SEMA Stands Up Against Scrappage Plans

[cjforumadmin]

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/SEMA-Stands-Up-Against-Scrappage-Plans.html

[tcbnj]

Another example of "truthiness". Its sad that our government representatives so frequently support the "easy" sounding "answer" versus providing real, solid solutions to serious structural problems (can you say comprehensive industrial policy?). It seems the American values we citizens associate ourselves with (freedom of expression and opportunity, individuality, responsibility, etc.) are so lacking in most of the people we send to government. As an active voter and taxpayer, these type ideas floating around just reinforce my distrust of both government representatives and the main stream media.

As stated in the blog, thank God for SEMA

[squirrel]

I'll thank Roy Richter, Ed Iskenderian, Willie Garner, Bob Hedman, John Bartlett, Phil Weiand, Jr., Al Segal, Dean Moon, and Vic Edelbrock, Jr. instead....

Go SEMA!

[DanStokes]

If you go back and look at my old posts you'll see that I have been suggesting that we vigorously support SEMA from the beginning. The squeaky wheel gets the government grease, so we'd better squeak. Look at the NRA, AARP and others. You can't just squeak off in the woods somewhere, either - you have to do it in the ears of those who make decisions. Sure, SEMA has an axe to grind (their business depends on it), but so do we, and our interests coincide pretty much completely.

So support them with Emails and with $$. It costs to get the ear of our elected reps (as much as that sucks).

Dan

[Remy-Z]

Just in time, too. For my speech class, I've decided to use this particular topic to infuriate a class that has a majority of anti-vehicle enthusiasts (as I've learned by their previous speeches and subsequent after-class conversations). I'm hoping to incite some kind of heated (violent?) reaction.

[squirrel]

The main flaw with any junker program is that there's no way of knowing if the car they're paying for was going to be driven XXX more miles, or was going to be left sitting and eventually scrapped. Usually they only get cars that were headed to the junkyard anyways, and they pay a hefty premium for them.

[jordanmorningstar]

Haven't the oil companies tried this before, as a means to "make up" for their pollution elsewhere? Even if it does work, there's no guarantee that the people aren't going to buy a foreign car.

Here in Canada, we have private charities that take care of the "crusher" programs-you call up the kidney or cancer charities, and they send a towtruck to get rid of the car. When it's scrapped or sold, a portion of the profits are paid out to the charities. Setting up something similar in the US could put an end to this-every time a corporate interest tries to do this, it will look like they're trying to take money away from the charities. Nothing like bad PR to keep the Wall Street gremlins away!

[squirrel]

Here there are charities (mostly religious) that take donated cars and sell them, and you get a tax deduction.

[std]

What about all the people that can only afford a $500 car. I would think that is the biggest amount of old cars on the road.

[squirrel]

Those are the cars they want to crush, but since they still are driven, they don't get them.

The cars they get are the ones sitting around with a leaking head gasket or something, that won't get driven any more, but won't get scrapped unless there's a good offer (like a crushing program).

[SuperBuickGuy]

So let me get this straight. My ever vigilent government wishes to give me $500 of my own money so that I can borrow $30,000 to buy a new car that the government will give me $500 of my money (again) when it croaks?
Wow, why didn't I think of going into more debt to save the good ole USA?

[squirrel]

We can just print up some more money....

[SuperBuickGuy]

We can just print up some more money....



Which, of course, is the punch line and the reason to buy imports... because at some point all they'll have is paper - and we'll have their finite resources.