteran’s injured in combat pay out-of-pocket for treatment of their injuries, “maximize the resources available for veterans”?

And then, this from Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel:

I think [the President] realized this was the wrong time to ruin what was turning out to be a very good first impression . . . We're very pleased that it turned out this way, and we're very pleased that those of you in the media gave us the chance to make our views clear.

Excuse us? Is there a right time for the worst idea of all time? And all those gracious vets will forever be in gratitude to Obama for restoring the status quo, eh, Rahm?

Gibbs and Emanuel would’ve been better served to just admit they screwed up and then shut the hell up. But, no – instead they suggest that despite their scrapping of the plan, they were really acting in the vet’s best interest (they just don’t know what’s best for them) and that it was just a matter of timing.

Because they had the gall to actually float the worst idea of all time and then after the ass-kicking they received, roll out hubris and arrogance as an exit strategy, the Obama Administration is in no way shape or form off the hook on this one.