U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Murdoch: News Corp. Too Big to Know

Leo Gerard — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:10:03 -0400

The Bush administration told taxpayers to hand over hundreds of billions of their hard-earned dollars to bail out Wall Street banks because the financial institutions were too big to fail. Now, Rupert Murdoch, owner of politically powerful publications and broadcast stations, claims his News Corp. is too big to know.

Murdoch, who’s in the news industry, essentially a business based on knowing and knowing first, told an investigating committee of the British Parliament this week that he’s a know-nothing. The CEO of News Corp., owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, said he was clueless about the phone hacking and other illegality endemic at his company. News Corp., he said, was just too big for him to keep track of its criminal activity. Others were to blame, he blathered. Others are responsible. But not him, not the guy in charge. Here’s what he said:

“I feel that people I trusted — I don’t know who, on what level — have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay.”

Basically, he said, he deserves the profits that his underlings make for him by bribing police officers and hacking phone lines. But if his underlings do something wrong —like bribing police and hacking phones — he can’t be held accountable because News Corp. is too big for him to know. He claims he certainly would not be behaving disgracefully as CEO for failing to know. And he’s saying he certainly shouldn’t have to pay for his underlings’ bad behavior on his watch. No, the way it works is he gets paid. No matter what.

Brilliant, as the Brits would say.

Banks are too big to be held accountable. Murdoch is too big to be held accountable. Only the little guy, like a laid off minimum wage earner, should be held accountable when he can’t make his mortgage or car payment.

In the United States, everyone is equal, except the guys who are more equal, the big shots like Wall Street banksters who rake in tens of millions in bonuses even when they lose gambles on collateralized debt obligations and the likes of Murdoch, now under investigation for violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — which Murdoch earlier had tried to defang through donations to a Republican congressman who floated legislation to make foreign bribery less, well, illegal, and to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce campaign supporting that.

British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband blamed both the international banking crisis and the Murdoch scandal on those in the more-than-equal class shirking responsibility. Referring specifically to News Corp., he said:

“This was an organization that thought it was beyond responsibility. Its power was so immense, its influence so great, from prime ministers downwards. Nobody confronted them. Nobody held them to account. Nobody seemed willing to challenge them. Not the police, not most front-line politicians, nor most of the press.”

Here’s a little bit of what got News Corp. into trouble: The now-defunct News Corp.-owned The News of the World hacked into the phones of innocent people including, investigators believe, victims of terrorist attacks, the royal family, a prime minister and other politicians, celebrities and a 13-year-old kidnap victim, Milly Dowler. In her case, the paper wrote stories based on her voice mails, and then, police believe, erased some of her messages when her box filled up, leading her family to believe that she might be alive and hindering investigation into what ultimately turned out to be a murder.

News Corp. paid some people who threatened legal action millions for their silence. Evidence indicating that The News of the World paid police for information was withheld from authorities for four years. The corporation destroyed the computer of a key editor at The News of the World and failed to safeguard e-mail evidence. Ten employees and former employees now have been arrested, including a woman described as Murdoch’s most trusted lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks. Britain’s top cop, the commissioner of Scotland Yard, and one of his deputies resigned this week over questions about the delay in investigating the phone hacking.

In the U.S., the FBI and the Justice Department are probing the actions of the U.S.-based News Corp. because if it bribed British police, that may violate the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and because of allegations that the hacking may have included the phones of American families of 9-11 victims.

In addition, Les Hinton, formerly executive chairman of News International, resigned last week as publisher of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), claiming, like Murdoch, that he “was ignorant of what apparently happened.” Hinton served as executive chairman of the News Corp. unit that oversaw its British tabloids for 12 years, a period during which The News of the World hacking occurred, and he was responsible for News Corp.’s 2007 internal inquiry into the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voice mails. He quit the WSJ after British papers suggested his testimony about the Dowler case to Parliament was, as American conservatives are fond of saying, “not meant to be factual.”

As the scandal escalated, Murdoch withdrew News Corp.’s $12 billion bid to buy controlling interest in British Sky Broadcasting, the country’s dominant satellite TV network. This must have felt like a wooden stake to the heart for the political power broker, to whom candidates for prime minister bowed and scraped. He was, for example, the second person David Cameron invited to Downing Street after Cameron’s 2009 election as prime minister. And Cameron hired as his communications director former The News of the World editor Andy Coulson. Coulson now is one of 10 facing charges in the phone hacking and police bribing debacle.

Murdoch needs to get out of American TV as well. Federal communications law contains a morals clause requiring owners of television stations to be “of good character.” Murdoch has proved that he is not.

He either permitted phone hacking, police bribing and a costly cover-up, or he is so incompetent that he failed to know. Either way, Murdoch’s character could hardly be described as good.

Unlike Britain, the United States doesn’t have kings. But Murdoch assumed the role of kingmaker here — aiming to control American elections with his newspapers including the WSJ, his broadcast stations including Fox, and millions in contributions to conservatives and conservative causes like the Chamber of Commerce. If he can’t be held accountable for his corrupt business dealings because of his self-induced amnesia, at least the FCC can hold him responsible for his corrupt character.

Time for the FCC to oust Mr. Know-Nothing.

Honest Businesses Support Clear and Fair Rules

Liz Rose — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:26:30 -0400

Washington, DC -- Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, responding to reporting of the Chamber of Commerce’s Fifth Annual Capital Markets Summit in Washington, DC today, where leaders of the Chamber of Commerce asked government leaders for tax breaks and fewer rules to protect consumers. Borosage said,

“The Chamber isn’t for competitive markets; its defending a rigged crony capitalism, in which corporate interests prey on taxpayers.

“Today, corporate profits are at record levels, while corporations pay less of the tax burden than ever – yet the Chamber wants lower taxes.

“Wall Street excess and regulatory lassitude helped blow up the economy – yet the Chamber wants to roll back what little regulation has been put in place.

“Honest businesses support clear and enforced rules, so that dishonest companies don’t have an edge.

“When the Chamber argues for lower taxes and against common sense rules, then they are representing those who profit from a rigged game, not a fair game.”

Robert Borosage’s also wrote about infusing some common sense in to the battles over the Federal budget. Borosage wrote:
“Common sense is an endangered species in today’s budget frenzy. Inside the beltway, millions of dollars have gone into a concerted campaign to elevate hysteria about deficits, in an effort to roll Congress into deep cuts in entitlement programs. On the right, the Tea Party desire to roll back liberal social advances and slash government capacities combines with a systemic corporate effort to gut consumer, environmental and worker protections. The White House and congressional Democrats, having foolishly turned prematurely to austerity, are tongued tied when it comes to arguing the case for jobs – which even the zealous co-chairs of the President’s Deficit Commission accepted as needed in the short term.
“That’s why this statement of Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former chair of the Council on Economic Advisors, is so important. Stigltiz was recrutied in one of the innumerable efforts to consolidate an elite consensus in the beltway, by supporting the recommendations of the co-chairs of the President's Deficit Commission. Only, he sensibly said no. He warns that the recommendations made by Bowles and Simpson are “unprincipled political compromises that would lead to a weaker America.” If adopted, they would constitute a “near suicide pact.”
To read more go to:
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011031329/stiglitz-common-sense-pie...

Corporate Rewards: Controlling U.S. Trade Policy

Leo Gerard — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:50:44 -0500

Real men, real human beings, with feelings and families, fought and died at Gettysburg to preserve the Union, to ensure, as their president, Abraham Lincoln, would say later, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Perversely, afterwards, non-humans commandeered the constitutional amendment intended to protect the rights of former slaves. Corporations wrested from the U.S. Supreme Court a decision based on the 14^th Amendment asserting that corporations are people with rights to be upheld by the government – but with no counterbalancing human responsibilities to the republic. No duty to fight or die in war, for example. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court expanded those rights – ruling that corporations have a First Amendment free speech right to surreptitiously spend unlimited money on political campaigns.

Today, Lincoln would have to say America’s got a government of the people by the corporations, for the corporations.

The proposed trade agreement with South Korea illustrates corporate control of government for profit. It’s the same with efforts to revive the moribund trade schemes former President George W. Bush also negotiated with Panama and Colombia, the world’s most dangerous country by far for trade unionists, with 2,700 assassinated with impunity in the past two decades, 38 slain so far this year.

Nobody likes these trade deals – except corporations. They’re all modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), both of which killed American jobs while giving corporations new authority to sue governments (read: taxpayers) for regulations – like environmental standards – that corporations contend interfere with their right to make money.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the South Korea so-called Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would cost America 159,000 jobs and enlarge its trade deficit by $16.7 billion in its first seven years.

Americans, now suffering though corporate-caused 9.6 percent unemployment, know a deal when they see one – and the South Korea FTA is not one. In a September poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 53 percent of Americans said so-called free trade agreements have injured the country. Only 17 percent said those trade schemes benefited the United States. Disgust with these deals spans party lines, including Tea Partiers, 61 percent of whom said they’re bad for America.

Many politicians, particularly Democrats, abhor the schemes as well. In July, just after President Obama announced that he would try to get the South Korea pact passed, 110 House Democrats described their disdain for the deal:

“We oppose specific provisions of the agreement in the financial services, investment, and labor chapters, because they benefit multi-national corporations at the expense of small businesses and workers.”

In addition, during this fall’s midterm election campaign, 205 candidates, Republican and Democrat, ran on platforms condemning job off-shoring and unfair trade, and house Democrats who ran on fair trade were three times as likely to survive the GOP “shellacking” as Democrats who supported so-called free trade schemes.

Significantly, the South Korean public and some South Korean politicians also oppose the trade proposal. In the week leading up to the G-20 meetings in Seoul, trade unionists, farmers, peasants and students filled the streets in marches and candle light vigils to express outrage with the proposed agreement, including its provisions giving U.S. corporations the right to challenge South Korean laws in private tribunals.

In October, 35 South Korean lawmakers joined 20 U.S. Representatives in writing President Obama and Korean President Lee Myunk-bak to protest the proposal.

Despite all that opposition, when Obama and Lee emerged from talks without an agreement, the American press, pundits and “analysts on both sides of the aisle,” described the situation as a major diplomacy failure, “a serious setback for the president.”

They were wrong. It wasn’t a setback for Obama. It was the president refusing to sign a bad deal for American workers.

It was, however, a humiliation for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which just spent at least $50 million from secret corporate donors to elect Republicans who will do its bidding. The South Korea deal is a priority for the Chamber. Here’s what Chamber senior vice president for international affairs Myron Brilliant told the New York Times after the South Korean negotiations broke down and Obama pledged to attempt to complete the deal over the following six weeks:

“This will be an early test for this president with the new Congress, particularly the House leadership.”

The “Brilliant” test is whether the president of the United States will comply with Chamber demands to complete trade deals that kill jobs and that Americans despise.

When Obama went to Seoul, Chamber President Thomas J. Donohue was there to, as he put it, help win the trade deal. He also was among 120 executives given exclusive access to international leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev in a conference before the G-20 meeting.

The international organizers didn’t invite to the trade talks or the conference the students, farmers, environmental groups, organized labor and untold millions of individuals who oppose the so-called free trade deals. The human beings who will be hurt most by the trade deals didn’t get a seat at the table. The corporate-people who stand to gain everything did.

Brilliant’s comments express the corporate sense of entitlement. They spent tens of millions to get what they wanted from politicians to increase profits. Now they expect it to be delivered. It’s their recompense, their corporate reward.

If fatter profits mean fewer American jobs and wider trade deficits, that’s simply not a problem for corporations. That’s among the perks corporations got when the Supreme Court awarded them the privileges of personhood in America but none of the pesky personal and patriotic responsibilities of actual people in American society.

Campaign Cash: Why Conservative Attack Ads Won't Stop After Election Day

Zach Carter — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:08:16 -0400

Today is the first election in American history in which corporations have been allowed to spend their own money to buy political favors. This legalized corruption comes courtesy of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which injected massive amounts of corporate cash and unprecedented levels of secrecy into American politics.

And all of this crazy corporate spending will not be restricted to elections. That's right. As Jesse Zwick reports for The Washington Independent, two front-groups founded by GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie plan to keep running ads attacking Democrats well after the elections are over.

As Zwick emphasizes, this is actually a way to help keep one of the organizations, known as American Crossroads GPS, from breaking the law. Many groups that spend money on elections register as 501(c)(4) organizations, which must devote no more than half of their activity to political operations. In return for limiting their political activity—advocacy or condemnation of specific candidates—they don't have to disclose who their donors are. So groups like American Crossroads GPS plan to run "issue ads" focusing on the budget deficit and immigration reform this fall to balance out the ads directed at specific candidates that they've already run.

Under the Citizens United ruling, so long as corporations or wealthy elites launder their political expenditures through a front-group, they can give as much as they want without ever being held publicly accountable. But the high court’s decision also allows these front-groups to keep their actual expenditures secret as well. It’s not just that we don’t know who is funding them—in many cases, we also don’t really know what they’re funding.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign dues

The secrecy surrounding anonymous donors may very well extend to foreign corporations. As Harry Hanbury emphasizes in this video for GRITtv, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a lobbying front-group for the largest American corporations—is facing heavy scrutiny over is foreign contributions. Nearly $900,000 in annual dues to the Chamber come from foreign firms, and the Chamber aggressively courts foreign donors who might benefit from weak U.S. laws—particularly environmental laws. The Chamber insists that it’s playing by the rules, but Hanbury catches them lying twice about the nature of the group’s foreign funding.

California's environmental laws for sale

Corporations aren’t just targeting federal elections to influence public policy. As Tara Lohan explains for AlterNet, big oil companies have financed a campaign to repeal California’s carbon emission reduction law. Two major polluters—Valero and Tesoro—have spent a combined $7 million boosting the repeal, while Koch Industries—a major Tea Party funder—has kicked in about $1 million as well. A full 70 percent of the $10.7 million that has been spent to bolster the anti-environment ballot initiative has come from out-of-state sources.

Even the Tea Party's worried

When the Tea Party Patriots received an anonymous $1 million donation for get-out-the-vote efforts, left-wing bloggers weren’t the only people upset about it. As Stephanie Mencimer reports for Mother Jones, some of the Tea Party Patriots’ own members were nervous: Who was funding this operation, and where was the money going?

We’ll probably never know, because the Tea Party Patriots aren't legally obligated report their donors or expenses. The group has only disclosed $15,000 worth of expenditures of the $1 million donation, $10,000 of which was re-granted to another organization run by the father of Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler. The remainder is anybody’s guess.

But wait, there's more!

Writing for In These Times, Sam Ross-Brown highlights a potential legislative solution to some of these campaign finance shenanigans. The Fair Elections Now Act would limit individual campaign contributions to $100, and match them by a factor of four-to-one, increasing the spending power of ordinary citizens and helping to level the distorted playing field created by Citizens United.
Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones details who got hit the hardest this election season in the final push leading up to Election Day: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) got some of the biggest expenditures. This year also smashed previous campaign expenditures, coming in at $443 million.
Suzy Khimm reports on voter intimidation tactics for Mother Jones from a McDonald's fast food franchise in Ohio's 16th district. Employees were told to vote for Republicans or their wages would go down. McDonald's may have been emboldened by Citizens United even though such tactics are still clearly illegal.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Campaign Cash: Biggest Loser Corporate Edition—Spending $2 Million on a Losing Race in Iowa

Zach Carter — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:03:31 -0400

Corporate America is on the attack in every state. As Joshua Holland explains for AlterNet, outside groups have spent somewhere between $750,000 and more than $2 million in an attempt to unseat Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) in a state where ad buys come cheap. But Braley is almost certain to win anyway, even if his lead isn't quite as comfortable as it was in 2008, when he took 64 percent of the vote. This is what corporations and wealthy elites are willing to pony up in races they're sure to lose.

Most of that money comes from two groups: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a front-group for some of the nation’s largest corporations, and America’s Future Fund, a right-wing front-group founded by GOP lobbyist and ethanol executive Nick Ryan. Public News Service's Eric Mack highlights the races in Hawkeye state that are unusually flush with cash.

Thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission earlier this year, corporations and wealthy elites now have license to spend unlimited sums to promote candidates they like (or attack ones they don't). Things are already getting out of hand. Outside groups are dumping millions of dollars into obscure races this year—even in places where they appear to have almost no chance of victory.

Republican candidates are raking it in

Thanks to Citizens United, much of the spending in midterm elections is secret. We'll never know who is spending millions of dollars on anonymous attack ads. But a tiny fraction of the electoral purchases by outside groups have been disclosed, and if those are any guide, the Republican Party is reaping the vast majority of the rewards. As Jesse Zwick details for The Washington Independent, of the roughly $12 million in public corporate expenditures, they're spending more than $9.7 million on behalf of Republican candidates.

The Chamber of Commerce's long history in elections

Though big spending on campaigns is new for many political action committees, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been playing fast and loose with election law for years. As Harry Hanbury explains for GRITtv, the only reason the Chamber’s top brass aren’t behind bars right now may be due to deliberate cover provided by the Federal Elections Commission—its six members consist of three Republicans and three Democrats. Without four votes, the FEC can't to do anything to curb the Camber's activities. With the panel's three Republicans ideologically opposed to the very idea of campaign finance regulation, serious action from the FEC is nearly impossible.

When the FEC’s own top lawyers found that a complaint against the Chamber reveals a gross violation of law, the partisans on the FEC board refused to take action. In 2004, when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington took aim at $3 million in political spending that the Chamber deployed to re-elect President George W. Bush, the FEC did nothing because of the partisan deadlock.

Citizens United helps those at the top

As David Brodwin explains for American Forum, the Citizens United decision doesn’t benefit businesses or corporations in general—it benefits the biggest, wealthiest corporations. When the Supreme Court freed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political efforts, that freedom doesn’t help companies with constrained resources. In other words, Citizens United is a structural force that will permanently and inevitably reinforce the status quo. As the Wall Street crash, the BP oil disaster, the mining malfunctions in West Virginia and countless other recent corporate shortcuts have shown, the status quo is not acceptable.

“The money that will flood the political system will not represent the views of companies in green America" Brodwin writes. "Instead, the money that will flood the system will come from organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is expected to spend more than $200 million this year on lobbying and direct campaign expenditures. This organization and others like it represent companies that don’t value responsible business. Is this the kind of business thinking that we want to dominate our political discourse?”

But wait, there’s more!

In a Q&A with Sam Petulla at The American Prospect, Sheila Krumholz, executive director at the Center for Responsive Politics, talks about how the current problems with Citizens United remind her of the 1990s.
Check out my interview on corporate spending on The Young Turks.
Alexandra Gutierrez explains at The American Prospect how Alaska's Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller became an unlikely opponent to the new rules created by Citizens United.

Republicans First Slime, Then Maneuver to Block Labor Board Nominee

Tula Connell — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:07:30 -0500

Mike Hall on our AFL-CIO Now Blog staff wrote about the latest Republican maneuvering to kill a qualified nominee for the nation's Labor Board and I want to share it with you.

Republican Senate leaders are so frightened that a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) might actually have an open mind about workers' rights, that in two purely partisan maneuvers, they've blocked a majority vote on one of President Obama's nominees for an NLRB seat.

Craig Becker is a highly respected and experienced labor law practitioner and scholar. He has an impressive 27-year record of advocating for and representing workers, especially low-wage workers. He is currently an associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO and SEIU.

That experience—as opposed to being the type of management stooge favored by the Bush administration—is what has driven Republicans into a mouth-foaming frenzy.

First, they've rushed to seat newly elected Scott Brown (R-Mass.) moving up his original Feb. 11 date to this morning in order to break the Democrats 60-vote filibuster proof majority. A vote to end the Becker filibuster was set for Monday, followed by a confirmation vote that only requires a simple majority—basic democracy. Brown's seating scuttles that if Republicans vote in a 41-seat bloc.

In addition, two Republican senators, Mike Enzi (Wyo.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who earlier had voted for Becker at the committee level last year, somewhere along the line had an epiphany that Becker was the devil incarnate with a union card and now say they will vote against Becker.

Of course, both the rush-job swearing in and see-the-light moments by Enzi and Murkowski came following a full-court press by a panicked U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbyists that had an inside track and cozy relations with the pro-management Bush NLRB for nearly a decade.

Despite Republican and corporate attempts to paint Becker as a red-tinged radical, he is a mainstream labor lawyer, whom Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, calls "one of the pre-eminent labor law thinkers in the United States."

Last month, 66 labor law professors from our nation's top law schools wrote Senate leaders urging Becker's immediate confirmation and attesting to his "integrity, fairness, and dedication to advancing Congress' purposes in adopting federal labor law and to the role of the NLRB."

How's this for far-out, dangerous and crazed pro-union beliefs? Here are some excerpts for Becker's opening state to the HELP committee yesterday.

As an attorney, I have sat across the table from management and also on the same side of the table, in both postures gaining an understanding of employers' concerns and often finding common ground between labor and management....I have represented parties on both sides of unfair labor practice cases.

I fully understand that, if confirmed, I will occupy a position far different from the positions I have occupied as a scholar, teacher, and advocate...if confirmed I will have a duty to implement the intent of Congress as expressed in the law, to consider impartially all views appropriately expressed to the Board.

Pretty scary stuff if you're a Republican senator, huh?

Findlay, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce Kills Buy America Parade Because Unions Backed It

Tula Connell — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:20:08 -0400

The Chamber of Commerce--that's the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--proved once again how anti-American it is when it comes to supporting U.S. industry.

In Findlay, Ohio, unions had been organizing a parade and all-day event for this Saturday to highlight American-made products and the need for U.S. trade and economic policies that reward job growth in this country. The unions worked hard to get the business community involved and spent months meeting with the city's Republican mayor, who supported the plans.

But in the end, GreaterFindayInc., the local Chamber arm, killed the Heart of Commerce and Community Celebration. Says Donnie Blatt, United Steelworkers (USW) Rapid Response coordinator for District 1:

GreaterFindlayInc. did everything they could to sabotage us. They told business not to cooperate with us.

Looks like GreaterFindlay also put a lot of pressure on Mayor Pete Sehnert, who now says the city will hold a similar event next year-but without the participation of unions in organizing it.

Seems GreaterFindlay now has the mayor just where they want him. (To e-mail GreaterFindlay, you need to fill out a form--here--and submit it.) According to the local newspaper:

"Basically, Findlay's a non-union, Republican area and mostly what we had were Democratic speakers and union people," Sehnert said. "It's not what I had in mind."

Someone could infer from Sehnert's statement that a pro-America, buy-America celebration isn't supported by Republicans. Because the Greater Findlay Chamber of Commerce rejected an event that would have opened with a parade of U.S.-made, union-made Harley-Davidsons and classic American autos driving down Main Street, alongside floats showcasing American-made products. Speakers would have included U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Betty Sutton, the state attorney general and state treasurer. Blatt says Gov. Ted Strickland was thinking of speaking as well.

The state's oldest manufacturing firm planned to join the festivities, with its owner speaking about the importance of keeping manufacturing in Ohio. USW District 1 planned to give out free hotdogs and hamburgers.

Blatt and Rod Nelson, president of USW Local 207L, and Rob Greer, USW Rapid Response coordinator, met weekly with the mayor over two months, constantly reiterating that they did not want the Heart of Commerce and Community Celebration to be solely a "union event" but sought participation by the local business community.

Their goal from the start was to ensure that local business played a key role in the event, where they could display "made in Ohio" products to offer consumers locally made options. Says Blatt:

We told the mayor: "We don't want this to be a union event. We want this to be a celebration of American manufacturing, a celebration of American workers. We want this to be a community celebration highlighting the need to keep good jobs in the U.S. and in Ohio.

But Blatt says the Chamber of Commerce didn't see it that way.

The mayor came back repeatedly and said the GreaterFindleyInc. were raising hell with him because they said this is a union event.

I said the only reason this is a union event is that they're making it a union event.

Blatt and the union members who worked so hard to pull together this event did so because we need jobs in this country. Just ask the 26 million U.S. jobless workers who need jobs or full-time work but cannot find it. Blatt summarizes the event this way:

We wanted us all to come together to show the importance of keeping jobs in America.

Clearly, once again, keeping jobs in America is not an economic strategy that interests the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (Let's just delete the "U.S." portion of that name, shall we?)

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.com.

Chamber of Commerce Staff Gets Drunk, Blames Workers

Tula Connell — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:00:09 -0400

They may be party animals when chugging $8,204 worth of booze but, after the hangover is over, the staff at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce goes back to being their ugly anti-worker selves.

Seems that some 100 or so Chamber of Commerce staff recently ran up an $8,204 tab at The Exchange, a sports bar within staggering distance from the Chamber's architecturally ever-so ponderous Washington, D.C., headquarters. The tab included 155 pitchers of beer, 37 bottles of beer, 208 mixed drinks, 111 shots, 43 margaritas and 11 open bottles of liquor.

And when the bosses got the tab, they weren't happy. After all, the image of Chamber staffers soaking in thousands of dollars worth of Red Bull and pitchers of vodka that sources say the party-goers ordered, strays a bit from the pin-striped image the Chamber sells its members. And then there's that problem of justifying such a large, booze-soaked expense to its frugal dues-paying members out in DeKalb, Ill., or Anaheim, Calif.

So, when confronted with the bill, the staff did what the Chamber always does--blame workers. That's right. The Chamber now is saying The Exchange waitstaff was tipped too much.

Should have thought of it. The problem is not the thousands of dollars the Chamber of Commerce staff wasted on getting wasted, it's the 18 percent tip for the waiters and waitresses that's the real crime.

This, after all, is the group that fights every boost in the minimum wage--like the federal increase that finally got passed after minimum wage workers received no pay increase for 10 years. The same bunch of lobbyists that pushed the Senate to approve the Bush nominations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court. The same cabal took a big role in promoting Bush's scheme to privatize Social Security and in killing legislation to expand children's health care through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Such influence does not come cheap. The Chamber spent the most money in lobbying expenditures in the past decade, with General Electric Co. ranking second at $161 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

If the Chamber had its way, the waitstaff who put up with a mass of drunken fools dripping with a massive sense of entitlement should serve the rich for less than minimum wage. And be happy about it.

Just like the rest of America's workers.

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.

Fact-Checking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

David Sirota — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:58:27 -0400

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is in a tizzy over my post yesterday about the corporate-written Colombia trade deal that it is trying to ram through Congress over the deep opposition of the American public. The Chamber purports to "fact check" my post, so let's do some fact-checking of the fact-checking - just to show you how corrupt these people are.

CLAIM: The world's population loves our current trade policy.

The Chamber says it isn't true that free trade is unpopular in many Latin American countries and the developing world in general.

FACT: Free trade is unpopular in many Latin American countries and the developing world in general.

Here's the gold-standard: The 2008 BBC World Service Poll of 34,500 people. It reports: "In 22 out of 34 countries around the world, the weight of opinion is that 'economic globalization, including trade and investment,' is growing too quickly." Looking country-to-country on page 9, you find large segments of the developing world unhappy with the current NAFTA-style trade model epitomized by the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. That includes majorities or pluralities not only in places like Chile and Argentina, but in Africa and Asia. And, of course, there is this from the Los Angeles Times - with "market economics" (as usual) being the euphemism for "free trade":

"Trust in market economics [in Latin America] is declining, according to a poll released in November by Latinobarametro, a Chilean opinion research firm. Millions are frustrated that privatization and falling trade barriers have done little to mitigate income inequality. Survey respondents in Central America were particularly downbeat, despite that region's recent embrace of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which includes the U.S., the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. In a separate 2007 opinion poll, Mexicans said they disapproved of NAFTA by 2 to 1, according to the Mexico City-based polling firm Mund Americas."

CLAIM: Because legislators vote for something, it means the public supports it.

The Chamber claims that NAFTA-style trade deals that throw farmers off their land, privatize social services and inflate medicine prices in the developing world are wildly popular among the masses in the developing world. The proof? "Over the past four years, democratically-elected legislatures in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Peru all approved trade agreements with the United States with more than 85% of legislators voting in favor."

FACT: Democratic legislatures are very often bought off (see Congress, United States).

You have to look no further than our own U.S. Congress or state legislatures to know that "democratically-elected legislatures" often become the rubber stamp of corporate policies that the vast majority of the country opposes. In just the last few years, we've watched Congress pass trade deals, bankruptcy laws, financial deregulation schemes, corporate tax cuts, resolutions perpetuating the war - all policies unpopular with the American people. Citing support from a "democratically elected legislature" for a corporate-written policy that crushes workers and the environment proves nothing more than those legislatures are as bought off as our own.

CLAIM: The Colombian government has no association with paramilitary gangs.

The Chamber notes that I wrote that the Colombian government has a "known association with paramilitary gangs." The Chamber goes on to insist that "it is associated with them as the entity that has shut them all down."

FACT: The Colombian government and political elite has associations with paramilitary gangs. additionally, the Colombian government runs its own military operations like such gangs.

I'll let the Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC and the New York Times do the talking for me:

"Some of Colombia's most influential political, military and business figures helped build a powerful anti-guerrilla movement that operated with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to U.S. cities." - Washington Post, 5/22/07

"In his five years as president, Alvaro Uribe has repeatedly denied accusations that he's been cozy with Colombia's murderous right-wing militias, whose thousands of victims include suspected rebel sympathizers and union activists. Yet newly uncovered video of his 2001 campaign shows him shaking hands with a militia leader who was arrested only weeks later on suspicion of involvement in multiple murders, and is now a fugitive with a price on his head." - Associated Press, 6/17/07

"Funded in part by the Bush administration, a six-year military offensive has helped the [Colombian] government here wrest back territory once controlled by guerrillas...But under intense pressure from Colombian military commanders to register combat kills, the army has in recent years also increasingly been killing poor farmers and passing them off as rebels slain in combat, government officials and human rights groups say." - Washington Post, 3/30/08

"A cousin of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has resigned from the Senate to avoid a Supreme Court inquiry into whether he had ties to paramilitaries. Mario Uribe's resignation comes amid a scandal that has seen dozens of politicians accused of paramilitary links and 14 jailed awaiting trial. A jailed former leader of the AUC, Salvatore Mancuso, has alleged that he met several times with Mario Uribe who asked him to support his senate campaign in 2002." - BBC, 10/5/07

"Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo resigned on February 19. Araujo's resignation, in response to the unfolding paramilitary scandal...The minister's resignation coincided with new expressions of discontent by US congressional Democrats about the unfolding scandal, underlining the sensitivity of the issue for the Uribe administration as it seeks US ratification of a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) and funding for a second phase of Plan Colombia." - New York Times, 2/21/07

CLAIM: The Colombia Free Trade Agreement is all about tariffs.

The Chamber of Commerce would have us believe that the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is only about reducing tariffs on American goods. The organization says "92 percent of imports from Colombia enter the U.S. market duty free...By contrast, Colombia imposes tariffs on imports of U.S. manufactured goods of 14%, and often twice that for agricultural products. For American workers and farmers, that’s just not fair. The pending trade agreement would put U.S. trade relations with Colombia on a fairer, mutually beneficial footing by eliminating Colombia’s tariffs — most immediately. That means new sales, new exports, and new jobs. So how would that destroy our economy?"

FACT: Trade deals are all about investor rights, outsourcing and imperialism - the latter of which stokes anti-Americanism.

The Chamber's move is a standard sleight of hand when it comes to trade - focus on a topline number, and ignore what trade deals really are: investor rights agreements. The reason trade deals are thousands of pages long is not because it takes so much paper to lower tariffs - that would take a page or two - it is because these deals are chock full of special interest provisions granting investors more rights than citizens and governments. For instance, corporations can use these trade deals' provisions (known as Chapter 11) to sue national, state and local governments in international tribunals for profit losses brought on by environmental, human rights and consumer protections. Another example: This trade model bans government procurement procedures that target taxpayer contracts to domestic, job-creating firms. And, of course, these trade deals are filled with pharmaceutical patent protections that inflate the cost of medicine in the developing world.

These "investor rights" provisions not only help corporations pad their profits, but also provide them the kind of legal frameworks they like when they outsource jobs. And that's why the push for the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is at the top of the Chamber's agenda: Because, as the Denver Post recently reported, corporate America sees Latin America as the next big place to outsource American jobs and therefore cut labor costs.

Finally, the whole idea that it is awful that Colombia protects part of its market with tariffs displays a stunning disregard for Colombians and for basic economic history. One of the reasons so many Latin Americans oppose these free trade deals is because they force developing countries to allow multinational corporations to take over their economies, throw farmers off their land and generally treat the country like a colony for exploitation. As economist Ha-Joon Chang shows in his new book "Bad Samaritans," every single developed country - including our own - built up its economy by protecting parts of its economy from economic colonization. Our nation's push to force countries to allow such colonization is one of the major reasons anti-Americanism is brewing in the Southern Hemisphere. Listen to a speech by any of the new Latin American populists, and their rhetoric is rooted in a critique not so much of our military adventurism, but of our economic imperialism as epitomized by our trade policies. Many of these populists take their rhetoric to places that are unacceptable, but we ignore the roots of such blowback at our peril.