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Jul 25, 2010

Gillard bribe: Cash for Clunkers.




Cartoon: Nate Beeler.



In another of her less than original ideas Gillard has come up with an electoral bribe to car buyers with a rehash of the Obama administrations “Cash for Clunkers” program.

The idea as proposed by her is to pay people with older cars $2000 dollars to replace them with a small Japanese model more fuel-efficient model. And of course if you believe the press it’s all in the name of the environment and a more compassionate and caring Australia, which is of course in line with Labors election slogan, moving forward.

Reporters need to be a bit more circumspect when listening to the sort of stuff their political cousins regularly come out with.

“"I want to help Australians to update their motor vehicles," she said, noting that the old cars would be turned into scrap metal. The rebate will be on offer for 200,000 new vehicles, costing the Government $394 million.”

This should read as follows: “I want your votes and I don’t really give a shit how I go about it and as such I am prepared to engage in outright bribery, in order to get those of people with older cars. The old ones will be turned into scrap metal, thus denying those who cannot afford new ones, even with a discount, access to the parts from those handed in, to keep their current vehicles running.

The bribe will be on offer for 200,000 new vehicles, costing the dumb arse taxpayers $394 million.” For the record this is not as the press has dutifully reported the members of parliament forking out their own money in order to do good things, but as usual, tossing our money about in a profligate manner to get reelected in order to toss our money about in a profligate manner to ….. .

In many ways the theory of ‘Cash for clunkers,’ is similar to the ‘broken window’ theory where it is argued that vandalism is good, (the leftist perspective on “Greed is good in the movie ‘Wall Street’,) in that the destruction of property is synonymous with economic revival, (thus wars are good for the economy) by causing the victims to spend money they might have been otherwise too bloody selfish to. The fact that the victims may have had their own aspirations as to what to do with the money they have been forced to spend to get back where they started from is beside the point.

There are numerous reasons why people keep their old vehicles. Some have priorities, which they put before having a flash car. Some just can’t afford it. The reality is, that this scheme is most likely to encourage people to spend beyond their means in order to take advantage of the ‘once in a lifetime offer’ thus putting them in deeper shit than Julie has already placed them in.

This is of course not to say that Julie doesn’t understand the aspirations of the po’folk. She has anecdotal evidence from her university days of what her professors told her of how they yearn for the hard earned dollars of the successful to be taken and redistributed to each according to his needs. Its just those poor misguided pricks that aspire to a job and achieving success by the sweat of their own brow that she has problems with.

13 comments:

  1. Excellent article. It's bad enough we get American reality TV shows Australianized... now we have to start emulating their failed economic policy, just awful.

    I was trying to find a contact email but unfortunately I couldn't find one. Was just going to bring to your attention a libertarian website I and my colleagues have created: http://www.themulewatch.com It's a news aggregator site for all Big Government related news stories from around the world updated regularly.

    We hope that it will serve as a useful resource for you.

    Keep up the great work,

    Washington

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  2. Thanks Washo, I have bookmarked you as well as recommending you to my contacts.

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  3. - Sigh -

    Why can't she take $2,000 less of my money and let me decide whether of not to spend it on a bloody car. Or, since it seems like making a new car for me to buy would involve more energy use and associated emissions - not that I actually buy into the warble gloaming bullshit - than extending the life of the car I have I'd settle for $2,000 of petrol vouchers.

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  4. No! No! For God's sake don't copy us Yanks! If Obama gets a second term, we're gonna be a Third World country.

    Wait a minute. Hmmm. On second thought, if you guys wanna be green I'll pay for Al Gore's ticket to come down there. Only stipulation is you can't send him back.

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  5. Great to have a couple of old friends over, Bawb, meet Angry, Angry meet Bawb.

    I really question the green credentials of this one as it takes a hell of a lot of energy to make a car, and quite a bit to melt the old one down, so they would probably be more energy efficient leaving the old ones on the road, but of course there are no votes in that.

    It is obviously not designed to help the local car industry as the press report says, "The slow-selling Toyota Camry hybrid, built with a $35 million taxpayer subsidy, is the only available locally built car on Ms Gillard's list."

    Actually Bawb I think Gore was down here a while ago, I seem to remember Kevvy sucking up to someone not long ago. We sent him back. Had I known that you didn't want him back, we could have sent him to England instead, but then Angry would think we were picking on his old home country.

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  6. Hello Bawb.

    "...we could have sent him to England instead, but then Angry would think we were picking on his old home country."

    Why not? The Cobblelition leaders both believe in the carbon demons, and the new PM is famous for cycling to Wasteminster. Unfortunately his briefcase was following him in a chauffeur driven Jaguar, but as with nearly all things green making the gesture is so much more important than having an effect.

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  7. Howdy Hi Angry,

    Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: "If you're not angry, you haven't been paying attention."

    IMHO, all these government green are just a bunch of eyewash. They'll waste a dollar to save a dime.

    The only good the government bail-out of GM and Chrysler did here was to save Ford. People across the country here bought Fords (even people who had never owned one before) simply because they did NOT take the bail-out money. Great advertising for them.

    Ah, unintended consequences.

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  8. thats a real thoughtful write - thanks

    But it begs asking just how the country can return to a surplus by 2012/13, as guaranteed by Mr. Swan, when Prime Minister Gillard is going around the country throwing money around, left right and centre, to get the voters on her side. Perhaps she is no good with figures? Perhaps she is no good with promises? Perhaps it’s all just political spin? Whatever her motivation (let me not be accused of making judgements), one only has to look at some of the figures being promised, and then ask the question – just who is going to pay for all of this when we already have a deficit of $57.1 billion dollars.

    http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/07/does-government-own-printing-press.html

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  9. Hi Fellas, I am sorry I have not had the time to respond to you but I am in election mode at the moment. I am now the lead Senate candidate for the LDP in Queensland.

    The LDP describes itself as moderate libertarian and is on the libertarian side of classic liberal. We hope that we can maybe get a senator up and for that reason I was basically drafted to do it. We need Senators who can argue the cause, and as a long standing libertarian I fitted the bill.

    Our preselection battles are brutal, take your eyes off the other bastards and they'll gang up on you and the next thing you know you're the candidate. I guess thats better though than having a whole lot of people who are the sort of people who want the job.

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  10. bawb, another unintended consequence of this kind of 'government' money for new cars is what to do with the old ones. Last week's Top Gear mentioned that Britain can't crush the cars fast enough and so they're being left out on disused airfields until they get caught up (Top Gear is especially ruined for Australian viewers and might not show that bit so I've put it on YouTube). That's on top of the moronic idea that crushing a car that might have several years more life in it makes any kind of sense at all. Mad as a bag of monkeys.

    Jim, very best of luck in becoming Senator Jim and ditto for the rest of the LDP candidates. The Victorians will be getting a couple of votes from me and the missus, and since I'm an Aussie election virgin I'm really hoping I can (a) find them on the ballot paper and (b) vote above the line.

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  11. Thanks Angry, we only have a few Reps candidates in Victoria, so I cant tell whether you have one in your electorate, but keep an eye out for them. Our Senate ticket did pretty badly in the draw, so look for them above the line towards the far right hand side.

    Your Youtube is great, and I will post it here and on Thoughts on Freedom. Thanks for that.

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  12. Jim, I looked on the web. Found the Senate candidates but no LDP Rep where I am. Even if there had been the second preference would have had to go to someone I wouldn't actually want at all, which is a drawback of Aussie voting (nobody's ever given me a satisfactory answer about how I vote if I like only one candidate and find the rest equally unbearable).

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  13. Bloody Hell Angry, Iam seriously going to have to do something about those Google Adds, I open this page and get a add for Gillard, these wankers have no idea.

    There is a lot to be said for the Qld state system where preferences are optional, if you opt for them they are counted, but otherwise it is first past the post.

    As a Senate candidate I could not advise you to go informal, but what we are trying to do with our preferences is to build a coalition of small parties in order to break the Labor/Liberal/ green monopoly, so if you have the option try to go that way.

    The basic principle is to put the Greens last. They are the most dangerous mob of economic illiterates on the ballot. Seriously mate, I advised a guy the other day to put the Socialist Left, and the Communist candidate above them. They are that babloodyd

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