Cash For Clunkers Hurting The Poor

The news has been beaming about Obama's Cash for Clunkers program and the government is even considering extending it, is this a good thing? Sure if you are well off enough to be able to afford a new car.  If your a lower income family however its making things harder.

You can read the details of the program on the government website CARS.gov, but to sum it up you trade in a car 25 years old or newer that gets 18 MPG or less and you can collect anywhere from $3,500 to $4,500 for a trade in.  The government then takes the cars traded in and crushes them so they cannot be resold.  It also prevents the engine and drive train from being sold off as parts.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the eventual result due to supply and demand of the market.

The soccer moms driving big SUVs with duel income families will trade their cars in for new ones.  Those used SUVs that would go to the used car market are now being destroyed so lower income families looking for larger vehicles to transport their families around in have fewer options on the used car market.  With fewer options and the same level of demand, the used car prices will go up.  This makes it harder for the poor families to afford any cars.

Oh and here's the double wammy, since the program requires the cars be crushed and not used for parts the parts market likewise has lower supply which in this case since fewer people will be able to afford even used cars, this will increase demand making it even more expensive on the poor.

Now since the left claim to hold the monopoly for caring for the poor I wondered if they've considered the effect they are having on the car market so I stumbled over to the left leaning site Salon.com and found a discussion about just this subject:

Will Cash for Clunkers hurt poor people?  As old gas guzzlers get demolished, critics warn that prices for used cars will rise

Answer:
Depends on what you define as poor
I remember being in a car driven by what we called a liberal back in the day. My friend was arguing against a ballot initiative that would have added a five cent per gallon tax to gasoline to fund public transit. His argument was that higher gas prices would "hurt the poor". I asked him to exit the freeway and drive along West Capital in West Sacramento. After looking around, he agreed with me that the poor generally neither own nor drive cars. However, he still opposed the gas tax.

Likewise, higher used car prices would not hurt the truly poor since they still do not own cars.

Depends on what you define as poor?  Clearly this is the party of Bill Clinton aka meaning of is.

Democrats Growing On Trees?

There is an interesting article posted this week on Blue Hampshire discussing growth in Democrat voter registrants.  They discuss the double digit registration leaps in several NH counties between 2002 and 2008.  Now this of course only accounts for the time under Bush when let's face it, he turned a lot of people off from wanting what the Republican party was selling, mostly because he did not represent what it means to be a Republican, but I digress.  They do not get into what has happened with registrations since Obama took office.  But we'll ignore that for this discussion and move on.

In Rockingham county they site that Republicans grew 17% but Democratic registration in that same period grew by 65%.

In Merrimack County Republican registration increased 9% but Democratic registration lept by 74%.

Their article (found in full HERE) goes on to list a few other NH counties that saw the same type of double digit registration growth from Democrats.

My first question is where did all these people come from?  Merrimack County for instance only increased it's population by 8.71 percent from 2000 until 2009.  And that increase includes many underage children who are not yet eligible to vote.  Rockingham County increased by just 6.82% during this same time.

While I don't doubt that Democrats gained more voters due to Bush from 2000 to 2008 I have to question the size of the leaps, could we be seeing evidence of voter fraud as we've seen time and time again in NH?

National Debt: Who Spends The Most

I was looking recently at the national debt numbers over different periods of US history, mostly current history.  I'd like to share with you all some of those numbers.

April 1993 when Bill Clinton took office (with Democrats controlling house and senate) the national debt was $4,225,873,987,843.44

In April 1995 when republicans took back control of the house and senate the national debt was $4,873,480,746,464.74

April 2001 when G.W. Bush took office the nation debt was $5,773,739,949,951.53

April 2006 when Democrats took control of House and Senate the national debt was $8,175,743,292,992.87

April 2009 when Obama took office the national debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08.

At the moment of my writing this article the national debt is $11,615,547,832,492.18

So let's do some math...

Two years under Bill Clinton with Democrats controlling both houses the debt went up $323,803,379,310.65 per year.

The following 6 years under Bill Clinton with Republicans controlling the debt went up only $150,043,200,582.80 per year.

The first 6 years under Bush with Republican control and the on going wars in the middle east, the debt went up to $400,333,890,506.89 per year.

The last two years under Bush with Democrats controlling both houses the debt jumped up to $1,225,566,877,960.11 per year.

From April of this year when Obama took office with Democrats controlling both houses under him he's already increased our debt by $988,660,783,579.10 and that just within 3 months of his leadership with Democrat control.

Now tell me who's expanding government the fastest?

Republicans Are Afraid Obama Will Succeed

Today there was an editorial in the Telegraph written by Fred Morse entitled "Republicans fearful Obama will succeed", you can read it in full HERE.  Most living in Merrimack recognize Fred's name as one of the more outspoken Democrats in Merrimack who writes this type of letter nearly on a weekly basis, so it's clear his letter is intended to be a partisan slam piece but while his reasoning leaves a lot to be desired his over all premise is correct.  Republicans are afraid Obama will Succeed.

It's the at what will he succeed that Fred doesn't seem to get.

In January 2009, all 117 Republican members of the House of Representative voted "no" on the economic stimulus legislation.

...

The Republicans voted "no" because they perceived that if the plan proceeded, the credit for getting America back onto its economic feet would go deservedly to Obama and the Democrats in Congress.

Wrong Fred.  Republicans voted no because the bill takes money from those who work and give it to those who don't.  It creates temporary make work jobs (you can see some here in NH were they are repaving highways that were perfectly fine prior to their work).  It increases American's reliance on government.

But Fred attempts to defend his claim with this statement:

The Republicans are now further concerned that things are looking a little too good for America with advances in the stock markets, modest gains in 401k accounts and poll results indicating that the majority of Americans favor the stimulus package.

Things are looking a little too good right now?

I'm sorry but my 401k while having a SMALL bounce back has not come anywhere near recovering and as for the claim that the majority of Americans favor the stimulus package?  Well get me some of what he's smoking because I'm not seeing those results in the polls I read.

Rassmussen Polls show that 60% of Americans oppose another stimulus.  And only 31% of Americans see the current stimulus as having actually helped.  In another poll (also quoted in that last link) taken by Doug Schoen shows that a majority of 56% of Americans oppose the notion that the government should spend money to stimulate the economy.

So while he is correct that Republicans fear Obama will succeed he doesn't understand why.  We do not want to see more people rely on the government.  While Democrats see government "helping" more people as success Republicans do not, we see the more people dependent on government and the less people being independent as failure.  While Democrats see Health Care run by government as they have in Canada, Europe, Mexico etc as success, Republicans see that as failure.  When we look at the performance of Health Care in those countries compared to ours we don't see improvements, we see failure.  Democrats do not view the Constitution as Republicans do, while Republicans see the letter of the law, Democrats see a "living" document that can change as times change.  They see success in being able to ban guns and allowing kids to get abortions without the need for their parents ever knowing.  Republicans see that as failure as we watch our Constitutional rights being stripped away and our parental rights stripped away.

So yes we are afraid Obama will succeed because that will mean all the values we see as making America great will be gone.

This IS Socialism

If I told you the government was going to pass a law outlawing private business unless that business was approved by the government and the only other option available was one provided by the government what would you call that?  I'd call it socialism.

Welcome to Obama's America.

The new Health Care Reform bill brought to you by the Democrat's in Congress does just that, it outlaws private health insurance.

You can read this monster HERE, but here's the key quote taken from page 16 of this bill:

(A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.

So effective on the first day of the year when this bill passes it will become illegal for a PRIVATE insurance company to offer you their product.

And they've put this on the fast tract giving Congress two weeks to review, debate and vote on it.  Two weeks which also happen to fall right at the same time as when the media is focusing on the Sotomayor lying... er I mean hearing.  If you think this wasn't planned to pull a fast one on the American public then I've got a bridge to sell you.