Pun Salad

FIRE's article on the video is here. Dave's currently having fun in Idaho.

The House of Representatives voted to provide an emergency $2 billion for the "cash for clunkers" program on Friday, and the White House declared the program very much alive, even though car buyers appear to have already snapped up the $1 billion that Congress originally appropriated.

Both New Hampshire Congresscritters voted for it, of course. Grant Bosse at NH Watchdog is on target as usual.

The dead weight loss to the American economy is staggering. Thousands of perfectly good cars will be scrapped because Congress wants to curry favor with car dealers and car companies. Reader William Albenzi reminds me of the Broken Window Parable, in which destruction is mistaken for economic activity. Regardless of the cost to the Treasury, the cost of scrapping functional automobiles for a marginal increase in fuel economy is huge. Even weighed on purely environmental grounds, the benefits of increases as small as one mile per gallon must be offset by the sheer tonnage of rusting hulks added to American scrapyards.

"If they can't administer a program like this, I'd be a little concerned about my health insurance," car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.