Cash For Clunkers- I was unaware

[Finnster]

My whole impression is that the whole "green savings" was just BS to put the program thru w/o being called another bailout to get the auto companies and the parts suppliers going. I don't think Obama even believed that.

In some sense it worked as huge numbers of inventory was moved, auto companies will get some cash flow and will order new cars to restock, meaning the (US-based) parts suppliers will have work again. Lots and lots of people and small businesses tied to this. Logistical Cluster-F to be sure tho.

I do see some sense of having some req to junk the engine, as you want to have some easy way to be sure dealers/whoever don't scam the system by pocketing the cash and reselling the "clunker." But they should be able to part out the car or ship it to some foriegn country for sale (Europe does this with tons of used cars.) The gov't should sell the clunkers for parts or exprt and at least get some of the money back and still remove the cars from US gasoline consumption. Hell, you could have reduced the cost (or expanded the program w/ that.)

What also sucks is you only qualified if you were a dipshit and bought some crappy fuel hog. My comuter car is an 02 Mazda w/ 160K and gets 30mpg. The mpg req of the CfC was a chitty 22mpg or so. Not that I would have sold off my car, it still runs well and I plan to fix and run it until it dies. However, its irritating knowing you don't even qualify as you bought a responsible car in the 1st place, and many cars getting bought get less than my 8yo car.

Lastly tho, I think the gov't (Bernake, Paulson, Geitner, Obama and even that fvkwit Bush who got us in many of the current messes) does deserve a great deal of credit so far. The fact that we are not talking about a depression, and are on track to see GDP growth possibly in the Q3 is huge from where we were even 6-8mos ago, when it looked like there was no bottom to the cliff we were tettering on.
Cutting back on all the spending, bailouts and stimulus would have been a replay of the '30s, and a 10% unemployment, 15% in house prices and modest GDP growth would have looked like candyland had we done what McCain and the Congressional GOP wanted to do and let the whole financial system collapse like Lehman.
So far the only dumber ideas than I've heard from the Dummicrats are the ideas from the Retardicons.