Happy Birthday Obama!

Eville wrote: How does "we will release it when it is ready" equate to  "withholding data"?  Not only is incomplete data useless, but it can also be potentially dangerous.

Or the data shows that the clunkers program was poorly managed... Which would be typical of this administration.

We already know that you only need to buy a car that gets

1 mpg more than your "clunker" to qualify for the rebate... Wow. thats impressive. Think of the billions of gallons of fuel that will be saved from this aggressive campaign funded with our dollars.

Well, some facts came out last night... And here is an article about the clunkers program.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/05/car-rebates-populist-stimulus-clunker/

Drumming up support for continuing the rebates, the Obama administration has pointed to data collected since the program began July 24:

-- Through early Tuesday, the clunkers program had recorded 157,000 transactions worth $664 million. (hmm, and $1 billion was used to buy $664 million worth of cars... Good thing the public is stupid and doesn't realize how much waste was in setting up this mess over 1/3 of the cost of the program was to run the program... Yup, $336,000,000 went to run it for 10 days... You can bet that health care will have the same "savings"...)

-- Eighty-three percent of the vehicles traded in were trucks or SUVs. (so we reward people who purchased gas guzzlers to begin with, not people who made "good" fuel efficient choices)

-- The new vehicles purchased on average get 9.6 more miles per gallon than the trade-ins, a fuel efficiency improvement of 61 percent.

"With clunkers, you've taken about four to five months of business and you've pushed it into a matter of days," Anwyl said. "I think we could see a real drop in sales activity after mid-September moving into October."

The environmental benefits are also being questioned. The new vehicles purchased with rebates get an average 25.4 mpg, according to the government's data.

But Dan Becker of the Center for Auto Safety suggested that taxpayers will end up spending $3 billion for less-than-stellar fuel economy gains.

"If it doesn't make economic sense and it doesn't make environmental sense, maybe it doesn't make any sense?" Becker said.

"Well, its good for the enviroment" I can hear someone on here saying...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/05/experts-carbon-savings-cash-clunkers-small/

WASHINGTON - "Cash for clunkers" could have the same effect on global warming pollution as shutting down the entire country — every automobile, every factory, every power plant — for an hour per year. That could rise to three hours if the program is extended by Congress and remains as popular as it is now.

Climate experts aren't impressed.

Compared to overall carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, the pollution savings from cash for clunkers do not noticeably move the fuel gauge. Environmental experts say the program — conceived primarily to stimulate the economy and jump-start the auto industry — is not an effective way to attack climate change.

"As a carbon dioxide policy, this is a terribly wasteful thing to do," said Henry Jacoby, a professor of management and co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. "The amount of carbon you are saving per federal expenditure is very, very small."