It's nice to know that Uncle Sam is giving my tax dollars to people who are in the financial position to even be able to buy a
new car while they make it increasingly difficult, in a land where public transportation is mostly a myth, for the lower income folks to drive back and forth to work to stay off the dole, which would end up taking even more of my tax dollars. I have no problem with a deduction as an incentive, but giving the car companies 3k on every sale is making me reach for the pepto...
However, it will be pretty funny when the folks who bought into Hybrid technology realize that it was just a poorly performing interim step designed to boost waning motor vehicle sales, and that the $3000 they thought they saved gets eaten up by the maintenance costs on the things. You might as well just buy a 3 cylinder, gutless GEO and skip all that short-lived "feel-good" stuff in between. The net result will probably be close, if not the same. But you probably won't be able to brag to your country club friends about the GEO you just bought

My opinion on the Hybrids is that they will only slow down the progress of finding a real solution, which will be alternative fuel systems derived from renewable sources. They make it look like someone is doing something about the problem, but it's really just a band-aid that you and I will be paying for...again and again. It also will end up giving the oil companies a scapegoat for the next round of price increases: "All the Hybrids the government subsidized into the marketplace has reduced the volume of our gas sales, so we need to jack the prices up to make ends meet. And BTW, Uncle Sam, could you give us a giant tax break because it was YOU who was responsible for doing this to us in the first place." Accckkkk!

As for gas prices, the "supply and demand" model doesn't even come into play. I watched gas prices
drop 20 cents on the day the companies stood before congress! I guess the demand went way down because everyone stopped driving that day to watch it on CSPAN.
I hear lots of people talking about "capitalism" and the right to "make money" and normally I would wholeheartedly agree. But in this case, we are literally talking about the life-blood of nearly every person and company in this country being controlled by companies who don't compete against each other for sales because they don't need to. And they all show mind-numbing profits in a time period where they claim their refining capabilities were hammered. I don't even know how that works outside of "bizarro world".....
And I love the argument about "gas being cheap here compared to other countries." So what?!? An apple costs $5 in Japan, does that mean we should be happy to pay $4 for one here in the US? Other countries have cheap, accessible and mostly convenient public transportation that is probably subsidized to some extent by those high gas prices. Here we just subsidize some jerk's 5 million dollar a year paycheck (before bonuses, naturally.)
I can't do anything about any of this, but man can I complain!

RandyT