Cash For Chuckleheads

I really don't like the "Cash For Clunkers" program.

First, the supposed environmental benefits are "middling" at best. There are far more effective ways to use tax dollars to save the planet.

Then there's the moral hazard. The most common trade-ins include Ford Explorers and Chevy Blazers. Why should we reward people who made lousy mileage decisions? We should be letting the free market punish those decisions. I'd much rather reward the guy whose '95 Civic is still going strong.

Finally, the economic stimulus. Short-term stimulus for car makers and dealers, yes. Woohoo! But what happens six months from now? Remember employee pricing, the superstar of 2005? Remember what happened a year later, when there was no more demand in the pipeline? Remember the bankruptcies of 2008? A taxpayer-funded price cut isn't a rescue plan, it's a leaky life preserver in the middle of a big ocean.

So this is one of those odd moments where I find myself in agreement with immoderate Republicans like Jim DeMint. "Cash For Clunkers" gives Joe Taxpayer a piece of bail-out pie, so it's enormously popular. But that doesn't make it good policy. It's as misguided as the huge Wall Street bail-outs.

Another One Bites The Dust

Just for the record, I predicted Palin's resignation months ago. Sure hope I'm right about the scandal part, too. That would explain her odd decision to announce her abdication on July 3rd.

At Least We Knew Where Clinton Was

Turns out South Carolina mystery man Mark Sanford was out getting his package stimulated. First Ensign, now this.

Feel free to insert your own remark about astonishing Republican hypocrisy here. I'm worn out.

The Company We Keep

According to this Amnesty International study, the U.S. had the fourth-highest number of executions in the world in 2008. First, second, and third were China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Fifth was Pakistan.

Granted, absolute numbers that don't adjust for population are skewed. And, granted, the U.S. number is going down. Still - Iran? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Do we want our country on this list?

And anyone who abhors the idea of spending tax dollars to keep killers alive should read this Economist article. Life imprisonment is cheaper than execution.

Actual Numbers Trump Vague Threats

Daniel Gross has a very nice analysis of Republican tax increase FUD. If you're making $300K, you'll pay an extra two grand in taxes. Is that really going to drive a lot of successful entrepreneurs onto the welfare rolls?

Republican Lies!

I know, "Republican Lies!" is like "Rain In Seattle!" But this one is so flagrant.

Those high-earner tax increases that the Republicans keep whining about? They don't take effect till 2011. That's twenty months from now.

We can debate the dubious assertion that a modest tax increase turns entrepreneurs into slackers. We shouldn't have to debate how a calendar works.

I Accept Full Responsibility For This Post

Timothy Geithner is the latest government official to take (or "accept") full responsibility for a mess. So much courage in the public sector! But there's always an unspoken asterisk - full responsibility, as long as there are no consequences. As long as I don't lose my job. As long as it doesn't cost me anything.

In Geithner's case, the statement is especially absurd. Of course he's fully responsible - he did his own tax returns. Does he imagine that he's taking the heat off Intuit? Were fingers pointing their way because they left the "Do you work at the IMF?" question out of Turbotax's canned Q&A?

But even when the responsibility-taker sits atop an org chart and really is talking about the mistakes of people down below, the statement is meaningless. It's easy to take full responsibility when there are no consequences. How about "I accept full responsibility for my team's mistakes, and therefore I'm resigning"? That would mean something.

See Ya, Dubyuh

Well, it's almost over. We're getting our country back. We rented it out to some lousy tenants, and they did a lot of damage to the place, but the eviction notice stuck this time. Soon we can start to repair things. (Except for the Supreme Court appointments. They'll be around for a long time, occasionally causing pain and embarrassment. Like herpes.)

Bush has had a chance to watch Obama in action for two months now. I wonder if he sees the difference, if he's picking up even a glimmer of how a real leader does things. Maybe he has a clue now about what went so wrong for the last eight years.

Probably not.

Connect The Dots

• Chrysler Shuts Factories For A Month


• PT Cruiser Does Poorly In Crash Tests - December 2008


• PT Cruiser Does Poorly In Crash Tests - August 2000

Mysteries of Newspaper Delivery, continued

The Times was on the porch this morning, where it belongs. But it was raining hard, so even a slacker might have felt compelled to do the right thing. No holiday card yet.

On The Motives of the Paperboy/Woman/Man

For a certain kind of ex-New Yorker, the Sunday Times is a big deal. Now that I have a porch, I really look forward to stepping outside in my pajamas and scooping up the One True Newspaper. We've been getting delivery for about a year and a half; for most of that time, it was bliss.

Then, about six weeks ago, things fell apart. Two weeks in a row, the paper ended up not on our porch, but on the sidewalk. Dangerous. The Sunday Times comes rolled up in a plastic bag. It's the size and shape of a fireplace starter log, plenty big enough to launch a pratfall. And a lawsuit.

We figured there was a new delivery person on the route. We complained. The Times promised to fix it. They did, sort of. For the last month, no more sidewalk, but no porch either. Instead, the paper has consistently landed somewhere on the steps in between.

Now, this morning, the paper was back on the porch! Small miracle. Cynic that I am, I immediately assumed that the new, lousy delivery person was upping the service level in anticipation of a holiday tip.

Upon reflection, I've come up with some other possibilities. Maybe the pre-holiday timing is a coincidence. Maybe there were more complaints, and the new person was forced to start doing the job right. Or maybe there were more complaints and s/he got canned, or quit, and the new new person is doing it right. Or maybe someone was filling in for the original person for a couple of months; now she's back and doing her usual splendid job.

In the next few weeks, the delivery person will drop off the holiday card/tip solicitation. If the name matches last year's, I'll have the answer. If not, I'm left with my theories...the holiday card. That's where I had them.

How About Al Gore For EPA Administrator?

My wife's idea. Sounds like a winner. Sure hope the transition team reads my blog.

Leaving Office In Disgrace? You Betcha!

A lot of people think Sarah Palin has a political future. I think her past is catching up with her: ethics violations, bridge-to-nowhere flipflops, secret Yahoo email accounts to sidestep Alaska's public records laws.

This is the future of the Republican Party? Sounds more like the greatest hits of Nixon and Bush.

Many Alaskans have strange ideas about morality, but I don't think Governor Palin will make it to the end of her first term. Let the hue and cry begin.

Balanced Journalism, Richmond-Style

As long as the Times-Dispatch reports lynchings-in-effigy for both sides, they're on the high road.

Support Car Ribbons

When you start seeing these everywhere, just remember that I started it.

How The Other Half Lives

I was standing outside a bar last night (does a common theme emerge in these posts?), talking politics with some people. We started listing the various canards and pseudo-evidence that might keep a poorly-informed voter from supporting Obama: He's a Muslim, a terrorist, a member of Al Qaeda, his middle name is Hussein...

A woman standing nearby yelled, "That's not true, and I'm voting for him!" Great, right on, we responded. But, "You need to get your facts straight!" she yelled. No, we were joking, we explained. "Doesn't sound like joking to me," she said, and returned to her cellphone.

In short, she was an intrusive pain in the butt, far more interested in excoriating than in educating. She's voting the right way, but I wonder how many votes she's cost Obama with her hectoring.

And I got a sense of how folks on the right must feel when we true believers explain things to them. It's not fun to have a stranger yell at you. It doesn't make you reconsider; if anything, it makes you even more certain that Obama and his supporters are scary.

I understand the frustration - we're fighting racism and a massive campaign of lies. But it doesn't matter how right we are - stay calm, or stay silent.

I'm Calling It Now: Obama Wins Virginia

I was at a blues party this past Sunday. I was wearing my Bush's Last Day t-shirt. The guy sitting in front of me was wearing a B-52 bomber peace sign t-shirt, "Peace The Old-Fashioned Way." White guy, middle-aged.

I told him we probably disagreed on all sorts of things, but I thought his shirt was cool. He told me I was making assumptions that might be wrong. We chatted. He was right.

He's a vet, served in a bomber wing, is proud of it. But he had no problem with my t-shirt. As a conservative Bush voter, he feels "betrayed," and his feelings about the Iraq war match mine: senseless, the wrong war.

He's not thrilled with either presidential choice, and he wouldn't say how he's planning to vote. But he did say that he hopes that "young man" can lead the country. So, again, this is a prototypical McCain voter who's actually somewhere between uncertain and Obama.

Another reminder that, in these polarized times, there are smart people in the middle with nuanced views.

Finally, a caveat, my margin of error: I do most of my political fieldwork with a bellyful of good beer. Unlike the media elite, however, I admit it.

My Money Went To Wall St. And All I Got Was This Lousy Bailout

Good thing Congress acted so quickly to reduce market volatility.

OMG Democracy!

The richest, strongest special interests lost one today. Whatever their reasons, an odd coalition of House Republicans and Democrats said no to business as usual.

Will it last? I'm not optimistic. But, for one day, it's possible to believe that maybe, just maybe, we can wrest control of our government back from the lobbyists.

$700 Billion

The argument goes something like this: we have to do something, or thousands of people in the financial industry will lose their jobs. Banks, leery of taking on more bad debt, will stop lending money, and we'll have a credit crunch. If no one can borrow money, that'll prolong the housing market collapse. Thousands of people in construction will lose their jobs. More people out of work means more people behind on their mortgages, more foreclosures, more bad debt and failing banks. A downward spiral. The bottom? A recession, or maybe this century's Great Depression.

Okay, let's put aside for a moment the very necessary discussion of just how likely this doomsday scenario really is. Let's stipulate that, if we do nothing, disaster will play out just this way. Let's assume that we have to do something radical and expensive to avert calamity.

That still leaves a $700 billion question: is a huge bailout for bad debt the best way to stop the meteor? Right now, it's the only solution the Bush administration is offering: make taxpayers the buyers of last resort for Wall Street's mistakes.

But $700 billion is a lot of money. It can pay for a lot of restructured mortgages to keep people in their houses. It can pay extended unemployment benefits for a lot of laid-off workers. And it can ease a credit crunch by guaranteeing debt - new, solid debt issued by lenders willing to submit to rational regulation in return for a federal guarantee. The kind of debt that gets repaid.

Any Wall Street dealmaker knows that you don't take the other guy's first offer. We taxpayers should keep that in mind as we look at the Administration's bailout plan.