The Government can’t run the simple one-size-fits-all “Cash for Clunkers” program. Here’s how complex it is: If you trade in an old gas guzzler for a new car that gets better mileage, the Government pays $4500 for the old car. The rules are simple. The cost is fixed. Whether you qualify is not a judgment call. Nobody needs a second opinion.
After 6 days the Government is shutting it down. It has already blown through the budget amount allocated, proving that it cannot predict costs farther out than next Tuesday. Within those short 6 days, it has created chaos and confusion by changing the rules unilaterally: it adjusted the mileage data assigned to some old cars. So you cut a deal with the local dealer, and before you can clean out your glove box, you learn that you no longer qualify.
“If they can’t administer a program like this, I’d be a little concerned about my health insurance,” car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.
As a baby-boomer, I will be entering clunkerhood before too long. After we enact the panacea of universal health care, will the Government be surprised to learn how many of us clunkers actually want treatment? Or will it simply change the rules, adjust our data, or substitute its judgment for that of our doctors?
July 31st, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Politics |
no comments
The beer summit is on tap for tonight, and American beer companies are hopping mad. Obama has ordered up brews that fit the profiles of his guests: a color-sensitive selection of Red Stripe and Blue Moon. Obama himself intends to drink Bud Light. Yuck! One more thing they apparently don’t teach you at Harvard.
American companies wonder how the gears of domestic diplomacy can be lubricated with foreign brews. (Anheuser-Busch is now a Belgium enterprise, which makes we wonder if Obama drank Bud Light before it became European.) At any rate, beer apparently makes Obama’s list of things unexceptional in America. In attempting to quell one dispute, Obama is fomenting bitter resentment in other quarters.
So I’m betting that Sgt. Crowley gets the best of this teaching moment. After all, he will be up against a literary scholar who testified as an expert witness that 2 Live Crew lyrics were akin to Shakespeare’s “My love is like a red, red rose” (without questioning his own expertise long enough to discover that Shakespeare never wrote that line) and a president so enamored with things European that he will uncritically buy the worst they have to offer.
July 30th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Leisure, Politics |
no comments
Disaster can be predicted reliably from two facts reported today by Fox News:
- The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has doubled in the last year and more are on the way.
- The President eschews any talk of victory.
Those old enough to remember Vietnam (Obama apparently not being one of them) will see the parallel.
The President who did his best as a Senator to hobble our efforts in that region had this to say.
I’m always worried about using the word “victory,” because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.
And we certainly wouldn’t want to repeat that, would we?
Two things in Obama’s statement are striking. First, Hirohito did not surrender to MacArthur. Japan surrendered to the U.S. (Hirohito was not present at the signing.) MacArthur, for all his hubris and love for photo ops, knew that. He did not have to make some ridiculous disclaimer like, “It’s not about me.” Second, that word “always” speaks volumes. It tells us that the absence of victory is not a tactic devised to meet the realities of the current situation, but a strategy – a guiding principle.
It has taken a long time for the reality to surface that victory was within our grasp in Vietnam at the very point we adopted a strategy of defeat. The consequences of our half measures were horrific.
It would be reasonable to define victory as something other than a Hirohito moment, but taking victory out of the equation will surely lead to defeat.
July 24th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
one comment
The extended warranty scam artists will not only harass you daily with telephone calls and fraudulent sales practices, they will have you arrested and put in jail.
Charles Papenfus had enough. He overreacted and made verbal threats to his tormenters.
According to court documents, Charles W. Papenfus, 43, allegedly told a sales representative during a May 18 telephone call that he would burn down the building and kill the employees and their families. He was indicted for making a terrorist threat, a Class D felony; and he could be sentenced to up to four years in prison if convicted.
Let’s agree that threats of physical violence and bodily harm should not be made. But if Papenfus were a traditional terrorist, the kind that indiscriminately kills with bombs and airplanes, we would be asked to engage in a ritual of self-examination to discover root causes. In this case, Papenfus appears not to be merely a deranged zealot, but a man provoked.
The warranty scammers have spread like a cancer, using robo calls to disrupt businesses and invade people’s homes. The calls come with phantom caller IDs. The warranty company’s true identity is concealed. Try staying on the line long enough to ask the live salesman what company he works for.
The Better Business Bureau recently accused the firm of sending mailers to consumers that incorrectly state factory warranties on their vehicles either have expired or will run out soon.
Or simply ask the salesman which vehicle he is referring to. Take my word for it: he doesn’t know who you are, what vehicles you own, or whether any is covered by a warranty.
What are the terms of the warranty? Well, that will all be disclosed in due time – due time being after you fork over a down payment of several hundred dollars. No, they really can’t discuss such sensitive matters with people who are not yet customers.
But you should not ask any of these questions if you have a tendency to become frustrated with lies and deceit offered up by uninvited and anonymous callers. An intemperate remark, and you might find yourself bunking with Papenfus.
Meanwhile, your public servants who are so diligently prosecuting Papenfus are content to paper over the massive fraud that emanates from the St. Louis suburbs.
Last year, then-Attorney General Jay Nixon sued the firm for misleading consumers, and a condition of that suit’s settlement was that TXEN Partners would refer to consumers’ expiring warranties only if the company believes “in good faith” that those claims are true.
July 22nd, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Commerce, Law |
no comments
It is becoming easier to hold people accountable these days. The PR professionals with big budgets can’t do much in the face of some pointed and well-executed criticism on YouTube, this time from Dave Carroll.
“This struck a chord with us,” said a spokeswoman for United. “We are in conversation with one another to make what happened right.”
No kidding. With YouTube views in six figures, what United thought was just Dave Carroll’s petty problem is becoming United’s public relations nightmare.
July 9th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Commerce, Music |
one comment
John Hinderaker at Power Line took a sensible position on the death of Michael Jackson:
I once did a post called “My Thoughts on Britney Spears,” which for some reason I can’t find in our archives, at a time when she was in the news. It set the record as shortest blog post ever. I don’t have anything to say about Michael Jackson, either; his career mostly coincided with a period in which I wasn’t listening to popular music and I never thought much about him one way or another.
I have been fortunate, I think, to keep company with Hinderaker in this regard and to be blissfully unconcerned about Michael Jackson throughout his career.
But that requires some clarification. It is Michael Jackson the musician and entertainer that bored me. In other respects, he aptly represented some of the most disturbing trends in modern culture, and we would do well amid all the wailing to consider the column by Linda Stasi: “Shed No Tears for this Twisted Sicko.”
OK, I said it — and it’s about time somebody had the nerve to say what millions of people must feel and believe about the once-talented black man who turned himself into a white woman before turning himself into a monster.
But you’d never know any of that if you’d listened for the past week to the endless prattle from the sickening, fawning media and all those Hollywood music phonies who were crying crocodile tears over someone they’d mostly avoided like, well, a pedophile.
Pop music stopped being interesting when it stopped being about music. As a purely social phenomenon, it has nothing positive to offer. Jackson’s life and career epitomize this shift as he moved from talented musician to carnival freak, foraging on an infantile indulgence of every urge.
In his defense, he probably didn’t reach the depths of his personal hell without a lot of help from his friends. The most troubling part, though, is that he had millions upon millions of such friends, fans, willing enablers, or whatever you want to call them.
Stasi concludes:
The King of Pop was a great entertainer — innovative beyond anyone the world had ever seen — but he turned into a disgustingly depraved man who hung an infant off a balcony and forced his kids to walk around with masks, veils, towels and even nets over their faces.
I take issue with the parenthetical. The world has seen innumerable innovators that far surpass Michael Jackson. Jackson will not merit even an honorable mention in the realm of musical innovation, and there is no honor in the other innovations that will define his legacy.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Music |
no comments
