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Patience and persistence required

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

The title of this post sums up two of the most important tools one must have when dealing with the Department of Veteran Affairs. Filing a claim, to any of the VA’s many departments, is a daunting task. Translating the form-letter responses the VA sends once your claim is received requires mastery of the foreign language spoken by the department. For many veterans, this is too much to handle on their own.

After reading several of the comments on my Post-9/11 GI Bill saga post, I decided a post was necessary to provide some sort of advice to my brothers and sisters at arms. The sort of advice that might give veterans a glimmer of hope in the dark cave that is waiting for the VA to process a claim. The sort of advice nobody gives you when you separate from the service, or decide to file your first claim with the VA.

Rule #1 – Be patient.

We all want our benefits, and we all want them now. That simply is not going to happen, and pacing back and forth hoping tomorrow is the day you get your money is only going to stress you out. If you are like me, you already carry too much stress from your time in the service. Do yourself a favor, and roll with the punches. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease – so squeak on, but do not expect same-day action from the VA.

Rule #2 – Be persistent, and proactive.

You will get mountains of mail from the VA. Most of it has nothing to do with anything. Some of it is crucial to your claim. That means you’re going to have to read it all. Buy a shredder, as most of it belongs there. When the VA makes contact with you, make contact back with them immediately if there are any discrepancies whatsoever. If there is something that does not add up, tell the VA it does not add up. Keep telling them until you receive official notice, that would be more mail if you’re wondering, from the VA that there was a problem on their end and they are correcting it. Never take a “we will take care of this right away” over the phone as resolution. Just like in the service, if it is not on paper it never happened.

Rule #3 – Get assistance.

Whether this is your first claim, or your fifteenth claim, an extra set of eyes is invaluable. Any mistake, no matter how small, will likely result in your claim being delayed even longer and ultimately denied. Many veteran service organizations exist, and most of them have workers dedicated to helping veterans file claims. I am a Life Member of Veterans of Foreign Wars and a member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Both of these organizations can provide important information on filing your claim, and drum up support for you while you fight for approval of your claim. Though you may feel alone, know that you are not.

Rule #4 – Be prepared.

As I said earlier, if it is not on paper it never happened. Hopefully, you kept copies of everything your branch of service ever gave you. That is, if you were lucky enough to get a copy for yourself in the first place. Your official records will be the first thing that is checked. The probability your file is incomplete is about the same as the probability that the sun rises in the east tomorrow.

As an example, my medical records cease to exist past October, 2006. I was not released from active duty until July, 2008. The only award in my OMPF? Parachutist badge. Nothing else made it into my file. Fortunately, I have copies of all but my medical records (since the Army refused to release them to me while I was active, and then refused to release them to me upon separation).

If you do not have your records, do whatever you can to get them. Assuming that fails, as it did with the second half of my medical records, find someone who was there with you. Have them write you "buddy letters" for incidents they witnessed or of which they had direct knowledge. Remember, unless your buddy happened to be the diagnosing physician they need to stick to comments that are strictly within their area of expertise. An infantry friend cannot write that an IED detonation gave you TBI. He is not a medical professional. What he can say, is that an IED detonated on your patrol, he saw you get hit in the head and experience a loss of consciousness for however many minutes. Buddy letters are to establish that an event did in fact occur, and was related to your service. Nothing more.

Rule #5 – Make Congress work for you.

Know who your district representative is, know who your senators are. Have their contact information easily accessible, for both local and Washington D.C. offices. When you file a claim, go ahead and start writing a congressional inquiry. I keep an open file on my computer with the details of any claim I have going. If it becomes clear that the VA simply is not working on my claim, which happens, I print that file, scan it, and email it to the local office of my representative for congressional action. As I said above, if it is not on paper it never happened. This includes your VA claims. You need to keep copies of them, and when you’re filing a congressional you should send everything to them.

Once Congress is involved, you will get some sort of response. Refer again to rule number one, be patient. The response you get may not tell you a single thing you did not already know, but it forces someone at the VA to actually touch your file. Usually, this means it gets worked on shortly thereafter and you get some sort of resolution to your problems. This also establishes a paper trail, and takes away anyone’s ability to claim you never asked for information.

Rule #6 – Use the Internet.

This last one should be a no-brainer, considering it is 2010. When I say to use the internet, I do not mean head to Google and search for forms you need to fill out. While that is one good use of the internet, you have bigger fish to fry.

Consider the following, the VA has shifted some attention to “new media” and now has it’s ear to the ground listening to the buzz on Twitter and blogs. My Post-9/11 GI Bill saga post is ultimately what got my Ch33 claim finalized for Fall 2009. I shared it on my Twitter account, it was retweeted (echoed) by several other veterans online (to include IAVA’s Paul Rieckhoff) and ultimately the VA responded from their accounts.

Twitter is free. Blogs are free. You probably already have a Facebook account. All of these can serve to get your case noticed, and resolved. You just have to use them together, and keep at it. Remember what I said about the squeaky wheel getting the grease? Get your squeaks amplified by the internet and you might get a shiny new set of wheel bearings.

If anyone else has suggestions I left out, feel free to leave them as comments. I’ll add them to the body of the post. Never give up, and never accept defeat. If you earned an honorable discharge, you held up your end of the deal. Do not let the government back out of their end.

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Unresolved, the Post-9/11 GI Bill saga (Updated, x3. Scroll down – issue resolved!)

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Somewhere on the fringe of your memory, you may recall a post I made about the utter failure of the Department of Veteran Affairs to competently roll out the Post-9/11 GI BIll. My story is not unique in any way. My story is shared by, literally, hundreds of thousands of veterans of our ongoing armed conflicts. Veterans who promised something to their country, and upheld that promise. A promise, in the form of the Post-9/11 GI Bill (Ch33 hereafter), was made to us and has not been honored to a degree anyone could consider acceptable.

Four months. That is how long it took the VA to figure out I was eligible for Ch33. Keep in mind I had already been in the VA’s system for education benefits for a year under the Montgomery GI Bill, and am also in the VA’s system for disability and compensation. The requirements for Ch33 eligibility are simply not that hard to vet, especially not for veterans of an active-duty component. Did the veteran have 36 or more months of continuous active-duty service after September 11, 2001, and receive an honorable discharge? One sheet of paper contains all of this information, and the VA has this sheet of paper with my name on it in at least triplicate. Even the laziest of unskilled work could make it through literally thousands of these claims in a single day if motivated by a bacon double-cheeseburger. I will stop trying to understand how the VA failed to do this, because it defies all logic and I’m not sure even Socrates could come up with an explanation.

Roughly two more months have passed, and my Fall 2009 claim is still incomplete. When the VA found someone able to muster the will to read my DD214 and determine that my honorable discharge after 4 years, 11 months, and 26 days of continuous active-duty service did in fact mean I was eligible for Ch33, they fumbled the ball again. The University of Houston submitted my tuition and fees to the VA correctly, the VA turned around and certified me for a full $1000 less than I was owed. Immediately, I contacted the VA and informed them of their mistake. As far as they were concerned, it must have been my mistake. I got the school to call, and explain exactly what the mistake was and the VA agreed with them. “We will get this fixed,” they said. My account summary at UH still shows a $1000 debt owed. I have already taken half of my finals, and registered for Spring 2010 courses.

If you think that is pitiful, hold on to your chair, it gets worse. Remember the $3000 emergency advance payment the VA so graciously offered when they had veterans dropping out of college, because of the mountains of debt they built up, because the VA failed to deliver BAH payments as promised? I took one of these checks and was informed shortly thereafter the debt would be settled by withholding BAH payments when my claim was finally processed. When I finally got my money in early November, there was $3000 too much money. In early December, I got a full BAH payment for the month of November. The VA still isn’t withholding the money. That’s great, right? Free money! All my problems are, surely, gone! Wrong. Even if the overpayment is entirely the fault of the VA, you will pay it back. This has happened to me before. I have no desire to deal with the same sort of insanity again; I put away $3000 somewhere I wouldn’t touch it until either the VA withholds from my future BAH payments, or sends me a another debt-collection notice. Fool me once…

A contact within the Department of Veteran Affairs got me this response to an inquiry about settling the debt from the GI Bill head-honcho Keith Wilson:

“VA is currently developing the process to collect the amount of advance payments received. When the process is developed, VA will provide notification to all students that received an advance payment to ensure they understand the process and their questions are answered.”

If anyone else feels like that is the non-answer of the century, I am glad I have company. Why call veterans, and explain to them that the debt would be settled by withholding from BAH payments if that was not actually the plan?

As the semester draws to an end, I cannot say I look forward to Spring 2010. Allegedly, claims have yet to begin processing for the new semester and that is just another disaster waiting to happen. Ch33 was meant to afford veterans of our most recent wars the ability to go to school and focus only on school. We would not need to work, because we would get a housing allowance. We would not need to worry about how many hours we were taking, because our tuition and fees would be covered. Instead, we were not paid either on time. Instead, fighting to get what we were owed before we had to drop out, or risk drowning in a pool of debt, became a full-time job that robbed us of many hours that could have been spent studying.

This has been said many times, but is worth repeating again. Failing to plan, is planning to fail. The VA failed to plan, and failed us all.

For more information on the Post-9/11 GI Bill, and some of the ways you can fight back against the VA when they fail to do their jobs, go visit newgibill.org.

Update:
Finals are over, my grades have been posted, and the VA has still not paid for their $1000 mistake in my fees. I have tried to call, every single day, for several days and still cannot get anyone on the phone at the VA. This is absolutely maddening. I shudder to think of how the veterans even less fortunate than myself are taking things, especially this close to Christmas.

People ask me what I want for Christmas. Now I know. Give me a competently run GI Bill, and an effective Department of Veteran Affairs. That is all I want, and it will last me a lifetime.

Update #2:
Christmas has come and gone, and I had a good one. What I did not have, however, was resolution of my ongoing issues with the VA. In fact, things have become even more interesting.

The VA apparently uses Twitter now. Personally, I think they might want to master the technology they already use before they branch out too far into social media. Below is what the VA sent me regarding one of my tweets about underpayment of fees.

From @VAVetBenefits: @anthonymartinez Check w/ your certifying official to see what amounts your school submitted to VA for payment as that is what we pay.

Is that so? I have two documents, which I have scanned (with my personal information redacted) and uploaded here, proving otherwise. In addition to those documents, the VA’s own question system has an open and unresolved entry under my account about the underpayment of my fees started by a VA employee. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, and I have already exceeded 1000 words in this post, look below (click the photo for a larger view). I got lazy with my redaction of personal information, but note the areas highlighted by neon-green arrows.

VA fail

VA Fail

Update #3 – Resolved

From @VAVetBenefits: @anthonymartinez Resolved. Thanks for the info and good luck!

This tweet appeared on my TweetDeck on December 30, 2009. Last night, on my way to my younger brother’s wedding, I got mail from the VA office in Muskogee dated December 29, 2009, that acknowledged the underpayment and informed me they had sent the appropriate $1000 payment to my university.

Big thanks to @DeptVetAffairs and @VAVetBenefits on Twitter for working hard to get my issue resolved. Without them, I’m not sure I’d have ever been paid. Another thanks goes out to Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afganistan Veterans of America for his retweets of my updates here on the blog and the work his organization does to help other veterans in positions even worse than my own.

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38-32, ECU.

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Worst passing decision ever. That sums up Keenum’s play on 1st and 10 at the ECU 39 with 47 seconds left in the game.

Prior to that pass, this was probably the best game UH had played all season. There were some hard breaks – including letting an interception stand when ECU had 12 men on the field – but all in all that was one hard fought conference championship game. UH had come from behind several times this season, against tougher teams, and was poised to do it again to bring home the trophy. In the final set of plays at the usual UH pace, Keenum decided to go long to a receiver that was not open. This would be his final interception of the season, and the play that lost the game.

The Cougars are a young team, and hopefully learned from their (many) mistakes this year. Next year, if they put what they’ve learned to proper use, they’ll be unstoppable.

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Choosing the right words

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

This post is a few weeks late. I was not sure I even wanted to post the photo as some will certainly find it offensive. The choice of imagery used by those organizing the protest was chosen exactly to offend those with whom they disagree, and thus extract an argument. The chord the display struck with me, however, was not one the organizers likely intended. Take a look and see what your initial reaction is, and then scroll past the photo to read my reaction.

Words are important, use the right ones.

Words are important, use the right ones.

When I came across the “Warning Genocide Photos Ahead” signs early in the morning, the main display had yet to be erected. I figured perhaps there was some Holocaust memorial display going up for whatever reason, or perhaps a radical anti-war protest was setting up a display. Either way, the probability anything that would phase me would be shown was very low. You do not spend 26 months in a combat zone without seeing things most people should never have to see.

A few hours passed, and the display was put up for all to see. I was wrong in my assumptions, and was greeted by an anti-abortion display. That’s all good and well. Personally, I do not believe it is the government’s business at all to legislate the medical decisions between a physician and a woman. I also strongly believe in personal responsibility. Either way, you live with the choices you make.

My reaction was not really even related to the imagery, which certainly distressed several students that passed by the very central location in front of the library. No, my reaction had much more to do with the application of language. Hyperbole is often used when a group seeks to garner attention, and this is certainly no exception.

The first, and most obvious, use of sheer hyperbole is in their most brightly colored sign which reads WARNING GENOCIDE PHOTOS AHEAD. On one hand, there actually are a few images from the Holocaust and that certainly amounts to the deliberate and systemic killing of all people of a specific demographic. On the other hand, it would be foolish to assume the warnings were directed at the inclusion of the Holocaust photos instead of the photos of aborted fetuses. As the warning clearly applied to the abortion photos, someone failed to grasp or apply the word genocide very well. For abortion to amount to genocide, there would need to be a concerted effort to eliminate all Homo sapiens sapiens fetuses. Logically, such a concerted effort would be a genocide of the highest degree as far as our species ought to be concerned. An effort on that scale would absolutely threaten us with extinction. Fortunately for our species, no such effort exists. For nearly two decades the slope of the graph representing the abortion rate in the United States has been a negative average value. Genocide was a poorly chosen and improperly used word.

My other issues are not quite as clear cut, linguistically. One of the large signs brings up the concept of Constitutional Rights, something rather dear to me considering the oath I took (twice). Generally, anytime I read those two words together I assume the user has not once actually read the Constitution. Experience has proven this to be a wise assumption, and I will continue to operate under that assumption here. I asked one of the protesters what exactly that sign meant, and was greeted with a poorly educated answer. In short, the inclusion of any potential for the pending health-care reform measures to direct any funds to the procedure of an abortion has been equated with a constitutional right. If ever there was a stretch, this is it. While a law may certainly pass making abortion a procedure paid for by the government, such a law would in no way make abortion a constitutional right. Some might even argue such a law would be entirely unconstitutional. At any rate, unless Congress proposes an amendment explicitly proclaiming a right to abortion, a constitutional right it is not.

From there I cannot help but dive into a little scientific argument. The abortion-by-choice rate, globally, is far lower than the rate by which embryonic growth is rejected by nature itself. Full, or even partial, term birth is not the normal outcome of fertilization in our species. If pregnancy is detected early, and the conscious decision is made to act against that pregnancy it cannot really be said with any certainty that the result would have been live birth had such a conscious decision not been made. Of course you cannot say for sure that nature would reject the pregnancy either, but rejection does in fact happen quite often. If you want to draw up some more hyperbole, these protesters ought to actually protest fertilization, as the body is more likely to abort than it is to carry to term. If you want to apply a little Washington-style circular logic, these very protesters should support an action that would actually be genocide.

The moral of the story? Words matter. Pick the right ones when making an argument, and make sure you actually understand the subject matter before you put yourself in a position from which you may have to answer difficult (or even easy) questions.

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Austin City Limits 2009

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Yeah, I know I’m late. Better late than never though. Slideshow below. I only took my camera to the final day of ACL. The weather was less than optimal for enjoying the weekend, and I probably will not be paying for ACL tickets again in the future. Lackluster lineups combine with the inability of Austin to really support the kind of crowd the festival draws to leave me rather disinterested in going again.

That said, Dave Matthews put on a hell of a show, as did Pearl Jam. It is well known that I will do stupid things to see either of those groups live. The end.

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My experience with the VA’s exercise in failure.

Monday, October 26th, 2009

During my second tour in Iraq, with the 3rd Brigade 3rd Infantry Division, several of my friends and I closely followed the development of a new and improved GI Bill for veterans of the Global War on Terrorism. Even early on in the drafting of the bill to overhaul the GI Bill, into something more like the benefits package enjoyed by veterans of WW2, details looked very promising. Promising enough to make leaving active duty as a non-commissioned officer, even when faced with enlistment bonuses in excess of $50,000, to finish a college education a very appealing prospect.

When the bill was signed into law, in July 2008, I was camping with my parents in Zion National Park and enjoying my terminal leave. My phone, which had not seen even a single bar of signal in many hours, rang loudly as one of my old Army buddies called to give me the news and details of the GI Bill that would supposedly make our goals in higher education much easier to achieve. Both of us were skeptical of how well things would work once actually implemented, as we were both stop-lossed and well understood the unparalleled ability of our government to drop the ball on its end of a deal.

Dropping the ball is about the most polite way to phrase the epic failure that is the Department of Veteran Affairs’ handling of the entire Post-9/11 GI Bill (Ch. 33) system. There were 10 months between the signing of the bill into law, and the opening of the application process for Ch. 33 benefits, and more than a full year before the first payments would roll out. Somehow, even with that much time, the VA was unable to coordinate with the states and institutes of higher learning to have things ready for Fall 2009.

As soon as the application process opened I submitted the appropriate paperwork to both change schools and programs. Four short days passed before I received one of the coveted certificates of eligibility for my new school, and new major. I was informed that the election of Ch. 33 would be processed at a later date. That date was roughly four and a half months later. Nearly a solid three months into the semester. A solid three months during which I had to dig quite the debt-filled hole because I did not have the housing allowance I was promised, nor did I have the book and supplies stipend I was promised, nor were my tuition and fees paid.

My case is far from the only of its kind. More than 100,000 veterans are in the same, rapidly sinking, boat. To address this, the VA issued emergency $3,000 “advance payment” checks at Regional VA Offices around the nation to veterans that could produce a few simple pieces of documentation. I went and took advantage of the $3,000 check, even though it fails to cover even the housing money they owe me. What can I say, I was very close to being unable to pay any of my bills. Electing to beat back the possibility of ruining my otherwise excellent credit score, I used that money to pay off some of the ~$6,000 in personal debt I was forced to take on by the VA dropping the ball. That decision was hedged on a bet that the VA could not possibly take another full month to pay my tuition.

Now, with full disclosure in mind, there were circumstances surrounding my specific claim that quite likely threw an extra kink in the pipes. I was overpaid for the Spring 2009 semester, and filed for a waiver (which was promptly denied). This, as it well should, definitely caused a backup on the payment end of the deal. However, I paid what the VA claimed I owed them immediately upon receiving my denial letter. Ironically, when I called to make that payment the VA was unaware they had denied my claim. Apparently postal mail moves faster then their computer system. We will ignore the fact that the ~$900 I owed the VA for their overpayment amounts to roughly one third of the amount they owed me for tuition alone, and will certainly not imply that it would have been incredibly simple to deduct the overpayment from what the VA owes me in housing allowance money.

What the above circumstances do not explain is how on Earth it took the VA four and a half months to determine that a veteran with 4 years, 11 months, and 26 days of continuous active duty military service beginning in March of 2003 was eligible for Ch. 33 benefits. Glancing at my DD214, a document the VA certainly has available, in at least triplicate, would quickly reveal to anyone able to read that I do in fact have more than the required 36 months of post-9/11 service to qualify for Ch. 33.

Fast forward to this very day. In the mail was a wonderful letter, dated 21-Oct-2009, from the VA informing me that I was 100% eligible for Ch. 33! Thing were looking up, until I read how much the VA sent (none of which has made it to The University of Houston, or my bank account). People that know me are well aware that I take a hands-on approach to pretty much everything, and will know I am serious when I say I was literally standing next to the kind VA lady at UofH when she typed in and submitted the balance the VA owed for my account. Here is an image to illustrate the breakdown:

Breakdown of my tuition and fees at the University of Houston for the Fall 2009 semester

Breakdown of my tuition and fees at the University of Houston for the Fall 2009 semester

Those numbers add up to $2,599.15. This is the balance my account summary shows due at UofH, and the amount the VA owes for this semester. The amount for which they claim to have sent in payment? $1,599.15. Interesting, right? My best guess is that someone cannot type, and instead of entering $1,153.55 for my fees typed in $153.55. No big deal, just a grand right? Wrong. Like many people in today’s economy I cannot simply will an extra $1,000 into my wallet. Taking the above mess into consideration, I would be insane not to worry that the emergency loan I took to pay my tuition will not be paid on time. After all, it took four and a half months for the VA to figure out I was eligible. Since it only took me about 32 seconds to figure out how the VA miscalculated what they owed me, my guess is that it takes them roughly 4 months to come to the same conclusion. By then I’ll be asking “Would you like fries with that?”

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Three times now..

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

I have agreed with President Obama three times now, thanks to his recent “off-the-record” comment about Kanye West. The first time came in a shocking condemnation of wasteful spending, namely on the F-22. While an incredibly cool aircraft, it simply has no role and is not used. Why we were paying for something of little interest to anyone, to include the Air Force, is beyond me. The second came during a speech that caused, without much rationale, much uproar. Those too busy scowling at the thought of a President speaking to school children without their explicit consent might have missed the first time a Democrat has come right out and championed personal responsibility. That’s right, he flat out told students they are ultimately responsible for their educational success. Not their teachers, not their parents, not the government. They are. I’ll give the man a standing ovation for that remark, and only wish he would urge personal responsibility at more (all) levels of society.

Now, this third agreement comes in response to Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift at the VMAs. President Obama called Kanye West a “jackass” during an “off-the-record” portion of an interview with CNBC. This comment was tweeted, and quickly removed as a breach of “journalistic integrity.” People are, for some reason, upset about this tweet-leak of the President’s comments and that baffles me. If it’s journalistic integrity we’re after, the comments never should have been cut from the interview in the first place. The man said it, and he can face whatever backlash comes from it. If you’d not like your comments repeated, you should probably not say them in the first place.

Let’s consider this for a moment. Media, whether you like it or not, are about ratings. They are not about information. If you disagree, you should stop reading now. Given that Kanye’s comment was a top trend on Twitter and occupied the majority of casual conversation heard at many universities around the country the following day, it stands to reason that the topic was on the minds of many potential viewers. Relevance. The President called Kanye a jackass soon after the interruption of Taylor Swift. Timeliness. Media, remember, are about ratings. We have a relevant issue with a timely response to something of interest to a large number of viewers. How much sense does it make to censor that comment? None.

Now some will say such comments are slander, but we’d be supremely naive to act as if a politician’s career is not built largely on slander in the first place. Of course to slander one, you must make false statements. Kanye is a jackass. That is a true statement, and thus the comment is not slander.

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The Death of a Legend

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

A long post was planned, but I’ve not got the energy to go through it all right now. The Constitution is dead. It died a long, long time ago. Only in the past month or so have I come to realize this interesting piece of information. Essentially, I took an oath (twice) to support and defend something that doesn’t actually bear any relevance today.

Article 1 defines the legislature, what the legislature can do, and what the legislature cannot do. Looking back at “key issues” over the course of the last several decades reveals that Article 1 is irrelevant.

Article 2 defines the executive, see above.

Article 3 defines the judiciary, and again we see large irrelevance.

Even the much vaunted Bill of Rights is but a shell of meaningless words today.

All of that said, I’m not sure why I still react to political ploys as if the Constitution still play some role in the way our government works. If you do believe in the Constitution, and the principles therein, you have no representation in government. It’s an interesting place to be in the land of the “free.”

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Health Care Reform… wait, what?

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

There is no article, nor amendment, within the Constitution of the United States of America that gives Congress, the President, or the Supreme Court any legitimate power to exercise in this domain. That the debate, if you wish to call it that, continues to rage is a shocking testament to the fact that the document members of each aforementioned body swear to uphold bears no meaning on the course of American life today. What does that have to do with health care? Let’s make a little comparison.

There are guidelines as to exactly how our nation’s government is meant, or even allowed, to function. These guidelines are relatively simple to understand, having been written largely in plain English. To further simplify matters, they are not excessive in number. Surprisingly enough, in the face of such simplicity, the highly non-partisan guidelines of the Constitution are almost entirely ignored by all three branches of our government. These are the same people proposing to reform a system their own actions brought to ruin. The guidelines they seek to impose, while not even within their rights to legislate, are not simple to understand and are tremendous in number. Does this sound even remotely similar to a recipe for success to, well, anyone?

Proponents of the current House bill take great joy in climbing to the top of the hill and shouting that the free-market solution has failed us. This makes me pause and think, “What free-market solution?” There is no free-market in the United States. Pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, doctors, nurses, and laboratories are far from free within their own markets. What makes these people so certain that increasing bureaucracy within these same markets will cure the problems?

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Cash For Clunkers

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Someone please explain how this is meant to jumpstart the auto-industry and/or economy. The requirements to trade-in remove affordable vehicles from the pool of available automobiles forever. Most of the vehicles that qualify for the $3500-$4500 rebate still generate fairly high levels of debt for the purchaser (and government). Since I’m pretty sure the environmental aspects of the program are a waste of breath, I’ll just question the economic.

If this is meant to help the suffering auto-industry (ie: ours), shouldn’t American manufacturers have some qualifying vehicles people are actually interested in purchasing? It doesn’t strike me as something highly beneficial to the American auto-industry to have the government subsidizing the widening of the gap between foreign and domestic auto sales. From the outside, it looks like this is doing exactly what we do not want to be doing – generating tons of debt. The government does not have money, so every dime they put up is ultimately debt. You can call it “savings” if you want, but that requires you to ignore simple things like “definitions” of “words.” As that debt is ultimately the tax-payer’s, those that use the credits really get hit twice – once on the government books, and again with their new car payment.

If the savings are meant to come from the gas pump I’m going to have to go ahead and raise my trusty BS flag. Right now my truck gets a lovely 16mpg. I don’t drive it often, but that’s because I’d rather be on my motorcycle. Assuming I drive 300mi per week, and gas is $3 per gallon, I spend about $225 a month on fuel. Now, if I did the same thing in a vehicle that gets 30mpg, I’d spend about $120 a month. Moving vehicles is sure to save me $105 per month, right? Wrong.

My truck is 12 years old, even full coverage insurance on the vehicle is less than $100 per month. With my excellent driving record, and my freedom from the under-25yr-old-males-are-insane insurance bracket, full coverage (often required for financed vehicles) on even a new subcompact is over $200 per month. The difference in insurance premiums alone just killed all but a cheeseburger’s worth of the “savings.” We’ve not even touched on the part where my truck is paid for, and a new car comes with payments.

Let’s say that by some miracle you get a car, after the $4500 rebate, for $10,000. Then lets say they give you 0% financing for 5yrs. You’re going to pay $167 per month for five years. You’re now spending $167 per month more than you were before, fuel savings or not. Even if your insurance premiums stay dead even, the payments exceed the fuel savings by over $40.

It seems that in the last few years we’ve seen several economic sectors explode in the face of rising consumer debt (and over-extension). Is the auto-industry somehow exempt from this? If you couldn’t afford the vehicle without the $4500, can you really afford it with the money? Or is that just enough to bring your payments down to the level where eating Ramen and SPAM three times a day is still possible? Did Congress consider any of the above when they authored and passed the bill? I say all of this as one that was actually interested in the program, and was close to turning the aforementioned truck in for CARS credit. Then I did the math.

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