Cash For Clunkers, Converter Box Coupons and KFC Grilled Chicken

Once again the Obama administration has found a way to showcase government's inability to play in the free market. The government's $1 billion "Cash For Clunkers" program has been suspended after already spending close to $150 million in a week on 22,000 vehicles with reserves of $850 million for pending applications. You can bet that their will be a bill down the road to add more taxpayer funding to this program because it was not fair that everyone could not participate.

The program that is officially called Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), was designed to help jump start auto sales by offering consumers $3,500 or $4,500 rebate if they trade in a used vehicle that gets 18 mpg or less and buy a new car that is more fuel efficient. But just like the digital t.v. conversion box coupon program the government under estimated the consumer response.

The digital t.v. conversion had budgeted $1.3 billion to assist consumers with their conversion to digital broadcast on older television sets. But the money ran out and consumers were still waiting for their $40 coupons to purchase the set top boxes. The official conversion date was then extended from February to June to allow for additional $650 million in funding from Obama's "stimulus package" and to get more coupons in the hands of the populace.

Both these programs have the same thing in common. Government bureaucrats are not the best people at forecasting expenses. Although the DTV conversion coupons were redeemed at about 55% the money has been allocated and you can best believe that it will not be reallocated back to the treasurey once the final coupons have reached expiration.

With the CARS program the dealers are the ones that may be on the hook. They have to give the consumer the rebate off the vehicle price up front and wait for the government to approve their application for reimbursement on the vehicle but not until they have proven that they have chemically destroyed the engine and rendered the car unsaleable. Thus if the bureaucrats decline an application the dealership does not get reimbursed and will have to eat the loss because they will have a car that cannot operate.

What does all of this have to do with KFC Grilled chicken? Nothing and everthing; except that even private enterprise can sometimes underestimate consumer demand. KFC chose the queen of daytime talk, Oprah Winfrey, to help launch a free grilled chicken dinner promotion and were innundated with angry customers who were being turned away at stores after they begin to run out of chicken. The difference is that KFC realized that they had a problem on their hands and still promised free chicken and a Pepsi as a raincheck to those who did not get their meal on the day the promotion ran. KFC did not use taxpayer money to fund this obviously expensive product launch promotion but paid for it from the ordinary running of their business. KFC's president, Roger Eaton, apologized and made good on his company's plan to offer a free trial of their latest product.

Once again the government has under projected demand and expenses for another government program. Yet they think that we will take their word at how much health care reform will pay for itself when these two programs indicate that they have no clue as to consumer demand or how to fund it. Every program the government has ever launched has cost more than what has been budgeted but now health care will pay for itself and possibly provide a savings to the government. Ha Ha.

These are my words. Please post yours!

Healthcare Reform or Overhaul...Still No Plan

After listening to B-Rock Opompus on last night I had the sinking feeling that we have been here before. It all sounded too familiar. It all sounded like the pressure that B-Rock put on Congress and the American public for his stimulus plan.

Take these words from an op-ed piece that the president wrote on February 5, 2009:

"Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

Now compare those words to these words uttered last night:

"So let me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we don't act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction. These are the stakes of the debate that we're having right now."

If any of you really listened to the president you all would have heard what I have been hearing from him since last August. Plenty of ideas and no true plan to get these ideas working. If you recall he once thought about taxing the benefits of the those wage earners who make over $350k annually but now has support for creating a surtax for those Americans who earn $1M annually.

When asked if he and Congress would abide by the same plan that he is proposing, Opompus made the mistake of telling Americans that he wanted them to have the same plan that Congress currently has. O.K. They pay about 25% of the premiums and the taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab. In short, the taxpayers will pay for the plan. The other problem with this is that members of Congress have no waiting period to enroll and they are offered a myriad of plans to choose from which are through private carriers and provide for no pre-existing conditions clauses. Plus Congress has its own doctors, nurses and technicians standing by. They don't even have to leave work to get a physical exam or x-rays. Unless we work in healthcare field we gotta go to the doctor's office.

What is wrong with this idea? First, the government subsidizing 75% of premiums already indicates that companies will choose to drop coverage for their employees and turn them over to the government plan because not many companies choose to pay 75% of their employee premiums without tax incentives. Secondly, no private insurer can compete with the government when it comes to the ability to impose taxes and penalities on the populace to keep their premiums low thus eliminating competition.

To further bolster the presidents take over of healtcare was hidden in his response to a question posed by Steve Koff, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

"But having a public plan out there that also shows that maybe if you take some of the profit motive out, maybe if you are reducing some of the administrative costs, that you can get an even better deal, that's going to incentivize the private sector to do even better."

He seeks to remove the profit motive from private health insurers. Then there will be no private health insurers if they cannot make a profit. No one will be in the business of assuming risk without rewards. I know that health care costs have continued to rise but so have the cost associated with the advancements in treatment. Companies and researchers that come up with new and innovative ways to fix our ailments have to be compensated for their research and development. I really don't think we can wait on Pakistan to come up with a new treatment for any new malady that exists. Most money is recouped in the early stages of use.

I don't hear an outcry about how much money Microsoft makes off of its suites of Office 2007 or Windows Vista software. They are still charging the same rate that they did when the products launched 3 years ago and by now I am sure that they have recouped all of their research and development costs for that product launch( and you can bet that Windows 7 will be launched with the same pricing structure). And take a look at the Apple iPod. The prices never really go down. You get some new features, first color, then video, then smaller size, then touch and wi-fi capabilities but the prices remains constant within a few dollars. But I digress.

As I mentioned earlier, the president is full of ideas and no plans. His ideas are disguised as plans but if you examine closely you will see that there is no substance to grab hold to. Contrary to what he says, B-Rock wants to nationalize healthcare. He wants a complete overhaul of our healthcare system without looking to see what is broken and needs fixing. If my car were to run out of gas while driving; I would not rebuild the engine to fix the problem. I would call the motor club to bring me gasoline or tow me to a gas station. Let's remind our elected knuckleheads in Congress that overhaul means tearing down to rebuild. Do we need to rebuild or just fix what is broken and remove what is not working?

These are my words! Please post yours!

Obama Getting Snubbed by FOX Again...

President B-Rock Opompus is so in love with himself and his voice that for the fourth time in his six months in office he is appearing on prime time television to read to us from his teleprompters.

This president keeps telling us that we are living in 'tough economic times' and these times also extend to businesses from large to small. Yet once again he finds it necessary to interrupt business as usual for television broadcasters by preempting a prime revenue time slot to deliver to the American people more of his dribble.

Broadcast networks have continued to see their revenues decline during this recession and would much rather dumb us down with their "piss-poor" programming versus delivering 'revenue negative' Obama dribble. FOX has once again decided to forgo this loss in revenue altogether while NBC only decided to carry this broadcast after the White House decided to change the start time to 8 p.m. If I were Obama I would find it disturbing that his favorite network, NBC, had to think about whether to carry his broadcast. CBS decided to carry the broadcast early on because it was already running repeats and probably won the lottery to lob the first softball question at a future presser. ABC had to move two of its silly shows to an hour later to make certain that they get a seat at the alter. FOX will refer you to its news channel for their coverage but will not lose money on this sputum.

So what could he possibly have to say to us this time? I predict he will try to sound like the late Billy Mays and pitch us of the merits of his trillion dollar Obamacare plan. On how we must act quickly to head off a crisis (sounding like the stimulus speech in January). Using snake oil salesman tactics along with the demeanor of a used car salesman he will go on to tell us about the failing state of the economy but how his 'stick-it-to-us package' is creating and saving jobs even though less than 10% has been spent. He will tell us that he does not want the 'guberment' to run the automotive industry but will sell us on the speed in which both automotive companies have emerged from bankruptcy. How his policies helped to create a stronger automotive industry and saved jobs.

After his last prime time broadcast there was a major drop in viewers watching the president address the people. I can't wait for the viewer numbers after this fiasco.

These are my words. Please post yours!

$12 Billion For Training People For Jobs Of The Future

I have been away from writing and commenting for a couple of weeks. That does not mean I have not been been watching, reading, waiting and reacting to what has been going on in our nation. In the interim, Farrah Fawcet, Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, and Billy Mays all passed away. But B-Rock marches on toward world domination.

When you get a chance try to add additional water to your toilet bowl by pouring a gallon of water into it. What you will find is that even though you are pouring more water than your bowl can hold the water level never rises as it is siphoned off to keep the water level constant. That is how I feel about the money our president continues to pledge to spend to the American people and to other nations around the world.

President B-Rock is proposing spending $12B on the nations community colleges in an effort to reach, teach and train more people for "the jobs of the future." That is all fine and dandy but the future is now. With unemployment sitting at 9.5% and the president himself stating that it will rise over the next several months, committing money toward training for jobs that have yet to be created will be a total waste of tax payer money. Pouring additional water into the toilet to keep it level!

But wait, we have already been there and done that with the $787B stimulus package that has yet to stimulate anything as only $60B of it has been actually spent. That is less than 10% of the total. But this president had to have a spending bill on his desk immediately after taking the oath of office. He had to be able to review it for five days(we all would have liked to have seen it for five days) before signing it and the American people were suppose to be able to view it for themselves. The water level is still the same but the results are getting worse!

B-Rock spoke today in Warren, Michigan, a state that has been hardest hit by this backwards running economy. The president told the citizens there that many of the jobs lost in the auto industry will not be coming back. Duh! A large dose of reality for those who are already figuring this out since the guberment owns and operates two of the biggest American car makers. But yet we still hold out for the 2 million, no I mean 3 million, oh wait I think the final number was 4.1 million jobs to be created or saved by this administration. Yet his proclamation was that his stimulus has created 150,000 jobs.

But back to the 'jobs of the future' training that the Nations community colleges are suppose to be gearing up to teach. Is the president putting the cart before the horse in this instance? I don't mean because he is anticipating creating new jobs but because he thinks these new jobs are going to come from new energy sources.

First he will need to get his 'Cap N Trade' cereal bill through the Senate and onto his desk in order to move this country toward Obama "energy independence." Then we need to figure out which former GM and Chrysler plants will be able to build wind turbines efficiently with union labor and where will these people get their training to build said turbines. Finally, and this is where the cart gets ahead of the horse, only some of the money he is proposing will not be allocated until the next fiscal year. As with the case of the stimulus money being less than 10% spent in six months time we could possibly have these people educated and ready to work by 2015. But the recession should be over by then, right? Still trying to change that toilet water level by adding more water to the bowl!

Here is the rub. B-Rock Obama has done little to improve this nation's economy. He is not the guy you want speaking about the economy or tinkering with it as his only ideas come in the form of pouring more water into the toilet only to see the water level never change. Some would wonder where he gets these ideas and how late he stays up formulating this stuff. Obama thinks an associates degree will be necessary for the 'jobs of the future.' So once again he wants to reform something, and that is the nation's community colleges but I have to ask, where does he get these silly ideas? Could the short answer to that question be, V.P. Joe Biden?

These are my words! Please post yours.

Perez Hilton Takes A Beat Down....Well Sort Of!

I really could care less about this overly obnoxious blow hard but I could hardly contain myself when I viewed his recent video blog of his alleged attack by the manager of the pop group, Black Eyed Peas.

In view of the trashy statements that this idiot made about the former Ms. California, Carrie Prejean, I could care less about this piece of human trash. I watched the video of him telling his side of the story to the assault and all I could do was laugh. He launched into a tirade about group member, will. i. am, only to say that it was the manager that hit him.

My favorite line in the post was, "I like writing about other people's drama. I don't want drama in my life." So much for keeping drama out of your life huh Mario. Perez makes a bold assertion that he does not need additional press because he has 10 million visitors to his web site daily. Oooooh! 10 million idiots or maybe 200,000 that visit so frequently that it adds up to 10 million! Either way this guy gets no sympathy from me or should he get any from anyone. He only reaped what he has sown.

He insulted Ms. Prejean because her views are different from his. He hangs around with the celebrity elite, and I don't know why, but thinks that we should pity him because he got knocked on his ass for calling will. i. am a faggot. You can see this idiot make a fool of himself by following this link!


Well Ms. Perez welcome to the real world. I guess you thought that the body guard for Lady GaGa was your body guard. Obviously not, he did what he should have done and that was protect his paying client not your stupid behind. I am not advocating violence against anyone but this idiot got out of his sandbox when he decided to mess with members of the Black Eyed Peas. You see Perez, Ms. Prejean could not come out at you. Many bloggers did but she could not for public relations reasons. So you got a little smack upside the head. Get over yourself. You are one big dramatic martyr and no one cares. No Pity Party for you young lady!

For the record I hope whomever smacked you is found guilty of assault. But you need to stop whining about "they followed me to the hotel" where you stated they were also staying thus they were not following you. Stop being a wuss and crawl back into your hole for another 30 or 40 years.

And your effing tirade toward the Black Eyed Peas at the end of the video was not necessary and to call Fergie "fugly" really riles me up. She did nothing to your disgusting butt. You got embarrassed and only wanted to get your face in front of the public with your martyred tale of whoa!

For the readers that normally visit my blog you know that this is off base for my commentary but I needed a little therapy and this guy gave it to me.

Maybe this will force Perez or Mario whatever his name is to just quietly go away.

Those are my words! Please post yours!