Cash for Clunkers – $24,000 Spent Per Vehicle
$24,000 spent per car in the Cash For Clunkers program! Now there’s a headline that should make most people mad. The irresponsibility of the government, car companies, and car buyers is disgusting. The average sale price of the cars was $26,000, the cars could have been given away with efficiency this bad.
I got this figure from Edmunds. I’ll admit that the figures are a little murky to say the least. There are many arguable factors. The point to be taken is that there was much more than the amount the government stated given for the trade-ins when you factor in all costs involved.
The whole premise that the government would give people far more for their trade-in than it was worth if you bought a care THEY thought you have, should have sent Americans running. First of all, they were doing this with taxpayer dollars. Would you ask your neighbor to chip in on your new vehicle? If you took part in this program, you forced him! You also accepted the make and model that the government chose for you. Now, consider your job stability. In these times, you may not have a job long enough to pay for those shiny wheels, so there is a chance you’ll default on the loan and you will have no car at all soon.
So you’ve got your shiny wheels and you can’t believe they gave you so much for your clunker. What a deal! Wrong! The car dealers seen you coming as soon as they got wind of the program. They set their price on the new car higher and wouldn’t budge on the price. You didn’t get any more for your trade-in when you consider that they price of the new car was set high. The car dealers stuck it to you as usual and they got the government to pick up the tab on your old car. Not only that, they trashed all of the used cars. Now the used car market isn’t flooded, thus keeping used car prices high.
The government is claiming this was a success! I’d hate to see another failure if this is success. All that they did was figure out a way to get taxpayer money directed back to the unions. If it gets back the unions, it can filter it’s way back to the politicians. You were their tool to make this happen.
Oh but you are driving a car that so much better for the environment and saving gas! Do some research and you’ll find that when you consider the massive amounts of energy it takes to create your new car, you’re actually harming the environment when you replace your clunker. Save that explanation for your next meeting with Al Gore.
I hope people learn from this little clunker deal what the government is doing with your money and how they are playing you for a sucker. If you’ve bought one of these shit wagons because the government told you to, please don’t lean on my old Chevy truck and scuff it up. You’ve leaned on us all enough.
How to Clean Up a Hard Drive
Cleaning a hard drive to free up disk space is a hassle. You don’t want to delete something important, but you don’t want to sift through the thousands of files to delete unwanted files either. Chances are, many of those unwanted files are not making a big impact on your drive space anyhow. With today’s huge drives, thousand of small unwanted documents may not make a dent in the problem. It is the movies you forgot to delete after watching, large program install files that you no longer need, programs you never use, and photos that you do not want.
What you need is a disk space tool that can dig into your drive and show you the largest files that are taking up space. That program is WinDirStat. It’s a free download. After installing WinDirStat, in a few minutes it will list all of the files on your computer and provide a visual chart to show you where the largest files are. From there it easy to find what you can remove. In a few minutes I found 20gb of files that I no longer needed.
For the photos, there is no easy way. I use Picasa to quickly scan through the photos and remove the duplicates and unwanted photos.
To check for rarely used programs, go to the control panel – add/remove programs, and then sort by frequency to find programs that you rarely use.
After you have removed the unwanted files. Empty the recycle bin, then defrag your drive to optimize performance.
Trip the Motorcycle Ranch Bike Show
Hocking Hills Motorcycle Ranch had a motorcycle show today. My family went down to check it out. There were about 15 motorcycles there and a band that I was really glad to hear quit. This was our first time to the “ranch”. The ranch had some ragged motorcycles you could rent, a shop that didn’t amount to much more than a Harley gift shop, and a patio with 2 picnic tables. That’s all there is to the motorcycle ranch itself, but the rest of the strip mall/flea market there was interesting.
The Hocking Hills is one of the few wonders in Ohio, so when you add fall foliage tourists, it turns into a traffic jam. I’ve been there so many times that the traffic jam just isn’t worth it to me in the fall. The wonder of the hills is the caves, you can see foliage all over the state. The Hocking Hills Market sets just north of the traffic jam’s start, making it a good place to stop.
The Hocking Hills Market appears to be just another tourist trap. I always passed it up thinking that I’ve seen enough trinkets from the area, so no need to stop. I was wrong. There is a flea market there that has all of the junk from Wal-Mart for cheap without the greeter and building. The shops all were reasonably priced and full of quality stuff. The best part was the Diner D’Argento’s great food. The waitress was polite and the hamburgers were great. They even got my order right, which is an oddity all in itself.
I will be stopping at the diner every trip to the hills from now on.
The Can Am Spyder and the BMW R1200 C caught my eye.
The Can Am Spyder
BMW R1200 C Cruiser
Documentary Stuff Debunked
I think it’s important that as many parents see debunked version of The Story Of Stuff.
The Story Of Stuff is a video currently being shown in public schools everywhere. It is so full of Socialist propaganda that the debunking commentator can’t make it more than 2 minutes without stopping to tell you about another myth, lie, or misrepresentation. She fails to represent material from her own research with accuracy!
The debunker does a great job explaining the documentaries faults, but you should think about why Annie Leonard has decided to misinform and persuade the youth. She seems like such a nice lady! She speaks like a child loving soul. How could she have bad intentions? I don’t know what she was doing while she was traveling all over the world for so many years, but she wasn’t learning much apparently. Look at her list of supporters and consider where they get there funding, they’re not friends of the United States by any assumption.
Since the producers of this documentary do not state their true intentions(or any other truths for that matter), I have to make assumptions about why they would need to lie to children in order to promote their agenda. The United States is particulary demonized in the video because they excel in the production of goods and they excel in the consumption. We have long held a position of power and wealth that the rest of the world envies. Our competitors have never been able to top us with straight out competition. The only way to beat us is to destroy the system which makes our way of life possible. Even current attacks on our economy and laws have proved to backfire on them. Destroy the youth’s will to succeed and you will weaken our country more than any other effort.
Anti-Capitalist Making Huge Money in a Capitalist World
It doesn’t happen often that a movie trailer catches my interest. Usually, I get a recommendation from someone about a movie before I bother with it. All it took to grab my interest for Michael Moore’s new movie was the title, Capitalism A Love Story. The irony that that one of the nations richest Anti-Capitalists was making a movie explaining the wrongs of the system that has made him one of the uber-rich sounds like a comedy, mystery, documentary, and drama all rolled into one.
Take one look at a list of Michael Moore’s material
For example, in Bowling For Columbine, he rants about gun control and links them to school killings. Not once does he mention that ALL school gun rampages were fueled by youths on psychotic drugs. He is so clueless to the real problem, that he wants to remove 2cnd Amendment rights as a response to poor parenting, poor medical diagnoses, and improper school supervision of children on psychotic drugs. Not to mention the education system actually receiving more money for the every child that they can claim to have a psychotic problem. Since I know he’ll never mention this root problem, I know that viewing his movie is a pointless liberal rant I can view nightly on MSNBC.
In Farhenheit 911, he’s going to tell us the “ugly truth” that the war in Iraq is all about oil. No kidding?! What investigative reporting. Everything you consume or use is derivative product of oil. Our entire modern way of life depends on it. Iraq has a bunch of oil. So is going to war over oil such a hard concept to grasp? That’s not the only reason we’re at war in the Middle East, but of course it’s a major concern. Anything this goof has to say on the matter, I can hear nightly on MSNBC.
And so goes my thoughts on everything he’s ever created, just more whining Liberal talk that provides no solution. But now, this guy has grasp my interest with Capitalism, A Love Story. My first thought is, “Is he going to come clean and explain why he actually loves Capitalism? Is he going to explain that America is so free that you can make your fortunes bashing it with unsubstantiated claims, while you enjoy the fruits of the system?” I look further into it and I find out that he’s going attack all corporations. At 10% unemployment, why not kick the country’s employers around a little right?
In the previews I already notice he’s going to start stepping on his own toes. One mention is a story in Pennsylvania where juveniles were sent to facilities on the most minor of charges to fill a private company’s pockets. Millions were tracked back to the judges. I thought that story would turn our entire system on it’s ear and we never heard a follow-up on the story. As he starts to explain that the government should never be tied to private interests, I think that he’s finally had a Conservative awakening. He even uses some quotes from the forefathers about the dangers of banking. Considering he cannot understand The Second Amendment, I was shocked that he understood anything our founders had written.
This interview with Larry King is very humorous and revealing. Mr. Moore gets very uncomfortable when he explains that 1% of the country holds 95% of the wealth, and he is in that top 1%! He then justifies that by simply explaining that it’s ok because he got his money making documentary films? You’re left scratching your head. Then he proceeds to explain the wrongs of the mortgage crisis using the Conservative viewpoint of how Capitalism SHOULD work. Then in the end, he twists everything back around by claiming that Liberal solutions could solve all of this.
Mr. Moore’s humble beginnings as an overpaid union auto-worker at GM makes me smile. Just the thought of this bafoon trying to operate on an assembly line had to be hilarious if you were not his boss. Mr. Moore got his media start by suing the Mother Jones magazine for a wrongful dismissal. He couldn’t follow instructions and as their editor, created a magazine that was even to far left for their taste. He’s taken that $58,000 win and used the stock market and and entertainment corporations to boost his net worth into well over $100 million. His current state of politics sounds like a 30 year old that has just figured out why Liberal ideals are childish and destructive, but yet he’s already profited beyond his wildest dreams from the system that he loathes.
His story could only happen in America and I think that is why I am so compelled to see this movie. I am pretty sure that my end decision will be finding a way to view the movie for free. I just can’t stand the thought of contributing one cent to Michael Moore’s fortunes.
