Bunnin GM Supercenter salesman Michael Angelo Olinyk hands over keys to Doug Steiger of Orange County for his new SUV, a 2009 GMC Acadia. Steiger traded his 1998 GMC truck under the “cash for clunkers” program on Thursday at the Oxnard dealership.

I own a 1996 GMC truck, so I know the mileage sucks (14-15 MPG around town, maybe 20 MPG on a long road trip).  But the Acadia? It’s EPA mileage estimate is 17 MPG city/24 MPG highway. And that’s the EPA estimate. I don’t think I’ve owned a single car that got mileage even close to its EPA estimated mileage, so I have no reason to think the Acadia’s actual mileage will approximate the estimate, either.

It’s bad enough to give away money to sell more unaffordable hybrids. Now they’re giving away the taxpayers’ money for marginal mileage increases. I don’t care what this guy from the story drives. I do care that he’s getting thousands in taxpayer money to drive it.

STIMULUS POLITICS: USA Today takes on a different analysis, however, that shows that Obama districts seem to be getting more money: ‘Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year’s presidential election. That aid – about $17 billion – is the first piece of the administration’s massive stimulus package that can be tracked locally. Much of it has followed a well-worn path to places that regularly collect a bigger share of federal grants and contracts, guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation.

‘Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.’

Is that enough to conclude that the Obama administration is intentionally favoring friendly counties? Nah, not really. First, we’re only talking about the first $17 billion of nearly (gulp) $800 billion, or a little more than the first 2% of the funds to be spent. Second, note that the counties at the head of the pack are old hands at milking the government: “Much of it has followed a well-worn path to places that regularly collect a bigger share of federal grants and contracts, guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation.”

(By the way, it looks like Lasky was quoting someone else quoting the USA Today piece — nothng outside the quotation marks is actually in the piece — but he only links to USA Today.)

A skeptic cited in the USA Today piece likewise noted these considerations and others for doubting that politics were at play. The scariest comes at the end (emphasis mine):

Investigators who track the stimulus are skeptical that political considerations could be at work. The imbalance is so pronounced — and the aid so far from complete — that it would be almost inconceivable for it to be the result of political tinkering, says Adam Hughes, the director of federal fiscal policy for the non-profit OMB Watch. “Even if they wanted to, I don’t think the administration has enough people in place yet to actually do that,” he says.

“Most of what they’re doing at this point is just stamping the checks and sending them out,” Hughes says.

Chew on that last line for a few minutes.

UPDATE (7/9/09): Gateway Pundit sees something nefarious in the division of spoils, and Donald Douglas says conservatives will benefit from even the perception of payback, whether it’s there or not. Should we be happy about that?

Tits doesn’t even belong on the list, you know. It’s such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname. ‘Hey, Tits, come here. Tits, meet Toots, Toots, Tits, Tits, Toots.’ It sounds like a snack doesn’t it? Yes, I know, it is, right. But I don’t mean the sexist snack, I mean, New Nabisco Tits. The new Cheese Tits, and Corn Tits and Pizza Tits, Sesame Tits Onion Tits, Tater Tits, Yeah. Betcha can’t eat just one. That’s true I usually switch off . But I mean that word does not belong on the list.

Anyway, I haven’t seem the F-bomb used to such good effect since Planes, Trains, and Automobiles . . . though there were no smiles to be had there. (Except on the people watching the movie.)

H/T: R.S. McCain.

The CEO had every right to correct the record, though I’ve seen at least one person criticize him for doing so after the president left the event.  What was he to do?  Interrupt the president to correct him while he was still speaking?  That arguably would have been rude, and announcing his disagreement in a later press release would not have had nearly the same coverage.  I suppose he could have tried to make his statement with some kind of “all due respect” preface while the president was still there, but I think he did the only thing he could practically do to keep the record straight.

Dan Riehl wonders “Amateur Hour . . . or Just Lying?“  I doubt the president was just out-and-out lying, since the CEO was right there to correct things.

Now, for the title of this post . . .

Lefties protested long and loud against Caterpillar a few years ago, after Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she tried to interfere with the destruction of a Palestinian home.  Has Caterpillar stopped selling to the IDF?  If not, it seems lefty stimulus supporters are arguing for an economic fix that could ensure more of this:

Which I personally have no problem with (that’s not Corrie, by the way, but another propaganda photo from the linked website), from what I know about it.  But either Caterpilar has stopped selling to the IDF, or lefty stimulus supporters have short memories.

We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements.

If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world.

As the Obama administration presses the largest fiscal bill in American history, caps the salaries of executives at institutions receiving federal aid at $500,000 and introduces a new plan to rescue the banking industry, the unemployment rate is at its highest in 16 years. The Dow has slumped to 1998 levels, and last year mortgage foreclosures rose 81 percent.

All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not—or even whether many people have thought much about it or not—the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French.

One thing from the Newsweek article that really grates on me is its repeated insistence on referring to the Bush administration and the Republican congresses during his term as conservative.  Grrr.  Thanks a lot, big-spending Republicans!

I have an in-law from Sweden who visits twice a year, and over the years we’ve had some good-natured give-and-take over the ways in which our respective cultures and governments are better than the other.  A year or two ago, he was happy to see the center-right party in Sweden get voted into power.  The last visit here, he said to me — only partly in jest — that it was the first time he could say that the U.S. government was more liberal than his own.  Ouch.

Hat tip: Weekly Standard Blog, via HotAir.

With gas-tax revenues plummeting, the state of North Carolina is looking seriously at taxing motorists for how far they drive.

If the “road-use tax” is implemented, it would at first be simple – with the state checking your odometer annually and taxing you based on how many miles you have driven. But transportation experts say new GPS technology could allow the state to charge people different rates based on when and where they drive, in an attempt to manage congestion.

I’m anticipating no objections from the ACLU, at least as long as the government promises not to to use the GPS monitoring to identify, track, or apprehend terrorists.

H/T: Michelle.

The Federal Reserve entered a new era on Tuesday, reducing its benchmark interest rate so low that it will have to reach for new and untested tools in fighting both the recession and downward pressure on consumer prices. The central bank lowered its target for the overnight federal funds rate to a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, a record low, virtually bringing the United States to the zero-rate policies that Japan used for six years in its own fight against deflation.

Maybe we’ll have to change the usury statutes to make interest rates over 3% illegal.  (For you Ace readers, “usury” is a fancy term for “loan sharking.”)

Not everyone intends to mislead with this figure, of course (including JWF, I’m sure — I like the bloggers over there, pretty much). Some are just repeating the error after reading it elsewhere. But I can’t help but think that some folks are intentionally throwing it out there with the hope that those who hear it will forget the “including future benefits” part and maybe forget the “including benefits” part entirely, and thus walk away thinking that a UAW worker is making over $150k a year after overtime.

This is not a good practice, and not just because it is misleading.

First, it is the same type of “class warfare” rhetoric that conservatives routinely condemn when liberals wage it by talking about “taxing the rich” or “the gap between rich and poor.” The people engaged in deliberate deception are effectively identifying the UAW members as “the rich” when compared to many other hard-working Americans. And they explicitly condemn the gap between the “hourly wage, including benefits” of auto workers in the big three and tose working for Japanese companies. How is that any different than exploiting the gap between rich and poor? (Well, it is a little different, and I’ll get to that below.) The intent here is to demonize the UAW worker as someone making more than he should and to remind other Americans that they don’t have it as good.

Second, this $73/hr claim gives the left fodder for calling conservatives dishonest. This will undermine all of the good arguments that can be made against the bailout.

Third, it’s unnecessary. Wouldn’t it be wiser to argue in terms that are accurate (and therefore can’t be called dishonest)? My goodness, if you can’t make the case against Joe Six-Pack having to pay taxes so some guy can keep earning twice the hourly wage he does, plus a lifetime pension Joe Six-Pack doesn’t get, plus lifetime healthcare coverage Joe Six-Pack doesn’t get — and instead have to rely on the dishonest $73 per hour “earning” figure — then you’ve got no business making your case to anyone.

By the way, is this argument a form of “class warfare,” and aren’t conservatives supposed to be against class warfare? Well, yeah. But I’ll cut conservatives some slack, here, as the difference is that taxpayers are being asked to keep this system alive.

The correct way to present this figure is not as a UAW member’s wage, but as the hourly cost to the company per worker. That is consistent with how it is usually reported for other folks, and it is perfectly honest, because costs are understood to include all costs of employment, including future costs for current employees.

Oh, yeah. The latest news, which Michelle Malkin is quite happy about, is that the auto company bailout has died in the Senate . . . at least until next year.