Glenn giving away car

June 03, 2008

The Glenn Beck Program

The 1989 Geo Metro got 58 MPG on the highway and 53 MPG in the city.

GLENN: Today I'm going to help you out. Have you heard that the Geo Metro is selling at a record clip? Now, when I first heard this yesterday, I thought the Geo -- I didn't even know the Geo Metro was even made anymore. Wasn't the Geo Metro like a piece of crap car? The Geo Metro when it was originally released sold for $9,000. The Blue Book on it is $1,000. You can buy them now -- I've seen one that went for $7,000. Blue Book is $1,000. Why are they going for so much money? Because the Geo Metro got -- Stu, was it 50 miles a gallon?

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: When did this car come out? In the mid-90s?

STU: Yeah, it was in the mid-90s but in the mid-90s gas prices were so low, it wasn't exactly a hot seller.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. Doesn't the Prius get like 52 miles a gallon?

STU: I think the Prius gets 52 or 56, something like that?

GLENN: Wait a minute. We had a regular combustion engine that was doing 50 miles a gallon?

STU: Yes, but you had to be inside of a Geo Metro to get that, which was the big problem.

GLENN: You have to be inside of a Prius.

STU: Yes, yes.

GLENN: I mean, so it's really not that much better.

STU: Let's see. The Prius, if I click on it right now gets -- I mean, it's listed here. I think they did change the way they do the mileage.

GLENN: Calculate the mileage?

STU: But this is listing it as 48 according to the Toyota website.

GLENN: I'm trying to -- I've got to Google Geo Metro. I remember --

STU: It used to be 60. The new adjustments has brought it from 60 to 48.

GLENN: What does that mean?

STU: They changed the way -- because they used to -- remember no one ever got 60 miles per gallon in a Prius. It was because of, you know, the way they calculated it. It wasn't real world conditions. They tried to update that as of this year and it knocked it -- which is funny because I haven't heard too many environmentalists touting that. They seem to -- I mean, that's a -- what was that, a 20% reduction in mileage? All this time they have been calculating these Prius as the savior of the universe and now it just lost 20% of its mileage when you use it in real world terms.

GLENN: What's the problem with that? Here's one. In 1989 Geo Metro, gets 75 miles to the gallon. I mean, look what people have done to them.

STU: Yeah. Well, some of them have been jacked up. But even the normal one was just --

GLENN: Get one and jack it up and give it away. That's what I want to do. I want to give it -- I want to find a Geo Metro -- can you get Doug Norris on? I don't even know how much -- can you get him on?

STU: We're trying.

GLENN: He's a car dealer down in Tampa, a good friend of mine. And by the way, GM has come out. Did you hear they are thinking about getting rid of Buick. Buick may be gone. Did you know -- you know what I read? It's in The Wall Street Journal today. Listen to this. General Motors resembles an aging starlet fighting the ravages of time. Despite a crash diet and costly makeover, her pool of loyal admirers keeps shrinking. The dramatic turnaround won't happen at GM unless they can persuade owners of import vehicles to buy its cars again. Drivers these days don't show much allegiance to any car dealer or any carmaker in Detroit. Even with dealers doling out cash rebates, warranties and other incentives. 54% of the American buyer won't even consider driving a domestic vehicle. 54% of us won't even consider getting into an American made car? Wow. Right now they're expected today to see data that will show another decline that could push domestic market share to less than 20% and the skid might not be over yet for American cars.

We have Doug on the phone? Doug. Doug?

NORRIS: Yes.

GLENN: Hey, how are you?

NORRIS: I'm doing fine, Glenn. How are you?

GLENN: Hey, I heard today that General Motors is coming out. Is there a chance that Buick goes away?

NORRIS: I have not heard that.

GLENN: I heard that on the news, heard that on the news today, that Buick may go away.

NORRIS: Well, I've seen the new 2010 Buick Lacrosse and if it's any -- and I know that it is, any kind of car like the Buick Enclave, it shouldn't go away because what a beautiful vehicle. No, I have not heard that.

GLENN: Have you heard that Geo Metros are selling all around the country?

NORRIS: I did. I heard on the news about a week ago that people are buying old Geo Metros and they are fixing them up and they are selling them because of the gas mileage rating.

GLENN: How did we have an American car that was getting 50 miles to the gallon and the Prius only gets 48 miles to the gallon?

NORRIS: I'm sorry, Glenn. What did you say again?

GLENN: I said how is it that we had an American car that was out in the 1980s and 1990s that was getting 50 miles to the gallon and yet the Prius only gets 48 miles to the gallon?

NORRIS: Well, I mean, we've had a lot of cars. General Motors has the most cars in production that get over 30 miles per gallon. So I mean, we've got a lot of cars that get 36 miles a gallon. Our Vibe does. So we've had some cars all through the years that get great gas mileage. But when people weren't all that worried about gasoline, when it was only $1.25 a gallon, I guess that's -- they weren't willing to -- there wasn't a sacrifice that needed to be made at that time.

GLENN: Now, how do I get a Geo Metro? Can you get your hands on a Geo Metro for me?

NORRIS: I checked with -- it's funny you asked that question. I checked with a guy that goes out on the road for us and he ran a little report just to try and find out. Within 1,000 miles of our dealership there is one Geo Metro running through any Mannheim auction.

GLENN: How much is it going for?

NORRIS: 150,000 miles on it.

GLENN: So that's got about, what, negative 10 miles left on it? You're going to have to push it.

NORRIS: Well, and that's what I'm trying to figure out. I know they say that people are fixing these cars up but what are they spending on them to fix them up.

GLENN: Yeah. So what is this car going for?

NORRIS: Oh, I don't know. It hasn't run yet. It's supposed to run this week. So I could try and keep track of it.

GLENN: Yeah, can you? Can you buy it for us? I mean, if Blue Book is $1,000, right?

NORRIS: Yeah. I mean, I don't know what this little car would bring. I can pull it up on the computer here to see if anything's run over the last, you know, month or so.

GLENN: Somebody said -- Stu, was it you that said that there was a Geo Metro that ran for -- that sold for $7,000?

STU: Yeah. The Blue Book is, you know, with that many miles is probably right around $1,000 but one sold on eBay for $7300.

GLENN: Was it souped up? Did it --

STU: I'll see if I can find it. I haven't seen the specific car but I mean, $7300, when the Geo Metro was new in 1996, it sold for $9,000 and it's selling for $7300 now. It's insane.

NORRIS: Isn't there a little panic going on there?

GLENN: No! No. A Geo Metro going for $7300? That doesn't sound crazy to me. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine if you have a Geo Metro -- I want to hear from somebody in the audience that has a Geo Metro right now that is like, oh, yeah, everybody was making fun of me for all these years. Yeah, read them and weep. There's got to be somebody out in the audience. If you have one you're willing to sell it to me, I'm not willing to pay top dollar, but I'm willing to buy it from ya.

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VIDEO: Both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama are radicals, but there's one HUGE difference

Biden backs yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences

The number of people serving life sentences now exceeds the entire prison population in 1970, according to newly-released data from the Sentencing Project. The continued growth of life sentences is largely the result of "tough on crime" policies pushed by legislators in the 1990s, including presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Biden has since apologized for backing those types of policies, but it seems he has yet to learn his lesson. Indeed, Biden is backing yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences—mandatory drug treatment for all drug offenders.

Proponents of this policy argue that forced drug treatment will reduce drug usage and recidivism and save lives. But the evidence simply isn't on their side. Mandatory treatment isn't just patently unethical, it's also ineffective—and dangerous.

Many well-meaning people view mandatory treatment as a positive alternative to incarceration. But there's a reason that mandatory treatment is also known as "compulsory confinement." As author Maya Schenwar asks in The Guardian, "If shepherding live human bodies off to prison to isolate and manipulate them without their permission isn't ethical, why is shipping those bodies off to compulsory rehab an acceptable alternative?" Compulsory treatment isn't an alternative to incarceration. It is incarceration.

Compulsory treatment is also arguably a breach of international human rights agreements and ethical standards. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made it clear that the standards of ethical treatment also apply to the treatment of drug dependence—standards that include the right to autonomy and self-determination. Indeed, according to UNODC, "people who use or are dependent on drugs do not automatically lack the capacity to consent to treatment...consent of the patient should be obtained before any treatment intervention." Forced treatment violates a person's right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.

It's a useless endeavor, anyway, because studies have shown that it doesn't improve outcomes in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism. A review of nine studies, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, failed to find sufficient evidence that compulsory drug treatment approaches are effective. The results didn't suggest improved outcomes in reducing drug use among drug-dependent individuals enrolled in compulsory treatment. However, some studies did suggest potential harm.

According to one study, 33% of compulsorily-treated participants were reincarcerated, compared to a mere 5% of the non-treatment sample population. Moreover, rates of post-release illicit drug use were higher among those who received compulsory treatment. Even worse, a 2016 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that people who received involuntary treatment were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those with a history of only voluntary treatment.

These findings echo studies published in medical journals like Addiction and BMJ. A study in Addiction found that involuntary drug treatment was a risk factor for a non-fatal drug overdose. Similarly, a study in BMJ found that patients who successfully completed inpatient detoxification were more likely than other patients to die within a year. The high rate of overdose deaths by people previously involuntarily treated is likely because most people who are taken involuntarily aren't ready to stop using drugs, authors of the Addiction study reported. That makes sense. People who aren't ready to get clean will likely use again when they are released. For them, the only post-treatment difference will be lower tolerance, thanks to forced detoxification and abstinence. Indeed, a loss of tolerance, combined with the lack of a desire to stop using drugs, likely puts compulsorily-treated patients at a higher risk of overdose.

The UNODC agrees. In their words, compulsory treatment is "expensive, not cost-effective, and neither benefits the individual nor the community." So, then, why would we even try?

Biden is right to look for ways to combat addiction and drug crime outside of the criminal justice system. But forced drug treatment for all drug offenders is a flawed, unethical policy, with deadly consequences. If the goal is to help people and reduce harm, then there are plenty of ways to get there. Mandatory treatment isn't one of them.

Lindsay Marie is a policy analyst for the Lone Star Policy Institute, an independent think tank that promotes freedom and prosperity for all Texans. You can follow her on Twitter @LindsayMarieLP.

BOMBSHELL: 'It wasn't just Hunter,' Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden was target of Ukraine corruption investigation — and he has the evidence to prove it

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani joined Glenn Beck on Tuesday's radio program discuss the Senate's ongoing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and reveal new bombshell documents he's currently releasing.

Giuliani told Glenn he has evidence of "very, very serious crime at the highest levels of government," that the "corrupt media" is doing everything in their power to discredit.

He also dropped some major, previously unreported news: not only was Hunter Biden under investigation in 2016, when then-Vice President Biden "forced" the firing of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, but so was the vice president himself.

"Shokin can prove he was investigating Biden and his son. And I now have the prosecutorial documents that show, all during that period of time, not only was Hunter Biden under investigation -- Joe Biden was under investigation," Giuliani explained. "It wasn't just Hunter."

Watch this clip to get a rundown of everything Giuliani has uncovered so far.

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Revealing Bernie’s dark side — one 1980s quote at a time

For most Americans, the 1980s was marked by big hair, epic lightsaber battles, and school-skipping Ferris Bueller dancing his way into the hearts of millions.

But for Bernie Sanders — who, by the way, was at that time the oldest-looking 40-year-old in human history — the 1980s was a period of important personal milestones.

Prior to his successful 1980 campaign to become mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was mostly known around the Green Mountain State as a crazy, wildly idealistic socialist. (Think Karl Marx meets Don Quixote.) But everything started to change for Sanders when he became famous—or, in the eyes of many, notorious—for being "America's socialist mayor."

As mayor, Sanders' radical ideas were finally given the attention he had always craved but couldn't manage to capture. This makes this period of his career particularly interesting to study. Unlike today, the Bernie Sanders of the 1980s wasn't concerned with winning over an entire nation — just the wave of far-left New York City exiles that flooded Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s — and he was much more willing to openly align himself with local and national socialist and communist parties.

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Over the past few weeks, I have been reading news reports of Sanders recorded in the 1980s — because, you know, that's how guys like me spend their Saturday nights — and what I've found is pretty remarkable.

For starters, Sanders had (during the height of the Soviet Union) a very cozy relationship with people who openly advocated for Marxism and communism. He was an elector for the Socialist Workers Party and promoted the party's presidential candidates in 1980 and 1984.

To say the Socialist Workers Party was radical would be a tremendous understatement. It was widely known SWP was a communist organization mostly dedicated to the teachings of Marx and Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Among other radical things I've discovered in interviews Sanders conducted with the SWP's newspaper — appropriately named The Militant (seriously, you can't make this stuff up) — is a statement by Sanders published in June 1981 suggesting that some police departments "are dominated by fascists and Nazis," a comment that is just now being rediscovered for the first time in decades.

In 1980, Sanders lauded the Socialist Workers Party's "continued defense of the Cuban revolution." And later in the 1980s, Sanders reportedly endorsed a collection of speeches by the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even though there had been widespread media reports of the Sandinistas' many human rights violations prior to Sanders' endorsement, including "restrictions on free movement; torture; denial of due process; lack of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; denial of the right of association and of free labor unions."

Sanders also traveled to Nicaragua and met with socialist President Daniel Ortega. He later called the trip a "profoundly emotional experience."

Comrade Bernie's disturbing Marxist past, which is far more extensive than what can be covered in this short article, shouldn't be treated as a mere historical footnote. It clearly illustrates that Sanders' brand of "democratic socialism" is much more than a $15 minimum wage and calls for single-payer health care. It's full of Marxist philosophy, radical revolutionary thinking, anti-police rhetoric, and even support for authoritarian governments.

Millions of Americans have been tricked into thinking Sanders isn't the radical communist the historical record — and even Sanders' own words — clearly show that he is. But the deeper I have dug into Comrade Bernie's past, the more evident it has become that his thinking is much darker and more dangerous and twisted than many of his followers ever imagined.

Tomorrow night, don't miss Glenn Beck's special exposing the radicals who are running Bernie Sanders' campaign. From top to bottom, his campaign is staffed with hard-left extremists who are eager to burn down the system. The threat to our constitution is very real from Bernie's team, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before in a U.S. election. Join Glenn on Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern on BlazeTV's YouTube page, and on BlazeTV.com. And just in case you miss it live, the only way to catch all of Glenn's specials on-demand is by subscribing to Blaze TV.

Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is editorial director of The Heartland Institute and editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.

Candace Owens blasts leftist cancel culture: 'Godless', 'societal atom bomb'

Candace Owens, BLEXIT founder and author of the upcoming book, "Blackout," joined Glenn Beck on Friday's GlennTV for an exclusive interview. available only to BlazeTV subscribers.

Candace dropped a few truth-bombs about the progressive movement and what's happening to the Democratic Party. She said people are practically running away from the left due to their incessant push to dig up dirt on anybody who disagrees with their radical ideology. She explained how -- like China and its "social credit score" -- the left is shaping America into its own nightmarish episode of "Black Mirror."

"This game of making sure that everyone is politically correct is a societal atom bomb. There are no survivors. There's no one that is perfect," Candace said. "The idea that humanity can be perfect is Godless. If you accept that there is something greater than us, then you accept that we a flawed. To be human is to be flawed."

Enjoy this clip from the full episode below:

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BlazeTV subscribers can watch the full interview on BlazeTV.com. Use code GLENN to save $10 off one year of your subscription.