“Success” Breeds More Clunkers – OPEN THREAD

Let’s see–what do I need?

Cash for Clunker Cross Training Shoes
Cash for Clunker Kids’ School Supplies
Cash for Clunker Dog Chew Toys
Cash for Clunker Hair Coloring and Styling (lol!)

They can all be made from environmentally friendly materials, so this will help justify the exchange. It works for me!

I am actually going to get a new dishwasher. Mine is on the brink, and I may as well get back a small percentage of what I’m putting into the system, eh?

This whole ‘cash for whatever’ stuff should spur people to think about the two types of spending: consumptive and productive. Briefly, consumptive spending is the type that produces nothing (or not much) at the end–you use the product up and it has not enabled you to do much more than you would have done without it.

Productive spending is that which brings more wealth at the end. Hiring a new worker for your business or investing in a machine that will increase your productivity are both productive.

Most government spending is consumptive and therefore wasteful. It is money that was taken from producers who otherwise would have a) done their own consumptive spending, b) done some productive spending, or c) saved it, thereby increasing bank reserves which would have made money available for someone else who could have borrowed it for their own productive spending.

Options “b” and “c” are much better for our economy in the long run. Option “a” makes the spending dollar for dollar a wash, but at least the spending is done according to specific market demands as opposed to the government spending which is based on our rulers’ whims (ie–lobbyists influences and/or our rulers’ attempts to buy votes in their own districts). It is clear–the less government is involved in spending decisions, the better off we will all be.

The Clunker programs are huge clunkers.

OT but just a little Guess this car dealorship is less than pleased with at least one clunker.

BORN IN THE USA?
Multi-state car dealer plans birth-certificate billboards
Huge signs by interstate will be seen by 300,000 per day in Denver alone

A top-rated talk radio host in Denver, Colo., has received some good news about his hopes to erect “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” billboards in front of hundreds of thousands of drivers a day when a local businessman heard his radio show and agreed to donate the sign space.

Now, WND has learned, that businessman is planning on donating signage in multiple states to get the message out that Barack Obama has yet to prove his constitutional eligibility to serve as president.

As WND reported, Peter Boyles, who hosts the top-rated morning program on Denver’s KHOW-AM, has been fascinated with the president’s refusal to release his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate to verify his qualification to serve as commander in chief and has dedicated many hours of his program in recent weeks to discussion of all sides of the eligibility issue, much of which has been based on WorldNetDaily’s extensive coverage.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108289

They have the ACLU we need lawyers too maybe the The United States Justice Foundation can be the one. It appears the usual suspects may try and rewrite the Constitution. We all know what will happen if they succeed,
BARACK OBAMA AND HIS ALLIES ARE TRYING
TO CHANGE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

The United States Justice Foundation is launching a major campaign to STOP a “Con Con” from taking place — WE MUST CREATE a tremendous outpouring of publicity and public scrutiny to be given to this danger, so that Barack Obama and his radical liberal allies can’t “sneak this past us” without anyone noticing, until it’s too late. Right now, our staff is conducting legal and historical research, and preparing legal opinions, to submit to every state legislature, if necessary, and we’ll be offering to represent any state, or state legislator, in fighting the Con-Con based on those documents.

We’re also going to be leading a grassroots effort to attack this issue at both the state and federal levels: At the state level, leading the charge in every state to either NOT VOTE for a “Con Con” (if they haven’t voted yet) or to RESCIND their past vote in favor (if they have). And, at the federal level, we’ll be mobilizing citizens across the country to contact their Representatives and Senators to DEMAND that they come out, NOW, and announce their support for a state’s right to rescind, and that they won’t support a call for a “Con-Con.” In addition, we’ll be calling on the Attorney General of the United States, and the Attorney General of each and every State that has passed a “Con-Con” resolution, to issue an official Opinion on the legality of rescission.

THIS DANGER IS REAL. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was called for the exclusive purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation. Once the Founding Fathers assembled in Philadelphia, however, they threw out the Articles of Confederation and wrote an entirely new Constitution, and even changed the ratification procedure so they could get it adopted more easily. The 1787 Convention is the only precedent we have for a national Constitutional Convention.

There’s no guarantee that all of the changes to our Constitution passed at a Constitutional Convention would need to be ratified by 34 states this time — if a “Con Con” can change our structure of government as defined in Articles I, II, and III, of the Constitution, then it can also change the Article V requirement that three-fourths of the states are needed to ratify any changes. The Convention of 1787 reduced the number of states required to ratify a change from 100% of the states to 75%, and a Convention today could “follow their example” and reduce it further, to 66%, or 60%, or even 51%!
President Barack Obama has already expressed his belief that the U.S. Constitution needs to be interpreted in the context of current affairs and events. Can you imagine what he and his supporters would DO to that document if given the chance to re-write it completely? Our Bill of Rights could disappear overnight!

In fact, all the way back in 2006, Obama already had his lawyers researching how someone could get around the eligibility requirements to serve as U.S. President — these people simply don’t CARE about whether we preserve the supreme law of the land!

http://usjf.net/ Home page
http://www.wnd.com/ World Net Daily sent me the above information in an email

Mercury fallout from the Cash-for-Clunkers program.

Automakers used mercury as a component for various auto systems until 2004.
They stopped because mercury is toxic, and it gets into stuff that we eat (the actual level of risk is in fact not relevant for this discussion).
People get very touchy about toxic elements being thrown out with the rest of the garbage, so there’s an industry designed around collecting the mercury at the end of a car’s life. The big (only?) one of these is ELV Solutions.
Here’s a list of the car companies that work with ELV Solutions. Notice which car company isn’t on the list?
That’s right: GM isn’t on the list. They exited the program at the beginning of August.
Autoblog Green calls the reason why “convoluted,” but it’s not. There are now two GMs. Good GM is the one with good assets and a chance of actually making money; Bad GM is the one with all the garbage assets, bad debts, and onerous obligations.
Good GM does not make cars using mercury, and technically never has (its predecessor Old GM did, not it), so it sees no particular reason why it should fund mercury recovery.
Bad GM… doesn’t make anything, or indeed do much of anything except sit there and slowly decompose; but Bad GM is the one that ELV Solutions needs to talk to about funding mercury recovery.

more
http://www.redstate.com/

This article in the American Thinker pulls no punches. It just seems right in so many ways. Speaking of President Obama:

It’s not so much that he’s a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task– all contributory of course. It’s that he’s not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn’t command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don’t add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don’t make sense and don’t correspond with our experience.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/another_failed_presidency.html

How about Cash for Congressmen Clunkers – trade in the tired old unreliable Representative for a new improved version that might actually represent you – or wait for the 2010 election.