Large Corporate Donors Help Chamber Influence Campaign

[GrantDem]

Source: NY Times

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed new rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.

And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has helped wage a national campaign to limit the ability of trial lawyers to sue businesses.

These large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group which keeps its donors secret — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/us/politics/22chamber.html?_r=1

[aquart]

1. I want to go to the Goldman Sachs auction.

The one where they sell the desks and coat racks after a company goes bust.

[GrantDem]

3. I'll bet you can some really nice office chairs dirt cheap...

[NC_Nurse]

2. So why is the COC tax-exempt? I guess I should know that....

[DBoon]

4. because they write the laws

the best legislation money can buy

[nradisic]

8. yeah, why are the y tax exempt?

They have gone political....they should lose the tax exempt status.

[movonne]

5. Well if the voters want a other countries owning America then I

have to say America is really lost and corporations will run our Presidents,our senate, and congress...

[Historic NY]

6. I want to know...what corporations to avoid. But they are cowards.

[nradisic]

7. I don't do business with any of them

Ask yourself....Do you do any business with these companies? If so, move your business. Now.

[unkachuck]

9. if the definition....

....of fascism is state-run capitalism, aren't we de facto fascist? Leaving aside how they do it, don't the capitalists in this country control our government and our capital-based electoral system?

....hiding beneath the cloak of democracy, is fascism....

[Frank Booth]

10. Obama has placed Goldman Sachs employees into many powerful positions in

his administration, and Goldman Sachs still manages to stab him in the back.

To repeat an extremely common refrain: When will Obama realize these people will never like him no matter how much he grovels?