Cash for Clunkers . . . Will they do better with your appendix?

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Update - July 31 - AP reports that Cash For Clunkers program suspended because the number of rebates unprocessed in the system is unknown. USA Today spins the same story that the program is suspended until the $1 billion appropriation can be increased to $4 billion.
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Original Post -

The federal Cash For Clunkers program began July 1, but the regulations weren't ready for another three weeks. The program ends when the $1 billion is gone, so it's first come/first served. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hasn't paid out any money yet because they can't get their "on-line" system to work.

Dealers are fronting the money in order to not lose sales. In the Twin Cities, not one dealer has been paid by the government. Not one. Dealers can't be sure when they'll be paid or if they'll be paid. What a great country!

Gee, aren't you glad it isn't your appendix that's waiting.

Congressman John Conyers. . . James Madison . . . and for some strange reason . . . . . .The Treasure of Sierra Madre .

July 29, 2009 - Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan)*: “I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill. What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

February 27, 1788 - James Madison (later, fourth President of the United States) in Federalist Paper #62: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed?"


Dobbs: 'If you're the police where are your badges?'
Gold Hat: 'Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!'

*from Wikipedia entry for John Conyers:

He is married to Monica Conyers, who is former President Pro-Tempore of the Detroit City Council and the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation into political corruption in the city, and who has pled guilty to conspiring to commit bribery.

I thank www.amusedcynic.com for this contrast of Conyers and Madison.