T
he U.S. Chamber is puffing up to make itself seem bigger and friendlier to American small businesses than it actually is–again. Bill Miller, Political Director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, just sent out an e-mail that states that “in order to ensure our country’s best days aren’t behind us, we must fight to preserve the American Dream in the days ahead,” and that citizens should support Friends of the U.S. Chamber and it’s “grassroots network, now more than 11 million strong” because it “empowers small businesses”. But what does “grassroots network” really mean to the US Chamber?
In reality, the U.S. Chamber’s version of the “American Dream” is a grim one, and one that we hope never comes to fruition; this is no story of baseball games, hot dogs and successful mom-and-pop Main Street shops.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane… Historically, the U.S. Chamber lobbied against involvement in World War II and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and supported Sen. Joe McCarthy’s hearings demanding the hunting down of “subversives” and “communists” in the early 1950s. In the 1980s and 1990s, The U.S. Chamber fought to weaken clean air standards, opposed a hazardous waste dumping ban, and lobbied against the Kyoto greenhouse gas treaty. And just recently, it 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 behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” Is the U.S. Chamber trying to build a “grassroots network” of physiologically adapted people?
Here’s an honest picture of the “American Dream” that the U.S. Chamber is spending millions in Congress every year to achieve: poisoned soil, water and air, increased rates of respiratory ailments and diseases from toxic pollution, the obliteration of civil rights for minority populations in the United States, and last but not least–humans with gills, so that we can continue to fight for survival as the ice caps melt and the oceans rise.
The U.S. Chamber has waged this ideological 100-year war against regulation for one reason: profits. Not profits for average small businesses in America, but for the largest multi-national corporations in the country. In 2010, 55% of the Chamber’s funding came from just 16 corporations, and the legislation it lobbies for was written by the wealthiest corporations and most powerful industries in the United States.
“The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me” campaign was forged out of a need to expose the U.S. Chamber as a corporate front group so that it can no longer lobby with impunity as the “voice of small business”, and the good news is that the Chamber knows it’s vulnerable–that’s why it inflates it’s membership numbers (we would love to see where that “grassroots network, now more than 11 million strong” figure came from), masks its motives and refuses to publicly state who it’s biggest corporate funders are. The U.S. Chamber is on thin ice, and with thousands of businesses and scores of local chambers uniting with us in declaring “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me”, we’ll make sure that anyone who joins Friends of the U.S. Chamber knows what they’ve actually signed up for.
