Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates & has $60M to do so

[babylonsister]

Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates


“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said.
The group indicates it will spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it put out in the last presidential cycle.

By Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 8, 2008


WASHINGTON -- Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said.

The warning from the nation's largest trade association came against a background of mounting popular concern over the condition of the economy. A weak record of job creation, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining home values and other problems have all helped make the economy a major campaign issue.

Presidential candidates in particular have responded to the public concern. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has been the bluntest populist voice, but other front-running Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, have also called for change on behalf of middle-class voters.

On the Republican side, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- emerging as an unexpected front-runner after winning the Iowa caucuses -- has used populist themes in his effort to woo independent voters, blasting bonus pay for corporate chief executives and the effect of unfettered globalization on workers.

Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-chamber8jan08,1,5346679.story?track=rss&ctrack=5&cset=true

[angstlessk]

1. If the chamber of commerce is for a proposal I know immediately it is bad for people

or the consumer. they USED to be a good organization back in the old days when companies cared about their employees and their customers..today it is all about the CEO, the board of directors the stockholders and all the rest that embodies the corporation can go to fucking hell, as far as top management is concerned. that includes its customers!

[babylonsister]

3. And no one is hiding their agenda; I'm surprised they're so 'honest'

about their motives.

[ursi]

2. I would like to see members of this group spend some time fighting in Iraq

They are one of the groups that kept that idiot Bush in office.

[NashVegas]

4. Too Short-Sighted for Their Own Good

When more dollars are in the pockets of more people, that's great for business.

When most dollars are in the pockets of some people, that's only good for businesses that cater to some people.

[underpants]

5. The Powell Memo to the US Chamber of Commerce --1971

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html

ntroduction
In 1971, Lewis F. Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell's nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell's legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell "might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice...in behalf of business interests."

Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's "hands-off business" philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building - a focus we share, though usually with contrasting goals. One of our great frustrations is that "progressive" foundations and funders have failed to learn from the success of these corporate institutions and decline to fund the Democracy Movement that we and a number of similarly-focused organizations are attempting to build. Instead, they overwhelmingly focus on damage control, band-aids and short-term results which provide little hope of the systemic change we so desperately need to reverse the trend of growing corporate dominance.

We see depressingly little sign of change. Progressive institutions eagerly embrace tools like the web and e-mail as hopes for turning the nation in a progressive direction. They will not. They are tools that can and must be used to raise funds and mobilize people more effectively (and we rely on them heavily), but tools and tactics are no substitute for long-term vision and strategy.

So did Powell's political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment "right" for corporations to influence ballot questions. On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

[NashVegas]

6. Wow, Thanks

In a recent newspaper story here, there was some play about how everyone of our current local Board of Education members was endorsed by the chamber, and that pretty much everyone they wanted out was ousted.

[yurbud]

11. the Chamber was the real Dr. Frankenstein of conservative movement. Now the villagers are coming

for their monster torches and pickaxes.

I wonder why they are upset?

[tanyev]

7. U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The Right Wing's Right Hand in D.C.

It's hard to precisely define the political establishment, the fixed group of financiers, political operatives, journalists, and politicians who make up the swirl of right-wing power in Washington D.C. But if it's not always simple to define in its totality, one man stands out as an innovative and particularly venal power broker: Thomas Donahue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Now, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce itself is a powerhouse. According to the New York Times, the Chamber has more than three million members, from businesses of every size, sector and region; its 2,800 affiliated state and local chambers give it a presence in nearly every state and Congressional district. It spent more than $53 million on lobbying in 2004, more than any organization has ever spent in a year. In 2004, it deployed 215 people in 31 states, sent 3.7 million pieces of mail, made 5.6 million phone calls and sent more than 30 million e-mail messages on behalf of its candidates.

This institution is one of the most powerful vehicles in D.C. One characteristic of Republican rule is how right-wingers have seized on groups like this and moved them away from helping their members and towards becoming part of the Republican establishment. The Chamber purports to work for a business-friendly environment that helps its members, but it lobbies for anti-science policies that have to do solely with ideology. Despite massive costs for the insurance industry, for instance, the Chamber is still in denial over global warming, urging "Congress to carefully review the climate change issue before taking further action." Despite the obvious interest small businesses have in a free and open internet, the Chamber of Commerce opposes net neutrality. The Chamber wants to weaken or eliminate the Family and Medical Leave Act, the minimum wage, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. They want to cut every possible tax despite massive deficits, privatize Social Security, and just generally pursue the right-wing agenda down the line. Far from a business-friendly umbrella group for its 3 million members, the Chamber under Donahue's management has turned into a pay-to-play vehicle for right-wing causes and corporate dishonesty. As Eliot Spitzer put it, ''Tom Donohue has never once found a crime that he couldn't justify, as long as it was committed by one of his dues-paying members."

The national Chamber of Commerce isn't pro-business, in other words, it's just a fully captured right-wing organization that has been taken over by the Republican Party. There are state and local Chambers all over the country that are not right-wing, but are genuinely apolitical organizations fostering networking and business growth in local areas. Many trial lawyers in the South belong to local Chambers, unwittingly contributing to a massive lobbying operation in D.C. undercutting their ability to represent the public against abuses.

http://www.alternet.org/story/45493/

[K Gardner]

8. K&R

[Blue_Tires]

9. fuck 'em nt

[Stop Cornyn]

10. So pro-Chamber of Commerce candidates like Hillary and Obama should be safe. So $60 million is the

price?

[Critters2]

14. Yep. This is good news for Barack and Hillary.

All that money will be aimed at the Populist.

[Stop Cornyn]

16. Good for Obamillary = Bad for Consumers?

[Critters2]

18. Absolutely.

Obamillary! I'm gonna use that!

[yurbud]

12. silver lining--histrionic tone shows they are panicked.

The good news here is the histrionic tone is a sign of how panicked they are. Michael Moore said the heavy-handed tactics of the Bushies from election-rigging to bullying critics is a sign that they know they can't win the argument by legitimate means or fool enough people anymore--they can only hold on to power with brute force. They are like a dying dinosaur, thrashing for a way to pull itself out of a tar pit. We just have to be careful it doesn't grab us take us down with us.

[yurbud]

13. remember when the wealthy at least paid lip service to ''noblesse oblige''?

[Snotcicles]

15. Lets start a boycott of all businesses that are members of the Chamber of Commerce

And tell them to withdraw their memberships NOW!

[laureloak]

17. Well, there's GOOD business...and there's BAD business.

[Blue_Tires]

19. ttt-- also being discussed here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3990334