"Cash for Clunkers," A.K.A. "Euthanasia for Engines"

Tonight's headlines are all about the abrupt ending of the "Cash for Clunkers" program. While the program was alive, it's mission was to abruptly end the life of some cars, the much maligned gas guzzlers. These automobiles were the driveable ones. Real clunkers did not qualify for the program. They were already dead in the government's eyes. The program should have been titled "Euthanasia for Engines That are Running."

Dealers were instructed to accept cars for the program according to the government's eligibility requirements, the most important one being driveability. The car must be driveable, able to start and run, hence, it must be driven--not towed, not rolled in, not flat-bedded--into a participating dealership. It must be running so that it may be put to death, to a condition of inoperability in direct observable contrast to the one in which it came.

The guzzlers were put to death by a fairly gruesome regimen. Euthanizing the car began with a complete engine oil drain. You don't have to know much about cars to know this is like draining the blood from your body. The analogy is not perfect but you get the idea. You wouldn't do well without your blood; cars don't do well without oil. As participants in the program, dealers were required to purchase the agent of engine death, sodium silicate, which one dealer reported costing $30 per car. Water was then added to this substance and mixed up to yield a slurry resembling the consistency of oil. The mixture was then poured into the car, getting in to all the places the oil used to be. The car was then started up (clearly, the reason for requiring cars in the program to run) and left to run in sufficient time for the engine to heat up and stay heated up to some temperature for a prescribed period of time. At this temperature, whatever it is, the silicate slurry becomes a molten glass. Engines don't run well on molten glass, although they're fooled for awhile by the nice, hot, viscous stuff running through their machinery veins. The engine stops or is stopped, the silicate cools and eventually solidifies into the hard glassy stuff that silicate is. To pursue the analogy, it'd be like an infusion of cement into your veins. Needless to say, the car won't run if it's seized up solid.

If, at this point, by some miracle, the cars started up again, dealers are instructed to repeat the procedure.

This strikes me as unnecessary death mongering. Alright already. The car is no longer road worthy, but to destroy the car parts so totally seems an overkill, to put it accurately. That's the point our government is making. Kill the car so completely that no car parts will enter the rebuild, resale, or reuse markets in any way shape or form. No millimeter of metal or organized functionality of a vehicle in the program is to be used again, by anybody, anywhere. Used car lots will not be the recipients of cars or parts euthanized in the program. Neither will any other business of any kind be the beneficiary of the auto cadavers. Perhaps the landfills will welcome them.

So, here's another example of the government wrecking yet another panorama of businesses. If you are among the lucky ones who got their $3800 dollars or so, consider yourself really lucky, because not everyone was. Folks with cars promised eligibility were suddenly ineligible. Deals flopped for customers. Deals flopped for dealers. In fact, dealers are being put out of business with the expense of the program. I forgot to mention the labor they pay their service people to put the car to death in the prescribed procedure. A procedure the government dreamed up, not to service customers' cars, but to destroy them. While participation was voluntary, dealers reported that they had no choice. Customers wanted cash for their clunkers, and if the dealer wasn't in the program, customers sought out ones who were. Participate (and bear the expense of supplies and labor with money you don't have) or lose your customer base. Damned if you do; damned if you don't. That's what happened. Put a lot of car dealers and folks in related businesses right out of business by one route or another.

That's what our government is about: destroying our cars and destroying our businesses. How's that working for you?