Agreeing to the disclaimer between the site and the dealer site actually makes your computer, and the network it is on the property of the US Government:

“This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, Dot, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.”



Good thing Bush and his intrusion into others affairs is gone.

there goes Thursdays

At least you had the option to not participate this time.

Aren't all working Americans particpating at this time? Billboard last evening at a local dealership was flashing "Free Government Money"

So Jerry..............let's tell the class the difference between CHOOSING to agree to the gov't intrusion into your computer (as a DEALER participating in the C for C deal), and the gov't just DECIDING that you need to be spied on with no consent given by you..

[censored] o dear you're a Bush ballwasher sometimes.

Not washing any balls, I just think that we have the same horse, different color.

But doesn't the "if you're an innocent law abiding citizen, then you have nothing to worry about" rule apply here as well?

Hey Jerry, where is that link that shows that?

why do you think i stopped posting those? i coulda gone to jail for some of the stuff i saw while trying to provide quality entertainment

cash for clunkers - sounds like that one guide everybody rags on on here for cheating people

Kaiser, here's the only link you need to read about it:

Don't Believe Everything You Read on the InterWebz

Lemme guess, JG...you heard it on Fox, or got it in a typical right wing email list?

Fish on...

Todd

This is the site that I copied from
http://www.hobokensandwich.com/2009/08/cash-for-clunkers-ultimate-big-brother.html


I just googled "cash for clunkers disclaimer"

The disclaimer was removed yesterday to be rewritten.

So, you must have heard about the disclaimer somewhere that made you want to google that. I'm guessing... Crazy Beck?

The Snopes site basically talks about a poorly worded disclaimer and that lawyers say that it would be unconsionable for the gov to do what the disclaimer says. Disclaimer was real and I'm not sure what the reason for the "poorly" worded disclaimer was. Seems to me the disclaimer was to the point.


Just because Beck is a little crazy doesn't mean that he stumbles on some truth.

Cash for clunkers isn't about energy savings, it's about stimulus.

How about cash for ct scans?

With the exception of "a little", I wholeheartedly agree.

It is my understanding that the disclaimer was never even on the consumer side of the site. It was for dealers that are submitting confidential customer information related to the program.

Beck is a f'n goat.

His first claim was that this disclaimer was on the cars.gov public site, when in reality it was on the site for dealers participating in the program.

That didn't stop all the talk-radio donkeys from running with Beck's statement without ever checking if it was valid, though.

But that's what they do.

And the whole time Beck was running his hole, nobody was talking about how KBR has been poisoning our soldiers in Iraq with hexavalent chromium. Or that the DOW hit 9200 yesterday. Or that we're still fighting two wars. Or that soon our health care expenditures will equal 20% of our GDP. Or about a bazillion other things that matter.

Pathetic.

Beck actually makes Hannity look somewhat sane...and that takes some doing...a lot of it, actually.

The actual part in the disclaimer, both the earlier and later writings of it, never had anything whatsoever to do with the premise of this thread, which is that the Gubmint will now own your computer and files if you sign up.

Getting that information from FoxNews is about as smart as getting information about garbage collection by watching Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street...remember, they are the network who went to court and won on the argument that they are under no obligation to actually tell the truth, even when they know what they are saying is untruthful.

The very mention of Beck just raised the wingnut quotient on this thread from a rather pedestrian 7/10 to at least a 9.5...

Fish on...

Todd

The thing that I'm most blown away by in this healthcare debate is how otherwise intelligent, rational people can be so completely duped by wingnut propaganda?

The original premise of the thread was a copy of the disclaimer that I thought was odd. I don't listen to "right wing conservative radio", never heard Beck on the radio or watched his TV show, I see him on Fox at 4 in the morning one day of the week for 5 minutes.

Aside from the "being rewritten" disclaimer, I hadn't paid any attention to cash for clunkers. But it looks like bailout money for the middle class. I don't own a bank or financial institution that is TOO BIG TO FAIL and receive bailout or stimulus money. I just get to help pay for it. But if I had a car that wasn't already getting over 20 mpg, I could join the parade and get $4500 off the price of a new car, that I would also get to help pay for with my federal taxes, along with my kids paying for it, and probably grandkids paying still paying for it long after it's worn out and traded in. Is there anything about this program that isn't fundamentally economically dumb?

Sg

Not that I can find!
The best laugh (acually cry) is that the foreign cars are leading the pack in sales.
But what the hell do I know--I'm just a dumb carpenter.

+1

I'm not a big supporter of the program (it certainly doesn't directly benefite me), but I think it comes down to the larger question of "economic stimulus". I seems that the point where you need economic stimulus, something is already broken. To me, I'm not sure that it isn't the system as a whole.

Whether the stimulus is a subsidy, a straight kickback, a rebate, or a tax refund, it is all essentially the same thing, which is an attempt to get money circulating and goods/services being purchased. I'd rather we lived in a country where the economy didn't collapse unless everyone is consuming like mad. To me, if people aren't spending money, it is because they either don't have it or they are "afraid" to spend it because they aren't sure they'll get more of it in the near future. The last thing someone that doesn't have money needs is for someone to give them an incentive to spend when all it will really do is make the situation worse in the end. The car companies knew things were drying up years ago. If they didn't, they should have. Once things were 0% APR for so long, anyone that wanted a new car, bought one. Now, the only way that things keep rolling is to offer even greater incentives that, in the end, will leave people more in debt than they were before. Sure, you are saving $4500, but you also now owe another $20k on a car that is now worth $18k. Not much that different than pushing credit cards. Purchasing will temporarily increase but the fallout is still yet to come. Let's see how many of those "Cash for Clunker" loans end up defaulting.

As far as the foreign/domestic car thing, that line has gotten really muddy in the last decade. There are some "American" cars that are not made in the U.S. and some "foreign" cars that are.

Wherever you heard it...right wing radio, FoxNews, or from some ridiculous e-mail...it came from Beck, and it was bull$hit the minute he uttered it, just like most of what he says.

Fish on...

Todd

Oh dang, I was hoping to head home before the pile-on-JG tag team started

Next up: Hankster?

No need to pile-on-Hankster...while I don't always agree with Hank, at least he forms his opinions from reputable sources and some sort of logic...rather than just parroting whatever Rush, Hannity, Beck, or some anonymous e-mail tells him to think.

He even checks his facts before presenting them as such.

Fish on...

Todd

One match in my hands is bound to lead to an inferno.

The lack of fishing recently has me a little tense.

No............seriously.

it might be more stimulating to drill here drill now

Hey Hank... I'll bet the workers that build the new cars, the small businesses that supply parts to build the cars, the auto mechanics that work on the new cars, the sales managers, finance agents and the sundry MIILIONS of other folks who's very livelyhoods are tied to the sales of new cars are probably feelin' pretty good right about now too!

Yeah... what a waste!

KK,

A flamethrower works in any direction.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd, you've heard me ask Jaek a few times.................how tall do I need to be to kill you?

-----------------------------------------------------

I'd have a lot more respect for the anti-Federal-spending crowd if they weren't Reagan ballwashers, too.

Reagan implemented massive federal spending, and accumulated a huge debt, to prop up an economy on its heels, and he was their hero. Obama is implementing massive spending to prop up an economy on its heels, but he's a socialist/communist/destroying our future.

You're either against huge deficit spending or you aren't. If it's OK when Reagan does it and not Obama......or vice versa, then you're just a ballwasher for your party.

And party ballwashers are why this country is so f'ed up in the first place.

99.99% of the reason the wingnuts don't like deficit spending...now, I mean...is because a foreign born Muslim black man is doing it...they applauded it, with numerous studies to back it up, when Bonzo was doing it hand over fist.

That is what those of us who think call "hypocrisy", and immediately leads to the end of any credibility, however tenuous it might have been, that any of them had to begin with.

Hank, I've always got your back...political discussion with reasoning folks who accept the facts as they are and apply their own opinions over the top of those facts are the only folks worth arguing with.

The ones who make up their own facts...the birthers, the fundies, etc..., they aren't worth the diapers their mama's emptied off their asses...only difference being now they spew out their mouths instead of their asses.

Same product, different production line.

Fish on...

Todd

Hank.....................please.

Have you not seen the fawning, the man-love, the hero-worship in the eyes of the Reagan-lovers.................and there are LOTS of them.

And coincidentally, they are the same ones with their volume turned to 11 now, screaming about Obama ruining the nation with his deficit spending.

Anyone who claims government spending can't pull us out of a recession is a f'n goat who hasn't a clue about business or economics. It worked for Reagan, and it could work for Obama, too. But it's a dangerous game you don't want to play too often, because the accumulation of debt could bring the whole thing crashing down.

So yes, the accumulation of debt is a concern. Thing is, I don't remember the goats crying about it now crying about it when Reagan was doing the spending.

Why do you figure that is?

Party ballwashers, that's why.

See, that's where you're wrong.

The fact that you're still breathing is only due to my kind-hearted nature.

Those tax cuts cost us a lot more than the few jobs...far fewer than 21M...it created.

Fish on...

Todd

From Bruce Bartlett as written in Forbes............just as another opinion in the mix.

"According to a recent Treasury Department study, Ronald Reagan proposed the largest peacetime tax increase in American history as part of a budget deal to get the federal deficit under control. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982 was signed into law on Sept. 3, and most of its provisions took effect on Jan. 1, 1983.

During debate on TEFRA, many conservatives predicted economic disaster. They argued that raising taxes in the midst of a severe recession was exactly the wrong thing to do. "Every school child knows you don't raise taxes in a recession unless you want to make it worse," The Wall Street Journal's editorial page warned. Said Rep. Newt Gingrich, "I think it will make the economy sicker." The Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. said it had "no doubt that it will curb the economic recovery everyone wants."

Looking at the data, however, it is very hard to see any evidence that TEFRA had a negative effect on growth. Indeed, one could easily make a case that its enactment stimulated growth. As one can see, the economy's growth rates after TEFRA took effect were among the fastest in history.

Year/Quarter
Real GDP Growth

1982 III
-1.5%

1982 IV
0.4%

1983 I
5.0%

1983 II
9.3%

1983 III
8.1%

1983 IV
8.4%

1984 I
8.1%

1984 II
7.1%



Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
Comment On This Story

The unemployment rate also peaked just before TEFRA took effect at 10.8% in December 1982. Throughout 1983, it fell steadily to 8.3% by year's end. The unemployment rate continue to fall through 1984, reaching 7.3% by December.

In 1993, Bill Clinton proposed another major tax increase. Perhaps because it was initiated by a Democrat, conservatives were even more convinced that it would bring about economic disaster. In an Aug. 3, 1993, media fact sheet, John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis predicted the following results from the higher taxes: Capital formation would be reduced by $1.76 trillion through 1998, 1.34 million fewer jobs would be created and the real GDP growth rate would be 0.4% lower than it otherwise would have been.

An examination of the data, however, shows that this forecast was totally wrong in every respect. The following table shows what happened after the 1993 tax increase was signed into law on Aug. 10.

Year/Quarter
Real GDP Growth
Gross Private Domestic Investment

1993 III
2.1%
0.0%

1993 IV
5.5%
22.3%

1994 I
4.1%
18.3%

1994 II
5.3%
25.5%

1994 III
2.3%
-6.9%

1994 IV
4.8%
19.9%


Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

The unemployment rate was at 6.8% when the law was signed and fell steadily thereafter, reaching 5.5% by the end of 1994. By Clinton's second term, the economy was booming to such an extent that the federal government began running large budget surpluses.

Of course, past experience doesn't necessarily tell us what will happen in the future. Maybe this time, the conservative scaremongers will be right, and higher taxes will abort recovery and bring on a sharp economic setback such as happened in 1937.

But even if conservatives were willing to concede that Obama's proposed tax increases won't deepen or lengthen the recession, they would still oppose higher taxes because they cling blindly to the starve-the-beast theory, which says that if revenues are not allowed to rise, then pressure to reduce the deficit will be channeled into spending cuts.

The problem with this theory is that there is not one iota of evidence that starving the beast works. Under George W. Bush, federal revenues fell from 20.9% of GDP in 2000 to 17.7% in 2008, but spending rose from 18.4% of GDP to 20.9% over the same period.

Bill Niskanen of the libertarian Cato Institute thinks the starve-the-beast theory has actually had a perverse effect on spending. Because Republicans convinced themselves that the only thing they needed to do to restrain the growth of government was cut taxes, it caused them to become "casual about the sustained political discipline necessary to control federal spending."

Republicans have also developed a certain mythology about Ronald Reagan's administration. They think he held the line on taxes and that this forced Democrats to accept spending cuts. The evidence, however, could more easily be interpreted in the opposite direction: Democrats forced Reagan to raise taxes in return for insignificant spending cuts. He himself later lamented that none of the cuts in appropriations he had been promised by congressional Democrats were ever implemented.

As the table below demonstrates, Reagan signed into law major tax increases every year of his presidency after the first. By the end of his presidency, he took back half of the 1981 tax cut in the form of higher taxes. And it should also be noted that when confronted with a crisis in Social Security in 1983, Reagan endorsed a rescue plan drafted by Alan Greenspan that consisted almost entirely of higher taxes.

Legislated Tax Changes by Ronald Reagan as of 1988 Tax Cuts Billions of Dollars

Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981
-264.4

Interest and Dividends Tax Compliance Act of 1983
-1.8

Federal Employees' Retirement System Act of 1986
-0.2

Tax Reform Act of 1986
-8.9

Total Cumulative Tax Cuts
-275.3


Tax Increases Billions of Dollars

Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982
+57.3

Highway Revenue Act of 1982
+4.9

Social Security Amendments of 1983
+24.6

Railroad Retirement Revenue Act of 1983
+1.2

Deficit Reduction Act of 1984
+25.4

Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985
+2.9

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985
+2.4

Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986
+0.6

Continuing Resolution for 1987
+2.8

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987
+8.6

Continuing Resolution for 1988
+2.0

Total Cumulative Tax Increases
+132.7


Source: Office of Management and Budget, FY1990 budget

Many of the same Republicans who today complain about Obama's spending voted for every pork-barrel project proposed by any Republican during the years they controlled Congress, as well as voting for a vast expansion of Medicare spending in 2003 when the program was already bankrupt.

Among those voting to further bankrupt Medicare were such self-proclaimed protectors of the public purse as House Republican Leader John Boehner, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor and House Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan. When they complain about Obama's spending, they should be reminded that their vote to expand Medicare added $17.2 trillion to the nation's long-term indebtedness, according to the latest report by Medicare's trustees (Table III.C23).

None of this is meant to defend Obama's tax increases. They must be judged on their own merits and in terms of the potential benefits of the programs they would fund. But when Republicans claim that higher taxes will destroy the economy, they should be reminded that they made the same argument in 1982 and 1993 and that the actual economic results were the opposite of what they predicted. And when they denounce Obama's health plan for expanding the size of government, they should be asked how they voted on the Medicare bill in 2003."

Sounds like a case of hard numbers vs. projections to me.

1995?

Clinton was President until 2000.

You're grasping.

Which one is the party of spend?

It's so hard to keep track these days.

I don't know if you'd call it a sabbatical, but she's found it much easier these days to lead the Birther movement over at snivelheader. Amazing what those people believe over there.

Not sure if this one will work, but this is what she linked. Canada Free Press no less. Even they have RWWJs.

As usual no one has been able to answer the question as to what the initial disclaimer was intended to accomplish. As far as the Snopes story it is one of the few times they haven't included a copy of the original text in question. All they say is that it was poorly worded. As faras the cash for clunkers program goes I wonder about the hidden costs like the disposal of the clunker.

Birthers - nutcases or patriots?

Nutcases - most definitely
Patriots - possibly, but see answer #1

Under Bush the same people called them cowards. Now they are patriots. Will somebody please institutionalize these people?

More news on cash for clunkers I heard yesterday that I think is disturbing. Apparently you can trade in your gas guzzling clunker on GMC pickups with nice fuel economic V8s, and Ford 150 and 250s with V8s. You don't have to buy a 35 mpg 4 banger KIA or Ford Focus.

I need to do more research. My Subaru gets over 20 mpg, but it's got 124 k miles on it. $4500 would tempt me to replace it, even tho there's really nothing wrong with it, other than over half the useful engine life is gone. In fact, if I could get some of that $4500 and an interest rate under 2% (can't pay cash now cuz I'm spending so much each month building the house), I'd be doing myself an economic disservice not to get a new car.

Sg

Christ Hank... for a smart guy you ask a lot of stupid questions!

How many ACORN members did you see at Obama rallies chanting death to McCain?

How many ACORN members are travelin' the country, disrupting Republican town hall meetings?

The answer is NONE!

The tea baggers ARE nuthin' but a bunch of brain-dead, racist hillbillies... or in other words... the GOP faithful.

I know you think you're the anti-KK... defending the bastion of the righteous right here... but if you REALLY want to hold that title... ya gotta start bringin' more than the "ohh yeah... well this (insert liberal / Democrat here) did this" as your tired, repetitive rebuttal.

As usual, you never even asked a question, much less that one.

You did, however, copy and paste a bogus email right out of Glen Beck's comic book, and then say this:



...which is not only ridiculous, but looks even more ridiculous in light of that bogus email you copied over.

Fish on...

Todd

The "made up" part is the email you copy/pasted, the one that says the gubmint will own all of our computers and files if we participate in CARS...patently false...and bogus.

I doubt Beck sent you an email, but he's the one who...as usual...ignored reality and started this ridiculous rumor...and now it's zipping around the InterWebz being presented as fact, just as you did in the first post on this thread.

Fish on...

Todd

Here is the answer (again). I believe that dealers are sending information to the government related to the reimbursements. This would include buyers' SSNs, VINs of "clunkers", etc. I think the disclaimer was getting at the point that when those files/info get sent to the govt, they have rights to review the information (most likely for fraud). Again, this was NEVER on the part of the site that regular, cash-for-clunker users would access.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZing...

Looks like JG was born there, too...