The news has been full of the “Cash for Clunkers” fiasco. Like most people, I didn’t fully appreciate the program’s wanton wastefulness: all vehicles turned in under the program are destroyed, not resold. As several commentators have observed, most are perfectly good vehicles that could serve as usable transportation for poorer folks, provide stock to the used-car and parts business and keep legions of mechanics employed.
But no, this is a green measure, you see, and that alone justifies profligate waste on a truly criminal scale. The “clunkers” are – literally – destroyed so that the engines can’t be used for parts.
Here’s a video of a very nice Volvo sedan being wantonly destroyed. The method: pour two quarts of sodium silicate (essentially liquid sand) into the crankcase and then red-line the engine until it seizes.
This makes me crazy.
This sort of horrifying government waste is unfortunately nothing new. Under the New Deal-era Agricultural Adjustment Act, for example, the government paid farmers to plow under crops, slaughter livestock and destroy surplus food stocks at a time when people were going hungry.
And then there was the National Recovery Act, which imposed wage and price controls on small businesses in an effort to maintain prices in a deflationary economy. But not every business could pay employees the required wages.
From the December 17, 1934, issue of Time magazine, we learn what happened to Fred Perkins, who owned a small battery manufacturing business in York, Pennsylvania, and was unable to pay his employees the NRA-mandated wage of 40 cents per hour. The government imprisoned Perkins, eventually tried him and fined him – and his employees – out of existence. Here is a “March of Time” newsreel story about Perkins’ travails.
As we know, the US Supreme Court ultimately declared the NRA unconstitutional in Schechter Poultry v. United States (known to generations of lawyers as the “sick chicken case”). Unfortunately, the court was too late to save Fred Perkins’ business or his employees’ jobs.
A compliant mainstream media willingly produced propaganda to magnify both Roosevelt and the New Deal. Here’s a “patriotically contributed” MGM short-subject extolling both, starring Jimmy Durante. Observe that the banker is the villain and the viewer is left with Roosevelt’s all-seeing visage. Sort of like today.
Hat tip to Hot Air on an article from the DC Examiner.
