US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

see USCoC2 node and CoC tag

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AN 9 24

alternet-no lnx

Inside the billionaire's trick to keep people from voting

Thom Hartmann

September 23, 2024

Outside of Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan (and a hedge fund guy), just about all American billionaires are white. And while their white privilege helped most of them to become billionaires in the first place, for the politically active billionaires on the right, it’s their money that they care about the most.

Fred Koch, the founding patriarch of the Koch family, was an early supporter of the John Birch Society (JBS), which vigorously opposed any efforts to reduce the powers of the very wealthy white people or elevate the wealth or political power of poor or working-class people. Their most public positions in the 1950s and 1960s were against racial integration and communism— the ultimate method for leveling the fortunes of the rich. The JBS opposed virtually all “welfare” legislation, from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment insurance, calling it socialism and equating it with a softer version of communism. Around that same time, a Russian immigrant who’d fled the Soviet Union (her father had lost his pharmacy shop to the Bolshevik Revolution) came to America with dreams of becoming a great author or actress. Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum chose the stage and pen name of Ayn Rand, and in the 1950s she wrote a rather simplistic novel celebrating inherited wealth.

In Atlas Shrugged, a young woman and her hapless brother inherit a railroad from their father and try to grow it strong over opposition from the unions, which want a safe workplace and reasonable pay. As George Monbiot wrote:

In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing.”35

It means nothing, in other words, if average people are ground into the dirt. But when people who inherited wealth face challenges, particularly those from average working families, they should be able to utterly destroy them.

ALSO READ: Trump has a brand new front in the Haitian conspiracy push

In a subsequent novel, The Fountainhead, one of the “producers” of her mythology rapes a woman, but it’s all good because the woman decides that she enjoys it mid-rape. Monbiot boils it down simply: “Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge, and greed.”

While Fred Koch was helping the JBS in its fight against taxes and regulation, his sons were apparently reading Ayn Rand and taking her philosophy of radical selfishness to heart. They were also, by the 1970s, running the Koch oil operation and having constant struggles with regulators, particularly during the Carter administration.

Looking for political juice, David Koch joined and then largely took over the Libertarian Party in the late 1970s.

That political party had been created by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), a lobbying group formed in 1946 that represented the Big Three carmakers, the top three US oil companies, Monsanto, DuPont, GE, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, and both US Steel and Republic Steel. Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, was on its board of directors, as were United Fruit president Herb Cornuelle; National Association of Manufacturers director and DuPont and GM board member Donaldson Brown; and Leonard Read, a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive.

The mission of the new libertarian movement was straightforward: to lobby for the interests of big business and the uber-wealthy people that such business had created.

The same year that the FEE was created and they began the rollout of libertarianism, Congress busted an obscure University of Chicago economist named Milton Friedman for illegally shilling for the real estate industry.

As Mark Ames wrote:

The purpose of the FEE—and libertarianism, as it was originally created—was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.

This background is important in the Milton Friedman story because Friedman is a founder of libertarianism and neoliberalism, and because the corrupt lobbying deal he was busted playing a part in was arranged through the Foundation for Economic Education.36

Friedman was later implicated in the aftermath of the brutal and violent takedown of democracy in Chile, and his acolytes helped privatize the state-owned properties of the Soviet Union, creating the kleptocratic and oligarchic government that now runs Russia and many of the former Soviet states. Libertarianism, it turns out, has had real-world impacts, which include the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

No country has ever successfully established a libertarian form of economy or governance; it was, after all, a scam set up to front for the very rich, and the corporations that made them that way. But that hasn’t stopped libertarian and corporatist ideologues from trying.

While Chile and Russia are well-known examples, few Americans seem to remember how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld simply stood on the sidelines watching as the treasures of Iraq were looted after the United States took down their government.

It was to be a Grand Experiment: they’d finally prove that without government interference in a nation’s economy or social systems, an utopia would emerge. L. Paul Bremer was their front man, arriving in Iraq on May 2, 2003, to begin the process of “freeing” the country’s economy so that the world’s corporations would flood in and create a paradise....

6/14 state level:Council of State Chambers (COSC).

...

The U.S. Chamber's Regional Government Affairs Conferences

Since at least 2004, the U.S. Chamber has been inviting state and local chamber staff twice a year to travel to posh resorts for "regional government affairs conferences." Like ALEC's conference model, the Chamber underwrites conference attendees' travel expenses with "scholarship" money.

At the conferences, U.S. Chamber lobbyists, outside political consultants, professional pollsters and the CEOs of transnational corporations help indoctrinate state and local chamber staff on how best to follow the U.S. Chamber's special interest agenda.

The conferences cover a wide range of lobbying agenda items.

On energy, attendees are regularly briefed by Karen Harbert, the president of the U.S. Chamber's "Institute for 21st Century Energy."Harbert and the "Institute" she presides over have long advocated for deregulating fracking, expanding offshore oil drilling in U.S. coastal waters, rejecting the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, and vastly increasing coal and nuclear energy production.

On international trade issues,attendees hear from the likes of Christopher Wenk, the "Director of International Policy" at the U.S. Chamber, on why local and state chambers should lobby lawmakers to pass "free trade" agreements like the TPP and TTIP, despite the job-killing consequences of similar trade deals that the Chamber has backed that have decimated U.S. manufacturing jobs.

On labor issues, Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber's "Workforce Freedom Initiative" regularly leads panel discussions. Spencer formerly worked for David Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy operation (the predecessor of Kochs' Americans for Prosperity and also the FreedomWorks entities) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Predictably, his briefings are rabidly anti-union/anti-worker rights.

And so on.

But it's not all policy talk at these "government affairs" retreats.

Conferences end with a "political workshop" highlighting the U.S. Chamber's latest approaches to effective electioneering, because, in one conference agenda's description, "Getting actively engaged in politics is the new frontier for chambers for a simple reason: it's easier to elect officials who understand your concerns than to convince officials who fundamentally disagree with you" (emphasis added).

Conference agendas also show that the U.S. Chamber is keen on making sure state and local chamber lobbyists and staff have time to booze and schmooze. Every conference features two nights of alcohol-fueled entertainment.

Last October in Nashville, conference attendees were taken by bus to the Country Music Hall of Fame to enjoy "an intimate show with Nashville's finest songwriters."

At a conference for state and local chamber lobbyists earlier in 2015 in Las Vegas, attendees were invited to an open-bar reception at RHUMBAR, a location, the conference agenda specified, where the "plush outdoor patio is reminiscent of a tropical retreat, offering a picturesque location for attendees to mingle, sip cocktails, and take in the great views of the Las Vegas strip."

The following night, Vegas attendees were encouraged to "unwind at Ghostbar," another venue "with breathtaking skyline panoramas."

The term wined-and-dined is typically used to describe corporate interests' dealings with public officials. But state and local chambers do represent – or claim to represent – their communities in democratic forums and governing bodies.

Through the U.S. Chamber's luxurious conferences, the lobbyists and staff of state and local chambers are wined, dined, and indoctrinated with special-interest talking points.

The U.S. Chamber's "Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100"

The Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100 (CCC100) is an invite-only group of state and local chamber executives that gathers with U.S. Chamber lobbyists twice a year at opulent hotels and resorts across the country to help advance chamber lobbying priorities in states and cities for the coming six months.

The Chamber states that CCC100 "advises the U.S. Chamber on programs and services for chambers and provides feedback on policy-related issues." However CCC100 documents show the opposite: the Chamber is very much in charge of CCC100's policy agenda.

On March 1-3, 2016, CCC100 gathered for its first meeting of the year at the luxurious Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Florida. The three-day conference kicked off with a golf tournament on the Ritz'sPGA tour course. Cocktail receptions, dinners, electronic skeet shooting, and a Super Tuesday viewing party followed. More importantly, so did U.S. Chamber-dominated policy discussions.

The conference featured an hour-long speech from U.S. Chamber CEO Tom Donohue; a policy update from the Chamber's most senior government and political affairs executive; a luncheon featuringMichael L. Ducker, the Chamber's chairman of the board and the CEO of FedEx Freight;an economic update from the Chamber's chief economist; and a networking session co-hosted by the Chamber's managing director.

So much for CCC100 "advising" the U.S. Chamber on public policy.

CCC100 conferences have lasting impacts on state and local chamber executives. As the former CEO of the Palm Desert Area Chamber of Commerce Barbara DeBoom stated, "My participation on the CCC100 allows our chamber to stay ahead of the herd on economic updates, public policy issues, and leadership skills."

DeBoom went on to proclaim that CCC100 also serves as an excellent resource for her community, although the U.S. Chamber is largely funded by some of the largest global corporations in the world, whose interests are generally at odds with local communities.

Lastly, the U.S. Chamber's claim that CCC100 is merely a gathering of chamber executives is unfounded. There is another group that regularly attends CCC100 meetings: other corporate lobbyists.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for you and your organization to access influential executives," the Chamber wrote in a sponsorship brochure for potential CCC100 corporate sponsors. In the brochure, the most prominently listed sponsorship perk was "three days of unlimited access to the nation's top chamber presidents and CEOs."

Lobbyists lobbying other lobbyists. There ought to be a term for the exponential explosion of corporate lobbyists hired ultimately to influence officials elected to represent actual citizens—human beings in a democracy, not global corporations.

The U.S. Chamber's Institute for Organization Management

The "Institute for Organization Management" (IOM) is a professional development program of the U.S. Chamber designed to "enhance individual performance, elevate professional standards, and recognize association, chamber of commerce, and other nonprofit professionals who demonstrate the knowledge essential to the practice of nonprofit management."

In this sense, IOM serves as a leadership pipeline for the chamber network. The four-installment program, which the Chamber describes in academic terms, is offered to chamber professionals at five so-called "institutes" across the country.

Like the Chamber's regional government affairs conferences, "scholarships" are provided to IOM participants, who are instructed by a "faculty" of political consultants, communication strategists, lobbyists, lawyers, and seasoned chamber professionals (many of whom are former graduates of IOM).

Notably, a handful of the "courses" offered at IOM are about money and influence: "E250 PACs and Political Endorsements," "E211 Sponsorship Solicitation," "E362 Policy Development and Implementation," and "C270 Effective Government Affairs Programs."

The Association of Chambers of Commerce Executives

The Association of Chambers of Commerce Executives (ACCE) works "to support and develop chamber professionals to lead businesses and their communities." (ThisACCE is distinct from the new project spawned by ALEC that shares that acronym: the American City County Exchange.)...

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giants pp:

The American ruling class has long been determined to be

mostly self-perpetuating,6

maintaining its influence through

policymaking institutions such as the National Association of

Manufacturers, US Chamber of Commerce, Business Council,

Business Roundtable, Conference Board, American Enter-

prise Institute for Public Policy Research, Council on Foreign

Relations, and other business-centered policy groups.7

These

associations have long dominated policy decisions within the

US government.

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from western goals:

The Klan has never been the sole or even principle point of intersection for US fascism; formal, official Americanism has always been the lynchpin. During the 1920s, the US’s great industrial and finance moguls, from Hearst, Ford, Du Pont, and GM to the house of JP Morgan, Jr., went fascist, and big business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a leading purveyor of Americanist propaganda, joined them. In 1923, after Mussolini’s March on Rome, the counsel of NAM delivered a speech to their convention called il Duce an “extreme leader, not only converted by the lightning stroke of intelligence and falling from his error like Saul of Tarsus from his horse, but leading through the streets of a reunited country a great body of citizens,” liberating Italy from “the blighting hand of radical socialism.”

pg 145https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ julian barnes, prez CoC, Nam lawyer

Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America

By John Patrick Diggins

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Scorecard for the top 10 outside spenders 2012

Rank Group Wins-Losses Total spent

1 Restore Our Future 0-1 $143 million

2 American Crossroads 3-10 $105 million

7 in spending U.S. Chamber of Commerce 7-33 $36 million

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http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/

The Elite Group Driving the Chamber’s Agenda

The U.S. Chamber characterizes its agenda as “pro-business,” but the number of actors dictating the Chamber’s agenda has whittled down steadily over the years, so that a trade association that could once legitimately claim to serve as the voice of American business can now only credibly speak for a handful of the nation’s largest corporations. In 2009, a single donation of just over $86 million accounted for more than forty percent of the U.S. Chamber’s budget. Sixteen companies gave more than $1 million each, accounting for fifty-five percent of the Chamber’s $200 million budget. Ninety-four percent of the Chamber’s budget

Weakened Regulation of Wall Street

Chamber Board

JP Morgan

Charles Schwab

Edward Jones

Known Chamber Contributors

Bank of America

Citigroup

Bank of New York Mellon

Wells Fargo

Capital One

U.S. Chamber Wall Street Banks that Benefit from Privatization of Social Security

Bank of New York

Mellon

BlackRock

Charles Schwab (Board Member)

Citibank

Edward Jones (Board Member)

Goldman Sachs

JPMorgan (Board Member)

Morgan Stanley

Prudential Financial

U.S. Chamber Members that Benefit from Weakening of Healthcare Reform

UnitedHealth

WellPoint

Cigna

Aetna

Humana (contributed to $86 million campaign to oppose enactment of reform)

Chamber Board

AT&T

Caterpillar

Deere

3M

WellPoint

U.S. Chamber Companies that Benefit from Tax Breaks for Outsourcing

United Technologies

Hewlett Packard

Motorola

Thompson West

Citigroup

Intel

Microsoft

GM

Chamber Board

IBM

Deere, Inc.

Xerox

Accenture

Pfizer

The U.S. Chamber - A Multi-Million Dollar Shell Game

In the late summer of 2009, with the health care reform debate heating up, ads began appearing all over the country attacking the legislation. Months later, the National Journalrevealed that major insurers including Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint had funneled between $10 million and $20 million to the U.S. Chamber to fund the campaign. Meanwhile, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade association, continued to public voice support for reform.The duplicitous campaign is typical of the role the U.S. Chamber plays in corporate lobbying since CEO Tom Donohue took over the organization in 1996. He’s quadrupled its budget to $200 million annually (as of October 2009) and built the most powerful anti-reform lobbying force in Washington.  And he’s done it by soliciting large donations from a small group of CEOS of very large corporations who want to keep their lobbying agendas secret.

Last year, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. Chamber’s contributions came from just 25 contributors. While it claims 3 million members, the U.S. Chamber’s three biggest (and anonymous) donors accounted for nearly one in every five dollars raised by the lobbying firm, which operates as a non-profit trade association.

The Wall Street Journalunmasked the strategy as early as 2001. Donohue’s big innovation was setting up separate accounts to take in money for projects on behalf of individual companies and industries. It allowed corporations “to use the Chamber as a means of anonymously pursuing their own political ends,” the Journalreported.  Unlike most Washington trade groups that concentrate on narrow concerns and shun partisan politics, the U.S. Chamber has allowed itself to be bought by its largest donors, who are driving an inflexible, highly partisan agenda.

pvt intel HBGary http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/issues/chamber-gate-2011-what-chamber-knew

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175358/bill_mckibben_chamber_of_carbon

100th anniv, proud of superpac $ (po'd not #1 in a race)

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http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/06/20/9145/us-chamber-gop-block-election-ad-transparency-bill

In 2010, legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., would require nonprofits that buy political ads to disclose their donors. The bill — fought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's most powerful business lobby — failed. A stripped-down version introduced this year has been blocked by Republicans in both the House and Senate.

The Chamber claims disclosure would “silence free speech.” Critics say its opposition is more about shielding the business association’s corporate donors from a potential public backlash.

Transparency means ‘informed decisions’

“Disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion in the Citizens United case. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

But the reality is there is often no transparency in the current system.

Crossroads GPS spent $16 million on “express advocacy” in 2010, more than $15 million on ads bashing Democrats. That’s far more than any other non-disclosing group, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan, nonprofit group that tracks money in politics.

The outside spending addressed by the high court is in two categories: Independent expenditures and electioneering communications.

An independent expenditure group buys ads that urge voters to support or reject a candidate. Electioneering communications allow the mention of a candidate but stop short of urging a yes or no vote. In either case, coordinating the ads with a candidate is prohibited.

What DISCLOSE discloses

The 2010 DISCLOSE Act introduced by Van Hollen contained a number of provisions that were not strictly related to disclosure. For example, it barred campaign contributions from government contractors, foreign-owned businesses and companies that received government bailouts.

Nonprofits were required to report their donors when spending reached a certain level. And it required the group’s leaders to appear in a disclaimer approving the message conveyed in the ad.

The Chamber spends the bulk of its money on electioneering advertising. A key provision of the bill would expand the definition of electioneering. Currently, only electioneering advertising made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election must be reported.

Consequently, there is a disclosure gap.

And even when an ad buy is made within the disclosure period, the Chamber and other groups in the past have not revealed their donors. In Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission a judge recently decided that all donors who give more than $1,000 to electioneering groups must now be disclosed. An appeal of the decision is pending.

In response, the Chamber — which is a nonprofit corporation — announced on May 21 that it would no longer make electioneering ads and switch to independent expenditures so it can continue to keep its donors secret.

In 2010 the Chamber was especially outspoken against regulations on government contractors and argued the bill unfairly targeted businesses’ speech while insulating unions.

Unions also opposed parts of the bill. They were concerned that reporting requirements would pose an unnecessary burden by requiring fund transfers among chapters be reported within 24 hours.

Broadcasters voiced their opposition in 2010, particularly when it came to the provisions expanding the requirement that they offer political airtime at the lowest rate.

Clean bill

The 2012 DISCLOSE Act eliminates almost all those points of contention.

Restrictions on government contractors are gone and unions are subject to the same reporting requirements as the other groups.

Like the first version, DISCLOSE 2.0 requires that once an outside spending group has spent a certain amount, it must report the identity of each contributor who gave $10,000 or more. Groups must “stand by” their ads, the same way candidates do. And corporations, unions and other organizations that file annual financial reports must include their campaign-related spending.

In 2010, the Chamber was one of 113 organizations to lobby the bill and by far the largest. In 2010, it spent $100.2 million on lobbying. The 2012 bill hasn’t attracted nearly as much attention, due no doubt to its almost certain failure thanks to Republican opposition. The Chamber is again leading the fight. It sent a letter, signed by 124 organizations, to the Senate in May voicing its opposition.

Among the signers were the Associated Builders and Contractors and several of its local chapters, Edison Electric Institute and the Wichita Independent Business Association, whose board of directors includes Koch Industries’ vice president of government and public affairs, Mark Nichols.

The bill “is designed to chill the political speech of corporations, business interests, and others, while giving labor unions special protections,” the letter says. “The bill does not propose genuine reform — its disclosure requirements are transparently political and ultimately unconstitutional.”

Chamber spokeswoman Blair Latoff called the bill “politically motivated” and designed “to single out and stifle the speech of …the business community.”

The bill does not ban businesses from election advertising — it only requires them to go public. When asked how DISCLOSE would “stifle” speech, the Chamber did not respond. Advocates for disclosure say the speech issue is a smoke screen.

“By keeping its donors secret, the Chamber prevents the brand names of its members from being associated with policies and politicians that half of the public — their customers — reject,” said Bill Allison of the pro-open-government group the Sunlight Foundation. “The Chamber serves the interests of its members, and in politics, that means anonymity.”

Speech or secrecy?

As a tax-exempt trade organization, the Chamber does not report who its donors are, though filings with the IRS do include contribution totals. In 2010, the Chamber collected $188 million from contributions alone.

Its 138-member board of directors includes top executives from a cross-section of the largest corporations in America. Their interests include oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, transportation, telecommunications, insurance and finance.

Unions have been much quieter this time around. Bill Samuel, director of government affairs at the AFL-CIO, said they strongly support additional corporate disclosure.

“We’re pretty much an open book,” Samuel said, referencing the detailed reports on membership, dues, revenue and expenditures that unions file with the Department of Labor. “There’s no comparable disclosure for companies.”

The nation’s best-known defender of individual rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, opposes the bill.

“Anonymity in speech is really critically important,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, the ACLU’s legislative chief of staff. He said the bill harms groups that are purely involved in policy issues, not electing politicians.

The ACLU runs ads that fall into the electioneering communications category but does not take sides. If the issue at hand is controversial — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, for example — revealing donors could increase the chance of retaliation, MacCleod-Ball said.

But Richard Hasen, a campaign finance lawyer, testified before a Senate committee that the bill’s high dollar-amount thresholds and the option for nonprofits to create a separate account to preserve the anonymity of donors who do not make election-related contributions provide ample constitutional protections.

“Disclosure laws can prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption … provide valuable information to voters … [and] help enforce other campaign finance laws,” he said.

Social welfare?

Groups like Crossroads GPS are organized as 501(c)(4)s and known as “social welfare” organizations. They may not make politics their “primary” activity, according to IRS rules.

These 501(c)(4) groups make up an increasing percentage of outside spending.

In the 2010 election, they outspent super PACs by a 3-to-2 margin, according to a Center for Public Integrity study.

Crossroads GPS, co-founded by Republican operative Karl Rove, is one of the most active nonprofits. In 2010 and 2011, it raised $76.8 million, the Center for Public Integrity has reported, far more than the $46.4 million raised by its sister super PAC American Crossroads during the same period.

Top Democratic 501(c)(4)s include Priorities USA, affiliated with pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action; American Bridge, affiliated with pro-Democrat super PAC American Bridge 21st Century; and America Votes, which gained prominence from a $1 million contribution in early May from hedge fund billionaire George Soros.*

GOP opposes DISCLOSE

DISCLOSE 2012 has gone nowhere.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., led the filibuster that doomed the bill in the Senate in 2010. A representative for McConnell would not comment on the 2012 bill despite repeated requests. 

While a handful of moderate Republicans, most notably campaign finance reform champion Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have considered taking up the bill this year, it’s still considered a longshot.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio also opposes the bill. His office did not did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but Boehner said the 2010 version was a "backroom deal to shred our Constitution for raw, ugly, partisan gain."

But in 2007, Boehner said on “Meet the Press” that there should be “full disclosure of all of the money that we raise and how it is spent.” And seven years before that, McConnell said on the same show that “Republicans are in favor of disclosure.” 

Despite numerous requests, Van Hollen, the bill’s author, did not grant an interview and instead released a statement through his representative. 

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from the DISCLOSE Act 2012.”

Disclosure has become a partisan issue — only two out of 114 cosponsors of the 2010 bill in the House were Republicans — then-Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. This year, not one of the House bill’s 160 co-sponsors or the Senate bill’s 44 co-sponsors is Republican.

Adam Skaggs, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for campaign finance reform, said that since the 2012 bill is more closely tailored to disclosure and not cluttered with other issues support or opposition among members of Congress should be telling.

“By eliminating some of the provisions that prompted opposition in the first version of the act, the current bill presents members with Congress with a stark choice,” he said. “Do you support transparency in elections or do you not?”

For up-to-date news on outside money in the election, follow our*Source2012 Tumblr*and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

foreign bribery http://www.prwatch.org/node/11802

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August 29, 2012

U.S. Chamber launches ad attacking California budget, economy

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched what may constitute the first unofficial television salvo against Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative with an ad criticizing California state government.

The 30-second ad says "California is struggling badly" under the weight of "huge deficits," "high taxes" and "overregulation." It later claims that "bureaucrats put $37 billion in hidden, unaudited accounts," a reference to the state's special fund accounts that have drawn greater scrutiny in the wake of the state parks scandal.

The state's 550-plus special fund accounts were never themselves hidden, but the parks department purposely shielded $54 million from state leaders.

Based on Federal Communications Commission documents, the U.S. Chamber spent at least $431,000 in the Los Angeles and Sacramento broadcast markets on ads starting today and lasting through Sept. 6.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/08/us-chamber-launches-ad-attacking-california-budget-economy.html#storylink=cpy

spends big in CA congress seats mcinenrny/ http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/

bill mck RS 8/15

Left to our own devices, citizens might decide to regulate carbon and stop short of the brink; according to a recent poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans would back an international agreement that cut carbon emissions 90 percent by 2050. But we aren't left to our own devices. The Koch brothers, for instance, have a combined wealth of $50 billion, meaning they trail only Bill Gates on the list of richest Americans. They've made most of their money in hydrocarbons, they know any system to regulate carbon would cut those profits, and they reportedly plan to lavish as much as $200 million on this year's elections. In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce surpassed both the Republican and Democratic National Committees on political spending; the following year, more than 90 percent of the Chamber's cash went to GOP candidates, many of whom deny the existence of global warming. Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon – should the world's scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations." As radical goes, demanding that we change our physiology seems right up there.

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Themis:

SEPTEMBER

On September 10, :{U.S. Chamber Watch:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: files charges with the IRS that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “violated tax codes by :{:{**laundering** :(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:millions of dollars:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: meant for charitable work from a group with ties to the insurance giant AIG.”

September 10, 2010

Chamber of Commerce Accused of Tax Fraud

By ERIC LICHTBLA

WASHINGTON — With a war chest rivaling that of the Republican Party itself, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has emerged in the last year as perhaps the Obama administration’s most-well-financed rival on signature policy debates like health care and financial regulation.

Critics on the left have long complained about the chamber’s outsize influence. But now they are taking on the business association directly, charging in a complaint filed Friday with the Internal Revenue Service that it violated tax codes by laundering millions of dollars meant for charitable work from a group with ties to the insurance giant A.I.G.

The complaint was brought by a group called U.S. Chamber Watch, which was created four months ago — with the strong financial backing of labor unions — to scrutinize the Chamber of Commerce’s growing influence and provide a counterbalance.

But chamber officials said they had complied with all tax laws and dismissed the complaint as a political ploy.

A chamber spokeswoman, Tita Freeman, said its opponents “are desperately looking for opportunities to undermine the chamber’s efforts to promote free markets and economic growth.”

The I.R.S. refused to comment on the complaint, citing the confidentiality of taxpayer records.

I.R.S. regulators have often been wary of wading into political grievances, particularly after evidence emerged during the Watergate scandal that the Nixon White House had sought to use the agency for political purposes.

But in recent years the agency has occasionally gotten involved in politically tinged controversies. In one high-profile case in 2004, Republican complaints led it to open an investigation into the N.A.A.C.P.’s tax-exempt status after the group’s leader criticized President George W. Bush in a speech. The I.R.S. concluded two years later that the remarks did not violate the group’s nonprofit restrictions on political activity.

At issue in the complaint against the Chamber of Commerce is whether the group mixed funds for charitable and noncharitable political purposes in violation of tax codes.

The chamber, often using expensive mass-market radio and TV spots, has weighed in on many major public policy debates in recent months, including the Obama administration’s health care policy, business regulations, campaign finance laws and Internet rules, as well as job creation and the threat of tax hikes. On many issues, it has pushed for less government regulation in favor of free-market incentives.

Now the chamber’s political arm is turning to the November elections, and it expects to spend $50 million or more to push pro-business candidates, usually Republicans. As part of a wave of new commercials broadcast this week, the chamber’s California affiliate attacked Senator Barbara Boxer— a Democrat running for re-election against Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard — and accused Ms. Boxer of “destroying jobs” by voting against business.

Cyrus Mehri, a Washington lawyer who brought the I.R.S. complaint on behalf of U.S. Chamber Watch, said in an interview that the chamber’s current political activities were, in effect, being underwritten with money intended for charitable work.

The complaint focuses on loans and grants totaling about $18 million that were made beginning in 2003 to a nonprofit affiliate, the National Chamber Foundation, by the Starr Foundation, a charity started by the founder of A.I.G. and now led by Maurice R. Greenberg, the insurer’s former chairman.

Lawyers for Chamber Watch said their research, based largely on public tax filings, found that none of the principal on some $12 million in loans had been paid back and that the money appeared to have been given to the chamber’s foundation for unrestricted use.

The lawyers said that the money, in violation of nonprofit restrictions, was ultimately funneled to the chamber itself and used to finance broader political causes, including support for legal tort reform to shield companies like A.I.G. from liability. Mr. Greenberg himself had worked to promote restrictions on lawsuits, the complaint notes.

“You have millions of dollars improperly going to the chamber,” said Mr. Mehri, who drafted the complaint with Gail M. Harmon, a Washington lawyer specializing in tax law. “This is not a technical violation.”

But Stan Harrell, chief financial officer for the Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview Friday that the chamber’s lawyers and its accountants at Ernst & Young had reviewed the Starr Foundation funding and found that it complied with all relevant tax law.

“We’ve never had an issue, period,” Mr. Harrell said. He said that Chamber Watch, which was created by a federation of five unions called Change to Win, was simply trying to create trouble for the chamber because of its opposing political views.

“That’s democracy. From time to time, people make allegations,” he said. “If their real interest was proper accounting, they’d be talking to us. This is political.”

Mr. Harrell said that the funding from the Starr Foundation was listed in tax documents as a loan only in the most technical sense and that it was never intended to be paid back. Instead, he said, the money was restricted for long-term use on educational and research projects as part of the chamber’s capital plan and was invested by the chamber to ensure the Starr Foundation a set rate of return.

“We wanted to make sure we guaranteed the investment return,” he said. “Legally, that has to be represented as a loan. This was all done very scrupulously. If anything, we overdisclosed the transaction” in the group’s federal tax returns, he said.

OCTOBER

On October 5, ThinkProgress exposes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for directing foreign funds into the general account it uses for political expenditures to defeat progressive candidates.

On October 7, MoveOn, Public Citizen, and other progressive organizations protest the Chamber’s plan to spend $75 million against progressive candidates, and their lack of transparency over foreign money, in front of Chamber headquarters in Washington D.C.

NY AG goes afterlaundering:

Founded in 1967, NCF was created to provide in-depth analyses of critical economic and policy issues facing the nation. NCF has founded a number of programs to address emerging critical issues. In the early 1980′s, NCF established the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) in response to President Reagan’s Democracy Initiative. Today, CIPE continues to strengthen the democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. It became a stand-alone affiliate of the U.S. Chamber in 1985.

During the next twenty years, NCF has founded several other programs including the Investment for Growth initiative (now the Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness) to response to the complex regulations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2004, and the Intellectual Property initiative, which become the Global Intellectual Property Initiative (GIPC) in 2008.

Margaret Spellings serves as Executive Vice President of NCF. In this capacity Spellings provides both strategic and ongoing management leadership to the Foundation, including critical support around the Chamber’s American Free Enterprise. Dream Big. campaign. Spellings joined the Chamber in April 2009 as a Senior Advisor to the President and CEO. Before this, Spellings served as Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush. Spellings previously served as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, where she aided in the development and passage of the NoChild Left Behind Act. Prior to this, she worked for six years as Senior Advisor to then-Governor Bush, developing and implementing the Governor’s education reforms. She continues to work as the President and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, a Washington, D.C.-based strategic and public policy consulting firm.

top 10 green myths :{http://www.uschamber.:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:com/sites/default/files/reports/top10myths.pdf

2004

...

Myth 1: Forests are in rapid decline.

Fact: Forest acreage is increasing.

United Nations data show that forest acreage has increased through time, and there is no indication that this trend will cease in the long term.1 Today, U.S. forest tree growth exceeds tree cutting by 37 percent. In 1920, U.S. forests covered 732 million acres; today they cover 737 million acres, despite a U.S. population increase from 106 million to 272 million in the same time period. Similarly, European forests expanded from 361 million acres in 1950 to 482 million acres in 1990, and despite deforestation in tropical countries, 76 percent of the tropical rain forest zone is still covered with forest.2

Myth 2: Air quality is getting worse.

Fact: Air quality is getting significantly better.

Aggregate air emissions—everything rolled into one—have declined 25 percent since 1970, while our gross domestic product has increased 161 percent in the same period.3 Between 1988 and 1997, the total number of “unhealthy” air quality days decreased an average of 66 percent for major cities across the United States, and according to the EPA, air pollutant emissions have dramatically decreased, specifically: lead is down 97 percent; sulfur oxides are down 67 percent; carbon monoxide is down 66 percent; nitrogen oxides are down 38 percent; and ozone is down 31 percent. Air pollutants from cars have decreased by more than 90 percent—it now takes 20 new cars to produce the same emissions as one car produced in the 1960s and that figure is improving with the onset of new technologies.

Myth 3: The Kyoto Protocol will successfully reduce levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Fact: Even if the Kyoto Protocol was ratified and

implemented, CO2 would continue to increase.

Although parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to what greenhouse gas cuts they already believed they could accomplish, many have failed to achieve even these agreed upon minimal reductions. Moreover, developing countries such as China and India, which are large (and growing) emitters of CO2, will not endanger their economic growth by abandoning the use of coal, a cheap and abundant resource. That observation notwithstanding, even if the entire industrialized world achieved the CO2 reductions called for in the international Kyoto Protocol, the overall effect on atmospheric levels of CO2 would be minimal, and global levels would continue to rise substantially.4 It is important to

note that the technology needed to stabilize global atmospheric levels of CO2 does not exist, and without it, a Kyoto Protocol in any form is useless. It is currently impossible to supply carbon-free energy in the amounts that would be needed—we simply don’t have the needed technology.

cites uc d watt  NOT on cooling  13 Kenneth Watt, UC-Davis Professor of Ecology, at the first Earth Day (1970).

This crucial fact, noted in science journals, is woefully ignored. As reported in Nature, just to stabilize the atmospheric level of CO2 at 550 parts-per-million (ppm)—double what it was in pre-industrial times and substantially higher than the present level of about 370 ppm—could require generating as much as 40 terawatts of carbon-free energy. That is four times more than the amount of power currently generated by all the fossil fuels in use in the world today. And, as reported in Science, existing technologies cannot address this problem.5

Rather than fighting over economically punitive mandates, modeled after the Kyoto Protocol, what is needed is an abandonment of near-sighted legislative fixes in favor of a far-reaching plan for developing effective new technologies. Developing and deploying needed innovative technologies could take 50 to 100 years. The undertaking could cost trillions of dollars, but investments could be spread over decades. Regardless of long-term climate concerns, the effort will lead to new ways to generate large amounts of energy for the continued economic growth of the world economy.

Myth 4: All environmentalists are motivated by altruistic

concern for the planet.

Fact: Environmentalists hype scare tactics to

raise money.

In a recent full-page New York Times ad, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) used a misleading attack on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants to call for readers to join NRDC and make tax-deductible gifts to the organization.6

Contrary to the extremist message of fear communicated in that full-page advertisement, recent findings based on research funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicate that the current levels at which Americans consume fish are not harmful. NB NO CITE Public officials have not taken reasonable account of this research, which was published in The Lancet in May 2003, where, according to Gary Myers, pediatric neurologist at the University of Rochester, there is presently no good scientific evidence that moderate fish consumption is harmful to the fetus. Additionally, there is increasing evidence that the nutrients in fish are important for brain development and perhaps for cardiac and brain function in older individuals.7.....

Myth 5 : Environmentalists are all penniless college students, backed by overwhelming scientific opinion.

Fact: Environmental groups have enormous wealth, cry wolf to raise billions of dollars, and their most serious claims have been proven wrong.

Here’s a quiz: What do the countries Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Malawi, and Mali all have in common? The answer is: The entire gross national product of each of these countries,8 which they must spend for all purposes, is less than the enormous amount of money environmental groups raise and spend each year.

Aggregate donations to environmental organizations in 1999 totaled $3.52 billion—up 94 percent from 1992; this corresponds to a daily average fundraising of $9.6 million.9 Adding insult to injury, in Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Malawi, and Mali, millions of people become seriously ill or die from mosquito-borne malaria infections

4

that could be prevented if they could have adequate access to DDT, a pesticide that environmentalist organizations spend tens of millions of dollars annually advocating to get banned from use.

In 2001, the twenty largest environmental groups mailed out over 160 million pieces of direct mail.10 The five highest-paid business partners of Defenders of Wildlife, one of America’s fastest-growing environmental groups, are not conservation groups, but instead are direct mail and telemarketing firms. Six of the largest environmental groups spend so much of their donations raising more money that they do not even meet the minimum performance recommendations of charity watchdog organizations. Eleven of the twenty largest groups include fundraising costs in their tally of money spent protecting the environment, but don’t make that clear to members.11

“Environment, Inc.”, April 22, 2001. [NB: Aggregate charitable giving to environmental and wildlife organizations was $6.6 billion in 2002. Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2003, p. 851]

10 Source: Sacramento Bee, “Environment, Inc.”, April 23, 2001.

11 Source: American Institute of Philanthropy and Sacramento

The use of scare tactics in support of massive fundraising has become so widespread and important as a marketing tool to environmental groups that it has prompted criticism from Patrick Moore, founding member and former president of Greenpeace.12

As for environmental

“experts” being right all the time, consider this remark:

“By the year 2000 … there won’t be any crude oil.” 13

By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate...that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" Kenneth Watt, Ecologist 1970

[; the University

of California-Davis’ Kenneth E. F. Watt, a pioneering systems modeler and author of Principles of

Environmental Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973);]

Or this from a 1975 advertisement for The Environmental Fund, which was signed by 39 academics and industry leaders including authors Isaac Asimov, Malcolm Crowley, and Robert Elegant; professor Zbigniew Brzezinski; former Librarian of Congress/poet Archibald MacLeish; Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgyi; and U.A.W. President Leonard Woodcock:

“The world as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000.” 14

“I now look at the mainstream environmental movement that I loved and can barely recognize it. Why? Because it has abandoned science to follow agendas that have little to do with saving the earth ... We won public support because our protests were founded on logical, scientific arguments. That has largely gone now, to be replaced by a policy of sensationalism, misinformation, and never-ending conflict.”

Patrick Moore, founding member and

former president of Greenpeace

5

Finally, recall the remark of environmentalist Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University:

“If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 and give 10 to 1 that the life of the average Briton would be of distinctly lower quality than it is today.” 15

15 “Population Control or Hobson’s Choice”, In: The Optimum Population for Britain; L.R. Taylor, Ed. 1970.

Myth 6: All environmentalists are peace loving and engage

in traditional forms of civil disobedience.[like the boston tea party?]

Fact: Some environmentalists are responsible

for widespread criminal attacks both here

and abroad.

Radical groups such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) have engaged in acts of eco-terrorism that have led to the destruction of property valued at millions of dollars. Their extremist tactics endanger people, property, and fundamental agricultural and medical research that can benefit humankind. In fact, thousands of crimes perpetrated by environmentalists have been carried out throughout the world. Almost half the experimental fields of GMO strains in France were destroyed during the summer of 2003, ruining years of research.16 In the U.S. their acts include: $12 million in arson damages at a resort in Vail, CO; $50 million in arson damages at condominiums in San Diego, CA; $2 million in arson and vandalism damages to car dealerships, and adjacent businesses in the greater Los Angeles area; and $1.2 million in arson damages to a research lab at Michigan State University.17

13 Jan 201

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Thursday morning, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue argued that “free enterprise” requires a future of accelerated, unending global warming. Supporting expanded fracking, shale oil, and tar-sands development, including the Keystone XL pipeline, Donohue said that the United States should burn hundreds of billions of tons of fossil fuels for hundreds of years:

We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years — and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.

Burning that amount of fossil fuel would generate 444 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the oil, 135 billion tons from the natural gas, and 1.3 trillion tons from the coal. To maintain a climate compatible with civilization, all of humanity needs to limit future greenhouse pollution to less than 650 billion tons [PDF].

Far from “keeping the American Dream alive for generation after generation,” as Donohue claims, his promotion of catastrophic global warming would grant a diminished, deadly world to future generations.

Read Donohue’s remarks promoting the destruction of civilization:

Let’s start with a big one — energy.

Our nation is on the cusp of an energy boom that is already creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, revitalizing entire communities, and reinvigorating American manufacturing.

Unconventional oil and natural gas development is on pace to create more than 300,000 jobs by 2015 in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia alone. Take a look at what’s happening in North Dakota. The state is booming. Unemployment is at 3.4 percent. Oil production just surpassed that of Ecuador — one of the members of OPEC.

Energy is a game changer for the United States. It is, as the saying goes, “the next big thing.” With the right policies, the oil and natural gas industry could create more than 1 million jobs by 2018. Not only can we create jobs, but we can cut our dependence on overseas imports while adding hundreds of billions of dollars to government coffers in the coming years.

Recent discoveries have confirmed that this nation is truly blessed with energy resources. We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years — and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.

To tap our energy resources, we must speed up permitting and end many of the restrictions that have put key areas off-limits. Instead of handpicking a few technologies, we must harness all our resources, traditional and alternative — while expanding nuclear power and driving greater efficiency.

Our biggest and most reliable foreign energy supplier is Canada. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would bring Canadian oil sands down to our Gulf Coast refineries and to other destinations along the way.

This project has passed every environmental test. There is no legitimate reason — none at all — to subject it to further delay. Labor unions and the business community alike are urging President Obama to act in the best interests of our national security and our workers and approve the pipeline. We can put 20,000 Americans to work right away and up to 250,000 over the life of the project.

Donohue also expressed disappointment with Republican attacks on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, calling them “foolish” and “not doing anything other than setting up the ad base for their opponents.”

Brad Johnson is the editor for ThinkProgress Green at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Brad holds a bachelor’s degree in math and physics from Amherst College and master’s degree in geosciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the co-author of Technomanifestos, a history of the Information Revolution, and the founder of HillHeat.com, which covers climate policy in our nation’s capital.

MI state CoC funnels $: During the midterms, while many campaign finance observers were fixated on the proliferation of super-PACs and shadow-spending groups, the RGA spent [5] $132 million—more than the five biggest conservative super-PACs and 501(c) groups combined. It was instrumental in electing a slate of GOP governors—Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Ohio's John Kasich, Georgia's Nathan Deal, and Iowa's Terry Branstad, among others—who hastened to crack down on public-sector unions and roll back environmental regulations. These electoral successes were fueled in part by the creative campaign finance strategy that Robinson began to piece together.

 ---

mckibben: xl

Here’s my case in point, one of a thousand stories people working for social change could tell: All last fall, most of the environmental movement, including 350.org, the group I helped found, waged a fight against the planned Keystone XL pipeline that would bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Canada through the U.S. to the Gulf Coast. We waged our struggle against building it out in the open, presenting scientific argument, holding demonstrations, and attending hearings.  We sent 1,253 people to jail in the largest civil disobedience action in a generation.  Meanwhile, more than half a million Americans offered public comments against the pipeline, the most on any energy project in the nation’s history.

And what do you know? We won a small victory in November, when President Obama agreed that, before he could give the project a thumbs-up or -down, it needed another year of careful review.  (The previous version of that review, as overseen by the State Department, had been little short of a crony capitalist farce.)  Given that James Hansen, the government’s premier climate scientist, had said that tapping Canada’s tar sands for that pipeline would, in the end, essentially mean “game over for the climate,” that seemed an eminently reasonable course to follow, even if it was also eminently political. 

A few weeks later, however, Congress decided it wanted to take up the question. In the process, the issue went from out in the open to behind closed doors in money-filled rooms.  Within days, and after only a couple of hours of hearings that barely mentioned the key scientific questions or the dangers involved, the House of Representatives voted 234-194 to force a quicker review of the pipeline.  Later, the House attached its demand to the must-pass payroll tax cut.

That was an obvious pre-election year attempt to put the president on the spot. Environmentalists are at least hopeful that the White House will now reject the permit.  After all, its communications director said that the rider, by hurrying the decision, “virtually guarantees that the pipeline will not be approved.”

As important as the vote total in the House, however, was another number: within minutes of the vote, Oil Change International had calculated that the 234 Congressional representatives who voted aye had received $42 million in campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry; the 193 nays, $8 million.

Buying Congress

I know that cynics -- call them realists, if you prefer -- will be completely unsurprised by that. Which is precisely the problem.

We’ve reached the point where we’re unfazed by things that should shake us to the core. So, just for a moment, be naïve and consider what really happened in that vote: the people’s representatives who happen to have taken the bulk of the money from those energy companies promptly voted on behalf of their interests.

They weren’t weighing science or the national interest; they weren’t balancing present benefits against future costs.  Instead of doing the work of legislators, that is, they were acting like employees. Forget the idea that they’re public servants; the truth is that, in every way that matters, they work for Exxon and its kin. They should, by rights, wear logos on their lapels like NASCAR drivers.

If you find this too harsh, think about how obligated you feel when someone gives you something. Did you get a Christmas present last month from someone you hadn’t remembered to buy one for? Are you going to send them an extra-special one next year?

And that’s for a pair of socks. Speaker of the House John Boehner, who insisted that the Keystone approval decision be speeded up, has gotten $1,111,080 from the fossil-fuel industry during his tenure. His Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who shepherded the bill through his chamber, has raked in $1,277,208 in the course of his tenure in Washington.

If someone had helped your career to the tune of a million dollars, wouldn’t you feel in their debt? I would. I get somewhat less than that from my employer, Middlebury College, and yet I bleed Panther blue.  Don’t ask me to compare my school with, say, Dartmouth unless you want a biased answer, because that’s what you’ll get.  Which is fine -- I am an employee.

But you’d be a fool to let me referee the homecoming football game. In fact, in any other walk of life we wouldn’t think twice before concluding that paying off the referees is wrong. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, everyone in America would be outraged to see owner Robert Kraft trot out to midfield before the game and hand a $1,000 bill to each of the linesmen and field judges.

If he did it secretly, the newspaper reporter who uncovered the scandal would win a Pulitzer. But a political reporter who bothered to point out Boehner’s and McConnell’s payoffs would be upbraided by her editor for simpleminded journalism.  That’s how the game is played and we’ve all bought into it, even if only to sputter in hopeless outrage.

Far from showing any shame, the big players boast about it: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, front outfit for a consortium of corporations, has bragged on its website about outspending everyone in Washington, which is easy to do when Chevron, Goldman Sachs, and News Corp are writing you seven-figure checks. This really matters.  The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers.  That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.

It also explains why “our” representatives vote, year in and year out, for billions of dollars worth of subsidies for fossil-fuel companies. If there was ever an industry that didn’t need subsidies, it would be this one: they make more money each year than any enterprise in the history of money. Not only that, but we’ve known how to burn coal for 300 years and oil for 200.

Those subsidies are simply payoffs. Companies give small gifts to legislators, and in return get large ones back, and we’re the ones who are actually paying.

...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/armed-with-navete_b_1186178.html?ir=Green

Chinese hacked in May; 450 employees

Fact-Checking the US Chamber of Commerce

America's most overblown business lobby, busted.

By Josh Harkinson | January/February 2010 Issue

With a name that evokes Main Street and Little League teams, and with millions of dollars to spend on lobbying, the US Chamber of Commerce [1] has long been a powerful force on Capitol Hill. But as it's taken more extreme positions on a range of hot-button issues, from flirting with climate change denial [2] to fighting health care reform [3], its reputation as a predictable pro-business group is crumbling.

Last fall, Nike, Apple, and three major utilities quit the Chamber or its board of directors over what one company called its "extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics." Companies such as Dow and General Electric distanced themselves from the group as environmental and labor groups piled on with criticism of the Chamber's cozy relationship with special interests.

Amid the growing backlash, I reported on MotherJones.com that the Chamber had been routinely inflating [4] its membership numbers by 900 percent—claiming 3 million businesses as members when the real number is closer to 300,000. In October, the Yes Men [5] held a fake press conference where they announced that the lobby would now support climate legislation—leading the real Chamber to break with its stance against frivolous lawsuits to sue the anti-corporate pranksters.

The climate farce was just the most visible side of the Chamber's larger agenda to block nearly every major reform effort in Washington. Spending as much as $300,000 a day on lobbying [6], more than any other group or company, the Chamber has opposed efforts to give shareholders more oversight of corporate pay, strengthen the independence of corporate auditors, and create the watchdog Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It's trying to kill the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier for workers to unionize. It has run TV ads in 20 states warning that a public health care option would lead to "government control over your health."

Even after trying to massage its bloated membership claims, the Chamber still insists that it speaks on behalf of a broad cross-section of businesses. But for the past 15 years, it's been taking increasingly extreme, partisan stands, often setting policies in concert with small numbers of powerful donors who may not share the interests of many of the Chamber's members.

It wasn't always this way. The US Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1912 as a counterweight to the increasingly powerful federal government and the labor movement. Back then it generally took a moderate, nonpartisan approach, unlike groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, which opposed efforts to expand workers' compensation and ban child labor. During World War II, the Chamber's president described collective bargaining as "an established and useful reality." Half a century later, as President Bill Clinton prepared to roll out his health care plan, the Chamber's board unanimously backed universal coverage funded by employer mandates.

For members of the Republican class of 1994, however, such consensus building was unacceptable. According to John Judis' *The Paradox of American Democracy* [7], Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the group's chief lobbyist that it was "the Chamber's duty to categorically oppose everything that Clinton was in favor of." Congressional Republicans threatened to ignore the Chamber and hinted that they might start a competing organization. The Chamber caved, reversing its position on the health plan and sending its new lobbyist to apologize to Boehner (now House minority leader).

Three years later, Tom Donohue [8], the hard-charging CEO of the American Trucking Association, took the wheel as Chamber president, pledging to end its days as a "sleeping giant, missing in action from many important political battles." The group's tone became more strident. Senior Vice President Bill Kovacs, one of a few nominally Democratic hires, said Clinton's decision to sign the 1998 Kyoto Protocol was not simply "bad for business" but "unilateral economic disarmament."

The Chamber's politics became synonymous with its biggest corporate donors'. Donohue established special accounts for companies that feared taking controversial public stands, allowing them to anonymously funnel money to the Chamber, which then advocated on their behalf. In 2001, the Wall Street Journal outed Wal-Mart, Daimler Chrysler, and Merck as secret clients. (The Chamber has long refused to name any of its members.) Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability [9], a shareholder advocacy group, says that the Washington head of an S&P 100 company told him that the Chamber will set up a campaign promoting a company's pet cause if it donates at least $1 million annually.

Donohue has served on the boards of several companies that are among the Chamber's most influential members, including Union Pacific railroad, which has given the Chamber $500,000 since 2006. Since 1998, Donohue has earned roughly $2 million in income and up to $2.2 million in stock and options from the railroad, which gets 40 percent of its business from hauling coal and staunchly opposes the Waxman-Markey climate bill. He's expected to abide by a company policy that prevents him from acting in a way that is "inconsistent with the company's best interests." The Chamber has no similar conflict-of-interest policy.

Chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel, who declined to comment on its climate stance and membership claims, downplays Donohue's corporate ties, stressing that its policies are ultimately set by its committees and approved by its board of directors. But current and former members say its policy making is sometimes done undemocratically. For instance, neither the Chamber's board nor its energy and environment committee endorsed the most controversial elements of its climate policy. "There was no vote," says Donald J. Sterhan, the committee's chair. The decision to challenge the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases, he says, came from Kovacs, who last August called for a public hearing on climate science that would be the "Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st century."

The Chamber claims that 96 percent of its members are small businesses, yet its self-selected board includes just 6 representatives from small businesses, 1 from a local chamber, and 111 from large corporations. Mark Jaffe, CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, which belongs to the national group but disagrees with it on climate change and health care, tells me, "They don't represent me."

The more the Chamber throws its weight around to please a few large donors, the more it risks becoming just another special interest. The shift is already under way. "It's a trade association kind of run amok," says a Democratic Party insider who has consulted for the Chamber. After the lobby ran anti-EFCA ads that also targeted Democratic incumbents in 2008, he says, party leaders let it know that "there will be payback." This fall, Energy Secretary Steven Chu [10] described the defections from the Chamber as "wonderful," and the White House openly bypassed the group to talk directly with CEOs.

Chamber president Donohue says this won't change anything. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in October, he declared, "People have criticized us for helping industries or individual companies. What the hell do you think we do? That's our business!"

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/fact-checking-chamber-commerce-tom-donohue

Links:

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/fact-checking-chamber-commerce

[2] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/more-chamber-commerces-climate-denial

[3] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/11/west-virginia-chamber-and-war-coal

[4] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/10/chamber-commerce-smaller-it-appears

[5] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/yes-men-punk-chamber

[6] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/us-chamber-spends-300000-day-lobbying

[7] http://books.google.com/books?id=l5jwgYsemPcC&dq=The+Paradox+of+American+Democracy&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=E3IUS4_DJIfCsgOc8LD9Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[8] http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/09/us-chamber-commerce-president-tom-donohues-climate-conflict-interest-0

[9] http://www.politicalaccountability.net/

[10] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/11/steven-chu-smart-grid

• ### The Chamber's Fuzzy Math

The Chamber of Commerce says it speaks for 3 million businesses. That's hot air.

• ### The Chamber's Spin Cycle

Debunking the Chamber's media blitz spin.

• ### The Chamber's Tough Week

The Chamber of Commerce can't seem to catch a break.

• ### Chamber Sues the Yes Men

The Chamber of Commerce sues the Yes Men over a PR stunt.

The Chamber of Commerce vs. Climate Science

The business lobby's challenge to carbon regulations probably won't convince a court of law. The court of public opinion is another matter.

By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Mar. 1, 2010

LAWSUIT

William Kovacs, the US Chamber of Commerce's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, last year famously called for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate change. Kovacs was referencing the lightning-rod 1925 court case that made it illegal to teach anything other than divine creation in Tennessee public schools—and he wanted a similar public hearing in which climate science would be put on the stand. The remark drew plenty of bad press, and Kovacs soon recanted his "inappropriate" analogy. But it looks like the chamber is angling for that monkey trial after all, by way of a lawsuit it's filed against the Environmental Protection Agency that could be the first wave of a big-business assault on greenhouse gas regulations.

At issue is a scientific finding issued by the EPA last year concluding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health, due to the lower air quality, extreme weather events, and heat waves caused by rising temperatures. The chamber announced its intent to sue the EPA last month in an attempt to have the endangerment finding, as it's known, tossed out. The big-business lobby has been joined by a collection of trade groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Mining Association; free-market think tanks such as FreedomWorks and the Competitive Enterprise Institute; and the attorneys general of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia.

Legally, the chamber and its allies don't have much of a case. In the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases could be covered under the Clean Air Act if they are determined to threaten human health. Their ruling required the EPA to investigate whether carbon emissions did in fact pose a health risk. After the agency's scientists reached that conclusion, the EPA was automatically required to regulate the sources of greenhouse gases—otherwise the agency would be breaking the law. And because the EPA's directive is based on a scientific assessment, not a policy preference, it will be extremely hard to overturn, said Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. "These petitions are a real long-shot," he said. "The appellate courts tend to give a large degree of deference to the technical judgments of expert agencies, especially when they are based like this one is on voluminous studies." In addition, the EPA won't actually enforce regulations on the biggest emitters, like power plants and refineries, until 2011. That means the plaintiffs can't prove they've suffered any harm from the EPA's decision, said John Pendergrass, senior attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, who described the lawsuits challenging the endangerment finding as "premature."

So if the odds of this gambit succeeding are so low, then why is the chamber gearing up for a costly lost cause? The goal of the suit "is political obfuscation," argues Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. That is, the chamber's critics believe that the business lobby group hopes to once again muddy the public understanding of climate change by seeking a high-profile forum in which it can argue that the science isn't settled. "This is part of a media and political strategy. It's not a legal strategy," said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel at Sierra Club, which has intervened in support of the EPA, along with several other environmental groups and 16 states, many of them litigants in the case that originally prompted the agency's action.

The EPA's opponents couldn't have chosen a better time to argue that the science of global warming is still up for debate, thanks to the recent "ClimateGate" emails scandal, and the revelation thatan Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report contained flawed data. In reality, the emails released in the so-called ClimateGate flap showed climate scientists behaving unprofessionally over dissenting views, but nothing in the messages discounted the underlying science of climate change, which has been reaffirmed by thousands of peer-reviewed studies from scientists around the world. And although the IPCC's errors have raised questions about the timing and severity of specific anticipated climate events, they have not altered the overwhelming body of evidence and widespread scientific consensus that the planet is warming due to the burning of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, a number of the legal challenges to the EPA seek to exploit these controversies for maximum PR advantage.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for instance, claimed in a press conference announcing his state's suit that the finding is "based on the tainted data of an agenda-driven international panel." Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II accused the agency of introducing "job-destroying regulations based on unverifiable and unrepeatable so-called science." And the challenge from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, and other free-market groups alleges that the hacked emails scandal "has severely undermined EPA's alleged justification for regulating carbon dioxide."

For its part, the chamber claims that it's not attacking the EPA's scientific assessment. Yet its announcement of the lawsuit did just that—charging that the agency failed to perform "careful analysis of all available data and options" before releasing the "flawed" finding. And in its public comments submitted in advance of the release of the endangerment finding last year, the chamber also disputed the science of climate change, suggesting, among other things, that rising temperatures might actually be beneficial for humans, and that any resulting problems could be addressed by the increased use of air conditioners.

The barrage of lawsuits against the EPA comes as an increasing number of lawmakers in Congress from both parties are moving to attempt to block the agency from cracking down on greenhouse gas emissions. Leading the charge is Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who, with the help of industry lobbyists, has filed a resolution of disapproval that, if signed into law, would nullify the endangerment finding. This rarely used parliamentary maneuver already has 40 cosponsors, including Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), and Mary Landrieu (La.). A bipartisan trio of representatives introduced the same measure in the House in late February.

While EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has pushed back the enforcement of regulations on the largest emissions sources until 2011, she also has made it clear that rules are coming, whether the EPA's adversaries like it or not. "The law of the land found that greenhouse gases are pollutants, and they ordered EPA to make a determination," Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in late February. "I believe I have no choice but to follow the law." But even if the attempts to block the agency ultimately fail, the lawsuits have given opponents of regulation another platform to attack the science and delay action on climate change further. Says Snape of the Center for Biological Diversity, "If the goal of these lawsuits is to muck up the works, well, unfortunately they're getting a little bit of traction."

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/chamber-commerce-vs-climate-science

• ### Chamber of Commerce Climate Civil War Continues
• ### Apple Quits Chamber of Commerce
• ### Another Company Quits Chamber of Commerce Over Climate Position
• ### Fact-Checking the US Chamber of Commerce

America's most overblown business lobby, busted.

lawsuit

But that's not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Chamber is a hard-right ideological operation, which provides massive funding to conservative Republicans, including the new GOP majority in Wisconsin. If you want a sense of just how far right: Glenn Beck held a telethon on their behalf, and :{donated:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: $10,000 of his money. "They are us," he said -- and an executive of the chamber called in to thank him. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent more money lobbying in 2009 than the next five biggest players combined; they spent more money on politics than either the Republican or Democratic National Committees. They're the biggest elephant in the jungle.

Despite their claim to represent three million American businesses, more than half their budget comes from just 16 companies. They don't have to identify them, but it's pretty easy to guess who they might be, since the chamber has devoted much of its time to thwarting any effort to control carbon emissions. For instance, they filed a brief with the EPA demanding they not fight global warming because "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/koch-brothers-the-us-cham_b_834462.html

mckibben

nklein: This is where the intersection between hard-right ideology and climate denial gets truly dangerous. It’s not simply that these “cool dudes” deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity in the developing world. Recognizing the threat posed by this empathy-exterminating mindset is a matter of great urgency, because climate change will test our moral character like little before. The US Chamber of Commerce, in its bid to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions, argued in a petition that in the event of global warming, “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” These adaptations are what I worry about most.

the corp: 

gm cost to keep car from explo 8.58 byt expect court posts 2.40/car so save 6$ by killing ppl 63  1979 MALIBU  woman who had 3 kids burned over 60% (one lost hand) got 107m and punitive 4.8billion, reduced to 1.2 b, then appealed USCoC wrote brief to support cost bene analysis 63 

 -----

defectors:

• Some companies, on the other hand, have distanced

themselves from such practices. PG&E, Exelon,

PNM Resources and Apple all left the US Chamber of

Commerce over the Chamber’s positions and lobbying

against climate change action.11

see also International Chamber of Commerce6

Members include RWE, Shell, ExxonMobil,

Chevron

Claims to have millions of company members,

but among them are Royal Dutch Shell and

ConocoPhilips:

“...the Chamber will tell the EPA in a filing

today that a trial-style public hearing” on

the science of climate change is needed to

“make a fully informed, transparent decision

with scientific integrity based on the actual

record of the science.” William Kovacs,

the Chamber’s senior vice president for

environment, technology and regulatory

affairs, told the Los Angeles Times this hearing

would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st

century”.11

“There are ‘profound and wide-ranging

scientific uncertainties’ about climate change

and its impacts on health and welfare that

are ‘vehemently controverted (sic) among

scientists and technicians of numerous

stripes.’”12

Climate denial; large political contributions

to politicians that will block climate progress;

waging a campaign against ozone pollution

regulation.

greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/climate/2011/WhosHoldingUsBack-ExecSummary.pdf

U.S. Chamber Of Commerce: ‘:{We’ve Never Questioned :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:The Science Behind Global Warming’

By Brad Johnson on Sep 29, 2009 at 2:59 pm

Energy companies are abandoning the sinking ship of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in droves over its opposition to climate change action. The Chamber is aggressively opposing efforts by President Obama and the Congress to fight global warming pollution, saying federal regulation would “strangle the economy” and cap-and-trade legislation would be “economically disruptive of business and industry activities.” However, responding to the criticism of the companies who have left the Chamber, spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel claimed his organization respects the science of climate change:

We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming.

This is a blatant falsehood, by any definition. The Chamber has a long history of questioning the science of climate change. The Chamber’s present campaign against regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency questions the existence of global warming as well as the scientific evidence of its impacts on the public health and welfare. The Chamber promotes global warming denier books “to advance our thinking about issues of significance,” and has promoted the work of global warming denier Pat Michaels since at least 1992:

2009: Chamber SVP Kovacs Calls For ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ On The ‘Science Of Climate Change.’ “It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial.” Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President William Kovacs explained that the Chamber was seeking a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on global warming to prevent the EPA from declaring greenhouse gases a threat to the public welfare. Los Angeles Times, [8/25/09]

2009: Chamber Claims No ‘Plausible Theory’ To Link ‘Climate Change With Extreme Weather Events And Disease In The United States,’ Disputes ‘Claims Of Ocean Acidification.’ In an official filing prepared by the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis for the comments on the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cited blog posts by global warming deniers such as Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger to challenge a broad range of climate change science, including sea level rise and the “UN/IPCC forecasted temperature increases.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce, [8/25/09]

2009: National Chamber Foundation Promotes Global Warming Denier Book As ‘#1′ Top Book Of The Year. Promoting “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Foundation writes: “Climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. explain that climate science is hardly unbiased,” and that the “pop-culture icons of climate change turns out to be short on facts and long on exaggeration.” On Twitter, the National Chamber Foundation ranked the book “#1″ in its “Top Books of ’09.” National Chamber Foundation, [8/20/09]

2008: National Chamber Foundation Promotes Global Warming ‘Deniers’ Book Against ‘Global Warming Hysteria.’ The National Chamber Foundation selected “The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution and Fraud; And those who are too fearful to do so” by Lawrence Solomon to “help shape the debate on issues important to the business community.” National Chamber Foundation, [2008]

2008: Chamber President Tom Donohue Says ‘Scientific Inquiry’ Into Climate Change ‘Should Continue’ Because Of ‘Cooling Trend.’ On March 4, 2008, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue revealed his true thoughts to the Chamber’s board, questioning the science of global warming: “As the scientific inquiry continues (and given the recent reports indicating a cooling trend over the last year, such inquiry should continue) the Chamber supports public and private sector action to control the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce, [3/4/08]

2003: Chamber Says ‘We Need To Have Better Science’ To Justify Climate Action. Following the defeat of the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade climate legislation in 2003, William Kovacs, the Chamber’s vice president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, told the Heartland Institute, “We need to have better science to support any efforts to restrict energy use before Americans can justify sacrificing their jobs, quality of life, and paying almost double for their utility bills.” Heartland Institute, [11/21/03]

2003: Chamber Claims ‘Every Aspect Of The Environment’ Is ‘Getting Cleaner.’ Praising George W. Bush’s environmental record, William Kovacs dismissed the concept of global warming pollution. “The air, along with every other aspect of the environment, is getting cleaner. I think that has been a true statement for the last 30 years, and it will continue to be. I think Bush has been continuing along that path.” New York Times, [2/23/2003]

2001: Chamber Claims Global Warming ‘About One Percent From Human Activity,’ Says ‘Things Just Change.’ Appearing on CNNFN, William Kovacs challenged the “link” between human activity and global warming and called for more research. “Let me address two issues. One is, the link. You know, let’s be realistic, 95 percent of all greenhouse gases, you know, really come from water vapor; and another 3 or 4 percent from natural causes, and we’re down to about one percent from human activity. So the Bush plan is really twofold. One is, we’re going to spend another 120-$130 million to see if we can get some of the tough issues, and make the links. Even EPA agrees. You know, yes, there is global warming, but you know, 20 years ago, we were worried about global cooling. Things just change, and before we sink the economy, we need to make sure we’ve got the right research done.” [CNNFN, 7/16/2001]

1992: Chamber Sponsors Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels To ‘Refute The Global Warming Warnings.’ “Bankrolled partly by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Global Climate Coalition, a group of manufacturers fearful of new environmental regulations, Patrick Michaels and Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene M. Trisko have been traveling cross-country to refute the global warming warnings from environmentalists.” [Chicago Sun-Times, 5/13/1992]

Update

U.S. Chamber of Commerce board member Don Blankenship, the president and CEO of coal giant Massey Energy who has argued “greeniacs are taking over the world,” told Forbes yesterday that global warming is a “hoax”:

I think it’s all a hoax and a Ponzi scheme. I can’t find any logic to the fact that the climate is actually changing any more because of man than it would without man.

http://thinkprogress.org/tag/william-kovacs/

sunlight:

http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/us-chamber-of-commerce/99a03e3657514a37a6ab150a1caa8fb8

rs dirty doz

Donahue likes to call his organization "the voice of business." But under his leadership, the Chamber has become the voice of big polluters like ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. "The main purpose of the Chamber," says climate expert Joe Romm, "is to launder money from large industries and multinational corporations to affect public policy." Last year, the Chamber spent $81 million on lobbying, far more than any other group. During the midterm election, it also pledged $75 million for ads to help elect Republicans, nearly all of whom are ardent climate deniers. After helping to derail climate legislation and calling for a new "Scopes monkey trial" on the science of global warming, Donahue is now taking aim at the EPA, pushing industry-friendly studies to argue that tougher regulation of climate pollution will destroy millions of jobs and shrink the economy by $1 trillion.

cmd:

The**U.S. Chamber of Commerce**has enlisted**Andrew Card**, former White House Chief of Staff under President Bush, and Democratic former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh for a national "road show" to rally businesses to oppose government regulations. Communications for the road show are being handled by Chamber employee Thomas Collamore, who formerly was vice president of Philip Morris Corporate Affairs -- the department that was responsible for thwarting local, state and national policies to reduce tobacco use. The Chamber plans to formally announce the Bayh and Card road show on June 22, 2011, and then will start flying the two around the country to gather support for rolling back regulations designed to protect the environment, consumers and workers. A June 2 memo to the Chamber's Board of Directors says the two will give speeches, and attend events and media appearances at local venues across the country. The Chamber's effort is aimed at fighting the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, minimizing the power of the recently-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, blocking OSHA workplace safety and health programs, hampering employees' ability to join unions and other pro-business reforms. The Chamber has spent months soliciting millions of dollars in funding from Wall Street financial firms, insurance and energy companies for this anti-regulatory effort.

Funding: not helpful

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00082040

laUNDERING $:

Themis hit squad:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/15/944614/-HBGary,-Themis,-bloggers,-and-traditional-media:-What-a-tangled-Web

SEPTEMBER

On September 10, U.S. Chamber Watch files charges with the IRS that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “violated tax codes by laundering millions of dollars meant for charitable work from a group with ties to the insurance giant AIG.”

OCTOBER

On October 5, ThinkProgress exposes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for directing foreign funds into the general account it uses for political expenditures to defeat progressive candidates.

On October 7, MoveOn, Public Citizen, and other progressive organizations protest the Chamber’s plan to spend $75 million against progressive candidates, and their lack of transparency over foreign money, in front of Chamber headquarters in Washington D.C.

On October 19, Matthew Steckman (Palantir) emails Aaron Barr (HBGary) and Patrick Ryan (Berico) about “about offering a complete intelligence solution to a law firm that approached us” using “social media exploitation.” “Looking forward to discussing this opportunity,” Barr replies. Ryan says it “sounds like a great opportunity.”

On October 25, Steckman introduces John Woods to Patrick Ryan and Aaron Barr. They plan to meet on Nov 4 (gets moved to Nov 3) because Woods says “I have to make our formal pitch to the client early the following week.”

On October 28, Ryan outlines H&W’s problem: “A client of theirs is targeted by another entity, specifically a labor union, that is trying to extract some kind of concession or favorable outcome.” They have not yet learned the name of the client.

On October 30, Barr emails the group with a document for the proposal that is a triumph of biztalk verbiage.

NOVEMBER

On November 1, Barr emails the group with the info he’d collected on H&W, including John Woods’ family, by scraping LinkedIn and Facebook. He “grabbed all the partners friends lists that have facebook accounts,” 21 in all. “One of the steps we will do once we start on contract is do [sic] automate some of the scraping an artifact collection into single files and then develop a helper app that can parse all this information into the right fields. Should be easy.”

On November 2, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue praises the Republican gains in Congress, governorships, and state legislatures: “Today Americans sent a powerful message to Washington: Focus on job creation and economic growth. Voters have resoundingly rejected more government spending, higher taxes, and more burdensome regulations that have caused crippling uncertainty for businesses.” Meanwhile, the group of private security contractors comes up with the name “Team Themis.”

On November 3, John Woods meets with Patrick Ryan, Aaron Barr, etc. to discuss the project. In their “Corporate Information Reconnaissance Cell” slide show: “Purpose: Develop a corporate information reconnaissance service to aid legal investigations through the open source collection of information on target groups and individuals that appear organized to extort specific concessions through online slander campaigns.” It appears that at the meeting it was revealed that the client is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

On November 4, Themis has a conference call to discuss their pricing proposal. Steckman notes “Their client is loaded!” Ryan forwards the group a Chamber of Commerce booklet on corporate campaigns that Sam Kremin had found.

On November 5, Ryan asks Woods what data H&W has, wondering if it includes “Financial Records, Union Rosters, IP addresses” and “access to the union in question’s membership lists”. Ryan attaches a $200,000 cost proposal.

On November 7, Woods tells Ryan he will be meeting on November 9 “with the team at HW who has gathered the underlying data” and asks about how pricing will work.

On November 8 Woods and Ryan talk on the phone.

On November 9, Woods asks Barr to “impress” Richard Wyatt by investigating Stop The Chamber. Woods says Wyatt “might freak out” if he saw all the personal info Barr had collected by scraping social media sites. Barr is already collecting data on a number of anti-Chamber sites, including ThinkProgress. He tells Woods about what he found about Michael Gehrke. Aaron Barr also tells John Woods and Patrick Ryan the info he had found about VelvetRevolution.us, Brad Friedman, Emily Levy, ThinkProgress, and Debbie Fine. He also emails John Woods to tell him “Lets say we can publicly tie Joe Trippi (http://www.facebook.com/trippi) and his company to the development of videos for organization X. We can take videos released by organization Y and analyze the internals to see if there are forensic markers that are a match.”

On November 10, Woods talked with Ryan and “set up a meeting” for November 12 at the Palantir offices intended to get Richard Wyatt “to sign off on the project.”

On November 11, Barr sends Berico’s Kremin and Ryan a document with his research of “Chamber Opposition,” downloads of the Facebook supporters of Change To Win, Code Pink, Stop The Chamber, US Chamber Watch, Velvet Revolution, and a list of the Facebook friends of the Velvet Revolution’s Brett Kimberlin.

On November 12, representatives from Palantir, Berico, and HBGary meet with John Woods and Richard Wyatt. The expectation is set for a presentation to the Chamber of Commerce on November 23.

On November 15, Steckman says that the contractors have agreed on a plan for a $200,000 initial month of work, which would then become $2 million monthly for six months, split 50% Palantir, 25% each for Berico and HBGary. Ryan expresses some concerns that $2 million a month “sounds high.”

On November 16, Berico formally sub-contracts HBGary Federal “to submit a proposal to Hunton & Williams (herein referred to as ‘Customer’) in response to their request for assistance within the realm of legal discovery to provide certain software platforms and maintenance, and systems integrators and analysts in order to better conduct cyber investigations and Corporate Campaign Analysis (herein referred to as the ‘Program.’)” The contract is signed by Nicholas Hallam, Berico COO and Aaron Barr, HBGary CEO. In a separate email, Barr expresses amazement that Palantir wants $1 million a month for six months.

docs: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/25/959652/-Wikileaks-Reader:-HBGary-+-ChamberLeaks?detail=hide

--

ctr attack

http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-san-jose/:{anonymous:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:-announces-us-chamber-of-commerce-target

Earlier this month, Richard Clarke, who served for both Democratic and Republican Presidents, including a stint as the cyber security czar for the Bush administration, denounced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for plotting with a group of military contractors to hack into progressive groups. Clarke was in DC speaking at a cyber security conference hosted by Symantec. Although Clarke focused his remarks about the growing threat of global cyber terrorism, ThinkProgress spoke to the longtime public servant about the ChamberLeaks story we originally broke.

According to documents first reported by ThinkProgress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s attorneys began working with three military contractors — Berico, HB Gary, and Palantir — to come up with a proposal to discredit groups like ThinkProgress, the SEIU, StopTheChamber.com, MoveOn.org, and others. The tactics proposed included spying on families, using malware computer viruses to steal private information, using fake documents to embarrass liberals, and creating fake identities to infiltrate their targets.

Clarke denounced the scandal in no uncertain terms. Noting accurately that the Chamber “took foreign money in the last election,” a story also uncovered by ThinkProgress, Clarke said the Chamber had potentially conspired to commit a “felony”:

FANG: Hi. You talked a lot about classifying and recognizing cyber security threats, but you mostly focused on foreign threats. I’m curious about a story that broke last month, that the US Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest trade association, based here in DC, had contracted or attempted to contract military defense firms like HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico, to develop proposals to use the same type of cyber warfare tactics normally reserved for Jihadi websites against left-wing activists, trade — labor unions, and left of center think tanks here in America. What do you think about that type of threat from a lobbyist or a corporation targeting political enemies, or perceived enemies here in the US?

CLARKE: I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours.

Listen here:

Clarke, the author of a new book called Cyber War, was right to point out that hacking into progressive groups constitutes a felony. There are a number of federal and state statutes that prohibit the theft of private computer information.

Recently, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) formally requested documents from the NSA and Defense Department relating to contracts with two of the firms involved in this scandal, Berico and HB Gary. Nineteen other lawmakers have called for a wider investigation.

Update

David Chavern, the chief operating officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has responded to Clarke’s comments and this post on the Chamber’s blog. Claiming ThinkProgress is on an “anti-Chamber jihad,” Chavern states:

In more than 70,000 hacked e-mails, not one shred of evidence was found demonstrating that the U.S. Chamber ever hired or solicited proposals from any of these security companies. No evidence was found because it doesn’t exist—it never happened.

In fact, as ThinkProgress has reported, there are over half a dozen e-mails showing that the Chamber’s attorneys discussed and solicited the hacking plans from military contractors Berico, HB Gary, and Palantir. One e-mail notes that a video showing Palantir’s product capability in dealing with Iran for the U.S. government had “sold the Chamber in the first place.” In November, as the military contractors prepared multiple proposals and attack plans for the Chamber, there were several meetings with both Chamber officials and attorneys for the Chamber. On November 23, 2010, a meeting was scheduled where Richard Wyatt, a top attorney for the Chamber, would be “presenting to the client.”

mention

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175311/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit,_invasion_of_the_democracy_crushers/

A story of election-year vampirism led last Thursday’s NBC Nightly News with correspondent Michael Isikoff reporting on “a kind of secret fortune that has been flowing into congressional campaigns in these midterm elections,” with Karl Rove’s right-wing front-group American Crossroads, among others, “expecting to raise as much as $250 million dollars to flood the airways in the last weeks of the election.”  The next morning the New York Times reported on a bevy of top corporations (Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Texaco, and Dow Chemical, to name just four) who have funneled multi-millions through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce into massive national ad and influence campaigns in these last years -- and on one right-wing contributor who stepped happily out of the dark to the tune of $7 million (also for American Crossroads).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/us/politics/22chamber.html

Top Corporations Aid U.S. Chamber of Commerce Campaign

By ERIC LIPTON, MIKE McINTIRE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Published: October 21, 2010

Prudential Financialsent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Dow Chemicaldelivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.

And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has been critical of growing federal regulation and spending. These large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group that keeps its donors secret, as it is allowed by law — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.

The U.S. Chamber - A Multi-Million Dollar Shell Game

http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/news/news/inside-chambers-million-dollar-shell-game

In the late summer of 2009, with the health care reform debate heating up, ads began appearing all over the country attacking the legislation. Months later, the National Journalrevealed that major insurers including Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint had funneled between $10 million and $20 million to the U.S. Chamber to fund the campaign. Meanwhile, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade association, continued to public voice support for reform.The duplicitous campaign is typical of the role the U.S. Chamber plays in corporate lobbying since CEO Tom Donohue took over the organization in 1996. He’s **:{quadrupled:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:** its budget to $200 million annually (as of October 2009) and built the most powerful anti-reform lobbying force in Washington.  And he’s done it by soliciting large donations from a small group of CEOS of very large corporations who want to keep their lobbying agendas secret.

Last year, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. Chamber’s contributions came from just 25 contributors.While it claims 3 million members, the U.S. Chamber’s three biggest (and anonymous) donors accounted for nearly one in every five dollars raised by the lobbying firm, which operates as a non-profit trade association.

The Wall Street Journalunmasked the strategy as early as 2001. Donohue’s big innovation was setting up separate accounts to take in money for projects on behalf of individual companies and industries. It allowed corporations “to use the Chamber as a means of anonymously pursuing their own political ends,” the Journalreported.  Unlike most Washington trade groups that concentrate on narrow concerns and shun partisan politics, the U.S. Chamber has allowed itself to be bought by its largest donors, who are driving an inflexible, highly partisan agenda.

The hallmarks of U.S. Chamber campaigns are anonymity and misrepresentation. The website for its campaign to “Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Agency” does not reveal which banks and credit card companies financed the multi-million dollar lobbying and advertising campaign attacking the proposed agency. The ads featured small businesses complaining the agency would crack down on tiny businesses that offer store credit. “The Chamber was surely engaging in hyperbole,” the New York Times’ “You’re the Boss” column reported. “Even President Obama weighed in to point out that running a tab hardly qualifies as ‘financial services’ subject to regulation.”

With the 2010 Congressional elections looming, the U.S. Chamber has stepped up its anonymous fundraising to build a huge war chest to unseat supporters of health care reform, financial services reform and climate change legislation. The Los Angeles Timesreports that U.S. Chamber fundraising for the year is expected to soar well above the $144 million raised last year, with much of it earmarked for local ads targeting Democratic incumbents during the fall elections.

The template? The U.S. Chamber ran $1 million in so-called “issue ads” in the final days of the Massachusetts race that elected Republican Scott Brown, who won the race with the U.S. Chamber’s support and quickly voted with their position against health care reform legislation.  Tom Donohue called it the model for their 2010 effort.

donohue started legal reform: spoke at conf http://www.legalreformsummit.com/

DIRTY TRICKS:

Earlier today, ThinkProgress published an exclusive report that the law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing trade association representing big business, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress. According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Attorneys for the firm solicited a set of private security firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop a sabotage campaign against progressive groups and labor unions, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/chamberleaks-target-families/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/the-ridiculous-plan-to-attack-wikileaks.ars/

EXCLUSIVE: US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents

ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win. View a screenshot below:

The security firms hoped to obtain $200,000 for initial background research, then charge up to $2 million for a larger disinformation campaign against progressives. We don’t know if the proposal was accepted after Phase 1 was completed.

The e-mails ThinkProgress acquired are available widely on the web. They were posted by members of “Anonymous,” the hactivist community responsible for taking down websites for oppressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and American corporations that have censored WikiLeaks. Anonymous published the emails from HBGary Federal because an executive at the firm, Aaron Barr, was trying to take Anonymous down. Barr claimed that he had penetrated Anonymous and was hoping to sell the data to Bank of America and to federal authorities in the United States. In response, members of Anonymous hacked into Barr’s email and published some 40,000 company e-mails.

It is widely believed that Wikileaks has sensitive information about Bank of America, and plans to expose it later this year. This revelation prompted Bank of America to hire the law/lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which in turn, according to the e-mails posted online by Anonymous, hired HBGary Federal and other firms to go after Anonymous and supporters of Wikileaks. For instance, one proposal from HBGary Federal and its associates proposed targeting Salon reporter and Wikileaks-supporter Glenn Greenwald with “actions to sabotage or discredit” him.

ThinkProgress has published a series of articles investigating the Chamber and its activities. We exposed the Chamber’s efforts to coordinate a lobbying campaign on behalf of large banks, including JP Morgan, to kill significant portions of financial reform. In October, we published a series looking into the Chamber’s efforts to solicit donations from foreign corporations for the same account the Chamber used to run partisan attack ads during the midterm campaign, as well as the Chamber’s participation in secret fundraising meetings convened by the billionaire plutocrats David and Charles Koch.

ThinkProgress will be posting more details of the Chamber lobbyist campaign to target progressives soon.

– With reporting from Scott Keyes

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/lobbyists-chamberleaks/

another:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/15/944614/-HBGary,-Themis,-bloggers,-and-traditional-media:-What-a-tangled-Web

filed brief in Citizens United:

http://www.cuvfec.com/documents/case-08-205/CU-Merits-8.pdf

nrdc tracks defections:

http://www.whodoesthechamberrepresent.org/

it has its own Energy Inst:http://www.uschamber.com/press/releases/2010/february/new-energy-institute-analysis-copenhagen-commitments-fall-short

33m on 201  (politico says 75m just on House http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46049.html

full report:http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/sites/default/files/us_chamebr_watch_-_the_echo_chamber_-_final_formatted_2.pdf

...The Chamber, Boehner and McConnell: A Love Story

Speaker-elect Boehner’s relationship with the U.S. Chamber is well-documented. In a New York Times profile of him, Boehner’s comeback to power is explained: “It is his reputation as a ‘Chamber of Commerce’ Republican and his fund-raising skills — he has raised $36 million for Republican causes during this election cycle, more than almost anyone else in his party — that explain, in part, his rise.”5

One of Boehner’s top individual donors was a U.S. Chamber lobbyist,6 and this year, Boehner invited the Chamber’s top lobbyist to attend a controversial closed-door meeting about the America Speaking Out project.7 On issue after issue that pits the U.S. Chamber against the mainstream business community and the general public, Boehner adopts the Chamber’s talking points. Most egregiously, after U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue made headlines saying that American taxpayers should help pay for the BP oil spill cleanup, Boehner agreed: “I think the people responsible in the oil spill--BP and the federal government--should take full responsibility for what's happening there,” he said.

A similar dynamic exists in the Senate, where the U.S. Chamber has long-standing ties to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. The director of McConnell’s first reelection campaign and subsequent chief of staff, Steven Law, went on to become the U.S. Chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel (a position he very recently left to serve as CEO of American Crossroads,9 a right-wing organization that coordinated with the U.S. Chamber to funnel tens of millions of dollars into this year’s elections).10 

While Law was at the U.S. Chamber, the Chamber fought hard for McConnell, lauding his anti-health care reform stance11 and running ads in McConnell’s 2008 election against his opponent.12 McConnell worked just as hard for the U.S. Chamber: in 2008, the Chamber awarded him a 100 percent rating, reflecting McConnell’s support of the interests of the U.S. Chamber’s corporate funders on every vote the Chamber counted that year. Over his twenty-six-year Senate career, McConnell boasts a lifetime U.S. Chamber of Commerce rating of ninety-one percent.13 As the Chamber has sought to portray President Obama’s administration as anti-business, McConnell walked the Chamber line “on the issue of curbing the Obama administration's appetite for stronger business regulation,”14 saying, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”15

Boehner and McConnell’s loyalty to the U.S. Chamber is mirrored by the new class of mostly Republican representatives the Chamber worked to elect this fall, spending at least $31,702,779 on ads in federal races alone (although the total...

http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=C30001101&cycle=2010

But the chamber does what it does with a twist. It claims to represent "three million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions." The organization, that is, seems to speak for a country full of barbers and florists, car dealers, restaurant owners, and insurance salesmen, not to mention the small entrepreneurs who make up local and state chambers of commerce across the country.

At least when it comes to energy and climate, though, that claim is, politely put, a fib. The Chamber of Commerce doesn't have to say where it gets its money, but last year a group called U.S. ChamberWatch used one of the last disclosure laws still in existence to uncover a single pertinent fact. They went to the headquarters of the chamber and asked to see its IRS 990 form. It showed that 55% of its funding came from just 16 companies, each of which gave more than a million dollars. It doesn't have to say which companies, but by their deeds shall you know them.

The chamber has long opposed environmental standards. In the 1980s, it fought a ban on the dumping of hazardous waste. In the 1990s, it fought smog and soot standards. On climate change, though, it's gone pretty near berserk.

In 2009, for instance, one of its officials even demanded a "twenty-first century Scopes monkey trial" for global warming: "It would be the science of climate change on trial," the chamber's senior vice-president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs explained.

That didn't go over so well. Several high-profile companies quit the chamber. Apple Computer, the very exemplar of the universe of cutting-edge technology, explained: "We would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis."

Other businesses complained that they hadn't been consulted. Some, like Nike, quit the organization's board. "We just weren't clear in how decisions on climate and energy were being made," said a Nike spokesman.

One thing was for sure: they weren't being made by three million small businesses -- because many local chambers of commerce started quitting the chamber as well. From Florida and South Carolina to Missouri and Kansas, from Colorado and Pennsylvania to New Hampshire and Washington, dozens of local chambers have announced that the U.S. Chamber doesn't speak for them on these issues. In Largo, Florida, for instance, the head of the local chamber explained that the U.S. Chamber was composed, "for the most part, of political action committees and business lobbyists. They hold little resemblance to the local chambers of commerce that have been the cornerstone of their communities for generations."

Faced with that kind of incipient rebellion, the chamber backtracked just a little, issuing a statement saying that they didn't really want a global warming version of a monkey trial after all, and that climate change was an "important issue." (The same statement went on to call for transforming the United States into the "Saudi Arabia of clean coal.")

The happy talk in public, however, has done nothing to change the agenda the chamber pushes so powerfully in private. The same year as that statement, for instance, the organization**petitioned**the Environmental Protection Agency to take no action on global warming on the grounds that "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations."

Now, read that again. No suggestion here that 16 dinosaur companies adapt their business model to a reality that now includes melting ice caps, desertification and massive flooding, ever fiercer storms and acidifying oceans. Instead, they would prefer that every human being (and every other species) be so kind as to adapt their behavior and physiology to the needs of this tiny coterie of massive contributors. Forever.

What's become clear is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an organization formed in 1912, more than a century after the first local chamber came into being, is anything but a benign umbrella for American small businesses. Quite the opposite: it's a hard-edged ideological shop. It was Glenn Beck, after all, who said of the chamber that "they are us," and urged his viewers to send them money. (Beck personally contributed $10,000 of the $32 million he earned in 2009.) The chamber's chief lobbyist even called in to offer his personal thanks. It shouldn't have come as a great surprise: Beck's Fox News parent, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, had given its own million-dollar donation to the chamber.

from: http://mobile.salon.com/politics/war_room/2011/02/22/money_pollution/index.html

Posted by Matt Trojan on February 17, 2011

Chamber Has :{Chevron's:(style="background-color:#ed1c24"):}: Back - :{Again:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

Earlier this week, an Ecuadorian judge handed down a historic settlement for an eighteen year lawsuit pegging Big Oil against the indigenous people of Ecuador. Issuing an $8.6 billion ruling, the court found that Chevron was liable for the environmental devastation and health risks brought on by its subsidiary Texaco during the 1970s and 1980s. Rebecca Tarbotton at AlterNet summed up the significance of the ruling: More... http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/tracking-the-chamber/chamber-has-chevrons-back-again

MoJo oct 09

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/more-chamber-commerces-climate-denial

--

McKibben:

What’s become clear is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an organization formed in 1912, more than a century after the first local chamber came into being, is anything but a benign umbrella for American small businesses. Quite the opposite: it’s a hard-edged ideological shop. It was Glenn Beck, after all, who said of the chamber that “they are us,” and urged his viewers to send them money. (Beck personally contributed $10,000 of the $32 million he earned in 2009.) The chamber’s chief lobbyist even called in to offer his personal thanks. It shouldn’t have come as a great surprise: Beck’s Fox News parent, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, had given its own million-dollar donation to the chamber.

..

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175358/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben%2C_:{chamber_of_carbon:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/

After losing several high-profile members over its climate policy, the US Chamber of Commerce spent much of this week attempting to convince the public that it does believe global warming is a serious concern that Congress should act upon. But in comments recently submitted by the group to the Environmental Protection Agency, the group advanced a very different view. In its submission, the Chamber questioned the science behind the phenomenon of climate change, suggested that humans are now less vulnerable to rising temperatures because of the growing use of air conditioners—and theorized that even if the planet is getting warmer, that might be a good thing.

The Chamber's comment was submitted to the EPA on June 23 in response to the agency's finding in April that carbon dioxide is a hazard to human health. The 86-page document is packed with claims that cast doubt on that conclusion. An excerpt:

The Administrator has thus ignored analyses that show that a warming of even 3 [degrees] C in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans because the reduction of wintertime mortality/morbidity would be several times larger than the increase in summertime heat stress- related mortality/morbidity.

The comment also takes aim at the EPA for relying on the research of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a massive, decade-long, peer-reviewed study by leading scientists of the effects of global warming. According to the Chamber, the EPA based their finding "entirely on untested scientific sources—mostly a U.N. report" and noting that "the science on which EPA proposes to rely raises questions on unprecedented controversy."

It concludes: there are "profound and wide-ranging scientific uncertainties" about climate change and its impacts on health and welfare that are "vehemently controverted among scientists and technicians of numerous stripes."

The Chamber also submitted a supporting document, "Detailed Review of EPA’s Health and Welfare Scientific Evidence," that includes even more bizarre statements about climate change, including:

http://www.:{sourcewatch:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.org/index.php?title=U.S._Chamber_of_Commerce

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group in the United States that "has become a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine" since CEO and president Thomas J. Donohue took office in 1997. Prior to Donohue's tenure, the Chamber "used to be a trade association that advocated in a bipartisan manner for narrowly tailored policies to benefit its members." ^[1] The Chamber's 2010 budget is approximately $200 million, but as a trade organization, its donors can remain anonymous. ^[2]

The Chamber claims on its website that its mission is to "advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility."^[3] It describes itself as "the world's largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region."^[4]

Despite these claims, the New York Times reported in October 2010 that half of the Chamber's $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 big-money donors, many of whom enlisted the Chamber's help to fight political and public opinion battles on their behalf (such as opposing financial or healthcare reforms, or other regulations). ^[2] The Chamber is "dominated by oil companies, pharmaceutical giants, automakers and other polluting industries," according to James Carter, executive director of the Green Chamber of Commerce.^[5]

Accusations of tax fraud and money laundering

2010 Complaint

In September, 2010, two national watchdog groups, U.S. Chamber Watch and StopTheChamber.com, filed complaints with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service asking the agency to investigate the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for criminal fraud and money laundering. The groups allege that the Chamber illegally funneled donations from a wealthy charitable foundation into its political battles. Chamber Watch said that $12 million of an $18 million donation that the wealthy Starr Foundation gave (pdf) gave to the National Chamber Foundation was in the form of loans that have never been repaid. Chamber Watch says the money was diverted to finance political causes, including tort reform, to shield companies like AIG from liability lawsuits. The Starr Foundation was founded by Cornelius Vander Starr, the insurance entrepreneur who also founded AIG. The Foundation's Chairman of the Board of Directors is Maurice R. Greenberg, former President and CEO of AIG. The Foundation's Director (and Treasurer) is Howard I. Smith, AIG's former Chief Financial Officer. StopTheChamber.com says it was contacted by a Chamber whistleblower who described (pdf) how Chamber CEO Tom Donohue is "scamming [business] clients to serve his own interests rather than the interests of the business community." The insider compared Donohue to Jack Abramoff and Bernie Madoff. He also alleged that Donohue does not fear the Federal Elections Commission or Congress, and has a plan set up to attack the U.S. Department of Justice if the agency ever tries to investigate him.^[6]

The September charge echoed similar charges made earlier in the year, in January, 2010, that six of the largest health insurance companies in the U.S. had been secretly funneling millions of dollars to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose health reform. The total amount in this instance was estimated at between $10 million and $20 million. According to a report in the National Journal online, the money was used "to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber."^[7][8] ^ NO^ ^RULINGS?

2006 Public Citizen Complaint

On October 31, 2006, Public Citizen filed a complaint^[9] with the IRS asking it to investigate whether the Chamber and "its affiliated Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) failed to report millions in taxable spending from 2000 to 2004 intended to influence state-level attorney general and supreme court races and federal races around the country."^[10]

It also asked the IRS to investigate whether Chamber and the ILR, "which are two separate legal entities, combined funds in a shared bank account to hide accurate reporting of investment or interest income for tax avoidance. ... Court records, internal corporate documents and media reports indicate that the Chamber and the ILR engaged in a massive campaign to affect the outcome of state and federal races through direct expenditures and grants made to organizations that carried out the Chamber’s wishes."^[10]

Public Citizen reported that^[10]

"In 2000, the Chamber claimed it spent $6 million on judicial races and took credit for winning 15 out of 17 state supreme court contests. In 2002, the Chamber said it planned to spend $40 million on political campaigns, divided equally between congressional and state-level attorneys general and judicial races. None of these activities were reported on their tax returns from 2000 to 2003."In 2004, the first year since at least 2000 that the Chamber and the ILR reported political expenditures, both organizations appear to have underreported their spending. They reported a combined $18 million, but in a 'President's Update' memo released the day after the November elections, Chamber President Thomas Donohue claimed the group had spent up to $30 million in races around the country."The Chamber and ILR also failed to report grants and allocations to outside groups as required by Line 22 of IRS Form 990. Both organizations reported no grants to outside groups from 2000 to 2004. But in a 2005 deposition, a Chamber official acknowledged that the Chamber had partnered with at least six outside groups to advance its agenda to avoid garnering unwanted critical attention. At least two 501(c) organizations, the Washington-based American Taxpayers Alliance and the Columbus-based Citizens for a Strong Ohio, reported receipt of contributions from the U.S. Chamber."

U.S. election

2010 Midterm Elections

The U.S. Chamber played a major role in the Republican victories in the 2010 midterm Congressional elections, promising to spend $75 million (and reporting only $32 million), and helping to organize and coordinate spending by other "outside interest groups" like American Crossroads and American Action Network ^[11] In a blog post the night before the election, the Chamber stated it “had been a game-changing political force in these midterms. We’ve engaged in tight, competitive races; and we’ve altered them.”^[12]

The Chamber claimed it offered support to all pro-business candidates, regardless of party affiliation. However, according to a report from the union-backed Chamber Watch, "[i]t worked almost exclusively to elect Republicans in the powerful Senate, giving one lone endorsement to a Democrat, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, on whom it made no expenditures. On the House side, the Chamber created an appearance of bipartisanship by spending on behalf of eleven Democrats. But the Chamber’s support for Democratic members was razor-thin, and sometimes, the Chamber withheld support altogether, even where Democratic members worked hard to earn the Chamber’s approval." ^[13]

Whats more, while 93% of reported expenditures went to support Republicans, the 6% spent to support Democrats were spent on generic, non-candidate-specific ads, rather than more effective ads attacking opponents. The ads tended not to identify candidate-specific positive qualities, instead relying on a template with the same title for several different candidates, only changing the candidate’s name, picture and office number. The ads were also run later than ads supporting their Republican counterparts.^[13

Link to American Crossroads

American Crossroads and the Chamber are closely tied, and closely coordinated their efforts in the 2010 midterm elections.

In 2008, Chamber President Tom Donahue told the Los Angeles Times that he wanted to get very involved with elections. 'Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business. "We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said.' ^[14]

According to the U.S. Chamber Watch report:

"The U.S. Chamber first began to coordinate massive Republican resources when its general counsel, Steven Law, met with Ed Gillespie, Republican political strategist and former Counselor to President George W. Bush. According to the Associated Press, Law met with Gillespie in October of 2009, “calculating how to exploit the voter anger they had seen erupt at Democratic town hall meetings that summer.” ^[15]It was at this meeting that they conceived of American Crossroads an organization, that according to its website, is dedicated to “renewing America’s commitment to individual liberty, limited government, free enterprise and a strong national defense.” Law left the U.S. Chamber to serve as the group’s CEO.

According to Think Progress:

“At every turn, from the operatives running the two organizations to their targeted races to their media firms, American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are bound to one another…the two groups have exhibited uncanny coordination in their election targeting. In a number of Senate races, the Chamber and American :Crossroads coordinated their advertisements – one group put up ads in a race as the other group pulled its own down – in :order to ensure attack ads were always running against the Democratic candidate.” ^[16

Post-Election Backlash

The U.S. Chamber's partisan, corporate-funded (and often untrue) campaign attacks have compelled many local Chambers of Commerce to disassociate from the U.S. Chamber. ^[17] Despite the U.S. Chamber's attempts to portray itself as a community of small businesses and local Chambers of Commerce, the interests the U.S. Chamber served in the 2010 elections were those of its large corporate donors. More than 40 local chambers issued statements during the campaign distancing themselves from the U.S. Chamber, including chambers in the "battleground states" of Iowa and New Hampshire. Some chambers are considering what Politico calls the "extraordinary" step of ending their affiliation with the U.S. Chamber and quitting in protest. ^[18]

U.S. Politic

Climate Change Legislation

In 2009, the Chamber of Commerce lobbied against climate change legislation introduced by Congress. In describing its strategy, the Chamber says it will "resist ill-conceived legislation that is economically disruptive of business and industry activities, that creates regulatory and legislative obstacles to development and deployment of affordable, innovative energy technologies, and that could severely damage the security and economy of the United States."^[19] The chamber said it supports "mainstream, common sense views" on climate change, but that it opposes the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill passed by the House of Representatives on June 26, 2009.^[20

The group's opposition to the legislation has caused a rift among its corporate members. A number of companies have announced they are leaving the organization as a result of its stance on climate change regulations. Energy companies Exelon, PG&E, and PNM Resources all announced in September 2009 that they were quitting the Chamber. ^[21] Apple Inc also resigned from the Chamber, saying in a statement, "We would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis"^[22] Sportswear company Nike also criticized the Chamber's challenge of the U.S. EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as air pollution.^[20] Nike said it would resign from the Chambers's board of directors, but that it would retain its membership to the organization in order to work for climate change legislation from inside the organization.^[

Citizen action against the Chamber of Commerce's stance on climate chang

Yes Men stage fake Chamber of Commerce press conference

On October 19, 2009, anti-corporate performance artists the Yes Men issued a fake press release on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, claiming that the Chamber had reversed its position on climate change would no longer lobby against the legislation. The activists managed to secure a room at the National Press Club to stage a press conference announcing the policy shift to reporters. The real Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Eric Wohlschlegel interrupted the event and declared the event a fraud. Afterwards, the Chamber threatened to push for a criminal investigation over the prank.^[24]

Grassroots campaigns against the Chamber

CREDO Action, part of the Working Assets company, launched a campaign against the Chamber's stance on climate change legislation. The group is organizing an effort to urge members of the lobbying group to resign, calling on them to "denounce the Chamber's extremist position on global warming and revoke your membership effective immediately."^[25]

Velvet Revolution has also organized a campaign against the Chamber of Commerce, citing its stance on climate change among other reasons to call for a reform of the corporate lobbying group.^[26]

see also 350.org  BRAD FRIEDMAN

Employee Free Choice Act

In the 2009 debate over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill that would make it easier for workers to join a union, "both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO are focusing on grassroots outreach," reported PR Week. Before the bill was introduced, "the Chamber launched the Workforce Freedom Airlift program, a series of events that fly in local small business owners to Washington," to lobby against the bill. The first "airlift," on March 10, 2009, "brought in small business owners from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Nebraska, and Louisiana." Since July 2008, the Chamber has worked with Adfero Group on an anti-EFCA "social media effort," expanding "a virtual march on Washington that was created the last time the bill went to Congress in 2007." It "allows users to register for the march as avatars and send an automatic letter to their elected officials through a Facebook application." ^[27]

In April 2009, the Chamber launched a "$1 million television advertising campaign that takes a new line of attack against the Employee Free Choice Act, highlighting a provision that would allow federal arbitrators to set the rules for unionization if management and employees fail to negotiate their own deal." The ads "will hit the airwaves in Nebraska, Virginia, Louisiana, North Dakota and Colorado -- states whose senators could be swing votes." Previous attacks on the bill, from the Chamber and corporate front groups like the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and Employee Freedom Action Committee, claimed it would get rid of secret ballot elections. The bill would actually allow employees to form unions either by holding elections or signing cards. Although the "no secret ballot" claims are inaccurate, they've been effective, accorting to the Wall Street Journal. The "more than $30 million on TV ads [spent by business groups] in the past few years portraying the secret-ballot provision as antidemocratic ... pressured several key senators to reverse their prior support, leaving the bill several senators short of 60 votes." ^[28]

Political action committee

The Chamber sponsored The November Fund, a 527 committee that opposes what it describes as frivolous lawsuits and trial lawyers and ran negative campaign advertisements against trial lawyer John Edwards, John Kerry's running mate during the 2004 presidential race.

VoteForBusiness

"Under Donohue’s leadership, the Chamber has also emerged as a major player in election politics, helping elect congressional pro-business candidates through financial support and voter activism and turnout generated through the Chamber’s grassroots organization," VoteForBusiness,^[29] billed as "Your One-Stop Political Action, Education, and Involvement Tool".

Websites: http://www.voteforbusiness.net/ and http://www.voteforbusiness.com

National Chamber Foundation

"The revitalized National Chamber Foundation, the Chamber’s public policy think tank, is shaping the policy debate on cutting-edge business issues, with major new initiatives on intellectual property theft and counterfeiting, capital markets and accounting rules, and travel and tourism."^[29

Law

Law firm

"The National Chamber Litigation Center, the Chamber’s law firm, has become more aggressive in challenging anti-business measures in court, setting a new record for cases entered in each of the last six years and securing 48 court victories in 2006."^[29]

Legal reform

The Chamber has taken a lead role in the **:{tort reform:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:** movement. It sponsors the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), a 501(c)6 organization, and Legal Reform Now, a coalition of business associations, think tanks, and legal reform groups. Website: http://www.instituteforlegalreform.com/

On its website, the ILR posted a "State Liability Systems Ranking" which it calls "Lawsuit Climate 2007".^[30]

Opposing "activist judges"

In late May 2005, the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform President Lisa Rickard announced it was going to "reign in activist attorneys general."^[31] At a Chamber-sponsored conference examining the "appropriate role" of a state attorney general, several speakers "complained that 'Spitzerism' has become a dangerous model for ambitious regulators," refering to New York AG Eliot Spitzer.^[32

Madison County Record (Illinois)

The Madison County Record, "an Illinois weekly newspaper launched in September [2004] that bills itself as the county's legal journal, reports on one subject: the state courts in southern Illinois," Jeffrey H. Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post.^[33]

Birnbuam pointed to a "recent front page[that] carried an assortment of stories about lawsuits against businesses. In one, a woman sought $15,000 in damages for breaking her nose at a haunted house. In another, a woman sued a restaurant for $50,000 after she hurt her teeth on a chicken breast. ... Nowhere was it reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce created the Record as a weapon in its multimillion-dollar campaign against lawyers who file those kinds of suits," Birnbaum wrote.^[33

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act

In October 2007, the Chamber filed a friend-of-the court filing in a class action lawsuit under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court which originated with a California RICO lawsuit involving Microsoft and Best Buy. The Chamber stated that "RICO is getting out of control as a device against business. It has been used in more than 4,500 cases since 2001, with only 35 of those cases filed by the government."^[34] The Supreme Court overturned the appeal and ruled that Microsoft and Best Buy are subject to RICO laws.^[35]

Trade

TradeRoots

The Chamber's TradeRoots website is billed as "the nation's leading sustained grassroots education program dedicated to raising public awareness of international trade on a local level."^[36]

The Trade Toolbox, a "resource to help in the trade export process, ... includes trade statistics, country and market reports, best market reports, frequently asked questions and trade contacts." The Toolbox was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.^[37]

Website: http://www.traderoots.org/

TheTrueCosts.org

TheTrueCosts.org is a website sponsored by the Chamber. In conjunction with the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP), it has produced the No Trade in Fakes Supply Chain Tool Kit, which provides "proven strategies" for companies "to use to protect their supply chains from counterfeiters and modern-day pirates."^[38]

Website: http://www.thetruecosts.org

Coal and Energy

Chamber distributes books on energy to children

In 2010, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined with Scholastic Books to distribute roughly 100,000 books about the potential perils of government fossil fuel regulation to classrooms across the country, as part of its “Shedding Light on Energy" campaign. The book asks, “What do you think could happen if one of our energy sources was suddenly unavailable (e.g., power plant maintenance, government curb on production, etc.)?” Chamber officials maintain that there is no “hidden agenda” behind the question or the educational outreach effort in general, although the book is notably being distributed at a time when the Environmental Protection Agency is set to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.^[39]

The energy industry has a long history of working to get its perspective into classrooms. In the 1970s, for example, nuclear power officials distributed comic books in schools as it dealt with the PR fallout from the near meltdown at Three Mile Island. And BP helped develop environmental lesson plans in California, the Sacramento Bee reported last month. The posters and worksheets that the Chamber will be sending out to schools aross the country is based on statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the assignments are mostly aimed at teaching students how to use charts and graphs to convey where U.S. energy comes from and how it is used.^[39]

Chamber's Institute for Energy

In March 2007, O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that General James L. Jones, formerly the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe, had joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a lobbyist.^[40]

"Jones will head the Institute for Energy, which is to present itself as a grassroots organization. The Chamber went a similar path with the creation of the Institute for Legal Reform." Jones will focus on global warming and seek "to 'unify energy stakeholders behind a common strategy' to produce affordable and secure supplies while protecting the environment," reported O'Dwyer's, quoting Chamber president Tom Donohue.^[40]

[**James Logan Jones, Jr.**:{ :(style="color:#252525;;background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{(born December 19, 1943) is a retired:(style="color:#252525;;background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ :(style="color:#252525;;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:[United States Marine Corps general and the former United States National Security Advisor.

During his military career, he served as Commander, United States European Command (COMUSEUCOM) and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) from 2003 to 2006 and as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003. Jones retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007, after 40 years of service.

After retiring from the Marine Corps, Jones remained involved in national security and foreign policy issues. In 2007, Jones served as chairman of the Congressional Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq,^[1] which investigated the capabilities of the Iraqi police and armed forces. In November 2007, he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of State as special envoy for Middle East security. He served as chairman of the Atlantic Council from June 2007 to January 2009, when he assumed the post of National Security Advisor which he held until November 2010.]] wiki  condi

:{

}:

Jones serves as a Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), where he works on a variety of national security and energy-related issues.^[37] Jones is also a co-chair of BPC's Energy Project....

Energy project:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

The Energy Project was launched in April 2011. The project is led by Co-Chairs Byron Dorgan, James L. Jones, Trent Lott, and William K. Reilly. Margot Anderson, previously of the United States Department of Energy, serves as project director. The Energy Project, which evolved from the structure of the National Commission on Energy Policy, focuses on energy security, supply, reliability, cost and sustainability. The project's membership includes energy industry CEOs, top NGO and labor officials, and senior former political figures from both major parties.^[24]

To date, the project has released reports on regulation ("Environmental Regulation and Electric System Reliability"), renewable subsidies ("Reassessing Renewable Energy Subsidies: Issue Brief"), and natural gas ("Task Force on Ensuring Stable Natural Gas Markets").

In December 2012, the Energy Project plans to issue a report on Energy Opportunities for the President and New Congress.^[25]

The American Energy Innovation Council, launched in June 2010, is co-staffed by BPC and the ClimateWorks Foundation. AEIC is a group of business leaders who promote a more vigorous public and private sector commitment to energy technology innovation. The group, led by Chad Holliday, Norman R. Augustine, Ursula Burns, John Doerr, Bill Gates, Jeff Immelt, and Tim Solso, released a report, A Business Plan for America's Energy Future, outlining actionable steps to boost the nation's technology potential.^[26]...

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who hired Jones as his military assistant, is quoted as saying Jones has a placid demeanor and a "methodical approach to problems — he’s able to view issues at both the strategic and tactical level".^[44] While Commandant of the Marine Corps, Jones often signed emails as "Rifleman", as he served as an infantry officer.^{[citation needed]}

Jones was also responsible for convincing country music artist Toby Keith that he should record and publish his popular concert hit "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)".^[45]

National gas tax

"After a Minneapolis bridge collapsed on Aug. 1, [2007,] killing 13 people, members of Congress have sought to increase the gas tax to fix 'structurally deficient' bridges and make other infrastructure repairs. ... The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, groups that don’t normally agree with tax increases, support a national gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure improvements."^[41]

Other issues

Opposing national health care reform

The U.S. Chamber sponsors the Campaign for Responsible Health Reform, a program created to convince people to preserve employer-sponsored health insurance and oppose a public insurance option in health care reform in the U.S. The Campaign aims to convince people that a government-sponsored plan is "fiscally reckless," will "lead us down the road to total government control of our health," and that it will make those with private insurance pay even more.^[42]

The Campaign says that "a government-run plan that would have broad and unrivaled power to negotiate for low-cost services of doctors and other health care providers could put private insurers out of business."^[43]

The group's Web site has a "Take Action" page that says "We can’t afford to let a government-run plan raise our taxes and create long waits for treatment." It urges people to write their Congress members to oppose "government-run health care."^[44]

SCHIP veto

The Chamber is among a number of organizations which supported President George W. Bush's October 2007 veto of the SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007) bill.^[45] Republicans and "some business groups" such as the Chamber contended SCHIP "should focus on poor children and the expansion [would be] a move towards government-run health care. They also worr[ied] identification rules in the Democratic SCHIP bill might allow illegal immigrants to obtain government coverage."^[46]

Immigration amnesty and reform

The Chamber, "among others, has pushed for immigration reforms that would allow a path to citizenship for undocumented workers."^[47]

In January 2004, speaking in support of amnesty for illegal aliens, Randel Y. Johnson, Chamber vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, said: "We need a system of 'earned targeted adjustment' for undocumented workers that fill vital roles in our economy, which would enable them to achieve legal status. We also need to expand permanent and temporary visas for workers to enter the United States legally to meet future workforce requirements."^[48]

Social Security

The Chamber also has a role in promoting President George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security.

Lobbying spending

The Chamber ranks first in lobbying spending in the past decade, with **:{General Electric:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:** ranking second at $161 million, according to the **:{Center for Responsive Politics:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:**.^[49]

Political Money Line^[50] highlighted in February 2005 that the Chamber and its Institute for Legal Reform reported combined spending of $53.38 million for lobbying the Executive and Legislative branches during 2004. According to the watchdog website, "This is the largest twelve-month amount reported spent by any group."

The Chamber reported spending $20,060,000 in the first six months of 2004 and $8,780,000 in the last six months of 2004. They paid forty-five lobbyists in the last six months of 2004 to lobby on thirty-two issue areas, including "Trade, Small Business, Labor, Healthcare, Defense, Appropriations, Tort Reform and other areas."^[51]

The Institute for Legal Reform reported spending $10,000,000 in the first six months of 2004 and $14,540,000 in the last six months. They had five lobbyists on the payroll for the last six months of 2004, working on the tort reform issue including "Class Action Fairness, Asbestos Injury Resolution, Legal Reform, and Lawsuit Abuse Reduction."^[52]

Election cycle spending

Other spending reported by Political Money Line or Open Secrets:

• In 2007, $21.2 million total was spent by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR); $11.78 million for the Chamber and $9.4 million by ILR.^[53]
• In 2006, $72.7 million total was spent by the Chamber and ILR; $45.7 million for the Chamber and $27 million for the ILR.^[54]
• In 2005, $39.8 million total was spent by the Chamber and ILR; $20 million for the Chamber and $19.8 million for ILR.^[55]
• In 2004, $53.4 million total was spent by the Chamber and ILR; $28.8 million for the Chamber and $24.5 million for ILR.^[56]
• In 2003, $34.6 million total was spent by the Chamber and ILR. For the period 7/1/03 to 6/30/04 they spent $47.8 million.
• In 2002, $41.56 million total was spent by the Chamber and ILR. For the period 7/1/02 to 6/30/03 they spent $45.6 million.
• In 2001, $20.6 million total was spent by the Chamber and ILR. For the period 7/1/01 to 6/30/02 they spent $25.9 million.

The Chamber and large corporations

The Chamber claims to represent 3 million businesses, 96 percent of which are small, defined as having fewer than 100 employees. But the Chamber arrives at this figure by counting all businesses that are members of state and local chambers, which are independent organizations that pay a few hundreds dollars a year to affiliate with the U.S. Chamber for discounts and other programs and have no say over the national group's political activities, its lobbying, or endorsements. The U.S. Chamber's membership is actually about 300,000 businesses, and the Chamber's boardroom is mostly representatives of large corporations. Its 125-member board includes representatives of just two local chambers and a handful of small businesses.The rest are primarily from large corporations, like**Pfizer**,**Alcoa**, and**JP Morgan Chase**. In 2008, one-third of the $147 million the group raised came from just 19 companies.^[57] In 2010, the watchdog group U.S. ChamberWatch used a disclosure law to see the Chamber's IRS 990 form. It showed that 55 percent of its funding came from just 16 companies, each of which gave more than a million dollars.^[58] (Exactly which companies is unknown. U. S. law requires the Chamber to list amounts given on its annual tax return, but it is not obligated to disclose names.)^[57]

In 2010, chambers in San Antonio, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut began publicly moving away from the U.S. Chamber, disavowing the 2010 political attack ads that the U.S. Chamber had been broadcasting in their communities. Newer chambers, like the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, have declined to affiliate with the national group and have been among its most vocal critics: "They get the majority of their funding from big businesses. That's who drives their decisions," explains Executive Director Frank Knapp, noting that, unlike the U. S. Chamber, his group supported the health care bill and financial reform, and favors legislation to curb global warming.^[57]

Alleged spying on critics

In 2010, Aaron Barr, CEO of the technology security company HBGary Federal, alleged that he could exploit social media to gather information about hackers like those who supported WikiLeaks. In early 2011, Barr claimed to have used his techniques to infiltrate the Wikileaks supporter Anonymous, partly by using IRC, Facebook, Twitter, and social networking sites. His e-mails depict his intention to release information on the identities of Anonymous members and to sell it to possible clients.^[59] In early February of 2011, the activist group Anonymous hacked the firm's website, copied tens of thousands of documents from HBGary, posted tens of thousands of company emails online, and usurped Barr's Twitter account.^[60]

According to some of HBGary's e-mails, the Chamber of Commerce hired the lobbying firm Hunton & Williams, and attorneys for the law firm then solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop a sabotage campaign against progressive groups and labor unions, including the group ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, the labor union SEIU, U.S. Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com. Later emails revealed that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, who circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives.^[61]

On February 10, 2011, the Chamber of Commerce issued a statement denying they hired HBGary,^[62] calling the allegation a "baseless smear", and blaming the Center for American Progress and its blog, ThinkProgress for "the illusion of a connection between HBGary, its CEO Aaron Barr and the Chamber."^[63]

Affiliated centers / organizations

• Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth
• Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC)
• Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC) member^[64]
• Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC), Caroline Joiner, executive director^[4]
• Global Regulatory Cooperation Project^[65]
• Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW), Jan Magill, director of strategic partnerships^[66]
• Institute for Energy
• Institute for Organizational Management (IOM), Athens, Georgia
• The Energy Initiative
• Particulate Matter Coalition
• Yucca Energy Solutions

Senior management

The following are listed as members of the Chamber's senior management.^[67]

• Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO
• David C. Chavern, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
• R. Bruce Josten, Executive Vice President, Government Affairs
• LTG (Ret.) Daniel W. Christman, Senior Vice President, International Affairs
• Thomas Collamore, Senior Vice President Communications & Strategy and Counselor to the President
• Shannon DiBari, Senior Vice President, Human Resources
• Carl Grant, Chairman of the President's Advisory Group
• Stan Harrell, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer
• David Hirschmann, Senior Vice President and Executive Vice President, National Chamber Foundation (NCF)
• General :{James L. Jones:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: USMC (ret.), President and CEO, Institute for Energy
• :{Steven J. Law:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel
• Rolf Lundberg, Senior Vice President, Congressional and Public Affairs
• William C. Miller, Jr., Senior Vice President, Political Affairs & Federation Relations and National Political Director
• Lisa Rickard, President, Institute for Legal Reform
• James Robinson, Senior Vice President and Counselor to the President
• Arthur J. Rothkopf, Senior Vice President and Counselor to the President
• Agnes Warfield, Senior Vice President, Development

Board members

The following are listed as members of the Chamber's board of directors.^[68]

• Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO
• Paul S. Speranza, Jr., Chairman of the Board of Directors
• Donald J. Shepard, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors
• Gerald L. Shaheen, Immediate Past Chair and Chair of the Executive Committee

Also see the lists of regional vice chairmen;^[69] the senior council;^[70] and all members of the board of directors.^[71]

Contact information

United States Chamber of Commerce

1615 H Street NW

Washington, DC 20062-2000

Telephone: 202 659-6000

Fax: 202 463-5836

Website: http://www.uschamber.com/

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Ayres McHenry & Associates (biased Chamber polling firm)
• Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth
• Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs
• Bush administration U.S. attorney firings controversy
• Business Roundtable
• Campaign for Responsible Health Reform
• Coalition for Economic Growth and American Jobs
• Employee Free Choice Act
• International Chamber of Commerce
• Particulate Matter Coalition
• The November Fund
• Transatlantic Policy Network
• Jay Van Andel - former chair (1979)
• Yucca Energy Solutions
• Craig L. Fuller - board member

References

1. ↑ Matt Stoller, "Tom Donahue, the 'Gang of 6' and Red America," MyDD, December 13, 2006.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} ERIC LIPTON, MIKE McINTIRE and DON VAN NATTA Jr., Top Corporations Aid U.S. Chamber of Commerce Campaign, The New York Times, October 21, 2010.
3. ↑ About, USChamber.com.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} "USA : Chamber backs fight against internet piracy," U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Fibre2Fashion.com), October 19, 2007.
5. ↑ Tom Lochner, "Chamber hopes local promotion of green business produces national results," ContraCostaTimes, October 22, 2007.
6. ↑ National Desk Watchdog Groups Request Criminal Fraud and Money Laundering Investigations against The U.S. Chamber, American Chronicle, September 15, 2010
7. ↑ Staff reports U.S. Chamber of Commerce Charged with Money Laundering Tactics, Appomattox News, January 15, 2010
8. ↑ Peter H. Stone Health Insurers Funded Chamber Attack Ads, NationalJournal.com, January 12, 2010
9. ↑ Complaint filed with the IRS, October 31, 2006, by Public Citizen.
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1 10.2} News Release: "U.S. Chamber of Commerce Failed to Report Electioneering Spending and Grants, Public Citizen Asks IRS to Investigate. Chamber Spent Millions to Influence State and Federal Races," Public Citizen, October 31, 2006.
11. ↑ David Fredosso, U.S. Chamber Aims to Spend $75 Million on Midterm Elections, Washington Examiner, July 2, 2010.
12. ↑ On the Verge of a New Beginning for Business, Chamber Post blog, November 1, 2010.
13. ↑ ^{13.0 13.1} November 2010, US Chamber of Commerce: Leading the Charge in Electing a Republican Congress, a report by U.S. Chamber Watch.
14. ↑ Tom Hamburger, "Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates", Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2008.
15. ↑ Big money: Outside groups spending for Republicans, Associated Press, October 26, 2010.
16. ↑ Scott Keyes, Kissing Cousins: How The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce And American Crossroads Hook Up To Elect Republicans Think Progress, October 7, 2010.
17. ↑ Elspeth Reeve, Local Branches Leave Chamber of Commerce as it Lurches Rightward, The Atlantic Wire, Dec. 07, 2010 (compiling stories from several sources).
18. ↑ Jeanne Cummings, Angry Member Groups Shun U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Dec. 7, 2010, accessed Dec. 8, 2010.
19. ↑ "Climate Change," U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accessed October 2009.
20. ↑ ^{20.0 20.1} Deborah Zabarenko, "Rift at U.S. Chamber of Commerce over climate change," Scientific American, September 30, 2009.
21. ↑ "Out the Door: Exelon Leaves Chamber of Commerce over Climate Policy,"] Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2009.
22. ↑ Jenna Staul, "Apple Quits Chamber Of Commerce Over Climate Change," Huffington Post, October 5, 2009.
23. ↑ Jenna Staul, "Nike Quits Chamber Of Commerce Board Of Directors," Huffington Post, September 30, 2009.
24. ↑ Sam Stein, "Yes Men Pull Off Chamber Of Commerce Hoax On Climate Change," Huffington Post, October 19, 2009.
25. ↑ "Quit the Chamber. Join the Planet.", CREDO Action, accessed October 2009.
26. ↑ StopTheChamber.com, accessed October 2009.
27. ↑ Jaimy Lee, "Sides in 'card check' debate intensify PR efforts," PR Week, March 20, 2009.
28. ↑ Brody Mullins, "New Ads Intensify Fight on Union Bill," Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), April 13, 2009.
29. ↑ ^{29.0 29.1 29.2} Management: Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accessed October 22, 2007.
30. ↑ "Lawsuit Climate 2007: Rating the States," InstituteforLegalReform, accessed October 22, 2007.
31. ↑ News Release: "U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform: Rein in Activist State Attorneys General; Curb 'Regulation through Litigation' and Contingency Fee Deals," USNewswire, May 26, 2005.
32. ↑ Barrie McKenna, "Corporate America declares war on 'Spitzerism'," The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), May 27, 2005.
33. ↑ ^{33.0 33.1} Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, "Advocacy Groups Blur Media Lines. Some Push Agendas By Producing Movies, Owning Newspapers," Washington Post, December 6, 2004.
34. ↑ Scott Bekker, "Microsofted Up. Mafia law pops up in legal dispute over Microsoft-Best Buy arrangement," Redmond Channel Partner Online, October 16, 2007.
35. ↑ "Supreme Court: Microsoft, Best Buy Subject to Racketeering Laws," eFluxMedia.com, October 16, 2007.
36. ↑ TradeRoots.org.
37. ↑ Trade toolbox, TradeRoots.org.
38. ↑ Resources: SupplyChain, TheTrueCosts.org.
39. ↑ ^{39.0 39.1} Josh Voorhees, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43844.html#ixzz14oxFHwth "Chamber: Worry about energy regulations, kids"] Politico, Oct. 19, 2010.
40. ↑ ^{40.0 40.1} "Jones Works Energy Front," O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), March 5, 2007.
41. ↑ Jim Snyder, "‘...We are absolutely failing ... in how the system is performing’," The Hill, October 19, 2007.
42. ↑ Campaign for Responsible Health Reform The Campaign, Web page, accessed August 18, 2009
43. ↑ Campaign for Responsible Health Reform FAQs, accessed August 18, 2009
44. ↑ Campaign for Responsible Health Reform Take Action, accessed August 18, 2009
45. ↑ "Barrett Supports Bush On SCHIP," Campaigns & Elections, October 18, 2007.
46. ↑ Mike Sunnucks, "SCHIP override falls short," The Business Journal of Phoenix, October 18, 2007.
47. ↑ Josh Flory, "The Reich Way. Former labor secretary, author calls for Americans to reclaim democracy," Knoxville News Sentinel Co., October 20, 2007.
48. ↑ "Organizations Supporting Amnesty for Illegal Aliens," Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), undated.
49. ↑ Dan Morain, "Tinseltown filling campaign coffers. Democrats are reaping the benefits of wealthy and glamorous donors while entertainment executives hope to be heard in Washington," Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2007.
50. ↑ Political Money Line.
51. ↑ Lobbying Report for 2004: Chamber of Commerce of the USA, Senate ID#8817 and House ID#31886000.
52. ↑ Lobbying Report for 2004: U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, Senate ID#51172-12, House ID#34805000.
53. ↑ Lobbying database, 2007: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, OpenSecrets.org. Totals are as posted by October 22, 2007.
54. ↑ Lobbying database, 2006: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, OpenSecrets.org.
55. ↑ Lobbying database, 2005: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, OpenSecrets.org.
56. ↑ Lobbying database, 2004: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, OpenSecrets.org
57. ↑ ^{57.0 57.1 57.2} Stacy Mitchell, "Will the Real Voice of Small Business Please Stand Up?" Yes! Nov. 2, 2010.
58. ↑ Bill McKibben, "The Chamber of Commerce is darkening our skies" Grist, Feb. 22, 2011.
59. ↑ How one man tracked down Anonymous - and paid a heavy price By Nate Anderson, updated 2-10-2011, Ars Technica, retr 2011-02-11
60. ↑ Bright, Peter (2011-02-15). Anonymous speaks: the inside story of the HBGary hack. Law & Disorder: Tech Law and Policy in the Digital Age. Ars Technica. Retrieved on 18 February 2011.
61. ↑ Joseph Romm, "Bombshell: Chamber of Commerce lobbyists solicited firm to investigate opponents’ families, children" ThinkProgress, Feb. 13, 2011.
62. ↑ Collamore, Tom (2011-02-10). More Baseless Attacks on the Chamber. Chamber Post. US Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved on 18 February 2011.
63. ↑ Collamore, Tom (2011-02-11). Another Smear from the Center for American Progress. Chamber Post. US Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved on 18 February 2011.
64. ↑ Membership list, EWIC.org.
65. ↑ Deborah Platt Majoras, Remarks of Deborah Platt Majoras, Chairman, Federal Trade Commission, before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the launch of its Global Regulatory Cooperation Project, July 17, 2007,
66. ↑ Nell Luter Ford, "Still a job to do," The Clarion-Ledger, October 21, 2007.
67. ↑ Management, USChamber.com, accessed October 22, 2007.
68. ↑ Board, USChamber.com, accessed October 22, 2007.
69. ↑ Regional, USChamber.com, accessed October 22, 2007.
70. ↑ Senior, USChamber.com, accessed October 22, 2007.
71. ↑ All, USChamber.com, accessed October 22, 2007.

External resources

External articles

See U.S. Chamber of Commerce:External articles

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-01-:{glenn-beck-says-350-org-is-part-of-a-communist-plot:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

...Especially because, earlier in the week, I'd written a widely circulated essay that attacked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which on its own website says that as "the voice of business, the Chamber's core purpose is to fight for free enterprise." And yet I scourged the group -- because it's spent the past few years opposing any action on climate change. Indeed, it submitted a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency arguing that the agency should avoid regulating carbon emissions because, in the event of global warming, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations."

To me that sounds absurd. Instead of the 16 companies that provided more than half the chamber's budget adapting their business models to a world of safe renewable energy, they wished all people everywhere and forever to change their physiologies. But now I see that my protests can be read as a gesture of support for human solidarity, with all that implies.

I should have known better than to go after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After all, Mr. Beck just last year held a telethon on its behalf, encouraging listeners to send the chamber checks, and ponying up $10,000 of his own $32 million in earnings. "They are us," he'd explained -- and indeed, an executive of the chamber called in to thank him.

The Chamber of Commerce spends more money than anyone else lobbying Congress. It dropped hundreds of thousands on the last state elections in Wisconsin, all of it for the side now standing up for union-busting, I mean human freedom. Opposing it -- well, clearly I'm hammer-and-sickle all the way.