Internal combustion engine meets Madam Guillotine

First seen at Les', I just had to see what was up with the idiotic Cash-for-Clunkers program, supposedly requiring a vehicle's engine to be completely ruined, by nothing other than mandate from the program.

Simply astonishing.

The gall that these people (that'd be the politicians on Capitol Hill) have is unbelievable.

So, in Congress' efforts to get A) new car sales going again, and B) get more cars in circulation that get better mileage and reduced emissions, the car gets impounded by the dealer and can not be sold again. I get that.

This I didn't know; The engine must be entirely disabled by filling the crankcase with a Sodium Silicate and water solution, and run for several minutes, so as to set the mixture with the heat produced during operation. The results? Concrete where it shouldn't be.

The engine treated as deodand.

An evil thing needing to be destroyed.

I'm at a loss.

Much Later: From Billy Beck;

"This so-called "Cash For Clunkers program" is just hideous in its atavistic primitivity..."

at its philosophical base, yes, but in more concrete terms,

"All those engines and spare parts would have come in handy someday..."

But that's not the worst part of it. More importantly, there's this bit, as he quotes Matt Welch, from Reason;

"What do you think happens to the $800 car market when the guvmint is handing out $4,500 checks to have the things destroyed? I'll go ahead and state the obvious: It shrinks, making it more expensive for the truly poor people, the ones who want to make that daring leap from the bus system to an awful old bucket of rust." (emphasis - Ed.)

Yup. Perfectly servicable automobiles being reduced to nothing other than scrap, and that is a travesty. And like that 5 year-old Volvo S40 getting the axe put to its engine on Youtube, you've got a system that is rigged to put good cars out of commission, permanently, that could easily be driven for another ten years. The depreciation of that car to its owner (monetarily), when new, is now substantial, and if he is looking to unload it, he still could have SOLD it to someone for more than the $4,500 dollars than he's getting from Uncle Sugar. Private party sale, from Kelley's, is somewhere north of $9K!

This shit just amazes me.