This seller managed to trade in a vehicle, presumably worth less than the voucher, otherwise they would’ve straight up sold it. What they ended up paying for the Fit is $15480 — 4500 = $10980. That $11000 is presumably financed because if you had over $10000 in disposable income, I can’t see how you’d be hard-up for money. Shopping around you could get 5% and beat the 7% average, and of course the auto dealer may want a piece of that pie and try to beat 5%. In any case, we’re looking at just over $200 for a 5 year loan. A $200 car payment is quite affordable if your other expenses aren’t outrageous. If this seller could not get a $200 monthly payment, they’ve got bad credit or they don’t know how to negotiate or shop around for the best rate. In any case, the monthly payment would have been disclosed to them ahead of time, and they would’ve known if they could afford it, impulse buy or not. Their excuse about overextending themselves sounds dubious. Anyhow, they’re willing to knock $1000 off their asking price, which is $14480. After paying off their loan, they pocket $3500 in cash. So unless their clunker was worth more than $3500, they made money, perhaps up to an extra $1000 or more, not to mention all the time saved from not having to post their car or haggle over the price.

Am I being cynical? Perhaps this person did just make a financial mistake. I would’ve given them the benefit of the doubt until I saw this listing posted 2 days before:

I mean, really? Who turns around and resells a high-demand car with only 14 miles on it? Or one that’s still at the dealer? Two different people in two days?

At least the program is more or less doing its job, and the realist in me understands that people abuse situations all the time. There’s always a few bad eggs no matter what.

Her attitude reminds me of those who want to criminalize burning the US flag—a perfect example of people getting obsessed with their own personal dogma and taking nationalism to a detrimental extreme. It’s great to be proud of your country, but when that pride starts to encroach on the rights bestowed to that country’s citizens (or used to continue the state’s oppression of its citizens *cough*China*cough*), you’re doing your country a disservice. A true American patriot would understand their history and the US Constitution and know that flag burning is not just implied but encouraged when the government has failed to answer to the people. As such, given the questionable actions of the Bush administration, I would much rather see a candidate express their opposition by wearing a lapel pin like this:

But seeing how such boldness is rarely rewarded in politics, I doubt we’ll ever see someone sporting a pin like that anytime soon, short of another revolution. And just to head off the question, the pin does not exist. The image is a composite of three other images, i.e. it was shopped.

Now, there was a big loophole in the US tax code in 2003. This allowed a small business owner to get a $100,000 tax credit for the purchase of a vehicle over a certain gross vehicle weight. An unintended effect was that certain gas-guzzling SUVs, for example the Hummer, qualified and buyers would see a savings of nearly $20,000 on their purchase. What was the maximum tax credit for an electric vehicle? $4000. How many Hummers have I seen emblazoned with a company logo? I lost count. How many EVs have I seen with logos? Zero. The more interesting number would be the number of small business owners who bought a truck through their company for business and personal use—the business use being commuting to and from work. Good news is that something is being done about it.

So here we have a government that is putting $20,000 back into the pocket of small business owners who are incentivised to purchase SUVs and trucks with poor gas mileage. This drives up demand (less fuel efficient cars equals more gas to go the same distance of a more efficient car) and in combination with other factors (like a war that reduces supply) drives up prices which makes oil a valuable commodity. This then makes oil attractive to terrorists who are organized enough to steal oil and resell it for a decent profit. That is an overly simplified and tenuous argument but there’s certainly enough cause and effect to see that US consumption of oil helps fund terrorism. This is why it’s been said that a more effective way to fight terrorism is to reduce our demand for oil. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen those “Foreign Oil Funds Terrorism” bumper stickers?

I had pointed out the Tesla Roadster in an earlier post, an all-electric, high-performance sports car. This company has collected $60 million dollars in venture capital of which only $25 million dollars went into R&D. Of that $25 million dollars, the prototype vehicle cost $350,000. The Tesla Roadster has a street price of $100,000. Tesla motors is also planning on a $50,000 4-door sedan which is at the same price point of an H2 Hummer.

Imagine if that $350,000,000,000 were spent in an indirect anti-terrorist campaign through anti-oil rather than a direct anti-terrorist campaign. If the $100,000 tax break were applied to EVs, that $50,000 sedan now becomes a more reasonable $30,000 sedan. That could generate a potential demand of 17,500,000 customers while the incentive was active. That would be a record setting number. Another option would be to provide tax incentives for car manufacturers, regulate emissions (California did it and the EV1 was born), or simply direct funding of R&D. Seeing as the Tesla Roadster was developed on a budget of 0.007% of the cost of the war, all that money could have funded the R&D departments of 14,285 individual companies all working to ween us off oil! 14,000 new companies goes a long way to curbing unemployment, creating new tax revenue, and improving the economy. Of course these numbers are ideal and would be much less in real life. Still, money spent this way would’ve been more beneficial and even more effective than how it’s spent now.

If there’s anything the last two presidential elections have shown me, is that there’s a need for election reform because the current system does not result in a government representative of the voting public. Critics of alternative electoral systems have stated that they’re too complicated to understand. They must really think people are stupid. Granted that may well be but not so much that they can’t understand other electoral systems. So let me shed a little light.

Pick one candidate who you want to win.

Number the candidates in the order you’d like them to win.

So as you can see, from the voters perspective, neither sample ballot is more complicated than the other. On the otherhand, how these ballots are tabulated do differ in complexity, but pull a sample of American citizens from off the street and I’d bet that the majority of them do not understand how their vote translates to an elected president which probably lead to much of the resentment felt after the 2000 election. It’s not like you need to know how a car works. You just need to be confident that it’ll get you from point A to point B. The average citizen does not need to know how their vote is tabulated. They just need to be confident their vote counted and that the result is fair and representative of the majority of voters.

The first ballot is commonly known in the form of First Past the Post. The second is tabulated using one of the following: Instant Runoff Voting, a variant of a Borda Count, or one of the variants of the Condorcet Method.

Personally I feel that a plurality system is simply too divisive. Just seeing how polarized the political arena has become in the last decade is certainly an indication if not direct evidence. Plus candidates who are not either blue or red simply have little to no chance. Personally, I’m forced from the get go to often pick my second choice not because I want that candidate to win but more because I’d rather not see another candidate win. I have to choose the lesser of two evils.

Even though a preferential system would be an improvement, of the tabulation methods listed above, I’m not sure yet which may be the best choice. I listed them in order of increasing consensus which often translates to a centrist candidate winning. A centrist government hopefully means more progress and less stand-offs. (FYI I consider myself centrist.) The Condorcet Method will always result in a candidate preferred over every other candidate. However, that candidate may not be the first choice of the majority of people as is the case with IRV. This implies if IRV picks a winner that is not the Condorcet winner, then there exists one candidate preferred over the IRV winner but that is not a first-choice pick. Is it better to have a first-choice candidate be the winner even if there might be someone voters would rather have won or a winner acceptable to everyone even if it’s not a majority first-choice? Note: IRV can result in a Condorcet winner. It’s just not guaranteed. A Condorcet winner can be a first choice, but that’s not always the case.

What’s interesting is that in major political races where a preferential system was proposed or implemented, it was soon shot down or repealed by the opposing party. Both blue and red are guilty of this. Just goes to show you that politicians regardless of their color do not want a fair fight. Congressional redistricting, campaign funding via special interest groups, yadda yadda. They say people have lost touch with the political mainstream, but sometimes I think politicians have lost touch with the people they supposedly represent.