This can’t stop with cars! Look people, Obama and his stooges have seemingly overlooked lots of areas where government can get involved, take over, and bribe everyone. All in the name of cutting oil consumption of course, and ’greening’ up America. (It has nothing to do with socializing everything, growing government, raising taxes, and turning America into a Soviet Union. Naturally!).
Take light bulbs for instance. There are probably hundreds of millions of those old fashioned, current gobbling, short lived, clunker, incandescent light bulbs, innocently screwed into sockets and burning happily, just as those ’clunker’ cars were innocently performing. Just imagine the bonanza for all the Chinese made fluorescent bulbs. “Turn in your old current gobbling, ’clunker,’ light bulbs and receive a dollar each towards the purchase of a new, efficient, Chinese made fluorescent bulb.” A light bulb czar would be appointed and a few hundred bureaucrats hired to supervise the idea, with all old useable, but current gobbling, ’clunker’ bulbs being atomized in front of a bureaucrat before he handed out the credit slips. No cash would be issued, as it might get spent rather than buying a new Chinese made fluorescent bulb.
Consider ’clunker’ windows. There are hundreds of millions of old fashioned single pane ’clunker’ windows in those hideously inefficient wood frames, which let gobs of heat and cold into homes, thereby costing a lot of energy. Naturally, these hundreds of millions of ’clunker’ windows work perfectly, and are architecturally excellent, but they are inefficient, and we must stop that at all cost. You say you can afford to pay for the inefficiency in your 1885 home? Too bad Charlie, we must be ’green’ you know. Far more energy is wasted on old fashioned windows than with gas guzzler ’clunker’ cars. Just think of the potential! A window czar and suitable bureaucrats to oversee the demolishing of old fashioned windows, with suitable credit issued for new, double pane, efficient windows. Then maybe government could get involved in the window industry by limiting the salaries of top executives under the pay czar, checking on factory pollutions emitted, (unless they are in China), by the pollution czar, and cost of transporting under the transport czar. The opportunity for hiring endless D.C. bureaucrats and making the Obamanment more involved and dictatorial, is monumental.
The possibilities are endless. Old ’clunker’ refrigerators, ’clunker’ dishwashers, ’clunker’ microwave ovens, and ’clunker’ air conditioners, are not nearly as efficient as the new ones. They work perfectly of course, but they use a lot more electricity, which isn’t very ’green,’ and we’ve got to make Al Gore happy, make America efficient, and make our ’carbon footprint,’ whatever that is, smaller. So let’s be patriotic, and turn in all the old ’clunker’ refrigerators, ’clunker’ microwave ovens, ’clunker’ dishwashers, and ’clunker’ air conditioners, which use all that extra current. Even though they work perfectly, Uncle Obama will issue credits, and a czar will supervise the whole thing with the normal number of bureaucrats on had to see to it that all these usable, wonderful appliances are crushed into smithereens before a credit is issued towards the purchase of new, efficient ones. Then, America can go hopelessly in debt for the new appliances, just like they have for those new cars after the ’clunkers’ had their engines seized. Then the banks can foreclose on the new stuff, not know what to do with them, and we’ll be off to the credit default races again. Americans can’t resist a sale or refund, so they’ll go for it head over heels.
Then there are those run down, crummy, fuel inefficient, ’clunker’ houses, many of which are over-mortgaged, with owners over their heads in debt. We wouldn’t want those inefficient ’clunker’ houses to remain, would we? Think of the utility bills for those ’clunker’ homes with lousy insulation, and old fashioned wiring and furnaces. Just pay them off, and let the fire departments burn them as practice. Give the former owners a stipend so they can get started again in a far more efficient, new home. Pay the old mortgage off, so the banks will be off the hook, and presto! We have ’greened’ America at a cost of only a few trillion, and what’s a few bucks to the Obamanment which has the presses to turn out the bucks? You say that foreigners have about had enough of buying American debt? Not to worry, government print it and buy it themselves! There’s no limit to government creativeness.
And then we all seem to love the ’clunker’ green lawns, which are a hideous waste of fuel and water. Let’s have a green lawn czar, who will issue credits to everyone who gravels over their lawns, and saves all that pollution from lawn mowers and water to irrigate them. For every ’clunker’ green lawn destroyed by a bureaucrat, and a gravel one substituted, a hundred dollar check will be issued, and the proud new owner of the gravel lawn will sign a contract to leave it that way for ten years. Think of the expenses of water, lawn mowing, gas, fertilizer and weed control that will be saved. Maybe the czar could issue a $50 check when your old lawn mower is crushed or its crankcase filled with sodium silicate, and made to run till it locked up. (That process with cars makes me ill).
Why stop at ’clunker’ homes, ’clunker’ windows, ’clunker’ cars, and ’clunker’ appliances? Look at all those old ’clunker’ geezers which are sucking the life blood out of the health care system. Under the Obama plan, operations and expensive care will be denied to oldsters beyond a certain age anyway, so why not nip the problem at the bud? Every over 65 geezer with a severe medical problem such as cancer, stroke, major heart attack, or the like, will just be euthanized, given a free burial, and their relatives given money for not having them around any longer to love, adore, and care for in their declining years. Isn’t that the way the Ruskies did it under Stalin. and the chinks under Chairman Mao? Let’s get America really straightened out!
Maybe we can do as Hitler tried to do, and have ’super Americans’ with all the blue eyes and blond hair that Hitler wanted to reproduce endlessly, and of course be brought up and brain washed in Nazi schools. Or copy the chinks who prohibit having more than two kids, and if it’s a girl, they seem to mysteriously disappear. We could do that too! Simply take the smartest and handsomest kids, and put them under control of the Obamanment, so they can be raised in the nurture and admonition of liberal Democrats. There is always a way when government is in charge.
When the hyper-inflation really gets under way, the Obamanment can do as the Germans did in the 1920’s. Rather than print new money, just stamp the old with a few extra zeros. After getting off the plane Monday, returning from Bonnie’s 50th class reunion, we were a bit hungry, so we went to a Taco Bell, which is not my favorite place. I do like their deluxe burritos though, and the last one I bought was probably a few months ago. They were then $1.60, and now $2.09, which is a 27% increase. I know, the minimum wage has been increased, and I am sure everything else has been raised as well, even though they are the same things. Prices gone up, or money gone down? The premiums over spot gold and silver prices are up from a few years ago too, because of increased labor costs, utility costs, fuel and transport costs, and machinery and repair costs, plus probably ’czar costs.’ Same gold and silver, but the costs to turn them out over the spot price at the mine has increased. Same way with every single thing we buy, so get used to it, because once hyper-inflation gets started, never in history has it ever been arrested. Absolutely never. It just increases, because no one has ever figured out how to control a government, and ours is out of control, with a President urging it on with all deliberate speed. Better protect yourself! (Yes, George Bush spent recklessly, just as Obama and his troops are doing, although a lot less, and the fools in Congress went along with that too. As Glenn Beck says, both are guilty. I still see John McCain rushing back to D.C. to vote ’yes’ on the TARP nuttiness).
Leaving on another trip, so this will be last column till August 18th. To San Francisco this time and points between, to meet with clients and others. Son David (1-888-436-7077) and Daughter Melissa (1-888-442-0994) will be at your service. David will stay on an extra hour every day so that my hours will be covered. Look, I am close to 76, and I intend to fill my life with travel and enjoyment besides the joy and contentment I get from talking to you guys and writing this drivel. I love being Colorado Gold, but there are lots of places I have never been, and I intend to go there. Cruising the Mediterranean at end of September and beginning of October, as an example.