Rest In Peace. CARS (b. 23 July 2009 – d. 24 August 2009).

Few farewell words were spoken.

Four days to say goodbye.

CARS was gone before we knew it.

And only God and Obama know why.

The POTUS decided on 20 August 2009 to terminate the existence of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) following an end-of-life consultation session conducted by the Obama Administration.  Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, pre-announced the actual time of CARS’s death: Monday, 24 August 2009, at 8 PM (Eastern Standard Time), http://www.cars.gov/files/Windown%20Release%208.20.pdf.  Government functionaries will remove all systems that sustain CARS.  No stay is anticipated.  CARS has 3 more days to live. 

CARS was created during a statist orgy in January 2009.  A number of US Senators and Representatives participated in the bipartisan bacchanalia during which CARS was conceived.  Chuckie Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Susan Collins, Henry Waxman, Betty Sutton, Bart Stupak were among those who giddily delighted in the legislative carousal that spawned CARS.   Following a short gestation period, an extremely fragile CARS was born on 23 July 2009.  It almost perished less than 100 hours after birth due to postnatal complications which stemmed from a bloated and incompetent federal bureaucracy, a complete but typical lack of legislative forethought, and inadequate yet initally expensive funding.   CARS was placed on life-support in an intensive care unit.  It was nourished and revived by the infusion of an additional $2 billion “chump change” that Congress appropriated from the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). 

Secretary LaHood eulogized CARS for stimulating the economy.  He neglected to mention that macro-economic effect of CARS is negligible.  The positive dynamics of the program are short-term and temporary at best.  LaHood cited the public’s overly exuberant participation and the depletion of automotive dealer inventories as reasons for terminating CARS.  In the USDOT news brief, no mention was made of dealers abandoning the program, the backlog in reimbursement for dealers, the negative consequences on automobile repair shops, or the dearth of marketable pre-owned cars precipitated by CARS.  LaHood’s statement did mention that the USDOT will supplement “outside” contractors by using federal workers to process dealer applications for rebates.  These workers become part of the “3 million jobs saved or created” by the Obama Administration in its first 200 days.  One question remains unanswered by team-Obama: Why would the government terminate a program that it deemed so successful? 

CARS, a socialist love-child and play-thing, will have lived for 4 weeks and 4 days upon its ceasing.  This is a full 10 weeks shorter than originally conceived by Feinstein, Schumer, et alii.  The imminent death of CARS is of no concern to the kakistocrats in Washington.  Even as CARS expires they are concocting additional schemes to radically alter and integrally despoil American society.  They lust not only to reinvent the nation but to transform it into a dystopian state. 

No calling hours, no services, no shivah, and no pyre on the Potomac are planned for CARS.  Representatives of Toyota, Hyundai, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Kia will conduct a memorial service at Smokey Joe’s Ye Olde A-to-Z Junk Yard Shoppe and Used Auto Parts Emporium on Tuesday.  Those wishing to do so may send cards of condolences to any American taxpayer who did not, could not, or would not engage in CARS. 

Things will never be the same.

One minute CARS was here and now it is gone.

The human mind must be allowed to contemplate

the trying reality of senseless state planning.

CARS and Health Care

Put the government in charge of a desert and it would quickly run out of sand.  Those who believe that government is the primary means of solving a real or imagined problem are deluding themselves.

Andrew Cuomo (D/NY), New York Attorney General, announced his office has sent letters to 40 automobile dealerships throughout the state informing them they were running “misleading and deceptive” advertising directed at consumers, http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2009/aug/aug10a_09.html.  The advertising failed to specify eligibility requirements that consumers needed to fulfill in order to participate in CARS .

The CARS program was devised without cleverness or ingenuity.  The Congress and administration failed to fully weigh the costs and benefits of the program.  When the program exhausted the original $1 billion budgeted for it in less than a week’s time, Congress hastily muddled CARS by appropriating $2 billion for additional funding.

Now Mr. Cuomo disclosed that some dealers have exploited consumers.  Whether this was done intentionally or unwittingly is irrelevant.  It was wrong.  The dealers should have known better than those clunkers in Congress who conceived the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) and the POTUS who signed the bill into law.  Instances of fraud may come to pass.

There were some who presented arguments against the “cash for clunkers” program for weeks prior to its passage.  Their pleas fell on deaf ears in Washington.  Some citizens are now presenting objections, asking questions, and voicing concerns regarding health care legislation.  They are doing so despite their actions characterized as “un-American” in a USA Today op-ed piece that was written by U.S. Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D/CA8) and Steny Hoyer (D/MD5), http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/unamerican-attacks-cant-derail-health-care-debate-.html?loc=interstitialskip.   The article is disturbing.  Far from amusing, their cretinous statements are most repugnant.  Totally devoid of any semblance of statesmanship, the article is most inflamatory.  The Speaker and Majority Leader accomplished nothing more than whetting the appetites of the ninnies and dunderheads who are predisposed to Pelosi’s and Hoyer’s dystopian convictions.  

Take it from an “un-American”: should the deeply flawed health care legislation become law, and there is a good chance that it will, Americans will experience social, economic, political, medical, and moral repercussions for generations.  CARS is the latest in bungled and foolhardy governmental schemes and a presage of what ObamaCare will create.

A newfangled approach in town meetings

On Tuesday, 4 August 2009, a scheduled discussion, announced by Congressman Mike Arcuri (D/NY24) a week earlier, occurred at the Boehlert Center in Utica.  The topic of high speed passenger rail service was on the congressman’s pre-announced agenda.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D/MD5) also attended.  The meeting had an unanticipated and unexpected twist.  The legislators were challenged by a handful of constituents from the Fort Stanwix Tea Patriots and the Oneida County 9-12ers.  They challenged Messrs. Arcuri and Hoyer on the issues of the mounting federal deficit and the proposed health care overhaul.

The protest in Utica, small as it was, is but one example of dozens of demonstrations that U.S. senators and representatives from across the nation have encountered recently. 

The reactions of elected officials to the protests have become as polarized as the issues themselves.  House Speaker Pelosi (D/CA8) stated the protestors are “carrying swastikas and symbols like that” to meetings with their legislators.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D/NV) has accused the demonstrators of trying to “sabotage” the democratic process.  The President Obama has gone to the extreme of asking Americans to email the White House, flag@whitehouse.gov, with links to websites that oppose the administration’s health care proposals.  These efforts led to Senator John Cornyn (R/TX) to accuse the POTUS of compiling an “enemies list”.

Members of Congress are discovering that “town hall meetings” are becoming arduous undertakings as they are confronted by obstreperous constituents. 

Mr. Arcuri’s website, http://arcuri.house.gov/, has a “Meet With Mike” icon to that was intended for residents of the 24^th district “see when I’m [the congressman] coming to your community”.  Click the icon and no schedule appears.  The link is inoperative.  Constituents need not fret.  Mr. Arcuri has discovered a means to circumvent the traditional face-to-face nature of “town hall meetings”.

On 9 July 2009, Mike Arcuri held his first telephone “town hall meeting”.  This was reported in The Daily Star, http://www.thedailystar.com/local/local_story_190040006.html .  Mr. Arcuri “met” with as many as 6,000 of his constituents by speaking to them, not with them, in a session arranged by the AARP.  The AARP is lobbing for passage of ObamaCare.  The AARP position on the issue is found on its website, http://www.aarp.org/.  At the conclusion of the 30 minute bogus “town meeting”, 3 people were connected to Mr. Arcuri.  Only one person was able to ask a question; and, 2 calls were lost.  250 constituents said they wanted more information.  175 left voice-messages for the congressman.  An Arcuri spokesman characterized the event a “great” success.  More are planned.  That is either considered electrifying news that should pacify the masses or deemed a dazzling statement that should shock constituents.

It was at an AARP meeting in Virginia that Vice-President Joe Biden presented his unconventional and startling argument that the method to reduce the federal plunging federal deficit was to spend additional monies on entitlement programs like ObamaCare.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has cautioned that the present level of government spending is unsustainable.  Furthermore, the CBO has estimated the cost of the current proposed 1000+ page health care reform bill at over a trillion dollars.  Biden’s comment, which defied monetary sensibility and stunned economists, was warmly applauded by the administration.  The CBO reports, which displayed a common sense approach to our nation’s unsettled economy, were quickly dismissed by the Beltway majority.  

Yet advocates of ObamaCare are undeterred by the CBO’s portent.  Caution is thrown into the wind.  Americans are told health care is a crisis which demands immediate action despite the costs.  The American Medical Association has also endorsed ObamaCare.  That is tempered by the responses of physicians in a recent survey, http://sermo.com/.  91% of the doctors polled took the position that “the AMA does not reflect their opinions as physicians”.  Biden, Obama, the AMA, AARP comprise a fraction of a bloc of wastrels.  George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, said “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul”.  Mr. Arcuri is not yet committed to ObamaCare, but the AARP sponsorship of his newfangled approach to a town meeting may foreshadow his vote.  Contributors to his campaign financing, http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00027890, will play a major role in Arcuri’s final decsision on ObamaCare.  The irony is the “fat cats” do not even have to attend “town meetings”.

Mike Arcuri’s “town meetings” via telephones are shams.  The legislator needs to inform his constituents via his website of the places, times and locations of his public and open meetings with the residents of Congress’ NY 24^th district.   He needs to repair the broken link on his website.  Mr. Arcuri needs to reconnect with the people he represents.  Telephone conferences are an insufficient and faint-hearted approach by Mr. Arcuri to address weighty issues that impact all.  Americans, not just those living today but for generations to come, will experience the repercussions of the health care legislation.  There is no immediacy to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on hastily contrived government programs.   Members of Congress must honestly listen to the people they serve and not just pander to the special interests that purchase congressional votes.  This must begin immediately.  One question remains.  Is Mike listening?

“A man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them”  —  James Madison (1751-1836), principal author of The Constitution of the United States

 

                                                                  

 

Don’t hold your breath

The Observer-Dispatch reported that most of Congressman Mike Arcuri’s (D/NY24) campaign financing came from outside the 24^th Congressional District, http://www.uticaod.com/homepage/x1558729127/Arcuris-campaign-financing-mostly-from-outside-district.  There is nothing extraordinary about the source of money for this member of the House of Representatives.

There is one issue that is truly bipartisan in Albany and in Washington: make no effort to curb the use, misuse, or abuse of campaign funding.  Politicians in every political party on every level of government sustain themselves with money from special interest groups and individuals.  Campaign funding is their lifeblood.  Even on the local level candidates have raised and spent as much as $5000 when campaigning for an unpaid seat on a school board.  The condition becomes more evident on the state level; and, the reliance on PAC funding is most extreme on the national level. 

The expense of campaigning has dramatically risen over time.  Commercials, paid political announcements, are expensive propositions.  Neither Lincoln nor Douglas could survive today’s campaigning.  There are no sincere, face-to-face, toe-to-toe, rock’em sock’em, formal debates anymore.  They have sadly gone the way of a good 5 cent cup of coffee.  Replacing the old-style formal debates are the carefully orchestrated pseudo tete-a-tetes now aired on television and radio complete with formats agreed to in advance by the politicians’ handlers.  Politicians today rely on commercials.  These advertisements are expensive. 

Everyone is familiar with those canned, staged, humdrum, and obligatory images seen on television and in newspapers.  Smiling campaigner dressed in a sports jacket and tie (or pants suit).  Wife (or husband), the children, and the family pet pose at his (or her) side on a play ground or on the porch.  Images of their mistresses and liaisons may surface in the media long after the election concludes.  The American flag must appear at some point proudly waving in the background.  Then there is the blather: “Reelect me (for incumbents).  Send me to Albany/Washington (for challengers).  Vote for me.  I’ll represent you.  I’m for the people.  I’ll stand for your interest.” 

It costs money.  Much money.  It is all bunkum.  As politicians have become more jaded, the citizens have grown more wearied.

Voltaire, the eighteenth century French philosopher and essayist, wrote “…the art of government is taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other”.  There is a contemporary corollary, “…the art of campaigning is to take as much money from PACs to keep for oneself.”  Not all of the money is spent on signs, paid political announcements, advertisements, and the like.  Sometimes it is stored in freezers for future use.  Sometimes it is used by officials to preparing for the next stage in their careers as lobbyists.  How quaint.

The system of campaign financing is broken.  The only people in a position to repair the structure, satiated with PAC money and based on seniority, are the individuals who ravaged it.  Citizens should not anticipate an overhaul soon.

Sing Along Time

[A parody of the Kingston Trio’s They’re Rioting in Africa.]

They’re protesting from sea to sea, they’re griping across the domain.
There’s a drowning deficit in DC, and taxpayers are raising Cain.
The whole of America is festering with Orwellian controls.
Obama is crying over his numbers in the latest polls.
The statists hate the Reaganomics of Dutch.
And I detest socialism very much.

But we can be debtors, and doleful, and kowtowed,
For Washington allowed a multi-trillion dollar shroud.
And we are aware that some fateful day,
National Health Care will merely whisk us away.

They’re protesting from sea to sea, there’s fret about Big Brother’s plan.
What will follow is a reality: no one will live as a free man.

The Great Train Robbery Of 2009 And Beyond

Congressmen Michael Arcuri (D/NY24) and Steny Hoyer (D/MD5) were present at the Boehlert Center at Union Station in Utica on 4 August 2009.  High speed rail development was the agenda for the meeting.  Mr. Arcuri serves as a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  Mr. Hoyer is the House Majority Leader.  The Observer-Dispatch reported, http://www.uticaod.com/homepage/x1551839822/Arcuri-advocates-for-high-speed-rail-line, that the meeting was interrupted by members of the Oneida Country 9-12ers and the Fort Stanwix Tea Party Patriots who voiced concerns about ObamaCare and the propensity for soaring federal spending by the “Beltway Boys and Girls”.  Protests over the current administration’s improvident monetary policies are increasing thoughout the nation.

In March 2007, US Representative John Mica (R/FL7), a strong supporter of high speed rail according to his website, http://www.house.gov/mica/, estimated the cost of creating high speed rail in the Northeast Corridor alone amounted to $32,000,000,000.   He called for the use of private capital for the project.  Alexander Kummant, while he served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the federally owned National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak), testified at a House Transportation Committee hearing in March of 2007 following Mr. Mica’s reveling cost estimate.  The USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-07-11-amtrak-high-speed_N.htm, reported that Mr. Kummant stated that Amtrak’s ability to oversee a project of that magnitude would present a “serious challenge”.  Mr. Kummant believed that the railroad was better suited to administer project costing $200,000,000.

Apparently the circumstances today are quite different than in March 2007.  Obama promised change; and, change is what Americans are receiving.  It does not seem to matter that some of the change is not benefitting the citizens of this nation.  Washington has abandoned any notion of private capital to improve passenger rail service in the nation.  Government money is the only panacea for all real or imagined ills of America.  For example, the Obama administration can now, without the infusion of private investment, handle a rail project 450 times greater than the federal government could tackle only 24 months ago.  Amazing! 

The federal government allocated $9,300,000,000 to high speed railroads through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).  This was the onset of a colossal plan for high speed railroads in the United States.  The money is only a down payment on a much more encompassing federal plan that is estimated to cost at least $90,000,000,000 from the taxpayers.  Additional taxpayer dollars would subsidize and maintain the system after construction is completed.

On the New York State level, federal Gov. David Paterson disclosed his proposal for statewide improvements for freight and passenger service, http://www.ny.gov/governor/press/press_0309092.html, on 29 March 2009.  Aware that federal dollar were available, the governor unveiled his blueprint for railroads at a press conference and photo opportunity in the Rensselaer train station. 

The governor’s program comes with an estimated price tag of $10,700,000,000 over the next 10 years for improvements to the Empire segment of the US intercity passenger rail network.  The route’s hubs are in Niagara Falls and in New York City.  Paterson’s plan also identified a number of infrastructure projects with an estimated cost of $671,000,000 over 5 years.  Supposedly, the Niagara Falls to New York City express passenger trains would stop in Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Albany.  Paterson’s plan was immediately and warmly endorsed by a number of local, state, and federal officials who were intoxicated by the notion of spending more tax dollars. 

New York’s plan hinges on funding from the $9,300,000,000 earmarked for high speed rail development already obtainable through the ARRA and as the result of future federal monies. 

In April 2009, the Federal Railroad Administration, part of the United States Department of Transportation, outlined its strategy incorporating the Obama vision for the future of high speed rail in America.  Their plan is available online, http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/Final%20FRA%20HSR%20Strat%20Plan.pdf.  The plan was submitted “with great enthusiasm” by Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, with a commitment from President Obama to “the Nation’s travelers”.  Mr. LaHood also oversees the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  The NHTSA and Congress are responsible for the poorly conceived woefully contrived, and grossly underfunded CARS clunker.

In many respects the FRA raises more questions than it attempts to answer.  The FRA report omits a cost analysis of a national high speed rail project, and does not cite operational savings that might result from their concept of a high speed rail system.  The FRA has not considered the customary cost overruns of government projects, nor does it examine any additional federal subsidies to Amtrak beyond the current levels.  The FRA claims a reduction in carbon emissions in the United States of .05% if its plan were implemented.  However, the FDA does not document nor justify any of their figures. 

Furthermore, The FRA does not consider if the use of any alternative modes of transportation that might be a more economically and environmentally prudent choice rather than the FRA scheme.  It does not mention any added energy costs should the American Clean Energy and Security Act, Waxman-Markey, become law.  President Obama has already promised energy costs would skyrocket under the Waxman-Markey initiative.  Lastly, the FRA plan does not consider how the any probable seizure of land through eminent domain by the federal government will impact the rights of property owners. 

The FRA report superficially lists a number of challenges that high speed rail service must overcome: the lack of expertise and resources in the field of railroading, state fiscal restraints will affect how states could match federal dollars, the need to form partnerships with privately owned railroads, the necessity for multi-state and state-federal partnerships, and the requisite for new safety standards.  Sadly, no detailed or concrete solutions are provided by the FRA/USDOT.  Maybe that will become the task for an Obama yet-to-be-named or soon-to-be-named “rail czar”.  Memo to Rahm Emanuel: Sergei Witte is unavailable.

According to The Buckeye Institute, http://www.scribd.com/doc/16751266/High-Speed-Rail, it would cost $90,000,000,000 to construct an 8500 mile nationwide system.  Each Ohioan would take a round-trip every 19.5 years.  The Illinois Policy Institute also cites the $90,000,000,000 cost figure, http://www.illinoispolicyinstitute.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=1151.  The IPI states that if the high speed railroad becomes a reality it will carry riders an average of 58 miles per year.  Each Illinoisan would ride the rails once every 8.7 years.  Contrast that with the average of 15,000 miles per person per year in an automobile, according to the American Automobile Association. 

Do not expect America to have any Euro-style bullet trains in the near future either.  The costs of creating a bullet train rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles, http://dvice.com/archives/2008/05/220mph_californ.php, is a staggering $9,950,000,000.  It will take 2 decades to complete.  Is anyone interested in buying new California issued bonds?  With the steady decline of ridership by rails, the timeliness and expenditures of the FRA scheme is questionable.  In 1983 a comprehensive study on a high speed rail system for America was conducted, http://www.scribd.com/doc/4100524/US-Passenger-Rail-Technologies.  The exhaustive research and conclusions that it provides are still valid nearly a quarter century after the findings were released.  The social, institutional, and monetary (using 1983 dollars) aspects of high speed railroads were examined.  High speed rail was deemed not cost effective in 1983.  Why is it now suddenly economically feasible?  It is not.  The undesirable consequences of high speed rail outweighed any tangible or intangible benefits in 1983.   Nothing has changed to reverse that conclusion in 2009.  The cost-to-benefit differential is greater today. 

Many people mistakenly associate high speed passenger rail service with bullet trains.  The FRA does not even consider bullet trains within the realm of possibility.  The FRA plan merely projects an increase in the top speed of passenger trains from the current 79 mph to 110 mph.  Under the plan, average speeds would improve from 50 mph to 65-75 mph.  That would decrease the time of travel between New York City and Washington on the Acela Express about 20 minutes, for example.  If the FRA plan were implemented, the new railroad network would carry a paltry .3% of all passenger travel by 2025.

Americans submitted 137,000,000 tax forms to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in 2008 (2009 figures are unavailable).  The projected $90,000,000,000 minimum cost to realize the national high speed rail system will add $657 to the already existing tax burden. 

Think it is worth it?  Think again.  Today the price of a one-way ticket on Amtrak from Utica to New York City is priced at $76.  Adding your share of the pricy $90,000,000,000 project will increase the ticket price to $733.  You better plan to travel Amtrak often in the future in order to reduce your share of this Obama-FRA version of a ponzi scheme. 

Congressman Arcuri and House Majority Leader Hoyer though their hoopla and encomia are advocating adoption of another slippery Obama machination.  Poppycock!  The madcap measure is but one example of an ever-expanding central government and the belief it alone must control economic planning and policy.  The kakistocratic essence of our nation’s political elite is becoming more apparent and less appealing.  Please do not confuse the railroad expertise of Obama, LaHood, Hoyer, and Arcuri with that of Edward H. Harriman, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Leland Stanford.  Taxpayers do not need to be taken for a ride costing a minimum of $9,300,000,000 that could potentially mushroom to $90,000,000,000 at the very least.  The Obama-FRA proposal is potentially the greatest train robbery of all time.  Americans can find better ways to spend their hard-earned dollars. 

“Suppose you were and idiot.

And suppose you were a member of Congress.

But I repeat myself.”

—Mark Twain, American Author and Humorist (1835-1910)

——-

 The outstanding national debt of the United States at 12:52 PM on 4 August 2009 is $11,684,244,979,602.87

Your share of the debt is $38,099.97

Each day the debt increases by $3,960,000,000

Source: http://brillig.com/debt_clock/