Cash For Guzzlers Program: I'm Against It!

I can't dig up the bill number (yet) but supposedly Speaker Pelosi (spit) has already introduced legislation enabling a federal "(your)Cash for (someone else's gas) Guzzlers program.

This is supposed to make unicorns grow out your the environment cleaner and decrease national fuel consumption, as well as stimulate the car manufacturing industry.

The actual effects of the program would be not so great. The effects of the program are actually harmful to the "working poor" among us.

Cars are destroyed before their usefulness is done. You know how much precious carbon goes into making a new car from raw materials? About a thousand gallons of gas worth for every Prius.

Old cars that pollute the most are often rarely-driven collectors pieces. They don't pollute as much because they aren't driven as much. Duh?

For the same reason they pollute less, old cars don't use as much gas as you might think.

They want to pay thousands of dollars of monopoly money for single-digits increases in Miles Per Gallon ratings. How is that an effective use of my money, again?

Scrapping an old car means it won't be available for sale, cheap, to someone who desperately needs at least a "beater" so they can get to work

Scrapping an old car means the parts won't be available in the junkyards, driving up price of auto repairs for:

• poor people


• hobbyists and restorers


• mechanics

Besides which this kind of program does not affect the worst of the worst: really ratty old cars owned by people who can only afford really ratty old cars. If you can't afford ANY new car, regardless of discounts off MSRP, this program shoots right over your head.

This type of program ONLY helps those wealthy enough to afford a new car. It hurts the environment, hobbyists (voters) and poor people. For those reasons, SEMA SAN has been successful pretty much everywhere (and repeatedly in California) in getting legislators to vote these programs down.

I just called the offices of my Elected Heroes to register my opinion.

Will you?