A Clunker?

Did you ever meet a person that admitted to buying a ‘bad’ car?  I haven’t, but I have bought a few.

When I bought these clunkers, the facts didn’t seem to overwhelm the perception I wanted to believe.

The first of my bad cars was an Audi.  I loved its ride, looks, front wheel drive; but didn’t appreciate its burning of oil within the first year and the disintegration of the paint job, neither of which the manufacturer made good for.

My second car disappointment of spin over reality was a Jaguar.  Loved its looks, style, leather interior – my eldest daughter said it was like sitting in the inside of an expensive pocketbook – duel gas tanks; but didn’t appreciate the engine blowing out in the first year and again the paint disintegrating.

The manufacturer made good for both.  But I assure you I got rid of these two cars as quickly as possible.  I warned others about my problems, because they too had positive impressions of these vehicles, but unfortunately, they too had to learn for themselves.

On the positive side of cars that I have owned, I’ve never been disappointed with a Mercedes – I’ve had several; my first new car, a Hillman Minx, a Porsche, a few non-existent cars of today -  Pontiac’s and an Oldsmobile.

The point of my car-talk is that most of us don’t like to be wrong about selections of anything we purchase or vote for – even presidents.

Which brings us to the spin surrounding the Obama administration which began when he was a candidate, continues today as president, to the point we can’t tell the difference between the two; and we are now finding out that many of his promises have not only not been realized – he’s not even working on many of them.

The administration would like us to believe that the economy is improving, jobs are being saved, the banks are in better shape than they were and that health care reform will be the nation’s savior for all.

But this does not take into account that the fickle stock market is not the bell-weather of anything, least of all jobs, with unemployment nationally reaching for 10% – 17% in Detroit – 401 K’s are worth half of what they were valued at, houses are being foreclosed at a record rate, people have lost 50% of their value in homes, banks are still failing, and we are spending our way into bankruptcy, with China holding the mortgage on our nation.

If wealth re-distribution was the goal, the Obama administration is well on it’s way in 9-months to achieving the objective he elucidated to “Joe the Plumber,” as a candidate.

On Thursday of this week the Associated Press filed a story that said Obama’s economic recovery plan “aggressively defended an earlier, faulty count that overstated by thousands the jobs created or saved so far,” as a result of the stimulus package.

The AP found job counts that were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of paid positions; jobs credited to the stimulus program that were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs that were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

The White House fired back on this report saying the “story draws misleading conclusions from a handful of examples.  It looks at only a small portion of the data . . .”  More spin which reminds us of the accounting adage that ‘figures lie and liars figure.’

It’s all about the spin in America, which makes perception reality.  The facts, oh they will play out in history.  It may smell like the inside of an expensive pocketbook, but on the outside America may very well have bought a Clunker.