Thought For The Day - There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. - Winston Churchill (I wonder if that includes Hope & Change?) Good Afternoon Everyone, I am sure that we all remember one of Obamas first efforts to stimulate the US Economy. Back in 2009 the government was paying $4,500 in cash to trade in older less fuel efficient vehicles. Studies however have revealed that in actuality, any positive impact upon the auto industry was actually quite short lived. A 2011 study showed that this program did little to actually help increase production of US autos. What it really did was simply get rid of most of the inventory of already produced cars Detroit had on hand. The programs environmental impact has also been shown to be ineffective. When an automobile is recycled, everything is used. Not so with cash for clunker cars. They were simply shredded the older cars and did not actually recycle them. In effect, this produced tons of waste which ended up in landfills as opposed to reuse. In addition to these problems it has also been shown that since only operational vehicles qualified for the turn in, the government managed to remove hundreds of thousands of usable vehicles from the market place which negatively affected auto mechanics and parts suppliers who would otherwise have been busy repairing these vehicles. And finally, while the total number of vehicles purchased amounted to about 380,000 it turns out that within about 6 months to a year those cars would have been sold anyway. As it turns out is cost taxpayers about $1.4 million per job created as a result of this program. In summary, like most of the liberal economic policies implemented by the current administration, this one did little to actually help anyone long term because as soon as the program ended 2 months later sales reverted back to their pre cash for clunkers level. One Last Thing - President Obama recently unloaded on Hamas by calling their actions in Gaza extraordinarily irresponsible. As correctly pointed out by Charles Krauthammer, drunken fraternity boys act irresponsibly, such as when they put laundry detergent in a college fountain located on the quad; whereas, Hamas is guilty of war crimes. For example, it has now been confirmed by numerous sources that Hamas used the Al-Shifa hospital as its headquarters during the latest uprising. Lets see now, is that a war crime or merely irresponsible? Thats all for today folks, Fred
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 23:00:40 +0000