Cash for Clunkers hurt the Poor

When attempting to buy a good used car in or around Detroit, indeed perhaps anywhere in the nation, and one thing will surely jump out at you: the high prices of used cars. At Auto Round Up on Detroit's west side, a 12 year old vehicle with 225,000 miles was going for $2,400! At A and G Auto Sales on the east side, a 1997 Mercury with 150,000 miles and a badly damaged rear bumper was priced at $1,695. Similar tales abound, but the bottom line is this: in the Motor City, good used cars at good prices are tough to find.

We have our friend President Barack Obama to thank for that. You see, the Cash for Clunkers program decimated the used car market. Every car turned in for the program had to be destroyed; they could not be refurbished or resold. The reason given was to get older, gas guzzling vehicles off the road.

But were they all really gas hogs? One particular area heavily hit are the famed minivans, family cars not especially known to burn excessive petrol or horribly pollute the air. Trying to find a decently priced one less than even 15 years old is a challenge: a 1995 Caravan at a car lot on Van Dyke in Warren, Michigan was listed at $1600. This is a vehicle 16 model years old.

So who benefited from the program? Middle class Americans who could have afforded a new car had they wanted anyway, and unionized auto workers who vote for the Democratic Party and our President. The poorer classes, the ones the left tell us so often how much they care about, meanwhile, are struggling to get something within their budgets. Even the used car dealers are struggling because they can't get cars for inventory at prices their clientele can afford.

The federal government should have never been in the auto sales field anyway, and part of the reason is in the unintended consequences of such behavior as illustrated by the dry yet inflated used car market. Cash for Clunkers hurts the very segment of society which Democrats claim to love so much. Yet a moment's simple thought would have prevent the harm. A basic understanding of supply and demand would have shown the folly of the program as written.

But appealing to the people who vote them en masse and are also more likely give the Democratic Party cash and effort means more to the left than rational government policy. Yet the poor? The ones the Democrats so much for?

We suppose that they may eat cake.

BIg Brother Lurking

The Michigan Campaign Finance Network has issued a report claiming that more than $23 million dollars in undisclosed cash went towards TV ads during the 2010 election cycle in the state. The people on the receiving end of such expenditures, including failed Democratic candidate or governor Virg Bernero as well as Governor Rick Snyder, supposedly gained exposure through the televised media without dropping a dime from their own coffers.

Granted, the ads did not ask anyone to actually vote for him or any of the others in question. But groups seeking disclosure over exactly who donated the money for the ads are crying foul. They want full disclosure.

Why? Why must someone have to report, or have their donations reported, on the grounds of a presumed public right to know? Why does the public have the *right* to know?

To keep bad old liberals or bad old conservatives at bay? Perhaps; but as the, well, we'll call it secret giving here, happened across the political spectrum, it would appear as though there was a fairly equal distribution of private funding. So if what is driving these people are a fear of smoke filled rooms, well, neither side had any apparent advantage.

“The gubernatorial general election was not a different kind of politics. It was the same old same old: Secret spenders, no accountability,” reports MCFN director Rich Robinson. So who are they supposed to accountable to? Why should a private individual have to account for his actions in the mere support of a political candidate or political creed anyway? It surely is no more than an expression of free speech, isn't it? Is free speech the greatest thing since sliced bread? Should someone wish to keep his face from the public view, why ought we not respect that wish as much as any public expression?

The only even semi-rational defense would be to stave off the buying an election, Yet isn't that the point of any given electioneering, up to and including TV ads? So what's the point?

This is nothing more than self proclaimed public interest groups acting as busybodies for a public which didn't ask for their help in the first place. If there is a real threat to our liberties, it is from them, not anonymous donors to political action groups. When they have the right to tell us as a matter of course how we are to spend our own money, we are indeed under the specter of Big Brother.

Sting of Kilpatrick will linger a long while

It is, in many ways, the saga which never ends. But the fact is, the specter of Kwame Kilpatrick just keeps hanging over Detroit.

The latest issue has to do with the fact that the former Mayor used campaign funds for personal use; namely, that his lawyers in the text message scandal were paid out of it. It is a clear violation of state law.

But rather than accept a much smaller fine as proposed last year by then Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, Kilpatrick bid his time and never took the deal. Now, new Secretary of State Ruth Johnson is insisting on a fine of close to a million bucks.

All of this is before the former Mayor must return to Wayne County to face federal charges for public corruption next year. The saga simply has no end in sight; it appears as Detroit will be paying for their old leader's miscues for a long time to come. This cannot help current Mayor Dave Bing or the Common Council move Detroit forward. Indeed, it surely will do the average citizen little good.

The sad fact is that the average citizen is exactly who put Kilpatrick in power in the first place. Hopefully, there will be a lesson learned, even if after years of it being taught: keep a better eye on your elected officials. When Detroiters learn that lesson, they shall indeed better serve themselves.

Abortion Kills a Human Being

Pope Benedict XVI has said that human embryos are 'dynamic, autonomous individuals.' It is a good and clear statement of what seems a reasonable philosophic position: human beings have human babies.

It is high time that we state things clearly and emphatically where human life is at stake. We aren't talking about potential, we are talking about reality. The sooner we begin to emphasize that, the sooner we might begin to convince all but the hardest hearted that abortion is a great moral evil.

This is not a wholly, or even particularly, religious position, yet many will attempt to dismiss it as such. Concluding that, again, human beings have human children is no more inherently religious than asserting that rape, theft, or kidnapping is evil. Not that the religious aspect of this or any other moral question isn't important, but only that, when trying to convince someone not particularly or even openly hostile to religion that something is wrong we cannot use religion to defend it. We have to play the game on their field until such time as they come around to a more inclusive point of view.

Fortunately their field offers arguments not directly religious. We have defenses based on reason: if they are reasonable people, they will eventually begin to see these for themselves. If they are not reasonable people, well, they face a future of their making, either secular or religious, at their own peril.

Catholics and Politics

Metro Detroit is hosting a gathering of liberal Catholics this weekend. The local Church authorities are warning the faithful to stay away, as the meeting will broach subjects contrary to Catholic teaching. Interestingly, the group appears made up largely of older Catholics. Are we left to believe that we are seeing a rebirth of the Faith, as such a demographic indicates that liberal Catholics are slowly fading? Let's hope so.

The Michigan Legislature has begun asking for redistricting plans, the first step towards redrawing the state's political districts. What will happen in the end we cannot know precisely, but look for Detroit to lose influence while suburban and rural areas gain a bit. That's simply the nature of the beast: Detroit is losing people while the rest of the state gains. But watch out: there will be all kinds of pigheaded charges as the process plays out. Any attempt to take seats from our fair city will be fought tooth and nail, mainly by the Democrats, Detroit and other urban though less populated areas are where their greatest influence resides. Redistricting will not likely be a fair fight.

That's it today; a Saturday two-for. Let us know what you think.

Who Needs Whom?

New polling suggests pretty heavily that the Democrats and President Barack Obama need the so-called moderate vote in order to win elections, while the GOP can rely on the conservative vote quite readily. This can be interpreted in several ways, but perhaps the most insightful is this: moderates aren't really moderates, as a group, but, rather, lean towards more traditional and familiar thoughts whenever in doubt.

That makes sense, in the end. For when there is a crisis, don't most people act based on what they know? When President Reagan was elected back in 1980 to stem the tide of Democratic and hence more liberal leadership, what was his appeal? To make America great again, based on the traditional American values of individualism and hard work. When the GOP ran the tide last November, what was the big question: nothing less than obtrusive, interfering government trampling the rights of the people.

The moderates responded as they knew how, by throwing out those who did not support real American values. That's why conservatives don't have to appeal too overtly to the presumed middle: they aren't actually in the center after all. They are in fact more moderate to conservative rather than being between the left and the right as they are generally portrayed.

Given the fact that so few people, about 20 percent or one in five, call themselves liberal, and it seems that what we truly have in our nation today is an overall aversion to liberalism. Even the presumed center appears to harbor similar doubts about the left, seeing as the Democrats need to get about 60% of the middle of the road vote to win major elections. It is a telling statistic, and does not bode well for any long term success for the party of Jefferson and Jackson.

Of course, the Democratic Party left the beliefs of those American stalwarts behind eons ago. But that is a tale for another time.

Consenting Adults; So What?

One of the most pervasive while also one of the most ridiculous arguments in favor of certain presumed freedoms is the one about consenting adults. Simply put, it makes moral a given action on the grounds that the folks involved are in agreement as to their joint participation. It is ultimately a wholly untenable position.

To begin with, if all that is required to make something ethically acceptable is the agreement of the parties involved, then we really ought to allow duels. The (presumably) two participants agreed to take shots at each other. So no matter how barbaric, as they freely entered into the contract we would have to let them fire away.

Absurd. Yet when applied to other moral questions, and prostitution for example is one key area where the adage is often used, it is something accepted as axiomatic. The truth is that you would be on stronger ground simply to argue that paying for sexual favors is not in itself wrong rather than to say it's okay because there was no coercion.

The mere fact that people are willing to sell themselves that way while there are also folks willing to buy the, ahem, product, in fact reeks of coercive effects on its own standing. One person wants money, the other wants something which money can buy. A certain coercive effect is in fact at work. Still, even setting that point aside begs the question. The best answer is that nothing is good solely because those involved want to to do it. The act in question must be good on its own stead lest those involved be acting on mere impulse or selfishness. Or, indeed, actual immorality.

This is not to say that a free will act without pressure isn't a factor in moral decision making. It goes without saying that for most personal acts to be moral they must be entered into with a reasonable amount of freedom. In marriage, for example, both the man and the woman involved must do so of their own consent. Yet a hypothetical marriage between a man and a woman both of whom are free to marry is itself already moral. We are in fact beyond the issue of the morality of the potential nuptials by the time the question of will enters the fray.

In short, when considering the rightness of something there are two questions at hand. The first and most important query is whether the act is morally right, seen objectively, on its own. The second is whether those involved are the proper parties to it. Their consent is never a point until after the moral correctness of the action is assured.