Cash for Clunkers, barely chugging along. Let's give the government control of health care!

http://www.newsmax.com/us/us_cash_for_clunkers/2009/08/25/251900.html

All sales under the program ended Monday evening. But after already pushing back the deadline to submit records for the car rebate deals to noon Tuesday, the Transportation Department said late Monday that dealers may have more time to submit pending claims, due to continued problems with its Web site.

Government computers set up to handle the filings were deluged by dealers trying to send in their sales agreements at the last minute. Before the extension, all the paperwork was supposed to be submitted by Monday night, but the big rush of submissions shut down the government's computer filing system temporarily. That raised concern among dealers that they wouldn't be repaid for the $3,500 or $4,500 per vehicle incentives, and prompted them to push for an extension.

"We continue to address technical problems with the CARS website, and have determined that the website will not be fully functional before (Tuesday) morning," the Transportation Department said in a statement. "Dealers should be assured that they will be provided time to submit pending deals equivalent to the time that was lost this afternoon while the system was down."

Geoff Pohanka, who heads about 15 dealerships in Maryland and Virginia, said he had submitted about 910 clunker deals to the government and had only received payment for 16. He estimated the government owed his dealership about $4 million for the outstanding claims and was hopeful to get the final 90 voucher submissions into the system.

"Every 30 seconds, we're going back to the computer to see if we can get them in," he said.

...some energy experts have said the pollution reduction is too small to be cost-effective.

Well there you have it. We have traded nearly 1 million "gas guzzling" cars, and the effects are NOT cost effective!

I find it interesting that The Department of Transportation website can't handle the volume of claims. Meanwhile the television show American Idol is breaking records in the number of text messages they can receive in one night...

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=20499

SBC Network Processes Hundreds of Millions of Calls on American Idol Final Voting Night

100 Million More Calls Than a Typical Week Night

San Antonio, Texas, May 21, 2003

American Idol fans across the country were lighting up the phone lines casting votes for their favorite singer...or chatting about the final round of competition with friends. Here are some facts about the SBC networks' performance last night during the three-hour voting period for the Fox hit reality show:

* More than 260 million calls were processed by our networks during American Idol voting last night -100 million calls greater than a typical three-hour period of weeknight calling, a 62 percent increase.

A television network can come up with a computer system which can handle more than 100 million text message votes in a three hour period in 2003!

The federal government, spending billions of tax dollars, can't put together a system which can accept less than 1 million claims in a period of time spanning more than one month!

But the government, without rationing, can make health care cheaper, and more effective? There is rationing in the Cash for Clunkers program right now! Some of the dealers will not be reimbursed for the cars they received, because the government system was overwhelmed. Hmm...

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