Chamber’s ‘Jobs’ Agenda Ignores the 99%
In a pre-emptive strike for the truth yesterday, economic activists and patriotic millionaires, “prebutted” today’s speech by U.S. Chamber Commerce President Tom Donohue outlining the 1 Percent’s so-called jobs agenda. Hundreds rallyied outside the Chamber’s headquaters in Washington, D.C., yeterday before marching down H Street.
Donohue and the chamber’s mega-corporation members build the jobs agenda on lower taxes for giant corporations and millionaires and further deregulation of important safeguards for workers and consumers.
U.S. Chamber Watch’s Christy Setzer says: “The greatest myth about the U.S. Chamber is that they have an interest in creating or protecting jobs.
One glance at their so-called jobs agenda confirms as much: rolling back needed regulations and putting more money in the pockets of millionaires and corporate CEOs won’t create jobs, but it will help out the wealthy few who fund the Chamber’s lobbying budget.
Leo Hindery of Patriotic Millionaires told reporters “Nothing that’s being suggested in the Chamber’s proposals … will create jobs.”
Are we shocked?
Trumka: Young Activists Moving Nation to ‘Jobs, Clean Green Future’
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Because of the activism by young people like the 10,000 environmental Power Shift activists who traveled to Washington, D.C., to the tell Congress it’s time to force the corporate polluters to pay up and clean up, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We’re moving past the same-old tired debates and toward jobs and a clean, green future.
The activists were in the nation’s capital for a four–day clean energy conference and mobilization training, organized by the Energy Action Coalition. They capped off their conference this morning with rally in Lafayette Park with the White House on one side and the national headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the voice for some the nation’s biggest corporate polluters—on the other. Said Sherri Masterson from Miami (Ohio) University:
We want President Obama to do more to hold these big corporations, like BP, accountable for screwing up the environment and make them pay to clean up their pollution.
America Fast Forward Boosts Jobs, Rebuilds Infrastructure
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says that a new transportation and jobs infrastructure plan “will help revive manufacturing. It means jobs.”
The America Fast Forward initiative has bipartisan and labor/management support. At the Capitol Hill press conference announcing the new initiative today, Trumka joined U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz.
America Fast Forward will improve the way transportation projects are financed so that cities and states can access and disseminate funds directly to projects, creating a faster and more efficient system. The plan could create nearly 1 million jobs, produce $158 billion in economic output and generate $51 billion in worker income.
The plan is a national extension of Villaraigosa’s 30/10 initiative for transportation in Los Angeles County. He told the Los Angeles Times:
We’ve also won the support of 105 mayors—20 percent of them Republicans—because they understand the prospect of getting federal assistance through the traditional channels is now remote….This is a program that puts people to work now at little cost, since 98 percent of the federal dollars would be repaid from local sources. This is more than a step we’re proposing; it’s a leap forward.
It’s Undeniable: U.S. Chamber and Climate Deniers Share Warm Relationship
We all know that the Chamber of Commerce comes down on the wrong side of just about every issue that matters for working families. But here’s a staggering statistic to show you just how far out of the mainstream the Chamber swims.
In the 2010 midterm elections, the Chamber spent $32 million to elect their anointed candidates and 94 percent of that money went to candidates who are “climate deniers,” the people who think global warming, greenhouse gases and climate change are a left-wing plot. “I don’t need no stinking scientist to tell me about climate change, I’ve got Glenn Beck.”
This little nutty nugget comes from our friends at The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me, who point out that there actually is a method in the Chamber’s madness in funneling money to politicians who are certainly no friends of the earth.
Out of the 118 [Chamber] board members, at least 49 represent companies tied to fossil fuel use: oil, gas and coal, and related companies….Throughout its history, the Chamber has taken an anti-environmental stance, fighting to weaken clean air standards, opposing a hazardous waste dumping ban, working to diminish the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and lobbying against any national action on climate change.
Trumka, Chamber’s Donohue Will Call for Transportation Jobs Bill at Senate Hearing
Check this out. Next week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue will make a rare joint appearance to promote jobs legislation. They will appear Feb. 16 before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at 10 a.m. to speak out on the need for quick action on a new jobs-creating transportation bill.
Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, Trumka and Donohue issued a joint statement endorsing Obama’s call “to create jobs and grow our economy through investment in our nation’s infrastructure.”
Republicans Tap Leading Foe of Wall Street Reform to Oversee New Rules
Last year as the fight to rein-in Wall Street excesses—such as the mysterious and risky derivatives market—raged in Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was leading the corporate charge against reform.
Big Business couldn’t kill Wall Street reform then, but with Republicans taking control of the U.S. House next week, don’t think that battle is over. Think Progress reports the Chamber’s senior director of its division dedicated to de-regulating the complex derivatives market will now play a major role in overseeing how the new law that regulates derivates is implemented.
Ryan McKee has been hired by the incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), as senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Writes Think Progress’s Lee Fang:
In her new role working for Lucas, McKee will be liaising with regulators in charge of implementing new rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to overhaul the over-the-counter derivatives market. Read the rest of this entry »
Beck Shills for Chamber
Right-wing radio zealot Glenn Beck apparently has decided that all that foreign money coming into the Chamber of Commerce’s kitty just isn’t enough to buy an election.
Today he announced he was donating $10,000 to the Chamber and urged his listeners to chip in, too.
Beck is the same guy who called the long-term unemployed un-American, anti-capitalist, socialist losers and who verbally attacked an 80-year-old union activist for speaking at a high school, among other just as outrageous and reactionary rants.
The Chamber, for its part, doesn’t have much respect or use for workers, either. It’s spending $75 million to promote candidates who oppose new rules to discourage U.S. firms from shipping jobs overseas, want to repeal the minimum wage and weaken workplace safety and collective bargaining laws rules. That’s just the short list.
Maybe Beck’s disclosure of his contribution will spur the Chamber to step out from behind the shield of a weak election law and reveal just who else is funding its political attack machine….Nah.
Foreign Money Helps Finance Chamber’s Political Attack Ads
The Chamber of Commerce—which, as of mid-September alone, has aired more than 8,000 ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates—“is likely skirting long-standing campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections,” according to a Think Progress investigation released this morning.
The ads are funded from the Chamber’s general account which, says Think Progress, solicits foreign funding. The Chamber—which ironically calls itself as the “U.S.” Chamber of Commerce—has opened many overseas offices and has founded and funded foreign chapters of the business group, including in Bahrain, Egypt, India and Abu Dhabi, according the report.
While many of these foreign operations include American businesses with interests overseas, the Chamber has also spearheaded an effort to raise money from foreign corporations, including ones controlled by foreign governments….
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce appears to rely heavily on fundraising from firms all over the world, including China, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia, and many other places. Of course, because the Chamber successfully lobbied to kill campaign finance reforms aimed at establishing transparency, the Chamber does not have to reveal any of the funding for its ad campaign.
Blankenship Knows No Shame
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank discovered what those of us who watched Massey Energy CEO Donald Blankenship operate over the years have known for some time.
Blankenship, who has made a career of busting unions, violating mine safety laws, attacking environmentalists and shilling for the far right and corporate America, has no shame.
Blankenship didn’t hit the national stage until one of his coal mines blew up and killed 29 West Virginia miners in April. In the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster, Blankenship has sued the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), implied the deadly blast was God’s fault and told the government to keep its hands off patriotic business like Massey. Writes Milbank:
If Don Blankenship had any sense of shame, he’d crawl into a mine and hide.
CIGNA Admits to Secret Funding for Anti-Health Care Reform Ads
Back in January, as the fight over health care reform was in high gear, the National Journal pinned down what most of us suspected all the time: The nation’s biggest health insurers had been funneling money—about $20 million—quietly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to air lie-filled, scare-mongering ads about health care reform.
That revelation flew in the face of the insurance industry’s claim that it really supported health care reform, but they were just dickering over the details. While the facts about the secret funds were on the record and not disputed, the big insurers didn’t address the issue.
