WHEN PENGUINS FLEW AND WATER BURNED This is the true memoir of one US Air Force navigator’s journey from the schoolhouses of Air Training Command to the nuclear alerts of the Cold War to combat in a 35-year-old anachronism called the B-52. It is a first-hand account of life during the last days of Strategic Air Command, the early days of Air Combat Command and the ensuing military drawdown of the 1990s. From peacetime training exercises across the globe to combat operations in Desert Storm, Jim Clonts takes the reader inside the cockpit where life and death are seconds apart. Often comical, sometimes heart-pounding, other times tragic, WHEN PENGUINS FLEW AND WATER BURNED takes you into the world of military aviation, a crucible where warriors learn the true nature of character, conscience and mortality.

Friends of Liberty VOL 21
by Jim Clonts, 2009

08/27/2009

This week the Cash for Clunkers program came to an end. The program reminds me of past Government intrusions in the free market. During the Great Depression farmers were getting hurt by high supply and low demand. Not that people weren't hungry, but they simply couldn't pay much given that 25% of them were unemployed. The bumper crops and the diminishing dollars in circulation hurt the family farmer. What was the Government's solution? In California they burned and contaminated with kerosene large portions of the orange crop to artificially raise prices by decreasing supply. In the Midwest the Government had 6 million baby pigs slaughtered and discarded for the same reason. This was done at a time when people were actually starving. It seems Government understands how supply and demand works, just not how to successfully pervert it.

Cash for Clunkers essentially paid consumers to turn in cars in the bottom half of their service lives to be destroyed in exchange for buying a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. This was intended to save the planet from Global Warming(occurring during one of the coldest summers on record) and artificially increase demand for new vehicles, a tax-payer funded subsidy to the automotive industry. Like all intrusions into the free market, there were unintended consequences which eventually hurt the very people the Government claimed it wanted to help.

When I think of a "clunker", I think of an 82 Chevy Cavalier with blue-white smoke belching from the tailpipe, which of course is dragging the ground. In fact, clunkers apparently don't have to be all that old. The video circulating on YouTube and taken from the www.cars.gov dealer website showed technicians destroying the engine of a Volvo sedan, with an engine that sounded great before they burned it up with a water-sodium silicate solution in the oil pan. The car appeared to be a 2003-2004 vintage Volvo. Based on my 97 Volvo, I'd guess that car got 26-28 miles per gallon. Incidentally, the solution they replace the oil with is a hazardous material.

Environmentally, you can't just examine the difference in this vehicle's emissions versus the new car. You have to consider the environmental cost of building and transporting both cars and demolishing and then transporting again the one, years before the end of its serviceable life. It takes great energy to smelt ore into steel, form the plastics, stamp the metal, perform the machining, mine and refine the rare metals used in the electronics, as well as the energy required to reach the thousand plus degree heat required to make the windows and windshield glass. It also cost energy to melt the thing down after demolition and dispose of the hazardous waste used to destroy the engine. All of these steps are environmental aspects that release toxins to the air as well as expanding the sacred carbon footprint. Unless the car is a real clunker the best thing one can do for the environment is to keep it in good running condition for the full lifetime of the vehicle. Ironically, destroying these cars and trucks may hurt the environment as much as it might help.

People who took advantage of the Cash for Clunkers Program were generally in a position to buy a new car, anyway. It's true the Government money might push them over the edge to seal the deal, but these people are gainfully employed and in the market to spend some of their own cash on a new car and, of course, paying the insurance tab(can you say full coverage) on it. I'm betting very few of the three million unemployed bought new cars from this program.

The poor and lower middle class received no benefit from this program and in fact it seriously reduced their choices for transportation by removing a lot of good used cars from the market (600,000 vehicles according to one news source I read), as well as the parts those cars contained. The little guy who can't pony up ten Gs of his own money or get a loan for it, now has fewer cheap cars to choose from and may not be able to find that power steering pump he needs to keep his old car running .

There have been reported cases of dealers realizing the "clunkers" being brought in were cars they could resell at a profit. They would offer the customer the same $4500 trade-in value and later resell the car at a profit, rather than go through the program. That Volvo that was destroyed might have brought in $4500 for the customer, but the dealer could offer $4500 in trade-in value on a new car then sell the old one at a profit. The first customer got his new car, the second customer got a car he could afford and the dealer made a profit. Funny. Isn't that the way cars are suppose to be sold? I think it's called the Free Market.

Dealers who did participate have been left short hundreds of thousands of dollars of working capital waiting for the very slow-moving Government checks to roll in, reimbursing them for the CFC transactions. Many smaller dealerships just don't have that level of working capital they can tie up for months on end waiting for a Government check. The Department of Transportation has stated they underestimated the manning requirements for this program and have hired hundreds of employees to process the paperwork. With the program over, will they be laid off when the paperwork is complete? I'd bet not.

There are also reports that folks who turned in their clunkers and bought new cars are getting a nasty surprise when paying their sales and property taxes. Since CFC is not considered a trade-in, their taxes are based on the full sticker price of the new car, not reduced by the $3500 or $4500. Cash for Clunkers, it seems, does benefit state and county governments.

So---in summary--- the Cash for Clunkers program comes to a close, only costing three times more than originally estimated. The auto industry (Toyota, Honda and Kia, in particular) got a short term boost, and now faces a slump as demand drops like a rock. The environmental benefits may be fictional. The demand for the remaining used cars has risen and now the poor have 600,000 fewer vehicles on the market they can afford to buy. A few dealers made money circumventing the program, while many more continue to wait for their Government check, not able to invest in new product since their capital is tied up by the CFC cars. County and State Governments increased their revenues and, of course, the Federal Government has grown by hundreds of new employees.

So ends a successful Obama Administration program...

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