IS CASH FOR CLUNKERS REALLY ENDING ON AUGUST 24,2009?

[Get the latest "Truth With Speedzzter" here]

According to several media reports, the Obama administration will stop dealer funding for the "Car Allowance Rebate System [sic] at 8 p.m. August 24, 2009. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also announced that the $3,000,000,000.00 appropriated is nearly all gone.

Is this the end of "Cash for Clunkers?"

Don't bet on it.

Washington D.C. is the one place on Earth where obvious failure can guarantee a program's continued viability.

As David Freiburger's prescient editorial in the October '09 Hot Rod Magazine predicts, the Congress will whitewash the dubious environmental benefits of the "Car Allowance Rebate System" [sic]. This will provide "cover" for the next round.

There WILL likely be a NEXT ROUND.

Truth With Speedzzter predicts that then superlobbyists like the Dave McCurdy of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers will cajole Congress into renewing the "Cash for Clunkers" welfare/bailout plan as a means of: (a) furthering the recovery; (b) reducing the newly bloated inventory of FWD wimpsters that won't sell without about $10,000.00 "cash on the hood;" and (c) making sure that New GM and Chrysler can "pay back" a fraction of the billions the taxpayers have invested in them.

The OEMS have jacked up production. Dealer lots bulging with non-selling enviromobiles will play right into this scheme.

The OEM, labor, dealer, and environmental lobbyists will use the declining impact of the CARS welfare plan and the horrible job that NHTSA has done in administering it to dramatically reduce the restrictions on what can be traded in during the next go-round of sodium silicate vandalism.

Moreover, if Cap and Trade somehow becomes law, utilities and big industrial concerns will likely devise "crusher plans" to "trade" as "offsets" or "credits" for their carbon emissions.

So why do they want to destroy old cars?

In the blinded minds of the radical, freedom-hating Greens, racing, hot rodding, tuning, customizing, antique car collecting and other grassroots automotive pursuits involving historic vehicles are "killing the Planet." These freedom-hating, power-grabbing, "we-know-what?s-best-for-you" environuts cannot fathom why anyone would waste their time pursuing any automotive hobby or automotive aftermarket vocation in the first place. They will never understand that participation in these automotive pursuits often define much of who we are (just as hiking in the woods, eating tasteless vegan food, and blocking the fast lane in their slow, wimpy Priuses defines who they are).

The liberal "true believer" greens see such "Car Crazy" "rebels" as an impediment to their dream of banishing internal combustion and the 20th Century "car culture" to the ashcan of history. And the only way to "kill the Car Nuts" and subjugate them to the "uniform, happy, shiny, government-designed, sanitized, tamper-proof, disposable electro-micro car 'reservation'" is to flatten the "obsolete," "dirty," "rebellious" objects of our "Car Crazy" passion. In other words, crushing our supply of historic and milestone parts cars and "project cars," and thereby destroying the businesses which depend on them is in essence the "slaughtering of our buffalo."

Just as slaughtering the buffalo didn't exterminate all of the Plains Indians, a well-heeled and resourceful remnant will survive [the] war on Automotive "choice." But our "tribes" will be much smaller, much more insular, and much less diverse. And the "entry costs" for participation will escalate dramatically.

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Make no mistake about it, "Cash For Clunkers" is still a declaration of war against the automotive aftermarket and all "old car" automotive-based hobbies. The current suspension is merely a truce, not the end of hostilities.