Another Man's Treasure

ANOTHER MAN’S TREASURE!
By: The Speaker in the House
Claudia Roazen

This new “Cash for Clunkers” program by the government sounded innocuous until I found out what they did to the old cars. They seize and destroy the car’s engine and then scrap the rest of the car immediately. If everyone trades in their old cars then what will youth have to build on? Remember your first car? My first car was a yellow Ford Pinto, four cylinder, two doors, hatch, standard four on the floor and with no air except to crank down the powerless windows. I got absolutely no traction in the snow and it felt like a motorized toboggan driving in the New England winter. Yet, I loved it! I paid for my clunker with my own saved cash and it represented both freedom and my first steps as a young looking to be upwardly mobile adult. It broke down more often then it ran but I smiled through the pitted windshield that I owned my first vehicle!
When I moved up in the job market and made more money I sold my clunker for cash and bought another clunker but a big upgrade. I then owned a cream colored Oldsmobile Cutlass, six cylinder, four door, automatic on the column, power window but still no air conditioning. That used car was a big step up and I no longer had to white knuckle the ice and snow in the winter. Again, I would wait until either the car died or my income increased considerably before setting my sights on the next vehicle to purchase. Cars were like family and it was very hard to part with some of them and some of us still have the rusty old things in our backyards waiting to be restored. I did finally buy a brand new car and I paid cash and did not finance the car. Back then it was not a good deal to finance because the depreciation of the vehicle along with the high cost of insurance required; let alone the interest rate of the Jimmy Carter years, made it cost prohibitive, so I paid for my Oldsmobile Firenza outright. The Brazilian engine never let me down and after eight years I ended up selling it to my brother while I bought my parent’s old Acura Legend.
See that is the car ladder! The car ladder is just like the corporate ladder. I went from junk to a better clunk to a NEW American compact to a USED foreign luxury and I’m still waiting for the funds to buy a NEW foreign luxury. In the meantime however, I am in the marketplace for USED luxury cars and I now worry that the government in its lack of everything sensible and sane-minded is destroying the car ladder. I love old cars and again if I were rich I’d be more inclined to buy a nicer OLD car like say a Bentley or an Excalibur as opposed to a NEW American government owned GM.
I guess my government wants every American citizen to be as debt-ridden as it has become. We all should have mortgage debt, credit card debt, college tuition loan debt and now new car payment debt! I guess the government is re-writing the famous expression to say “Another man’s trash is trash!” Hey all you used car dealers and old classic car collectors better hang out at the dealership’s parking lots and convince the customers to sell to you instead of Uncle Sam. There’s a lot of treasure in the government’s waste barrel!