Richard Shelby Letter

Many General Motors, Chrysler and Ford retirees and employees are asking, “what can we do to help our companies?” Well, for starters, find an old shoe/boot/flip-flop you have laying around the house and mail it to “The Dinosaur Senator,” Richard Shelby, of Alabama. I think he will get the message (Shelby’s mailing address in Washington is listed below! Can you imagine the reaction of the other Senators when they see 1,000’s of these old shoes coming into the Capitol Building in Washington?  

The “Humpty-Dumpty” Senator may just fall off of his Mercedes and start speaking in German. That would probably be easier to understand than the English he is trying to espouse! Folks, the Post Office will supply the box free, so you will only be out a couple of bucks for postage. A small price to pay for the enormous satisfaction! 

 Now, for those of you that would like to do more, here’s an idea for you. To show America and all of the great people that live in this great country how much GM, Ford and Chrysler contribute to this Nation’s economy you might consider doing the following:

Stop what you are doing right now! Get out your “Magic Marker”……….take all of the paper bills out of your wallet or purse and *write one of these names on the front and back of the bill……. GM - Ford - Chrysler! Do this every time you spend any of your hard-earned paper money and keep doing it until January 31, 2009. The American public will soon realize how much GM - Ford - Chrysler retirees and active employees spend every day in this great country of ours, both in the North and in Shelby’s South, not my beloved South!

Another thought, write one of these names (GM - Ford - Chrysler) on the back of every piece of mail you send out until January 31, 2009. Think of how many Americans will see these pieces of mail!

We are sure you can think of many more ideas to express your concerns for the American Automotive Industry. Please let us know your ideas so we can share them with all the folks at GM - Ford - Chrysler!

Now, don’t you feel better? You are doing something very important and worthwhile to help yourself, your company and this country and it cost you very little time and money to get the job done!

                        Senator Richard Shelby Survey!
        "Humpty-Dumpty", uh?


Senator Richard Shelby’s Contact Information:

Mail your old shoe/boot/flip-flop to:

Capitol Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

ATT: Senator Richard Shelby

 

Contact Sen. Richard Shelby at E-mail Address:  senator@shelby.senate.gov 

Website: shelby.senate.gov


Phone: (202) 224-5744
Fax: (202) 224-3416

Please consider forwarding this E-Mail to everyone on your E-Mail mailing list!

 *Since a group or person cannot recommend such actions, we are not. You be the judge of what is fair and should be done by each individual person who may lose their Health Care and Pension Benefits real soon!!!!

February 19, 2009, 2:45 pm

Sen. Shelby Says GM, Chrysler Viability Plans ‘Fall Far Short’

Sen. Richard Shelby from Alabama reignited his criticism of two of Detroit’s domestic auto makers Thursday, saying the viability plans submitted to Congress “fall far short of providing credible strategies” and “contain few concrete commitments” by the companies’ stakeholders in relation to concessions.

Sen. Shelby, the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, has been a leading skeptical voice in Washington related to the appeals of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC for federal loans in recent months. Fresh criticism comes as the Obama administration begins to digest viability plans that the auto makers submitted to the Treasury department on Tuesday. Members of President Barack Obama’s automotive industry task force are meeting this week to begin evaluating the viability of GM and Chrysler, and mulling whether the companies merit additional funds.

It is unclear at this point whether GM and Chrysler would eventually need to return to Congress in respect to requests for additional funding. In December, Congress rejected an appeal for billions by the auto maker, leaving the Bush administration to craft a $17.4 billion bailout that was needed to keep them afloat. As a condition of those loans, GM and Chrysler needed to give updates on their viability plans by Feb. 17, and submit terms sheets containing agreements between the companies, the unions and bondholders.

“The plans contain few concrete commitments by GM’s and Chrysler’s management, bondholders, unions, and dealers to take the actions necessary to save these companies,” Sen. Shelby said in a statement emailed to The Wall Street Journal. “The plans fail to demonstrate that either GM or Chrysler can reduce its labor costs to match its competitors. They also fail to show that the companies can reverse the decades-long slide in their market share.”

Sen. Shelby has been an advocate of pushing the two auto makers into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, where the companies could conceivably cut costs and restructure contracts under the protection of a bankruptcy judge. In their plans to the White House, both GM and Chrysler presented possible scenarios for bankruptcy, but both said that as much as $21 billion in more funding for an out-of-court restructuring is a better course.

“Instead of taking concrete steps to solve their business problems, GM and Chrysler hope to rely on additional taxpayer funding to avoid bankruptcy,” Sen. Shelby said. “The focus of the restructuring process should be to make these companies self-sufficient, not to increase their dependence on taxpayer money.” – John D. Stoll

http://blogs.wsj.com/autoshow/2009/02/19/sen-shelby-says-gm-chrysler-viability-plans-fall-far-short/?mod=googlenews_wsj Forum located here so you can reply to Senator Shelby…Do It Now, Please!!!

 

Tuesday, January 20, 2009, 2:45pm CST

Study: Birmingham will lose 11,900 jobs - Birmingham Business Journal - by Ty West Staff

Birmingham, Alabama job market will feel the impact of a slower economy in 2009, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Council for the New American City.

According to the study, the Birmingham-Hoover metro area is projected to lose 11,900 jobs – or 2.3 percent of its workforce – in 2009.

The study projects that Birmingham’s unemployment rate will be 5.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 – which gives the Magic City one of the lowest projected jobless rates in the country for a major metro area.
 http://www.bizjournals.com/birmingham/stories/2009/01/19/daily14.html?ana=from_rss

 

 

I couldn't figure out why would the Congress let some firms go under and then bend over backwards to help others.
NOW this makes sense!!!!!!

(Why hasn't it gotten national press coverage?)

Remember when this economic crisis hit, and Congress let Bear Sterns go under, pushed a bunch of forced marriages between banks, etc.? Then they bailed out AIG.

At the time, I thought: "That's strange. What does an insurance company have to do with this crisis?"

I think I just found the answer.

Among other things, AIG INSURES THE PENSION TRUST OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS!!

No wonder they got bailed out right away!

To hell with the people, let's protect our future, said all our Senators and Congressmen.

Nice to see where their loyalties lie!

(We are from the government and we're here to help ourselves!)

Check it out... http://bx.businessweek.com/aig/


SURVEY QUESTION:
Should Birmingham, Alabama's Jefferson County declare bankruptcy now? See the survey results by clicking the link below:

 http://www.bizjournals.com/birmingham/poll/?poll_id=7124


Senator Shelby and his political cronies gave the Foreign OWNED vehicle manufactures too much of the Alabama taxpayers money. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Shelby, here's another shoe at you!
 

Play Throw The Shoe Game Here:  http://www.aksalser.com/game.htm

 Read The Article Below About Senator Richard Shelby and his fellow Senators who are protecting the Foreign OWNED vehicle Manufacturers:

Businessweek Article Says Detroit is a Political Pawn in Union Wars

Posted by christiancarguy on 17 December, 2008

This post was filed in Automotive, Car Sales, Politics

 As I keep hearing it’s the Unions fault, which makes no sense to me. Perhaps this article may shed some light on why some claim that…..SCARRY!!!  The big reason to allow GM and Chrysler to go into bankruptcy, I keep hearing is to get rid of the unions. That concept by itself is repulsive to me with out considering what the rest of this article says.

Unions or no unions we have to build and sell cars that people can afford and will buy with out going into slavery, (debt). We can do this, but we need to work together with God and it would appear to me that we need to be in perfect union. What a concept.  We need all hands on deck, everyone pulling on the oars that includes the unions, the Democrats, the Republicans and most of all my fellow Christians in prayer.

This article is from Businessweek, a publication that has not been very
complimentary to Detroit in the past. But WOW!

Senators Carping About Tax Subsidies Can Look in Their Backyard
Businessweek By Ed Wallace

Dec. 15, 2008'

In the ongoing power struggle between Republicans and Democrats, Detroit is
the latest, and possibly the bloodiest, battleground. And because it is a
battle of ideologies with no apparent connection to pragmatic economic
reality, the matter of whether the U.S. auto industry survives takes a
backseat to which party gets its way.

That’s because the two parties see the fate of Detroit as a watershed
moment, the kind of event that could potentially redraw the political
landscape forever. By refusing to bail out General Motors and Chrysler,
Republicans see a way to end the last vestiges of unionism in America and
the unions’ longtime backing of the Democratic party — a political base the
Democrats will fight tooth and claw to save. If neither side can win — if
they destroy the American automobile industry in its entirety and if in
doing so they set off a chain reaction that turns out to be the last straw
for our shaky economic system — they don’t care.

How can that be? Simple party politics. Because if these individuals bring
down the American economy by destroying Detroit, they’ll simply walk away
from the disaster saying “It was the other guy’s fault.”

Somewhere along the way this debate seems to have overlooked the fact that
Detroit, for all its blunders, is still a viable economic engine, providing
jobs to millions and creating some of the world’s best cars. For example,
the best-selling vehicle in America, even in this downturn, is still Ford’s
F-Series truck, and second place goes to the Chevrolet Silverado. Even the
Dodge Ram continues to hold a strong position in the Top 20 vehicle list,
while sales of the Toyota Prius are down substantially with the fall-off in
gasoline prices. (We assume that the Prius is the type of car the left wants
Detroit to build.)

And speaking of Japanese cars, I hate to point out the obvious, but car
sales in Japan are lower today than they were 15 years ago, down over 30
percent just last month. Yet you won’t see the heads of the Japanese auto
companies on the carpet in front of their government officials, being
drilled with questions like, “Why don’t you build cars the public wants to
buy?”

What’s amazing is that Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is such a huge critic
of using taxpayer money to bail out Detroit. Amazing because the state of
Alabama has provided hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to lure
foreign auto companies to build factories on its soil.

Of course, when Alabama gave Mercedes-Benz $253 million to build a factory
there, or about $168,000 per job created, that was considered a good thing.
When Honda considered building a new factory there, that was worth $158
million, and Hyundai’s Southern site choice forced the state to cough up
$234 million more. Again, these were considered wise investments because the
promise was that they would create more jobs for the chronically underpaid
Alabama workforce. However, in the summer of 2003, Mercedes brought in
Polish workers on questionable B-1 work visas to expand the factory because
they could be paid far less than the local workforce.

So you had Alabama gifting state tax dollars to Mercedes’ factory, only to
discover that some of the jobs it created went to much cheaper labor
imported from Eastern Europe.

Look at Senator Bob Corker of (R-Tenn.). The former mayor of Chattanooga was
one of those responsible for winning the new Volkswagen factory at a cost of
$577 million in tax incentives. Moreover, Tennessee got that factory only
because Alabama offered the Germans a mere $385 million.

Mississippi paid $284 million for a new Toyota plant; Kia got $324 million
from Georgia. Texas had to fork over only $133 million for Toyota’s Tundra
plant in San Antonio, while Tennessee gave $197.6 million not for a new
Nissan factory but simply so Nissan would move its American headquarters to
Nashville. There are other factories — BMW in South Carolina, Nissan in
Mississippi, and so on — but you get the point.

The Republican senators from these states see no problem whatsoever with
paying to bring new automobile production to their states, and the media
always quotes them gloating about how smart it is to spend that type of
money because it creates jobs.

The reality is that there’s no end to the tax largesse handed out to some of
the most successful car companies in the world. And you know their names:
Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. The
fact that many of these companies’ brand-new, state-of-the-art American
plants — nonunion plants, low cost-benefit plants — are also struggling
seems to have escaped the notice of these same elected officials and the
media.

Mercedes recently offered a buyout to its entire workforce in Alabama, and
Hyundai has never gotten its Alabama factory up to full capacity. Toyota
will not use its upcoming Mississippi factory to build its Highlander SUV,
and Nissan is converting its factory in that state to build commercial
vehicles. Toyota has been forced to shut its Texas truck plant because of
scanty orders for the new Tundra, and so on. So Senator Shelby’s statement
that Detroit “doesn’t innovate. They’re a dinosaur,” while his partner
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) brags about the “very large and vibrant
automobile sector in Alabama,” doesn’t exactly ring true.

So we find that nonunion, low-cost, state-subsidized, state-of-the-art auto
plants in America are having their fair share of problems, too. But
according to Senate Republicans, the only part of the American car industry
that isn’t working is in Detroit.

Other governments aren’t being so stingy — or mercenary. Sweden gave $3.5
billion to stabilize both Volvo and Saab on Dec. 10. Volkswagen has applied
to tap into the bank bailout fund set up by Germany for that nation’s
troubled financial system — our Treasury and Fed may be compelled to offer
similar help. And China just lent Chery Automotive $1.5 billion to continue
operations.

That’s right, other industrialized countries around the world will be
stepping in to ensure that their own automobile industries will still be
working when whatever financial downturn we are looking at is finally over.
Moreover, they understand that the world’s economy is precarious right now,
so they aren’t demanding that corporate jets be sold, they aren’t demanding
new business plans to save the individual companies, and they aren’t
publicly embarrassing the heads of Honda, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, VW, Nissan,
Renault, and others by demanding that they explain why their profits and
sales have dropped suddenly. In the rest of the world, elected officials
understand serious downturns in the economy and that the automotive industry
is cyclical in nature.

As for Congress, shame on you for playing politics when so many jobs and, in
many ways, the future of American manufacturing is at stake. But then again
politics is all you know. Maybe you should let American carmakers get on
with what they know how to do: build cars.

http://christiancarguy.com/2008/12/17/businessweek-article-says-detroit-is-a-political-in-union-wars/

 

American People Need Help!

You could change the country name to China, Japan, Germany, India, or any other country the USA trades with and the story would be the same. Why? Please write and express your opinions at the address listed below. And please forward this article to all those foreign car purchasers you know. They are killing the America we love so much!

LOCAL COMMENT  Detroit Free Press

Korean trade pact fails U.S.

BY U.S. REP. SANDER LEVIN • April 27, 2008

Tom Walsh got it wrong in his April 17 column on the pending U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement ("S. Korean trade deal worth close look; But emotional debate casts doubt on it getting approval in Congress"). It is not an emotional debate, but an economic one, that has derailed the Korea FTA.

 

Trade agreements are about the terms of economic competition between countries. Our negotiators should be fighting for U.S. businesses and workers by breaking down tariff and non-tariff barriers to U.S. goods and services.

 

Consider the facts: Korea is the fifth largest producer, and the ninth largest consumer automotive market in the world. We now have an $11-billion deficit in automotive trade, which is 87% of the total trade deficit between our two countries. In 2006, Korea sold 700,000 vehicles in the United States; the United States sold only 4,556 in Korea.

 

The FTA as negotiated will simply lock in a structure of one-way trade between the two industrialized nations and allow the Korean auto industry to continue an export-driven strategy using the profits from its protected home market to fund R&D and broader incursions into the U.S. and other major markets.

 

The FTA fails to eliminate the extensive use of discriminatory tax structures and non-tariff barriers used by Korea to keep its auto market closed. We also know through experience -- two previous Korean formal automotive trade agreements that the United States called the 1995 and 1998 "Memorandums of Understanding" -- that it is very difficult to move the Koreans to end these non-tariff barriers.

 

By giving away the 2.5% auto tariff and negotiating down the 25% pick-up truck tariff without linking it to concrete results in assuring the end of Korea's unfair non-tariff barrier structure, the Bush administration & congress has locked in the status quo and worse. Korean automakers win $217 million in auto tariff reductions from the FTA while tariff reductions for U.S. automakers amount to just $12 million.

We cannot accept a model of trade that fails to stand up for U.S. businesses and workers in the area that now represents 87% of our trade deficit with South Korea.

 

U.S. REP. SANDER LEVIN, D-Royal Oak, chairs the trade subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080427/OPINION04/

 

e-mail to:   oped@freepress.com

 

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=Contact

 

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008804270555

 

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

By Jordy Yager  - The Hill

Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM [ET]

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.

Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill. 

Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.

In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.

“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/with-economy-in-shambles-congress-gets-a-raise-2008-12-17.html

 

 Are You Listening CONGRESS…….you too Richard Shelby?

OH!  Now I understand!!!
You think the Auto Industry is costing us too much?  

Read this:
I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them.  I also have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.
 
Are we THAT stupid?
If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message.  If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every elected representative in  Washington , D.C. - five times a week for  as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.
 
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.    
Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77
 
2.   $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
 
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
& nbsp;
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
 
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
 
6.  $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal  aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
 
7.  30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
Verify at: < FONT face=Arial color=black>http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
 
8.  $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
 
9.  $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
 
10.  The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens.  In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
 
11.  During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also,  as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terroris t Countries.  Millions o f pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
 
12.  The National policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between  $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.'
Verify at: http://www.national policyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf</ A>
 
13.  In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin.
Verify at:  http://www.rense.com/gene ral75/niht.htm>
 
14.  'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One million sex crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in the United States.
Verify at: http: // www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
 
The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION SO 25 BILLION TO THE AUTO INDUSTRY TO KEEP LEGAL PEOPLE WORKING IS TO MUCH??????......... Come On Senators! You to Richard Shelby!

Submitted By Don Brice