The loss of wealth to the entire US system seems a bizarre fix as well. As others have noted previously, besides junk yards, charities, parts stores, and mechanics which will have less to work with. Why couldn’t the car dealerships kept the cars whole and sold them to the used car dealers? The 3 billion dollar price tag is still there, but other industries still get to participate.

Maybe it is stacking the deck in their future for more car sales with the loss of these.

Sorry for posting this late….had it written but shut down the computer when hubby came home.

My mechanic was a European raised Peugeot garage owner who gave me very good service and reduced prices all along when my income was low. That’s the only reason I had a foreign car–I bought it cheap and could make payments on repairs. I had an 18-year business relationship with that mechanic, a true gentleman.

So, the government, in this case the great state of Texas, and invidual business owners like my mechanic, “cooperated” to keep me driving to work in an area still needing way more mass transportation. This program was only available in the polluting counties that encompassed Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston-Galveston and San Antonio, I believe. Well organized, well managed.

The shuttle driver there said the dealer had stopped participating in the Cash-for-Clunkers program because they hadn’t been reimbursed by the goverment for cars already sold and it was causing cash flow problems. They had sold 400 cars in the program and were owed about $4000 each for about $1.6 million total.

He also said the number of cars they sold was similar to what they were doing last year or the year before…but not better.

I think this far left wing of the party shares the same beliefs as Obama and have marginalized the balance of the party, much the same way Obama has tried to marginalize Hillary.

For me the best scenario would be for Obama’s number to continue to plummet, the Dems lose big in the 2010 elections, and then Hillary resigns to pursue a run against Obama for the nomination.

Of course Obama will start to use the race card as his excuse the same way Governor Patterson used it today with calls for him to step aside int he next election.

Her sister was hoping that, after my cousin died from complications of Lupus, that maybe THEN they would acknowledge how bad it was, and reimburse her costs.

I know other people who have tried, unsuccessfully, to get Medicare, even though they were deserving. So, again, it isn’t a slam dunk program, nor is it a perfect program.

But yeah – I don’t think anyone has been advocating it be abolished anyway…

I’ve been an environmentalist for many years, and this just sickens me. People could USE those parts, they could be RECYCLED, for crying out loud (remember the saying, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”? evidently, the Dems and Obama haven’t.).

should be “low gas mileage vehicles”

There have been programs over the years (mabe on the state level) where if a car was considered a gross polluter, they would give the owner extra money to turn it in, more than they would get from just selling it to the junkyard. These were usually pretty old cars, which of course were no longer being made. So this type of program definitely worked to get a polluter off the road (these were “clunkers”, for sure!). With the SUVs and trucks being turned in today there isn’t the same effect, because the dealerships are still making these high gas mileage vehicles – so what is really the point in crushing some, when they’re still making more?

Of course, some of the vehicles being turned in now are older vehicles. The owners probably aren’t used to making payments, so I hope this doesn’t turn into the same fiasco as the ACORN housing push, where people were allowed to buy homes they couldn’t really afford!