[helrazr3]

hi jon,

i have been reading the posts involving sema and i had a thought[ i figured i had better get it out before it dies of loneliness] it says that to find out info on pending legislation to contact brian caudill at sema. i was thinking that if they sent you an update you could send out an alert in the weekly newsletter. how does that sound to you? it seems like a good way to get it to a lot of people without to much work.

[Jon]

Thanks helrazr3. I do want to implement some sort of warning on pending legislation affecting our hobby, but I'm not exactly sure what the best way to do it is. A little notice in the weekly newsletter would not be a bad idea, as long as there were weekly changes, and we didn't end up printing the same stuff for a month in a row.

I am not very impressed with SEMA, and have specifically prevented this website from becoming a member. They are, by definition, a marketing association (SEMA = Specialty Equipment Market Association). Their primary function is to protect the interests of companies and other marketing entities in the aftermarket automotive industry. They were started by businesses, to stick up for businesses. There is nothing wrong with this, but if legislation came up that were to benefit hotrodders, but not hot rod companies, whose side would they be on?

Nevertheless, we have a common interest in seeing that certain legislation gets passed, and certain other legislation does not. I think we should post notices about important legislation without referencing SEMA, but if this is not feasible, we can mention them.

If I were SEMA, I would just set it up so that websites could just cut-and-paste one little line of code into their sites, that would automatically update with SEMA alerts. This is very easy to do. Maybe I'll talk to them about this.