Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Cash for Cluterfarks


Cash for Clunkers a/k/a C.A.R.S a/k/a We’d have to be high to let these red-tape bureaucratic weenies touch our health care.

Here’s the skinny on this “successful” program:

You’ve heard it advertised by now: bring in your clunker if it has less that 18 miles per gallon and you can get a $3,500-$4,500 voucher on a new fuel-efficient vehicle.

Here’s what you’re not hearing: The Dep’t of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued 136 pages of rules plus 20 pages of amendments to car dealers. Irony update: the upside, the NHTSA claims these 150+ pages are in line with the Paperwork Reduction Act). Dealers were to be reimbursed within 10 days of making their initial claim. “Computer glitches” kept that from happening. Say it with me…….of course! Glitches! Always an underlying glitch! Blaming someone/something else is line with this administration's trends. But I digress....

Now having no love for major car dealers, I do have sympathy for the independently owned dealers. We have to go with the assumption these folks understood the mounds of regulations and passed that information onto the consumers, right? How likely is that?

So since its inception some say it’s been wildly successful as evidenced by Congress dumping two billion more into the program. I suspect any program that would advertise as “hey we’ll give you shit for free!!” would be wildly popular. However, it doesn’t make it (a) just, (b) economically sound, or (c) properly managed.

Speaking of governmental clusterfarks being properly mismanaged, we’re now seeing the aftermath of this wretched concept.

Regarding reimbursement to dealers, take Maryland as an example. Three hundred dealers were surveyed, 70 responded. Less than two percent of those dealers said their claims have been reimbursed thus far. The promised turnaround time by the NHTSA: 10 days. The NHTSA in turn has said it’s all the fault of improper staffing, they can’t keep up with the paperwork and the lack of details dealers are providing when submitting their claims. Oh also, these dumbass dealers keep submitting their rejected claims which backlogs the entire process.

The answer: hiring more unqualified governmental worker to process the paperwork. How hard can that be you ask, after all, it’s just paperwork. Well tell that to the dealers that got rejections back from the NHTSA that said “Reason for Rejection: None”. Thanks for playing!

This is government inefficiency for you. And now we’re being asked to entrust our lives and the lives of our loved ones to these imbeciles when considering passing government run health insurance programs.

Think of it this way. It’s easy to loath both the insurance companies and the government. I know I do, but I have more distaste for one over another. But let’s break it down:

Idiot employee to a major corporation that processes your paperwork.
Idiot employee to a major governmental entity that processes your paperwork.

Hey, guess which one actually has accountability for their job performance and has the fear of termination lingering in the back of their head??

Two billion guesses on that answer and the first two billion don't count.

Epic clusterfark failure.

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