What does that even mean?

It means the Thugs are grasping at straws.

BT, honey, I know you know better than to expect sense from Michele Bachmann.

She and her ilk can’t even admit that a program funnelling money directly to consumers/citizens works. Bailout? Hardly. If this had been done a year earlier (let’s see, who was in charge then?), maybe the auto companies wouldn’t have had to be “bailed out.”

I think Michelle Bachmann embodies the whole spirit of cash for clunkers. After all, she does get paid cash and if there ever was a clunker, it’s her.

If Bachmann can have top-notch low-cost health care, everybody should.

Seconded

It means they are SORE LOSERMANS!!!!!!!!1111!!!!

You see, Republicans and too many Dems know that unlike huge government subsidies of big corporations, you and I aren’t going to funnel a portion of our $4,500 back to a senator. And when they’re finally booted out of office we aren’t going to have a high-paying job waiting for them.

That just doesn’t seem fair.

Now if they had renamed it “Cash for Congress” I’m sure Republicans would have been unanimous in their support.

That too, yes.

when they’re finally booted out of office we aren’t going to have a high-paying job waiting for them

Perhaps they could sell used cars.

The problem with the cash for clunkers program is twofold: it came from the WH and it seems to be very popular.
It’s shameful that the republicans do not see how the cfc program encourages people to buy cars resulting in more dealerships being able to keep their businesses open, more energy efficient cars being built, more people who work for auto suppliers to keep their jobs, etc.
Michele Bachmann is the epitome of a waste of congressional space. It is no wonder the RNC is looking for someone to run against her in 2010. The average person who is not tone deaf would have cleaned up his/her act by now after making as many mistakes as Bachmann has, but she is clueless and lacks skills for introspection.

Maybe they’ll be better at selling them than at buying them.

Weren’t the Republic’s tax cuts for the rich an example of the government picking winners and losers? I wish Hensarling and Bachmann would clear that up for me.

So, to set the record straight.
When a stimulus such as infrastructure repair does not show immediate results, it is ineffective, and when a stimulus such as cash for clunkers exceeds all expectations stimulating sales, it is ill-conceived.

Another word for picking is choice, a non-Republican concept as well.
on the other hand, they seem to be find with Deciders.

I’ve got an idea for a new TV show called McGOPper.

The main character is a Republican politician who finds himself in death-defying situations and each episode shows him come up with a complex and innovative way to use tax cuts to save himself.

He’s dangling from a fraying rope over a vat of acid while a time bomb ticks closer to zero. Using only a pocketknife and his dedication to free market economics he miraculously saves himself (though the acid ends up spilling all over a bunch of poor people).

What does that even mean?

It means Their Still Crazy after all this Time!

If Michelle and Sarah keep this up people are going to have to quit with the blonde jokes and start telling brunette jokes.

(With apologies to brunette firepups).

I believe you’ve boiled it down to the essentials!

And of course, cash for clunkers is the opposite of the govt “picking winners and losers” – the customer chooses the dealer and brand he buys from, then the money is issued. Gov’t has nothing to do with it except sending the money for the subsidy.

But of course, Bachmann doesn’t think, she just rreaches into her grab bag of “Canned Repub Responses to any Democratic idea” and pulls one out at random. She doesn’t bother to look at it to see if it matches, she just tweets it, announces it, emails it, whatever.

wasn’t Hensarling one of the sawed off gits screaming about the poor Chrysler Dealerships about a month back ?

Hensarling, R-Big Oil.

This clown serves on the Warren Commission, and files a dissent to almost every report.

Perhaps they could sell used Clunkers cars.

It’s premiering on Fox this fall.

Bread and circuses.

The impression you seem to be going for is that being against “cash for clunkers” is necessarily an irrational right wing conspiracy.

I am certain that I am not alone in being for a single-payer health system, against the too-large-to-fail bailouts and against the cash for clunkers program. My guess is that simply taking the opposite side of every issue that Bachmann says might make one correct 80% of the time. Personally I don’t care what Bachmann thinks and I don’t intend to allow her to make any of my decisions, either for or against.

BTW high demand for getting a piece of a taxpayer financed giveaway that is being used to generate profits for automobile dependent businesses does not prove that program works, what it proves is that there are a lot of people that want to something for nothing. I’d trade this program for single-payer or even a good public option any day. Even if I weren’t eligible for coverage.

I guess I am in the opposition on this one. It doesn’t make sense that so many billions go to helping sell a few cars and take a few guzzlers off the street. If they spent the money “fixing” solid but otherwise “good” and “economical” cars, they would have made a hundred thousand more people happy and driving clean used cars around. The guys and gals fixing them at private auto shops number 10,000 to one vs. auto dealers. So much more money would have been spread around to the various communities, not just the ones that have really dumb auto dealers. No one profits from this but the one that has the otherwise useless inventory, and who is rich enough to get a loan. Even for a car, in this depression economy with the banks not lending. I can’t see it as anything but a costly bailout for auto dealers only that are stupid enough to have purchased inventory, a whole year after it was known to be a major depression. This is enabling true stupidity and greed in my book.

there was some environmentalist on Tweety complaining that the program was allowing way to high mileage cars to qualify for purchase.

You make some good points, but do you agree that there’s a benefit to getting hundreds of thousands of really fuel inefficient vehicles off the roads? The question is — are those benefits worth $2-3B? IMO, they are.

To me, the stimulus via auto sales is a secondary benefit, but a significant one.

“The government can’t run “cash for clunkers” properly, never mind your health care.”

Please excuse my stupidity, but as I understand it the government ran the CFC program so well, it’s already out of money, right? Right?

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” If Rod Serling were alive today, the Congresswoman from Minnesota would give him unlimited seasons worth of scripts.

This is a crazy program . I have a 2004 Jeep Cherokee with 50,000 mile on it. I went on line to the Cash for Clunkers site and put in the data and it said I can get a $3500-$4500 rebate on a new car that gets better mileage. I thought his was to get clunkers off the road not 2004 cars with 50k miles.

The key is this:

If the new vehicle has a combined fuel economy value that is at least 10 miles per gallon higher than the traded-in vehicle, the credit is $4,500.

the local Chrysler Dealer makes no mention of that

# Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
# Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
# Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
# Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
# You don’t need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
# Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
# The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

emptywheel has this up now on the extension

…

Early statistics from automotive dealers on the CARS Program, commonly known as Cash for Clunkers, show clunker consumers getting a 69% mile-per-gallon (mpg) improvement which saves them an average of $750 in gas bills a year by replacing their clunker with a new fuel efficient vehicle. “After gas and repair savings many consumers will spend less to drive a new car then they were spending to keep their clunker on the road,” says Sharon O’Connell, the director of http://www.CashForClunkersInformation.org. “If consumers miss their old cruiser they can buy another one with the $750 they save in gas.” The organization interviewed some of the largest dealers in the country who have been selling vehicles to clunker consumers for almost a month and their findings were released today in their “clunker report.”

…

A clunker is also a gas guzzler and a high polluting vehicle like yours and Hummers, etc.

I wonder how many owners of 4-wheel drive vehicles have taken advantage of the program. You know, the folks who drive the humungous 4-wheel tanks that the only off-road time they’ve seen is when they have to park in their friend’s yard cuz there’s no room on the street or at the flea market to buy knock-off Oakley sunglasses.

I’m shocked that the program has been so successful, considering the severe restrictions on trade-in vehicles that it has.

For example, I was considering trading in our ancient second vehicle, a 1995 Dodge Caravan… only it has much better mileage than your trade-in has to have.

From Cars.gov:

There are several requirements (but you also have to meet certain conditions for the car or truck you wish to buy). Your dealer can help you determine whether you have an eligible trade in vehicle. Your trade-in vehicle must
*have been manufactured less than 25 years before the date you trade it in
*have a “new” combined city/highway fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less
*be in drivable condition
*be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for the full year preceding the trade-in
*The trade-in vehicle must have been manufactured not earlier than 25 years before the date of trade in and, in the case of a category 3 vehicle, must also have been manufactured not later than model year 2001

So my 14 year old hand-me-down van, which leaks transmission fluid like a sieve and burns oil like a pyromaniac, is too GOOD to qualify. I found that hilarious, in a grim way.

It also seems like the program rewards people who purchased really nasty gas guzzlers the first time around, and punishes those who were more fuel conscious before it paid cold hard cash. After all, you CAN trade in some 2 year old Hummer monstrosity… but not an aging minivan.

Bank Bailout: When a Bonus Exceeds Earnings, How is It Not Fraud?
upstairs

The government can’t run “cash for clunkers” properly, never mind your health care.

here’s what that means;

“republicans hate government, if you have a succesful program we will undermine it, if you can make services more efficient we will spoil it

we hate government”

that’s why it is insane voting for a republican, when a republican is in office their purpose is to undermine anything that is working and exploit anything that doesn’t

bash for de-bunkers
dash for dunkers
flash for flunkers
hash for hunkerers
lashes for lunkers
passion for punkers
sashes for the sunken

If Bachmann’s against it, I’m for it.

She’s the new auto-weathervane, replacing George W Bush. There’s nothing she favors that I don’t oppose.

Oh, wait — she’s cosponsoring Grayson’s Fed audit bill, right? Oh well, stopped clocks and all that….

(Somebody slap that auto-punaise on its head, it’s generating crazy talk!)

For those not all that familiar with Pilgrim’s Pride founder Bo Pilgrim, this is a reminder from a Trading Markets.Com article:

Bo Pilgrim has long been the company’s public face, appearing on TV commercials in a black pilgrim-style hat and holding a hen while promising never to sell you a yellow chicken. A giant fiberglass bust of the poultry mogul in his trademark 17th-century headgear crowns a pavilion outside a sprawling chicken distribution center here.

The public face was sometimes an open embarrassment. When he wanted state senators to vote a certain way on a workers’ compensation bill, Pilgrim didn’t outsource to an Austin lobbyist.

Just off the floor of the state Senate, he personally handed out envelopes stuffed with $10,000 checks in 1989, when it was still a legal practice to make such brazen overtures. In a 1993 interview with Texas Monthly, Bo denied he was bribing lawmakers, insisting the checks were just so many “campaign contributions.”

The certain way he wanted senators to vote was, of course, to constrict workers compensation provisions.

A 2004 is certainly not a polluter and I can get 21 miles to the gallon on the hiway –Not all SUV fit your neat little catagory.

I just did the same with the info you gave me and it cam back NOT ELIGIBLE so am I missing something?

Actually I heard on NPR that the dealerships are having trouble getting the trade-ins authorized – the dealer they interviewed said that there is a 28 page document that needs to be filled out exactly right and if there are any errors on the form it doesn’t qualify – so at least in Minneapolis they haven’t been able to process any. So Bachmann is actually right on this so far. It sounds like they didn’t do a good job of thinking the actual process through.

I just put the information in again and was “Congratulated” on my car qualifying for the rebate —Don’t know what you entered –

thanks, I needed that.

Best success yet of the Stimulus plan it needs more money I’m thinking 10 billion just take it out of the war budget. Don’t mind the GOP they say everything is a failure before it starts Nattering Nabobs of Negativism.

How about we just make her an honorary blonde? Throw Palin in there as well.