A couple of weeks ago, I was driving through a deprived area in a large Southern town. The whole area was dismal. Houses were falling apart; the streets were littered; and the corner store that I passed had a sign outside which stated: No Drug Peddling Here.
As I drove through the area, I also noticed that on every second corner was a sign which read: $1000 Cash for your old car. I wondered what that meant and then I realized it was connected to the Government’s Cars for Clunkers program. Some poor souls, who couldn’t afford a new car, were being enticed by local hoods to swap their clunkers for $1000 cash. And then the unscrupulous buyers could find a way of claiming up to $4500 from the government. Nice $3500 profit – the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
I wonder what kind of oversight is being done with this “Cars for Clunkers” program? I wonder if shady dealers are buying up cars from the poor and offering their customers the government program without a real trade in? I wonder if local hoods are laughing at being bank-rolled by the government? I suspect that they are and that taxpayers like myself are paying for their ‘steals.’
So, who’s accounting for the money and who’s overseeing the program? And if this is what happens with one Government Bill, Heaven help us when Universal Health Care is imposed from on high – after all, as the radio announcers expresses on the Cars for Clunkers commercial, “This is a Government program and the rules are subject to change.”
