The truth is something that burns – it burns off deadwood, and people don't like having their deadwood burnt off often, because they're 95% deadwood.
~J.B.P.
Cash for Clunkers destroyed 690,000 functional vehicles in 2009, creating an artificial scarcity that rippled through used car markets for over a decade. The Obama administration sold this $3 billion program as environmental salvation and economic stimulus, but any free market economist could predict the real outcome: massive wealth destruction disguised as progress.
The program forced dealers to pour sodium silicate into engines, permanently destroying cars that poor families could have afforded. Politicians eliminated the bottom tier of the used car market overnight. Suddenly, a reliable $3,000 Honda Civic became a $7,000 Honda Civic (if you could find one). The supposed beneficiaries — working-class Americans who needed affordable transportation — got priced out entirely.
Government intervention always creates unseen victims, and Cash for Clunkers delivered them by the millions. Single mothers, college students, and minimum-wage workers watched their mobility options vanish as used car prices soared 30% between 2009 and 2014. The environmental gains proved negligible too: most clunkers averaged 15-17 MPG while replacements hit 24-25 MPG. Destroying half a million cars to improve average fuel economy by 8 MPG represents the kind of central planning that would give Soviet bureaucrats a hard-on.
The wealth destruction extended beyond sticker prices. Higher transportation costs forced people into longer payment terms, creating a debt cycle that persists today. Cash for Clunkers normalized 84-month auto loans, turning cars from depreciating assets into multi-year financial anchors.
Bureaucrats congratulated themselves for moving inventory off dealer lots while condemning an entire generation to transportation poverty.
@draloneboy Right.... like when 51 intelligence members said the laptop is fake? Credibility is gone for these fucks. MFs will believe whatever their "team" tells them.
STOP PARTICIPATING IN THE DIALECTIC
@KlockoFett@DonutOperator They gonna have to redesign every doorway and pillar if she's elected. thunder thighs and hurricane every thing else
What a mess
𝗝𝗢𝗡 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗙𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗘𝗗: 𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗘 𝗨𝗡𝗙𝗜𝗟𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡, 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗠𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧. 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗥𝗜𝗙𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗠.
One of the panelists on Jon Stewart's podcast cited a real study — published in Nature — showing that people who used X's algorithmic feed moved further to the right than a control group using a chronological feed. He presented this as evidence that Musk is "warping democracy."
Let's take the study at face value for a moment. Let's assume it's accurate.
What Stewart is telling you is that when people are exposed to a wider range of information and viewpoints than legacy media curated for them, they move to the right. Not because they were tricked. Not because they were radicalized. But because the information itself — presented without the filter of editors at the New York Times and producers at MSNBC deciding what you're allowed to see — leads people to draw different conclusions than the ones the left wants them to draw.
𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺.
For decades, the left controlled the information environment — the networks, the newspapers, the platforms, the search results, the fact-checkers who decided what was true. People saw what they were allowed to see and drew the conclusions they were steered toward. That wasn't called brainwashing. That was called journalism.
The moment a platform emerged that allowed crime statistics, border data, economic numbers, international news, and firsthand accounts to circulate without a progressive gatekeeper deciding what was fit to print — people started changing their minds. And the people who built and benefited from the old system called it manipulation.
Jon Stewart isn't concerned that people are being deceived. He's concerned that people are no longer being managed.
There is also a word for the system he's defending — one where trusted institutions decide what information reaches the public and frame it in ways designed to produce specific political conclusions. That word is not journalism. And the fact that losing control of that system feels to him like an attack on democracy tells you everything about whose democracy he thought it was.
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮����𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.