CARS.GOV INVADES PRIVACY
In an Orwellian move, the CARS.GOV website -- part of the Cash for Clunkers program -- will seize your personal information on your computer, leaving the door open to a complete take over of your life. Beware this invasion of your privacy, and read the fine print carefully.
More in Atlas Shrugs by Pamela Geller:
Cars.gov Gives Obama's Administration Complete Access to Your Computer
By Pamela Geller, August 1, 2009
What is truly breathtaking is how Bush was excoriated and his presidency destroyed by attacks on his intrusion into people's lives, invasion of privacy ....... all their leftist lies. No private citizen ever filed suit or made claims against the Bush administration for the Patriot act - tools needed to protect and defend us against the global jihad.
Notice how they accuse good folks of crimes they, themselves are guilty of.
So knowing all that we know about the left and their radical president - this is a powerful tool in their war on the American people and their politics of personal destruction.
The Cars.gov system, part of the "cash for clunkers" program (which the leftopaths are hailing as a great success, uh, who wouldn't want free money?) can steal everything on your computer and can continue to track a user and access information for the life of the computer.
Thus a program that sees economic progress in taking actual working objects that meet human needs (even if at less than 18mpg) and destroying them in exchange for some inked paper will stagger on. While thusly staggering, it also sets in essence a $4,500 price floor in what would probably have been the cheapest used cars on the market, thus pricing the less well off out of the car market entirely. (more at Reason): http://tinyurl.com/l843bu
If you are interested in the government's latest free money program, I strongly urge you NOT to visit the cars.gov site. I am sure Obama's propaganda czars will tell us how it is good for us.
Do not hit OK if you do choose to use the cars.gov site. DO NOT.
There is so much about this program to hate. For example, all the cars traded in must be destroyed in 48 hours. Think about that. Think about all the used car parts. think about the cheap cars that might have been available for poor folks to buy. It's unbelievable. The sheer waste.
Lots more details on the clunker of a program here: http://tinyurl.com/kkcgds
As for the clunker of a program, "cash for clunkers" - it is an assault on capitalism, the free market, the private sector, logic, reason and America. Serriously, how the hell did we get here?
Remember Barney Frank wanting all those new homeowners....the one's who later could not afford the homes they purchased? How many "new" car owners will default several months down the road on that neat $24K new car. Default because they were driving an old clunker because they could not afford a new car to begin with. Even with a $4.5k handout from the government.
What's happening to the clunkers? Dealers are supposed to destroy the engine and crush the cars. Well dealers don't do that. Recyclers do. Are they getting cars for 'free' from the dealers? They have initial costs before they sell the car as scrap metal. They have to pull all the fluids, and all the 'fluff' (upholstery, dashboards, plastic, etc some of which requires special hazmat handling). Any recycle facility will tell you that their main income derives from the selling of usable parts, scrap metal prices (which are currently down) are secondary.
More thoughts on loan defaults in a moment. But first, here is an excerpt from a damning New York Times blog entry, "Dealers Race To Get Their Clunkers Crushed": http://tinyurl.com/lnmsbc
The program requires that the clunkers be put out of service for good, so dealers must destroy the engines on cars that are traded in. We watched this process yesterday at the DCH Paramus Honda in Paramus, N.J. It is quite laborious and potentially dangerous. And it certainly is final.
Nick Clites, who is in charge of used cars for the dealership, was prepping a 1988 BMW 535IS, with 214,000 miles on the odometer, for its death. He drained the oil, then donned a silky blue protective suit, goggles and gloves and poured a sodium silicate solution into the engine. He revved the car, and within a few seconds, the solution hardened into a glass-like substance, the engine seized up and the car was dead.
[...]
"Oh my God, what a mess today," Sally Ann Maggio, who co-owns Hackensack Auto Wreckers, also in New Jersey, said on Friday. We visited her car-crushing business on Thursday. She didn't think much of the program to begin with.
Ms. Maggio said she generally makes her profit by reselling the engines, the most valuable parts of the cars she takes, but that's not posible with the cars coming to her because of the cash for clunkers program, because they have been rendered unusable. That cuts down the salvage value of the cars -- and the incentive for salvage yards and wreckers to take them -- to almost nothing, considering the time and energy they must spend in going to the dealer, towing back the dead cars, removing the engines, crushing the bodies and shipping them to a metal scrap shredder and recycler.
And, of course, the process reduces the supply of used engines for people who can't afford to buy a new car and come to the salvage yard looking to fix up old ones.
By all counts, it appears that the Obama Administration's good-hearted attempt to decrease domestic fuel consumption has critically wounded both the used car and auto salvage businesses. The government will not reimburse car dealers for the cash for clunkers bonus unless the dealer can prove that the trade-in car has been destroyed, so dealers must destroy the cars, which leaves the dealers with no other way to recover their clunker rebates if the government reimbursements don't come through (or come through soon enough -- and no, the government has absolutely no concept of "cash flow"). While many of these trade-ins probably are "clunkers," the destruction of these trade-ins means that thousands of potentially good used cars will never be available for resale. And auto salvage operators are left with no choice in the matter; their primary source of income (salvaged engines) has been destroyed by government fiat.
According to the Times blog piece, the government promised a 10-day reimbursement period for clunker rebates. (A short pause for laughter, as I have worked under government contracts and know that government reimbursement takes, on average, three to six months.) But the government's website crashed repeatedly, and dealers have not been able to upload rebate information. When the news broke last night that the program was running out of money and would be terminated, panic among auto dealers ensued. Even with today's $2 billion emergency cash infusion for the clunker program, dealers are still concerned, because they have no idea when they will get their money back.
