Guess what else you are paying for?

The feds have decided that despite raging unemployment, a collapsing foreign policy that has weakened America around the world, a new healthcare law about to tank the economy, and a failure of its bloated entitlement system, the thing Americans need most right now is an online database that lets you look up your car’s recall history.

The NTSB has been ordered by law to establish, in less than one year, a database that lets you look up your car and find out whether or not it has been recalled, and what the recall history is.

This was a rider to a highway funding bill signed into law. Evidently, rental car companies have been selling old cars to the public without informing them that a recall for that vehicle may not have been corrected; the software database is intended to allow sellers and buyers the means to determine whether or not the vehicle’s recalls were corrected.

Very nice. No funding information is included in the bill—so we have no idea what this new database is going to cost taxpayers. It could of course cost nothing—these databases already exist and are maintained by the respective vehicle manufacturer.

For example, if you wanted to purchase a used Toyota, you could easily use Toyota’s own database, pop in the vehicle’s VIN, and find out whether the vehicle has been recalled, and whether or not it has been serviced.

Additionally, the NHTSA provides a clearinghouse for all sorts of oddball foreign cars as well.

So what are we funding? Another duplicative database that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not over a million. All to get information that is already available.

The government is so big it doesn’t even realize how big it is.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.