Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand Russell, Skeptical essays
________________________________________
Free enterprise. Competition. Capitalism. Liberalism. All these words are synonymous with one another. Seriously. Look it up in a thesaurus, Liberalism is right there along side the other three words. You wouldn’t know it though, by the actions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
First things first here. I had to educate myself about exactly who these people really are. I was under the impression that this was a government entity, or sponsored by the government at the very least. Completely untrue, and frankly that surprised me a bit.
And on an semi-related note, I notice that most people who side with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who share it’s viewpoints and a political agenda with them, seem to be the ones who want to get rid of special interests, the lobbyists who currently run and ruin Washington, right? Maybe that is just me, but it seems to be the case, I may be wrong. Do you know who the biggest lobbyists in Washington are?
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who happen to be the largest not for profit lobbying group on Earth. They claim to represent the interests of hundreds of thousands of small businesses around the nation. Have you ever taken a look at their board of directors? It is a who’s who of corporate America’s leaders.
Alcoa has a presence, as does JP Morgan, as does IBM, the Las Vegas Sands, Anheuser-Busch, Dow chemical, Harrah’s, Verizon, Fox, The Carlyle group, ConocoPhilips.
________________________________________
Viddy of the day: from 2 weeks ago, Cenk Uyger from the Young Turks talking about the Chamber of Commerce fighting the Tea Party. And losing.
________________________________________
In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them.
Bertrand Russell, A New Social Analysis
________________________________________
Not saying that that is necessarily a bad thing, but when one of the most active lobbying groups in America, who helped shape the debate about
health care, to pick an issue at random, with commercials, and press releases, and pressure on legislators via lobbying and the like have as board members higher ups from Wellpoint, Pfizer and several major insurance companies who had skin in the game, with the implicit backing of that kind of corporate firepower, it does make you wonder exactly what would have happened without their interference in the process.
Or the interference in elections on a regular basis.
Or their interference in attempting to pass any of the regulations meant to make businesses accountable for their actions, which despite what they would tell you, is actually good for business. Laissez-Faire has never treated fairly with the common man, ever.
Or their insistence that we drill in ANWR.
Or their stance against regulation of greenhouse gases by the EPA.
Or their stance against regulation of any type.
Or their interference in attempting to get Card check passed.
Or their insistence that passing card check would cost America 600,000 jobs “the following year”.
Free enterprise may be important to the country, but it isn’t the most important thing in the country.
If the chamber really lived by their mission statement which is “To advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” one presumes they would not interfere so much in the daily life of the business and legislation of this great nation.
They were created initially to work closely with the federal government in the pursuit of mutual interests, but that seems to have long since gone out the window. They don’t want to partner with the government, they want to dictate terms to the government, make our representatives slaves, much more so than they could possibly be said to be now.
And that is bad for America.
At least that is what it looks like from here. I’m sure they aren’t all bad, but lord, it doesn’t look good for them from this vantage point, gotta tell ya that.
_______________________________________
Have a good night America, I’ll write to you tomorrow.
