Obama's 'Cash for Clunkers' was a flop

Over at The Washington Post's "Wonkblog," Brad Plumer concludes that the Obama administration's "cash for clunkers" program of 2009 was a flop.
Plumer notes that the program was designed to lend a hand to the ailing auto industry while taking old cars with low mpg and high pollution emissions off  the road.

But Plumer relies on two studies to produce a piece that certainly won't help with Obama's slipping legacy:
"As it turns out, the critics were on to something. A new analysis from the Brookings Institution's Ted Gayer and Emily Parker found that the program was fairly inefficient as economic stimulus and mostly pulled forward auto sales that would have happened anyway. It also cut greenhouse-gas emissions a bit — the equivalent of taking up to 5 million cars off the road for a year — but at a steep cost.

"Gayer and Parker find that Americans traded in nearly 700,000 old cars ("clunkers") through the program between July 1 and Aug. 24, 2009. Vehicle sales did rise during that period. But a detailed study suggests that consumers just bought some cars slightly earlier than they otherwise would have. Cumulative purchases over the year were basically unchanged.

"Other studies have reported similar numbers. A 2011 analysis from Resources for the Future compared U.S. car sales under the program with those in Canada (which didn't have a clunker program) during the same time frame. That study found that 45 percent of cash-for-clunker vouchers went to consumers who would have bought new cars anyway.
"... The program cost about $1.4 million per job created — far less effective than other conventional fiscal stimulus measures, such as cutting payroll taxes or boosting unemployment benefits. ... One recent study by economists Gerald Carlino and Robert Inman found that the 2009 Recovery Act could have been fully 30 percent more effective in boosting the economy if it had been better designed (i.e., more focused on things like aid to states and payroll tax cuts)."

Mystery photo needs some explanation

Let’s put our heads together and figure this one out … Where and when was this photo taken?

Michigan’s Mr. Media, Tim Skubick, has written a column for MLive about a tradition at MSU vs. U-M football games in the 1950s and early 1960s that featured the governor, riding in a top-down car, across the 50-yard-line at halftime.

The column is accompanied by a black-and-white photograph (above) with this caption: Gov. William Milliken, right, was the last to cross from one end of the field to the other in a tradition once allowed at MSU-U-M games. Here he's pictured with a famous former U-M football player, President Jerry Ford. (File Photo).

First of all, the historical facts are out of whack. Milliken took over as the governor in January 1969, so the tradition did not end in the early ‘60s. Gerald and Betty Ford are prominently displayed in this photo and it looks to me like a post-presidency pic, after Ford left the White House in January 1977.

Another item: That sure appears to be U.S. Sen. Robert Griffin riding behind the president. Griffin didn’t leave office until January 1979.

Most importantly, I don’t think this photo was shot at Spartan Stadium or at that other place in Ann Arbor. It looks to me like the Fords and Milliken are standing up in a limo sun roof and they’re riding down a street during a campaign event. Maybe during Ford’s ’76 election campaign?

Any thoughts?

I’m not sure what “file photo” means in this case, given that the material is published by the relatively new online MLive news service. Perhaps someone associated with from one of the former Booth newspapers recalls this photo.

I was a freshman at MSU in the fall of 1977 and I don’t remember any such halftime tradition. (Then again, my memories of college football Saturdays from those days are a bit fuzzy.)

According to Skubick, the annual governor’s appearance was quietly discontinued due to security concerns.

Here’s a portion of his column:

“Back in the bucolic days of the 1950s and early 60s, there was a halftime tradition. The bands from both schools would form an aisle at mid-field either at the Big House or Spartan Stadium and the announcer would ask for everyone’s attention ... at least those who were still sober.

“Ladies and gentlemen. We direct your attention to the 50 yard line where the governor of the state of Michigan will move from the home side of the field to the visitors side.”

Whomever thought-up the idea was obviously going for the symbolism that the governor had no favorite in the game, which was the P.C. thing to do. Why risk losing an election by offending either the blues or the greens in the audience?

So with the announcement, the governor would begin the trek from one sideline to the other while the bands played on.”

Btw: It’s quite possible that Skubick played no role in choosing the photo for his column.

Are cops targeting Sterling Heights councilman?

Controversial Sterling Heights Councilman Paul Smith has alienated a wide array of people in Sterling Heights – fellow council members, the mayor, the city manager and some department heads – but I wonder if he has now been targeted by the police department.

Smith, a tea party-style Republican who is up for re-election on the Nov. 5 non-partisan ballot, has loudly opposed the 2.5-mill tax hike for police and fire on that same ballot.

So, it’s a bit interesting that he was ticketed by the police on Saturday for a minor traffic issue (improperly changing lanes) and the city’s PR Department followed up with a detailed, five-paragraph press release about the incident.

Smith isn’t talking, but it is highly unusual, at the very least, for any city to issue a press release about a basic traffic violation. To make such a move one week before the election is highly questionable.

I’ve seen police press releases about suspicious deaths that were shorter in length than this announcement.

To be fair, Smith apparently was belligerent after he was pulled over and he ignored the officer’s command to stay inside his vehicle. The officer who handled the stop said that Smith had been driving his minivan slowly on Van Dyke but was also weaving a bit. After the cop rode alongside of Smith to assess the situation, the councilman abruptly switched lanes in front of the patrol car without using a turn signal, according to the release.

Police Chief Michael Reese said dash-camera video from the cop car showed that the stop was handled properly. It could be that Reese requested the issuance of a release to diffuse a possible political sideshow, with Smith claiming he was besieged by the PD.

The first-term councilman has had past run-ins with the police over minor matters, including a recent episode in which he snatched a pro-millage sign from the lawn of a local car dealer and went inside to berate the management in front of customers.

It should also be noted that the Sterling Heights police unions have endorsed two challengers who are hoping to unseat the outspoken incumbent.

We’ll see next Tuesday whether Smith emerges unscathed and just keeps rolling along.

Levin hammered for saying people are 'transitioned' to new health coverage

Congressman Sandy Levin is getting hammered on Twitter for apparently saying that those who are losing their health insurance coverage in the individual market due to Obamare are “transitioning” to new policies that meet new standards.

Conservative critics, including Michelle Malkin, have sent tweets ridiculing Levin’s description of the loss of insurance reportedly experienced by millions of people under the Affordable Care Act.

The Royal Oak Democrat’s remarks came at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing this morning. Republican members of the committee came armed with numerous anecdotes about people who have seen their policy cancelled and now face big premium hikes are large deductibles as an alternative.

Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, apologized to the panel for the disastrous launch of healthcare.gov.“I want to apologize to [the American people] that the website has not worked as well as it should,” she said. “We know how desperately you need affordable coverage… this initial experience has not lived up to our expectations or the expectations of the American people and it is not acceptable,” said Tavenner, whose CMS agency has overseen the Obamacare website project.

Levin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, defended the administration and said that similar rollout problems were experienced with Medicare Part D during the Bush years. In the states that were cooperative and opted for their own online exchanges, he added, the websites are working well.

“We start this hearing facing a basic reality: Democrats want to make the Affordable Care Act work. Congressional Republicans don't. That reality has been reflected in 40-plus efforts by Republicans to repeal, dismantle or defund the Affordable Care Act,” said Levin, who represents most of Macomb County.

“That reality was reflected in their zeal shutting down the government and jeopardizing the full faith and credit of our nation, damaging our nation's global standing and leading to enduring harm, costing our economy $24 billion, tens of thousands of jobs, and a dramatic drop in consumer confidence.”

According to The Hill, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a Midland Republican, countered that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told his committee “a dozen times that the administration would be ready” for the Oct. 1 enrollment launch.“We now know this administration was not ready,” he said, adding that if CMS had been more transparent about the problems it faced in the run-up, “many of these glitches could have been avoided.”

According to The Washington Times, Camp said the reports from Michigan indicate that the state’s actual enrollees could probably fit in his office. As for CMS complaints about a rushed timeframe for the healthcare.gov project, Camp concluded: “Frankly, three years should have been enough.” he said in his opening statement.

Read more: 

Why not let the NSA run Obamacare?

How can it be that the U.S. government has produced the most advanced, sweeping technology for spying that the world has ever known, yet it can’t create a website that allows Americans shopping for health insurance to simply log on?

That is the intriguing question posed by Ezra Klein at The Washington Post, who has a little fun comparing and contrasting the two systems on his Wonkbook blog this morning.

Klein notes that the “technical competence and reach” displayed by the NSA – monitoring 60 million phone calls in Spain in one month – is so overwhelming that the French foreign minister conceded that his nation’s leaders are “jealous” of the spy network’s abilities.

At the same time, the debacle resulting from the Obamacare rollout revealed “extraordinary technological incompetence,” Klein noted. In fact, reports on the ACA website project, which was farmed out to 55 contractors, demonstrates that some sectors of the government are far behind in software and technology as a matter of course.

Klein reaches a comical conclusion:

“The joke here is obvious: Can't President Obama just ask the NSA guys to run the Obamacare web site? After all, the ones who are no longer spying on foreign leaders will need something to do.

“But the more serious question is whether both of these visions of the government can be right at the same time. Is it possible that the U.S. government can contain both the terrifying technological competence implied by the NSA stories and the unnerving technological incompetence displayed in the Obamacare stories?

“You could make an argument for it. The NSA has much more in-house technological talent than the Centers of Medicaid and Medicare Services. They've also had a lot longer to get their systems up and working. Perhaps they're just better at what they do.

“But it seems at least as likely that the NSA is a whole lot less omniscient than the Snowden documents suggest. A program that sounds inescapable and infallible on paper might be a mess in reality.”