chamber of commerce

Obama Should Call Chamber’s Infrastructure Bluff

Dave Johnson — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:16:58 -0400

America's infrastructure is crumbling, hurting our competitiveness as other countries spend hundreds of billions. The Chamber of Commerce claims it supports spending on infrastructure. President Obama should call them on it because a majority of the public supports rebuilding our infrastructure and millions of us need work. The President should tell the Chamber to take its rhetoric seriously and support spending what is needed. Imagine the jobs it would create and the boost it would give to our economy now and in the future. The President should make it the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

The Urban Land Institute has issued a report on the country's infrastructure, showing how we are falling behind countries like Brazil, China and India. The Washington Post covers the story, in Study: $2 trillion needed for U.S. infrastructure

The United States is falling dramatically behind much of the world in rebuilding and expanding an overloaded and deteriorating transportation network it needs to remain competitive in the global marketplace, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute.

Burdened with soaring deficits and with long-term transportation plans stalled in Congress, the United States has fallen behind three emerging economic competitors — Brazil, China and India, the institute said.

[. . .] As Congress debates how much should be spent and where to find the money, China has a plan to spend $1 trillion on high-speed rail, highways and other infrastructure in five years. India is nearing the end of a $500 billion investment phase that has seen major highway improvements, and plans to double that amount by 2017. Brazil plans to spend $900 billion on energy and transportation projects by 2014.

According to the report,

... the U.K. has committed Us$326 billion (£200 billion) over the next five years to continue national infrastructure projects focused on rail, energy production, and broadband access, with an emphasis on reducing the nation’s carbon emissions through investments in renewable energy.

France, germany, spain, and Italy continue to build out high-speed rail and freight networks between major cities and extend cross-border transport links ...

Australia is working to shore up existing infrastructure while setting national priorities for future investments; expansion of ports, refashioning of rail lines, and relief of urban traffic congestion take precedence.

Canada is expanding its PPP initiatives to address the revamping of aging facilities.

... China is moving ahead with wide-ranging infrastructure programs, including completion of an unprecedented 10,000-mile high-speed rail network by 2020. newly constructed airports, ports, and subway systems in China’s major centers facilitate the country’s growth into the world’s second-largest economy and help it deal with mounting congestion from burgeoning urban populations.

India is working hard to attract more private financing for desperately needed infrastructure to nurture aspirations for global economic leadership, while the United arab emirates and Kuwait continue to use oil wealth to build out transport hubs and seek energy-efficient solutions for future power and water needs.

Brazil is accelerating road, transit, and water projects to accommodate its burgeoning economy and buttress an enhanced standing on the world stage; it does not want to disappoint people visiting for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 summer olympics.

This report follows the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card, that says a $2.2 trillion investment is needed to bring the country up to current standards. ASCE says, “Years of delayed maintenance and lack of modernization have left Americans with an outdated and failing infrastructure that cannot meet our needs.”

The Chamber of Commerce Agrees

The powerful Chamber of Commerce is on record in favor of infrastructure spending, saying on their website,

The U.S. Chamber is leading the charge to modernize and expand our nation’s transportation, telecommunications, energy, and water networks. Without proper investment and attention to our infrastructure systems, the nation’s economic stability, potential for job growth, and global competitiveness are at risk.

Public Support

Eighty percent of the public supports investing in infrastructure. From Center for American Progress, Public Opinion Snapshot: Public Backs Infrastructure Investment,

Eighty percent declared themselves in agreement with President Barack Obama’s State of the Union call for a major effort to rebuild and modernize America’s infrastructure in a new Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies survey for the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Right Is Wrong

Meanwhile the right wants to just sell off our commonly-held wealth, thereby providing an ongoing revenue stream to a wealthy few at the expense of the rest of us. Toll roads are the answer, not public investment, they say,

Economists of a conservative or libertarian bent have long argued that the federal government needs to get out of certain businesses, unload unneeded assets, and privatize such functions as passenger rail service and air traffic control.

. . . Economist Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute said the federal government should consider the sale of interstate highways. Motorists would have to pay tolls to the private owners, he said, but the roads would likely be in better shape. Federal, state and local governments could raise hundreds of billions of dollars through highway privatization, he said.

“Many of the world’s roads were originally built as toll roads, so it would hardly be revolutionary to return to that model,” Hassett said. “If it can work for the River Styx, why not the Beltway?”

The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday released a plan for balancing the budget that did not include tax increases, but did include a proposal to sell $260 billion in federal assets over 15 years. The plan does not specify the assets. It refers to “partial sales of federal properties, real estate, mineral rights, the electromagnetic spectrum, and energy-generation facilities.”

The President Should Listen To The Public

This is a tremendous opportunity for the President to lead with a plan for massive investment in infrastructure, employing millions and positioning the country to compete in the world's economy again. The publiic is overwhelmingly behind this. The Chamber says they support updating our infrastructure, and the President should challenge them to really support it. This popular plan is good for the country and is the right thing to do, and that makes it the right thing to do politically as well.

Take action: Tell President Obama to put the People's Budget on the table.

Robert Borosage is quoted in the Washington Times

Liz Rose — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:31:13 -0500

Obama reaches out to businesses Urges Chamber of Commerce to put money and people to work
"The president cannot make peace with a chamber committed to opposing every reform vital for the nation's economy," said Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America's Future. "But he can use this visit not to pander to the Chamber, but to challenge it — challenging it to represent the companies that are its members, not the ideologues that have been its allies."

Obama To Chamber: Be Patriotic And Move Jobs Back To America

Dave Johnson — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:40:01 -0500

President Obama today appealed to the patriotism of the members of the Chamber of Commerce to begin investing in America again, to begin bringing factories and jobs back and to begin sharing the gains of our economy with the American people.

Saying that we cannot go back to the economy and culture we saw before the recession, the President reminded business leaders that the pre-recession period was a time when growth and gains and productivity did not translate into rising incomes for working people. He asked business leaders to take responsibility for thinking about how we make sure everyone has a stake in trade, increasing exports and rising productivity, "So ordinary folks see their standard of living and income rise as well."

We can’t go back to the kind of economy and culture that we saw in the years leading up to the recession, where growth and gains in productivity just didn’t translate into rising incomes and opportunity for the middle class. That’s not something necessarily we can legislate, but it’s something that all of us have to take responsibility for thinking about. How do we make sure that everybody’s got a stake in trade, everybody’s got a stake in increasing exports, everybody’s got a stake in rising productivity? Because ordinary folks end up seeing their standards of living rise as well. That’s always been the American promise. That’s what JFK meant when he said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Too many boats have been left behind, stuck in the mud.

Speaking of a "virtuous circle" the President asked companies to invest in hiring American workers,

...[make] ... investments made now that will pay off as the economy rebounds. And as you hire, you know that more Americans working will mean more sales for your companies. It will mean more demand for your products and services. It will mean higher profits for your companies. We can create a virtuous circle.

The President said that as a government we will help lay the foundation for businesses to grow, innovate and succeed. We will update the infrastructure, transportation, education system and remove barriers to business growth. But he said he wanted to be clear that even as we remake the foundations, businesses have a responsibility to America.

We invest in the infrastructure, so innovation should lead to companies and jobs here, and manufactinrg here. Doing otherwise breaks the social compact and makes people feel the game is fixed and they are not benefiting.

We also have a responsibility as a nation to provide our people with -- and our businesses -- with the fastest, most reliable way to move goods and information. The costs to business from outdated and inadequate infrastructure is enormous. And that’s what we have right now -- outdated, inadequate infrastructure.

And any of you that have been traveling to other countries, you know it, you see it, and it affects your bottom lines. That’s why I want to put more people to work rebuilding crumbling roads, rebuilding our bridges. That’s why I’ve proposed connecting 80 percent of the country with high-speed -- to high-speed rail, and making it possible for companies to put high-speed Internet coverage in the reach of virtually all Americans.

The idea is supposed to be that we gain from the investment we make in laying down those foundations for businesses: Intel pioneers the microchip and puts thousands to work here. Henry Ford put people to work here. And then those folks buy here, and the economy works for everyone. A virtuous circle.

The President said that America can compete. Caterpillar is building a new plant in Texas. In Tennessee Whirlpool opening its first US plant in more than a decade. Companies are bringing jobs back to our shores. Now is the time to invest in America

Appeal To Patriotism

The President appealed to the patriotism of the Chamber. "I know you love this country and want America to succeed just as badly as I do, we are all Americans. It is that sense of patriotism that has carried us through harder times than this."

The President pointed to past partnerships between big business and government. At the end of 1930s, FDR formed a new partnership with business to build the "Arsenal of Democracy." Roosevelt reached out to businesses, and business leaders answered the call to serve their country.

After years of working at cross purposes, the result was one of the most productive collaborations between the public and private sectors in American history.

Some, like the head of GM, hadn’t previously known the President, and if anything had seen him as an adversary. But he gathered his family and he explained that he was going to head up what would become the War Production Board. And he said to his family, “This country has been good to me, and I want to pay it back.” I want to pay it back.

He said we have faced tumultuous moments of change and we know what to do: Rise to this occasion, come together, adapt.

Perhaps this will be a turning point, and the huge multinationals and financial giants that make up the Chamber's primary backers will begin to support America and Americans again.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Oligarchy

Leo Gerard — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:06:57 -0500

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev’rywhere you go;
Take a look in Tiffany’s store, glistening once again
With Wall Street bonus trinkets all aglow.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Art flies from Christie’s.
But the amazing sight to see is the tax cut guarantee
For the most wealthy.

Hedge funders content, still paying 15 percent
Is the wish of Boehner and Mitch.
Help these hurt least by financial crises
Is the Chamber of Commerce pitch.
And the GOP and Tea Party can’t wait for Congress’ new session.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev’rywhere you go.
There’s treats in the tax break deal for all the very well-heeled:
Estate tax gifts for billionaires, you know?
It’s beginning to look like oligarchy
Secret campaign gifts
Give scions power in Congress halls to force jumps to all their calls,
Always good and swift.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
If you’re doing drugs.
Look at unemployed stats; foreclosures still roaring fast,
‘merican dreams and life savings both mugged.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas:
Food bank grocery lists.
The only break the unemployed see is 13-month’s reprieve
jobless benefits.

Aid and career counselors for jobless 99ers
Was the wish of Bernie and friends;
Help through COLAs for veterans and grandmas;
Was the hope of liberal House Dems;
Both crushed, progressives now all dread Congress’ new session.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev’rywhere you go.
There is a poisonous pill slipped into the tax cut deal:
Robbing Social Security, oh no!
It’s beginning to look like oligarchy.
Soon budget cuts will start
And the thing that will make them sting is the knowledge that you bring
Of the pain they’ll impart.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go.
Take a look in Congress Hall, middle class badly mauled,
By demands from Republicans, you know?
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Debts are racking up;
To help jobless 15 million, the bill’s $900 billion
-- With the wealthy’s cut.

A steady job with good pay, health benefits to stay
Is the wish of the middle class.
A good economy; hope, security
Are the goals of the working class.
But they know Congress handles their concerns very last.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev’rywhere you go;
No money for construction or local government bond funds.
The stimulus will be much too low, so
It’s beginning to look like oligarchy;
Shake hard workers down
And give to the wealthy few, untrue to the red, white and blue,
Their greed has no bounds.

***

It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

1951 -- Meredith Wilson

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go
Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in ev'ry store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door.

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen
And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go
There's a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well
The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.

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.

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.

The Chamber of Commerce: Without Shame or Sense

Robert Borosage — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:54:43 -0400

The Chamber of Commerce is rolling out its “jobs and economy” political initiative today. As Politico reports, the blitz is “designed to drive voters toward '5 Questions to Ask Your Candidates,' to be distributed by mail and online to millions of voters.”

Here are the five, accompanied by five alternatives tied to reality rather than the Chamber’s ideological phantasmagoria:

1. Do you believe that our free enterprise system is currently threatened?

Do you believe that entrenched corporate interests are blocking reforms vital to our country’s future?

2. Do you believe that tax increases hurt job creation?

Do you believe that tax cuts to businesses sitting on trillions of dollars will create jobs or waste money?

3. Do you think that the growth of government at all levels and the deficits that follow negatively impact job creation?

Do you think that deregulation of corporations and banks and the financial wilding that followed, crashing the economy, and doubling the national debt negatively impacted job creation?

4. Would you deal with the debt and deficit issues through increasing government revenue or decreasing government spending?

Would you deal with debt and deficit issues by building a new foundation for the economy so we can grow our way out of the hole we are in, or with austerity, cutting spending on education, energy, infrastructure, Medicare and Social Security to balance our budget?

5. Do you believe that the uncertainty resulting from pending tax increases, higher government deficits, and more government regulations will hurt the economy?

Do you believe businesses aren’t hiring because they see no demand for their products, or that they are foregoing profitable opportunities fretting about deficits, and possible increases in taxes and regulations?

This country is struggling to respond to the worst downturn since the Great Depression, a direct result of the failed conservative policies that the Chamber of Commerce has advocated for decades.

Over the last decade, we lost one in three manufacturing jobs. Inequality reached Gilded Age extremes.. CEOs and bankers pocketed million dollar bonuses while cooking the books and gambling on exotic securities, inflating the housing bubble until it burst. Health insurance companies kept a strangle hold on a health care system that costs twice as much as those in other industrial countries, leaves millions uninsured and provides worse health care. Catastrophic climate change went unaddressed. Big Oil and big coal insured that the US would forfeit the lead in the new green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world. Conservatives removed the cop on the corporate beat leading directly to the financial wilding and collapse, the horrors of Massey in West Virginia and BP in the Gulf, the risks of poisoned toys and infected eggs.

One would think that in the ruins, the Chamber of Commerce would have the common decency to reconsider its ideological positions. After all, they have not only been ruinous to workers and the country, they led directly to the economic freefall that devastated businesses.

But no. Not one comma has been changed. Not a line changed in the stump speech. Mindless, without shame or sense, blind to the world around it, the Chamber gathers new millions from companies and peddles its poisonous nostrums.

The Chamber of Commerce's Jobs Deception Campaign

Richard Trumka — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:30:06 -0400

Unions are popularly known as "the folks who brought you the weekend." In contrast, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has the distinction of trying to take away the weekend--along with overtime pay, the minimum wage, Buy America rules, workers' freedom to form unions, child labor standards....The list is long and ugly.

So it's farcical that today the Chamber launched a campaign estimated to run in the tens of millions of dollars to promote job creation.

The Chamber's campaign originally started out as an attack against financial regulation--until the Chamber found out how strongly U.S. taxpayers support reining in Big Banks and the financial industry's widespread shady practices. So the Chamber conveniently changed the packaging to purportedly focus on jobs, which in fact the American people desperately need.

Look at who accompanied the Chamber suits while they were announcing their Orweillian-named "free enterprise campaign." As Sam Stein reported here:

Many of the individuals featured on Wednesday are long-standing donors to Republican candidates and groups that have fought efforts to enhance regulation. And, in one case, the business leader appearing alongside [Thomas] Donohue to decry the interference of government in the market place received business through the benefit of government contracts.

Yet, while millions of America's workers struggle to find jobs in an economy where there are more than six workers searching for every one job, the Chamber repeatedly opposed extending unemployment insurance. Can't have government interference in the marketplace, after all. Or aid to jobless workers. The same workers the Chamber's smoke-and-mirrors campaign is supposed to be all about.

The Chamber also is joining with Big Banks and financial giants to try and kill a proposed agency that would protect U.S. consumers from being preyed upon by unscrupulous banks, mortgage lenders and many of the same financial institutions that helped create our nation's economic disaster. The Obama administration's proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which this week is being considered in the House Financial Services Committee, would regulate products such as credit cards and home loans, while ensuring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission oversaw the $450 trillion "derivatives" market that sunk the world economy.

The Chamber is spending $2 million in attack ads, claiming that the new agency would hamstring even your local butcher from extending you credit for a week. It's the same sorry effort at deception and outright lies that the health insurance industry now is trying to pull in the debate over health care reform. Tell enough lies and hope someone believes you.

As President Obama said in response to the Chamber's distortion:

"We've made clear that only businesses that offer financial services would be affected by this agency. I don't know how many of your butchers are offering financial services," Obama said to laughter.

The Chamber is so twisted up in deception it seems unable to even provide accurate membership numbers. Writing in Mother Jones this week, David Corn points to a big discrepancy between the Chamber's public membership numbers and reality.

In testimony before Congress, statements to the press, and on its website, the Chamber claims to represent "3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions." In reality, the number is probably closer to 200,000.

Not sure if the 200,000 includes Apple Inc., Pacific Gas & Electric and the other giant corporations that recently have pulled their membership from the Chamber because of its draconian stand on climate change.

The Chamber's so-called "free enterprise" campaign has been tried before. After World War II, the National Association of Manufacturers led a similar such effort. That campaign to sell capitalism to U.S. consumers incurred the derision of no less than the editors of Fortune magazine, who found similar sentiments among business executives represented on the boards of the business associations that supposedly represented them.

In dismissing the campaign as ludicrous, one such executive described it this way:

The best way we can demonstrate the importance of Free Enterprise is to make it work.

It's clearly not working now. And although the Chamber may try to wrap itself in the shiny trappings of a feel-good campaign, its repeated attacks on consumers and workers demonstrate who the Chamber stands for: Wall Street not Main Street.

This is a crosspost from Huffington Post.

Chamber of Commerce Sides with Foreign Embassies Against Buy American

Tula Connell — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:21 -0400

There they go again. Those running the show at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are attacking again the Buy American provision in the economic stimulus package.

Ignoring, once more, that Buy American makes fundamental economic sense by ensuring at least some of our taxpayer bailout money is invested in American-made productions, the Chamber is siding with foreign embassies battling the Buy American provisions. In a June 2 letter to lawmakers, Bruce Josten, the Chamber's executive vice president for government affairs, asked Congress to exclude Buy American provisions from all legislation.

More recently, the Chamber held a joint press conference June 11 with the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters to decry the Buy American provisions in the stimulus. For a trade association with "U.S." in its name, siding with foreign corporations against those in the United States is, well, you fill in the word that best describes it.

Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC), framed the Chamber's action this way, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required):

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is effectively suggesting that America needs to buy more Canadian to dig out of our economic hole. That position doesn't pass the U.S. economic interest laugh test.

The Chamber's anti-Buy American stance, which undermines the interests of America's workers, also isn't amusing for the millions of jobless workers in this nation.

In fact, the Chamber's false argument that Buy America provisions will start a "trade war" is a tired one. The stimulus requires that U.S. material be used in projects funded by the bill, but also states that the clause should not override U.S. international trade commitments.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative spokeswoman Deborah Mesloh said the Obama administration is committed to ensuring that the Buy America requirements in the stimulus legislation are applied in a manner that is consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements.

Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), said the rules are necessary to boost the sagging domestic economy and should be included in other spending bills.

It is common sense that a small portion of your tax dollars in a stimulus package dedicated to stimulating the American economy be spent in America.

At the AAM blog, Steve Capozzola knocks down the Chamber's feeble arguments against the Buy American provisions.

Buy America provisions in the recent stimulus bill are both consistent with longstanding U.S. policy and adhere to America's international trade obligations.
Most other countries utilize the same domestic procurement efforts.
Furthermore, the U.S. has been a leading proponent of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), which opens the U.S. market to foreign bids. Some of the very countries criticizing Buy America policy have made no such reciprocal efforts to open their markets.

Tantillo, whose AMTAC is founded by U.S. manufacturers, succinctly sums up the need for Buy American provisions:

The only way for the U.S. economy to climb out of recession is for people to start buying more American-made goods and services, including the U.S. government.

This is a crosspost from AFL-CIO Now blog.

WSJ's Recent Run on Forced Arbitration

acanterbury — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:04:52 -0400

Originally published by David Arkush and Taylor Lincoln at the Watchdog Blog.

Wall Street Journal readers have heard a lot about binding mandatory arbitration recently. On Saturday, the newspaper’s editorial board used the Chamber of Commerce's biased survey on arbitration as justification for a fact-twisting polemic against the civil justice system. The paper reported on a lawsuit against the National Arbitration Forum by the city of San Francisco, and readers weighed in with views on arbitration far more reasonable than those of the editors.

The Journal's editorial touted a recent Chamber survey claiming that 82% of voters would prefer to resolve a dispute with a company in arbitration in contrast to only 15% in litigation. Of course, survey participants were not informed that if a company forces you into arbitration, the company picks who resolves the dispute. Participants also weren’t told that these biased decisions are binding and almost always final -- meaning no appeals even if the decisions contain “silly factfinding” or are just plain “wacky.” (The are quotes from the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court!) Needless to say, the Journal’s opinion writers didn’t mention these flaws in the survey.

As in the Journal's November broadside against our Arbitration Trap report, the editorial writers once again blur the distinction between voluntary and mandatory arbitration. The difference is huge. In voluntary arbitration, parties choose after a disagreement has arisen to settle it through a mutually agreed-upon arbitration process. No one opposes this, of course. But in mandatory arbitration -- the kind at issue in Congress right now -- consumers are forced to “agree” to arbitration as a condition of doing business. Or courts hold that consumers agreed to arbitration when they didn’t agree at all -- like when they didn’t know about or didn’t understand an arbitration requirement buried in fine print. Apologists for binding mandatory arbitration have repeatedly pulled this sleight-of-hand, using studies on voluntary arbitration to defend forced arbitration.

The Journal reported that the city of San Francisco filed sued the National Arbitration Forum last week, accusing it of all manner of abuses. The lawsuit’s charges, as rehashed in the story, echoed those in our Arbitration Trap report. Among the city's claims is that NAF only ruled in favor of consumers 0.2 percent of the time in the period studied.

The Journal blogged on the lawsuit, kindly using the numbers and a photo from our Arbitration Trap report (but failing to mention us or the report). The blog attracted dozens of comments which, on the whole, show that the Journal's readers understand forced arbitration pretty well in spite of the paper's opinion page:

“0.2% of arbitration cases won by consumers? Fire that weak kneed arbitrator, our goal is 0% consumer victories.”

“Juries tend to favor a consumer who has been wronged by big business, while arbitrators seem to like the business side of things.”

“I have no problem with fair arbitrations that are freely bargained for between economic equals; those can be beneficial because they generally are faster, less expensive than real litigation, and, unlike this type of arbitration, largely unbiased. This sort of arbitration, however, is just a kangaroo court set up to circumvent the legitimate justice system because consumers would win too frequently, what with juries being made up of other consumers and all.”

“I agree that people should be responsible for their own debts and actions, but due process of law and the appearance of fairness in dispute resolution is just as important.”

“The NAF arbitrations don't really occur in any place as they are ‘paper drop’ arbitrations. The NAF picks some pre-approved arbitrator that does business their way at $250 per and forward the paper work to that person's location, sometimes a PO Box. Most of these folks are semi-retired or retired lawyers from corporate or large multi-city law firms. At $250 per 15 minutes, not bad work.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.