Once again Big Brother is mucking around in the market, and once again the consequences are horrible.\u00c2\u00a0 Trade in your old gas guzzler for a new car and your Uncle will suck money out of your fellow tax payers’ pockets and stuff it in yours.<\/p>\n
For cars a 4 MPG increase gets you the $3500 bonus, and 10MPG gets you the full $4500. If you buy a truck a 5 MPG increase gets you the full $4500 bonus.\u00c2\u00a0 A mere 2 MPG increase will get you $3500.<\/p>\n
How does this suck?\u00c2\u00a0 Let me count the ways.<\/p>\n
1) Buying a new car is stupid.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing deprecates faster than a new car.<\/p>\n
2) You wouldn’t visit your neighbor, stick a gun in his face, and say “I’m buying a new car.\u00c2\u00a0 Gimmie 4500 bucks.”\u00c2\u00a0 But if you take advantage of this offer you’re doing the same thing, just spreading it out across more neighbors and having the biggest bully in the world point the gun for you.<\/p>\n
3) When you’re figuring out how much gas you’ll save with your shiny new car, be sure to figure in the energy cost of building it.\u00c2\u00a0 Making a new car takes the energy of about 1,000 gallons of gasoline, depending, of course, on the vehicle.\u00c2\u00a0 Hybrids take 1,600 gallons to build.\u00c2\u00a0 Do the math.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how bad your gas mileage is now driving your old car for another year will do more to save the planet than replacing it.<\/p>\n
4) Young people and poor people drive cheap cars because that’s all they can afford.\u00c2\u00a0 This program demands that the old cars be destroyed. The remaining older vehicles will go up in price, putting them beyond the reach of people who need <\/em>a cheap car to get to a job so they can eventually afford a decent ride.\u00c2\u00a0 So you’re not only screwing the planet, you’re also screwing the poor.<\/p>\n 5) Congress budgeted $1 billon for this program, but that’s already gone, so now they’re adding an additional $2 billon.\u00c2\u00a0 Republicans are pointing to this and saying “It’s three times the original cost.\u00c2\u00a0 So can you believe the Democrat’s health care numbers?”\u00c2\u00a0 This really pisses off the Democrats, because it’s a good point.<\/p>\n 6) Now for the really scary part.\u00c2\u00a0 You won’t see this unless you fill out the online form to get your handout.\u00c2\u00a0 As part of the process you’ll get the terms and conditions screen, that leaglease that nobody reads before clicking the “I Accept” button.\u00c2\u00a0 It contains this paragraph:<\/p>\n This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the US Government. <\/strong>Any or all uses of this system and all files may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personal, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. (Emphasis added) That’s right folks, if you take part in this program you give Big Brother the right to read, copy, monitor and inspect every single thing on your computer, and do anything they damn well please with it.\u00c2\u00a0 Your financial records.\u00c2\u00a0 That spreadsheet where you keep your passwords.\u00c2\u00a0 Your once private love letters.\u00c2\u00a0 All your e-mail.\u00c2\u00a0 That clip from “The Whole Nine Yards” featuring a full frontal shot of Amanda Peet naked.\u00c2\u00a0 Your favorite porn.\u00c2\u00a0 Every MP3 file (are they all legal?).\u00c2\u00a0 You’re giving them carte blanche to everything <\/em>everywhere in your computer, and permission to use it however they like.<\/p>\n And if that’s not enough to keep you from the program, you’re beyond smartenization, and too stupid to be reading this blog.<\/p>\n Update:<\/strong> It turns out the onerous language was on the dealer side, not the consumer side, so it was only the dealers <\/em>agreeing to let the feds grab all their data.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, due to pressure and bad publicity, it’s been reported that they’ve modified the language somewhat.\u00c2\u00a0 Thanks to John, who provided the details in the fourth comment to this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once again Big Brother is mucking around in the market, and once again the consequences are horrible.\u00c2\u00a0 Trade in your old gas guzzler for a new car and your Uncle will suck money out of your fellow tax payers’ pockets and stuff it in yours. For cars a 4 MPG increase gets you the $3500 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n