October 22, 2010

Not the hometown CofC

In case your Republican neighbor gets mad at the Dems for calling the US Chamber of Commerce out for its 90%-plus funding of Republican candidates this election, partially with foreign corporations' money, tell him or her this:

The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.

And these contributions, some of which can be pieced together through tax filings of corporate foundations and other public records, also show how the chamber has increasingly relied on a relatively small collection of big corporate donors to finance much of its legislative and political agenda.

[snip]

. . .while the chamber boasts of representing more than three million businesses, and having approximately 300,000 members, nearly half of its $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors. Many of those large donations coincided with lobbying or political campaigns that potentially affected the donors.

Dow Chemical, for example, sent $1.7 million to the chamber in the past year to cover not only its annual membership dues, but also to support lobbying and legal campaigns. Those included one against legislation requiring stronger measures to protect chemical plants from attack.

The US Chamber is not equivalent to the local one, whose members are the car dealers and the local restaurateurs. It's an 800-lb. gorilla flush with cash and convinced that Calvin Coolidge was right: "the business of America is business." Just as many Christian fundamentalists ignore parts of the New Testament (the Beatitudes come to mind), though, the Chamber conveniently ignores the rest of Coolidge's speech that day:
We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.
Silent Cal seems to have been a better man than I've given him credit for being. Rather than worshipping Mammon, the US Chamber of Commerce would do well to follow his thoughts.

Posted by Linkmeister at October 22, 2010 12:01 AM | TrackBack
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