Your state's attorney general can protect you against such questionable automobile dealer practices as misleading or bait-and-switch advertising, failure to disclose prior accident damage or prior rental use and fraudulent repair claims.  Your AG can enforce lemon laws and be a strong advocate for your consumer rights.  However, he or she cannot prevent any salesperson from high-balling or low-balling you on the lot or in the showroom until you've signed a purchase agreement. 

By employing the high-balling tactic, disreputable dealers lead you to believe (usually by not disagreeing with your own inflated estimation) that your trade-in is worth significantly more than what you will ultimately receive.  This forces you to re-visit their dealerships after everyone else has put a lower number on your trade. 

The low-balling tactic is designed to give you a false sense of how little you will pay for your next car, which also forces you to return to the scene of your "best deal". But an "oh by the way...how were you going to cover sales tax and documentation fees?" or some other added-cost question is innocently asked just as you are about to sign on the dotted line.

One of the foremost carguys on the planet, Ed Whitacre, chairman/CEO of General Motors Company, may be in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission for a new high-balling ad campaign that states: "We have repaid our government loans in full -- with interest -- five years ahead of the original schedule," in which he asks Americans to give his formerly bankrupt company's vehicles another look. 

Another look at the total amount that Congress appropriated for GM's bailout, however, would lead us to believe that Government Motors still owes American and Canadian taxpayers a whole lot more to settle its debt. GM has received a total of $52 billion in U.S. government aid, with the "repaid" $6.7 billion referred to in the current ad campaign as the loan. The rest of the debt would be repaid if and when the company sells stock to the public. 

The Obama administration's continued job creation claims are another example of the government low-balling us.  Obama’s senior economic advisers released a report just before he took office that projected unemployment would remain at 8% through 2009. Instead, unemployment topped-out at over 10% in October and remains well over 9% despite all of those "millions of jobs created and/or rescued."

Even the 600,000-plus temporary Census jobs haven't created the "250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month" increase that the official Jobs Spinmeister, Joe Biden, has promised.  In true low-balling tradition Joe will, once again, be forced to try the old "oh by the way" close when his high-balling claim is revisited. 

"At the time our forecast seemed reasonable. Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic," is what Biden schmuckishly told reporters a year after the aforementioned 8% unemployment cap propaganda was launched to low-ball us into a false sense that Obama/Biden was our best deal.

Then there's the continued high-ball claim that economic recovery has been "so strong" despite the expenditure of a mere fraction of the $787 billion Stimulus money. The converse, of course, is that spending anywhere from zero to the current number would have had pretty much the same effect without the "oh by the way" debt incurrence that we will have to deal with whether or not a full recovery ever occurs.

Predictably, the FTC says it "could not provide any comment on the GM ad or whether it had received any complaints or inquiries about GM's claims from the public or from government officials," which is a pretty slick way of shilling for the administration, its benefactor.

But Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, in a more formal explanation of flim-flam tactics than presented herewith, has called on Treasury Secretary Geithner to provide more information about why the company was allowed to use bailout money to repay bailout money, and how much of the remaining escrow money GM would be allowed to keep.

"The bottom line seems to be that the TARP loans were 'repaid' with other TARP funds in a Treasury escrow account. The TARP loans were not repaid from money GM is earning selling cars, as GM and the administration have claimed in their speeches, press releases and television commercials," Sen. Grassley wrote.

No, your state's attorney general cannot advocate for you in regard to GM's latest advertising gimmick.  As stated, high-balling and low-balling in the absence of a signed buyer's order is unenforceable.

Nonetheless, this instance is tantamount to a car dealer keeping your rebate and low-balling you into believe that he has discounted your new car by that much...or by high-balling you into believing that he was able to be so much more aggressive than those other cheapskates when he merely added the hidden rebate to your trade-in allowance. 

There will be a Lemon Law Proposition on your ballot on Election Day. I urge you to vote YES.

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