Cash For Clunkers
 

How come no one has done the math? The $1 billion set up for rebates is supposedly used up but as of Saturday afternoon the govt had logged 80,500 transactions.

4500 x 80,500 = 362,500,000

That is just over 1/3 of the $1 billion set aside for rebates and the govt had thought it had run out of money for the program on Friday. Also not everyone gets $4500 for some people it is $3500.

Makes no sense!

Not all transactions have been logged yet?

Did in 4 days what should have taken 4 months. Or so I heard.

Lots of scamming going on, from both sides.

I very much doubt car dealers are taking cars, discounting the price $4500 and not filing for the "cash for clunkers" at the time of sale.

Maybe, people are lazy or they are just going to have a grunt do them in batches on x date.

With this kind of planning I cant wait for the health care :Oh crap

Our current system is awesome, wouldn't want to fuck that up.

Check the Pentagon! Rumsfeld announced on 9/10/01 that something like $1 or 2 trillion dollars was missing at the Pentagon.

The next day...well, we all know what happened, don't we?

How can these numbers really be anticipated? If anything the overwelming success of the program should be a good thing. With so many people buying new cars, the economy mustn't be that horrible.

16,153,952 cars were sold in 2007

http://ask.cars.com/2008/01/new-cars-sold-i.html

That is 44,250 a day. I would not call that unpredictable or that great of a success.

We will see how many cars and trucks they are selling a few months from now to see how successful it is.

Keep your eyes open

I am sure it costs something to administrate it.

Good point! Was the money just for the clunkers or for the whole program.

1/3 administration 1/3 stolen somewhere 1/3 goes towards the cars

My dad was saying there was a guy on the news down in jersey that is owed $800k for cars he sold.. and that's just one dealer.

It's possible if they thought it would take months to burn through the money that the entire 1 billion was not available from day one.

That's just one possible guess.

The way I understand it is that if your car qualifies you have to "apply" for the rebate. So what the dealers have done is give you the rebate and sell you the car so that you will buy it right on that spot then they file the application. So that 80,500 are the applications that have been processed, the rest are all sitting in a queue somewhere waiting to get approval. I think they were not quiet ready for the sheer number of people that turned out to buy.

The beauty of it all is that none of the books for any of the bailout plans are even close to complete or correct. The embezzlement and robbery is so outrageous and arrogant that most people refuse to believe it's actually happening.

I think that is the problem with most government spending. It seems like the larger the dollar amounts the less they care about exact book keeping. I have a friend that is a cop and he is the armorer for his agency. So he orders all the ammo, takes care of the guns and does the training. He has an annual budget of $3,000 for all of this. They make him give them receipts for every penny. Last year he lost a receipt so he only had receipts for $2,955 of it and they ripped him apart. They knew he didn't steal it because they have to cut the checks for things so they can go back and find the check, but they were still pissed he didn't have the correct receipt. This same city had a huge parks project that cost almost 2 million dollars. They took estimates, guess and the contractors gave them hand written receipts on scrap paper. In the end they assumed they spent all the money, but they weren't 100% sure because the book keeping was so fucked up it was hard to tell and nobody said anything.

lots of shady acts going on. people scamming dealerships with trash cars they just bought and dealership not checking and dealerships saying they get a rebate in the mail.

my friend told me he went to the used car dealer this weekend and they said he gets a $4500 rebate check within 6 weeks from the gov't. sad but i wonder how many people are failing for this

This program looks like its going to be a big success, for the economy, AND the environment... Its funny to see bat shit senile Senator John McCain and other members of the burning wreckage of what was once the Republican Party flailing around trying to obstruct this and any other positive program to help this country out of the mess the Cheney/Bush Administration has sunk this country into over the last 8 disastrous years.

C4C is a good idea, one of the few coming out of Washington, DC these days. It is smart to get old polluters off the road, and good policy to give government incentives for that. The bonafide stimulus to the US car companies is a nice added benefit.

The real question is: will government fuck it up and mismanage it? Odds are, yes.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

hmm this might fit here
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mqfuZ7hiap0

Who is coming up with these stupid ideas...? Just another way to waste taxpayer money and put people deeper into debt.

Make no mistake about