Guest Post by Eric Peters
You may recall the Obama-era “Cash for Clunkers” business. It was a very dirty business and a key element of Obama’s declared intention to fundamentally transform the United States – though to this day many people do not understand just how key it has proved to be.
The plan was sold to the public as a means of “stimulating” the then-flatlined American car industry, which was almost literally (and in GM’s case, actually) bankrupt. The idea was to get people to buy new cars by paying them to throw away their old cars.
Italics added.
The cars were not traded in. Not even “parted out” – i.e., their major components (such as their engines, in particular) removed in order to be re-sold to someone in need of low-cost replacement parts. They were destroyed. Engines dosed with silica and then run until they seized – so as to render them unusable.
Consider the implications.
The Obama regime surely did.
While on the surface – as in, superficially – the “cash for clunkers” program was about getting people to buy new cars, it was fundamentally about getting rid of affordable (older) cars. And the reason for that was to fundamentally transform the country – by breaking the generations-long tradition of young people becoming independently mobile almost-adults while they were still in their teens.
Key to this was the ready availability of . . . clunkers. That is, inexpensive old cars. The kinds of cars teenagers could afford (including the insurance). An old “clunker” may not have run reliably; but it ran. And it was cheap.
It beat riding a bicycle.
It enabled a teenager to expand his horizons. To go where he could not go on a bicycle – and without being dependent on his parents (or the government) for transportation. This, in turn, encouraged the teenager to get a job – even before he got a car – in order to get the car. And then to be able to buy gas for it – and so on.
And this promoted 16-and-17-year-olds to almost-adults before they achieved legal adulthood. Having a set of keys opened doors. A teen with a car could go wherever he needed and wanted to go whenever he needed and wanted to go. It was a rite of passage defining the transition between childhood and adulthood.
It was for just this enticing reason that every normal teenager champed at the bit to get his driver’s license as soon as legally possible. Many spent their 16th birthday at the DMV because who wanted to wait even one more day longer than they had to in order to get that fully-adult (there were no restrictions, once) driver’s license? It marked the bearer as an almost-adult, even if he was still just sixteen.
But what does a license matter if you haven’t got a car?
Per Hans Landa (the fey SS officer from the Quentin Tarantino film, Inglorius Basterds) that’s a bingo!
And here we arrive at the true purpose of “cash for clunkers.” The program succeeded wildly – not in terms of “stimulating” the moribund new car industry but in terms of making an entire generation indifferent to driving. A measure of this is the stat that something in the neighborhood of 20 percent of those who fall within the 16-24 age bracket do not have a driver’s iicense. This entirely rational, if you know you cannot afford to buy a car. (How many people who can’t afford a private airplane bother to train as private pilots?)
It is also entirely artificial – and malicious.
Obama – who is a Marxist – understood that to fundamentally transform America into a Marxist state, the privately owned car had to go. The problem – for the Marxists – was that most Americans had one and most who didn’t wanted one. And – so long as they could afford one – it would be extremely hard to persuade them to give them up. “Cash for clunkers” was ingenious in that it did not attack car ownership directly. It very subtly disconnected the rising generation from the aspiration to want a car – by making it unrealistic for many first-time buyers to own one.
The $1,500 “clunkers” that used to abound having been thrown away – leaving very little in the way of anything that a teenager (or even a young twenty-something) can afford without taking out a loan. And that, in turn, requires full coverage insurance – which most teenagers and twenty-somethings can’t afford, either.
And so, they don’t even bother. With the car – or the license.
This, in turn, fundamentally transforms them. Which is how America is being fundamentally transformed.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
It cleared out a lot of running inventory which boosted new car sales a tiny bit when the interest rates were low.
So?
I will never give up my bicycle!
Eric knocks another home run.
Cash4Klunkers denied the American Economy about 700,000 vehicles.
These running, functional cars with years of use left couldn’t continue to help boost people up the economic ladder to a better life.
And our tax dollars paid for the destruction!!!!
Everything the treasonous A(O)bamaination did was to weaken and destroy the USA directly, and Western Civilization in general.
Justice is a long time coming, but it’s getting here, via the scenic route….
The Manchurian Coon
coondidate
What about safe affordable public transit ? They’ve even destroyed that. When I was a kid I could take the Long Island Railroad for 2 bucks into NY city. Then I could but a subway token for 35 cents good for bus or train . Go from Penn station to tottenville . To visit family.or to Brooklyn for the same. I don’t think a 10 year old kid could find his own ass today.
Or ride that same route without being stabbed or raped.
Yep, I can guarantee I’m not getting stabbed or raped while driving in my own private vehicle. They can take their public transit that they force me to pay for and cram it up their a**es.
In my town, town councilors proved it would be more cost effective for the town to just lease a low cost vehicle to all those actually riding our near empty buses around town than it was to continue to pay for the running and upkeep of our public transit system. But we’re living in times where the math and economics don’t matter. All will forced into old school eastern European and Soviet style transportation and housing whether you want to or not, comrade.
That’s how he got a gaping sphincter…
When I was a kid, in Queens, we had passes to ride NYC buses to school. Junior high. Different color pass each month.
I going to take a guess before I read the article. It was about reducing the amount of car parts available to keep older cars running.
Ok, read the article. I think he’s only partially right that the reason was about reducing affordable cars for teens and poor people. That was the end result but I stick to my first premise. They do not want any of us to have access to ICE cars and so they needed to get rid of as many as possible so car parts would become harder to find and less affordable when you find them.
Many teens lost interest in driving due to social media, and helicopter parents who will haul them around if they need to go somewhere. They just don’t meet in person as much as we did when we were teens. I have a 17 yr old nephew that doesn’t care if he drives so his parents haul him around. They finally convinced him to drive after he had a GF that wanted him to drive. They broke up and so now, not so interested. I would tell him to learn to drive and get his license if he wants to go anywhere. Or even if he just wants food. Go get off yer lazy ass and get it yerself, lazy ass boy.
Owning a car as a kid injected a measure of responsibility into us, especially if we took a mechanical interest in keeping the thing running (or running faster!). Most car owning kids in my high school had a job, liked to keep their car up, and generally stayed out of trouble. Even girls who were allowed to drive the family car were generally more capable than those who never got to drive.
It kinda equates to responsibility and jobs. Things the nanny state hates.
Good writing, Eric.
I’ll buy it was done to help “global warming” by getting rid of gas guzzlers, but to stop teens from driving is a bridge too far.
You think throwing away – destroying – working vehicles with years of working life left and replacing them with new vehicles -made in energy-intensive factories from newly mined ores and newly crafted plastics from petroleum and shipping both the parts and the finished vehicles around the world saved on emission of the deadly CO2? Wow.
yeah. sure. As if the externalities involved in the production, transport, manufacture and disposal of vehicles is free.
All this while the commie piece of shit leftist nigger turned every alphabet agency he and his leftist hit squad of Hate America and Americans at least all white Americans could against the independent citizens .
Let’s not forget snickering at the fact he was Kenyan Born by a white leftist mud shark and not eligible to be president
As Alex Jones pointed out numerous times especially in the Obama deception
Now look at the path this nation is on and Trump love him or hate him is the only one forceful enough to end the onslaught
If it’s hot to late
A few things about “the only one forceful enough…”:
Donald Trump LOCKED-FUCKING-DOWN the U.S.A. and is the father of “Big Beautiful Vaxxines.” Medical and Legal martial law is pretty damned forceful.
(Not even going to mention Jared and Ivanka; the best president Israel ever had, and the always abominable J0hn B0lt0n.)
It’s hard to hit a home run every time at bat.
Yeah, especially if you won’t even take a swing. The fucker fooled you too, I see.
This is how they’ll “take” the guns.
Bless their hearts, they can try.
There are those of us that already made the determination that is a supreme red-line that shall not be crossed because we know what comes after it.
I’m one of ‘em.
If I were a young person, that sounds like it would be a good idea to learn to be a machinist or CNC programmer and operator.
the only ones selling at buy back programs are zips and printed single shot items. no sane person would sell their means of protection at a time when even anti gun nuts are flocking to dealers and purchasing their own, recent polls show 65percent of folks own some fire arm or many. 41 percent of dems if you can believe that.. soon more and more states capacity laws will be over turned like cali and ore. the shortest amendment with the least verbiage is the most challenged. and with out it the primary the 1st is not enforceable.
I’ve got a dear friend who’s 84 years young. His two sons and daughter are all pro 2A. His grandchildren on the other hand, half would turn in guns at the drop of a dime. That’s what’s concerning. No one will ever “take” mine; but the future generations are being groomed to think they are nothing but trouble.
zio-weasels, my good man.
They have war-gamed overt confiscation of guns countless times: they always lose. Their strategy is simpler: make owning guns enough of a pita, such that fewer and fewer and fewer people will be willing to jump through their hoops — this includes ammunition — and you will have effectively disarmed America.
Cash for Clunkers only ran for 1 month before running out of funding, July 24 2009 thru August 24 2009. It only junked 677,081 cars. I’d guess that would be under 1% of all cars & passenger trucks at that time.
During years 2010 thru 2023 several million more cars have become Clunkers. Millions & millions more.
More likely, cash for clunkers was a non-bailout bailout for the car industry.
It transformed me from a normally peaceable citizen into one that wants to smash the face of everyone that proudly had an Obama and Biden sign posted in their front yards.
There are people I no longer associate because of the Marxists, and it goes both ways.
And we were once such good friends.
@ the time? SURE there was Lots of ‘used’ High-End stock, on a barge, en route to: China, the Middle East, Central & South America.
My friend bought a 2002 gas 2500hd GMC in Wyoming for $1500 with 100k miles on it but beat up from concrete work. He drove it to Florida. He still drives it as his work truck years later and another 100k miles on the odometer.
Imagine being a normie and buying a new car with a $1k a month payment with self driving bullshit, stupid display screens and tracking devices, dealer only serviceable components. Nope I’ll take my 20 year old dependable truck with crank windows and manual 4×4.
Getting out to lock the hubs is SO 19th century!
In 1992 Chevrolet already had self locking hubs on 3/4 ton 4×4 trucks. I have one here on the ranch.
Eric,
A little late to the party but a subject that fits right in with this article is my VW TDI “clean” diesel.
My wife had an early 2000s Jetta TDI/5spd and we got 49.9 mpg on a road trip-across the Alleghenys/Blueridges to VA Beach, so plenty hilly.
My 2014 sportwagon TDI/6spd auto gets 37mpg. How am I saving the planet if I’m using more fuel?
I have never heard this addressed.
Currently taxpayers are subsidizing Green Diesel while Uncle Fed tries to kill diesel. Strange paradox isn’t it?
All our cars are diesel and we will drive them until they fall apart. Speaking with people who use the Green Diesel, they love it because it really does burn cleaner than dino diesel. Less DPF problems, clogged MAF sensors, and they perceive better acceleration. Trucking companies are reporting great results too.
But, we can’t have something that works and gets great mileage without being a science experiment so Uncle must kill it after 1st paying for it.
The VW Dieselgate scandal was all about finding a way to remove diesel cars from the marketplace, and in North America, it’s largely succeeded. After paying huge fines here, VW has dropped all diesel cars from North America and I don’t expect they’ll ever bring them back here.
Governments have long been working at restricting our mobility options so removing consumers ability to by a diesel VW that went 1200 KMs on a tank of diesel, compared to an ICE VW that went just over 600 KMs on a tank of gas was paramount. Get rid of the diesel option, then ban or restrict ICE cars and force people into expensive, limited range electric vehicles that will not last any more than a decade and they’ll have achieved their goal. If you’re wealthy, you won’t be able travel more than a few hundred KMs at a time in your expensive electric car, and if you’re not, you’ll be relegated to using public transit and subject to all its risks, or you’ll be walking.
My 92 F350 diesel will run on diesel, vegetable oil, kerosene, old motor oil, you name it. And if we get EMP’ed, I just have to replace the starter and a couple batteries and it will run again. I don’t think I will be driving an ev or walking in my lifetime. Although, riding our horses with my lever gun in a sling while glaring in the Texas sun is pretty appealing…
Whatever became of BioWillie? Who would object to the smell of french fries along transportation corridors?
That is new enough it has an ECM (Engine control module) that would fry in your scenario.
i have a ’21 jetta-no diesel/hybrid and i get 40-44 MPG
out of it. a great car
I still miss the ’73 AMC Ambassador wagon my folks had.
https://cdn.dealeraccelerate.com/gaa/39/22157/170311/790×1024/1973-amc-ambassador
The best I can hope for now is a 1991 Ford Country Squire:
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=585486504&q=1991+country+squire+wagon&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjCgcmK8uKCAxUAq4kEHUiVDC8Q0pQJegQICBAB&biw=1163&bih=512&dpr=1.65
You CAN do better! I did…
Had it close to a year now. 2012. Only 20000 ever made. One production year only. Still less than 25000 miles and got 5 year extended warranty bumper to bumper. Like a new car except for one thing…I hold the title!
But it ain’t a diesel…
And it gets turrible MPG…
But to each his own…
It’ll pass everything but a gas station and it rides like my living room couch. Also, it doubles as a hotel room. There’s your savings. As for MPG? I burn high octane, so if I keep my foot out of it, my MPG is within my acceptable limits. And if I DO put my foot in it? I’ll be seein ya!…in the rearview.
Plus…cops RARELY pull over a Cadillac because we’re voted most likely to fight back in court year over year. Cops play the odds just like everyone else.
Also? I paid 25k for it. While looking up the stock photo, I found one just like it for sale…50k!
I call that a good investment!
An underrated 31/43 mpg from factory. With a laptop you can do close to 50 highway.
Getting 32/42 with no modifications at all.
When my Mom and Dad went down to the Caddy dealership for the first time, my mother had the temerity to ask, “what kind of mileage does this thing get?”
“Ma’am, if you’re worried about that then you’re shopping in the wrong place.”
Pretty straight forward and honest.
Do you think all these street rats showing their asses every weekend worry about the price of gas or their fuel economy? Not a chance.
Also, a Dodge ain’t no Cadillac. For that matter, neither is a Lincoln.
I didn’t have a car or a license until I was 18. In Texas, you could get a hardship license at 15 and ride a motorcycle, which is what I did. I went everywhere, all year long, on 2 wheels. And I still do.
Those same stupid fucking teenagers are out there on the road tearing up their brand new shit like they WERE clunkers…burnin’ donuts. Running from the cops. Hitting the cops.
Trust me. This shit is a self solving problem. Thank God for a general lack of respect for ANYTHING, amirite?
For my graduation present from College in 1984, my father gave me a 1983 MB 300 TD wagon. He told me that if I took care of it, I would never need another car. Although I also have a truck, Gertrude is still my primary car, now with 1.2 MM on her. I intend to be buried in that car.