Shelby The Shill Worsens The Main Street Meltdown

The AP (via Time Magazine) tells us the following here (and I also posted briefly over here on a separate topic)…

(WASHINGTON) — The senior Republican on the Banking Committee said Wednesday he doesn't believe there will be a turnaround in the troubled U.S. auto industry until its top management is ousted and its manufacturing operations are revamped.

"I don't think they have immediate plans to change their model, which is a model of failure," Sen. Richard Shelby said, a day after the top executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler came to Congress to plead for a $25 billion "bridge loan" to avert layoffs and plant closings. "I think a lot of it will be life support," Shelby, R-Ala., said. "I believe their best option would be some type of Chapter 11 bankruptcy ... These leaders have been failures and they need to go."

Wow, that’s some harsh talk (and not entirely undeserved, I must say).

Well then, since the financial meltdown precipitated the credit crunch that imperiled the automakers, forcing them to greatly “ramp up” production of vehicles that make much better use of alternative sources of energy (something they should have done long before now, I’ll admit – both the New York Times and the Murdoch Street Journal today have full page ads from GM telling us what they’re up to on that front), you would think that Shelby had equally harsh words for the mismanagement of firms such as Lehman and AIG, wouldn’t you?

Not exactly; as noted here…

Where the (two major) parties appear to diverge is over Democrats' demand for government authority over the paychecks of executives whose companies participate in a taxpayer bailout. House Republicans oppose the idea, aides said, and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), a key figure in the debate, said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation" that he thinks compensation should be set by corporate boards.

Boy – somehow, that doesn’t have the same oomph of fire and brimstone, “make right your paths, you sinners!” as “these leaders have been failures and they need to go” in the case of the automakers, does it?

Well, call me a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger if you must, but somehow I think that has more than a little bit to do with the fact that Shelby has received a hell of a lot of campaign finance dough from the financial services industry, as noted here by Open Secrets (don’t see any automakers on that list, just for the record).

And while it’s true that Shelby voiced concern about the original bailout proposal by Dubya and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, as noted here (which was nothing more than a typical Bushco power grab and giveaway of our tax dollars with no oversight, as opposed to the little bit that currently exists), to me, that was more of a matter of political survival than anything else; maybe I should give Shelby props for that, but I won’t because it was a no-brainer.

See, Shelby to me is another Repug in the mold of Arlen Specter, someone who pretends to be something that he’s not, and that’s a moderate (I’m not sure a species like that can survive long in that party). As noted here, he was originally a Democrat, having fought Bill Clinton over taxes and spending in the early ‘90s, though Shelby apparently kept his mouth shut when prosperity flourished largely because of Clinton’s money management (and he knew which way the wind was blowing, as it were, changing parties in ’94 when the Repugs retook Congress and starting doing just about nothing but making Clinton’s life an utter misery).

Here are some more Shelby “lowlights”:

He received a 0 from the Republicans for Environmental Protection, as noted above by Wikipedia; he also loved Dubya’s tax cuts and voted to confirm “Strip Search Sammy” Alito (though he wisely voted against the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that weakened financial transparency, I must admit).

He also revealed classified information to Carl Cameron of Fox News (possibly tied to 9/11), though Cameron didn’t air it but Dana Bash of CNN did instead – Shelby wasn’t punished because the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed the matter in ’05, when it was run by the Repugs.

He also opposed the FDA’s efforts to regulate tobacco here; also helped direct $50 million in earmarks to a space and missile defense company run by a friend who hired one of the senator’s former aides as a lobbyist.

He also blocked a Darfur divestment bill that would have put pressure on Khartoum to stop the genocide (also said in June of ’01 that we had bin Laden “on the run”).

Another thing - also like Specter, Shelby is due to defend his Senate seat in 2010 (and also like Specter, it will be tough to knock him off, since he has an approval rating of approximately 54 percent at this point).

As you can see, though, Shelby has no trouble summoning up some serious harrumphing over the automakers in our current crisis (and as attractive as it is to punish them, it makes little sense since, like the money guys, the ripple effects would be felt everywhere - and I thought this was a good column pertaining to all this). But when it comes to the financial culprits who first toppled the dominoes, as it were, leading to the current economic misery, it looks like he’s out of gas.

Update 1: I must admit that it's really hard to support help for these cretins (the carmakers, that is) when they pull antics like this.

Update 2 11/20/08: And by the way, I think Shelby is an ideological fellow traveller with this guy.

Update 3 12/08/08: Regarding the matter of a loan to the automakers, I thought was kos said here was spot-on (concerning another unrepentant egomaniac).

Update 4 3/17/09: God, is Shelby a fraud (here).