Defections Expose Chamber's Dirty Little Secrets

[Guest guest]

_http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR200910150

4000.html?hpid=news-col-blog_

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101504000\

..html?hpid=news-col-blog)

Defections Expose Chamber's Dirty Little Secrets

TOOLBOX

(javascript:void(0) (javascript:void(0) (javascript:void(0) Resize

_Print_

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101504000\

_pf.html)

_E-mail_

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/emailafriend?contentId=AR2009101504000\

& sent=no)

_ Buzz_

(http://buzz./buzz?publisherurn=washington_po284 & guid=http://www.washin\

gtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR20091015

04000.html)

(http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/38ce/3/0/*/a;215651934;0-0;2;16763752;4826\

-180/31;31897716/31915592/1;u=o_2a_5bCS_5dv1_7c4996633400003406_2dA290B

4C000000F0_5bCE_5d;~okv=;dir=pearlsteinsnode;dir=opinion;dir=colum

ns;dir=business;dir=pearlsteins;heavy=y;;orbit=y;pos=ad28;del=js;~aopt=2/0/65/0;\

~sscs=

?http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;215479351;37695453;s?http://www.constantconta

ct.com/index.jsp?utm_id=WPO & cc=CLK_DCLKAWRWPOEMFTILE)

_

COMMENT

39 Comments | View All »_

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101504000\

_Comments.html)

COMMENTS ARE CLOSED

Your browser's settings may be preventing you from commenting on and

viewing comments about this item. _See instructions for fixing the problem._

(javascript:void(window.open('http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/admin/help/po

pup/frame_pageIE6-COMMENTS.html','NewWin','scrollbars,toolbar=false,menubar=

false,resizable=false,width=740,height=595,top=0,right=1000'))

Discussion Policy

_CLOSE_ (javascript:void(0)

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate

comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries

that are unsigned or contain " signatures " by someone other than the actual

author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who

violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any

other policies governing this site. Please review the _full rules_

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/delphi/delphirules.htm)

governing

commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that

you post.

Who's Blogging

(http://www.sphere.com/)

» _Links to this article_

(http://www.sphere.com/search?q=sphereit:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co\

ntent/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101504000.html)

By _ Pearlstein_

(http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/steven+pearlstein/)

Friday, October 16, 2009

It's been a lousy week for Tom Donohue and his pals over at the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce.

For months now, Tom has been crisscrossing the country looking for

corporate donations with which to launch a campaign to " remind, educate and

persuade " Americans that the free enterprise system is what has made America

great

and is what will once again " lead us back to prosperity. "

Normally, it wouldn't take a $100 million propaganda effort to convince

most Americans of the value of " individual initiative, hard work, freedom of

choice and free exchange of trade, capital and ideas. " But inasmuch as the

country is now mired in the worst recession in 75 years after a decade in

which the government pursued the rabidly free-market agenda espoused by the

Chamber, you can appreciate Tom's problem.

The Campaign for Free Enterprise, of course, is not really about creating

20 million jobs over the next decade -- if Chamber members could double

their profits while creating not a single new job, that would suit them just

fine. Rather, it's nothing more than a desperate attempt to repackage the

same old anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-government rhetoric in hopes of

derailing the major initiatives of the Obama administration and the Democratic

Congress.

Unfortunately for Tom, the world is finally catching on to his game.

In the past few weeks, a number of big-name companies -- including Apple,

Nike and PG & E -- have resigned from the Chamber or its various boards and

committees over its continued opposition to doing anything about global

warming. Donohue and his minions tried to brush off the corporate defections as

nothing more than a PR stunt orchestrated by environmental activists that

would have little impact on an organization with 3 million members. But in

the process, the controversy managed to expose three embarrassing truths

about the Chamber.

The first truth is that the Chamber, in fact, does not represent anything

close to the 3 million businesses it has always claimed. In response to an

inquiry from Mother , the chamber acknowledged that its actual paid

membership is only 300,000, including several thousand local chambers of

commerce whose own membership was used in calculating the inflated 3 million

figure. Moreover, when Josh Harkinson of Mother contacted some of those

local chambers, their leaders took pains to distance themselves from the

national organization, whose policies, they said, they had no hand in shaping

and with which they frequently disagree.

" They don't represent me, " said Mark Jaffe, chief executive of the Greater

New York Chamber.

Indeed, the second dirty little secret that was revealed by the defections

is how undemocratic the Chamber has become. Among lobbyists in Washington,

the Chamber is known as a staff-driven organization, which should hardly be

a surprise given the wide range of businesses that belong to it. And with

a board of directors that is self-appointed and has an unwieldy 120

members, it should be no surprise that Donohue and his top staff really call

the

shots. While the Chamber likes to point to its network of policy committees

that supposedly advise the board, the panels tend to be dominated by those

members with special interests to protect. Recorded votes are rare, and

presentations are heavily skewed toward experts who agree with the positions

staked out by Donohue's lobbyists, who over the past 15 years tightly allied

themselves with the Bush White House and the Republican leadership on

Capitol Hill.

Moreover, much of the Chamber's public policy effort these days is now

funneled through a network of independent entities that it has sponsored to

work on specific issues. These arrangements allow the Chamber to raise large

sums from businesses that may not want to be publicly identified with

hardball tactics like filing lawsuits or running negative ads. The entities

have

the advantage of not being subject to limits on corporate political

contributions, nor do they have to disclose where they get their money or how

they

spend it.

What we've also learned this week is how disingenuous the Chamber has

become in its Washington lobbying. To hear it from Donohue and his minions,

it's

not that the business community opposes financial regulation, or universal

health care or controlling greenhouse gases -- it's just opposed to every

credible idea for doing something about them. And rather than focus on

working constructively to improve legislation, the Chamber's default strategy

is to try to kill it outright through exaggeration, misrepresentation and

outright lies.

In the hands of the Chamber's propagandists, a rather straightforward

effort to halt abuses by mortgage brokers and credit card lenders is being

transformed into a regulatory power-grab that will ensnare butchers and bakers

and candlestick makers.

A tax on gold-plated health plans that will generate the money needed to

provide health insurance subsidies to low-wage workers is turned into a huge

income tax on small-business owners that will snuff out job creation.

And a proposal for a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions suddenly is

dismissed as an economy-crushing tax increase that will send all

manufacturing over to China.

Earlier this month, I went to one of those off-the-record dinners you might

have heard about, where the chief executive of a big and well-known

corporation was bemoaning the inability of government to deal with big problems

like huge deficits, global warming and the failure to turn out more college

graduates and PhDs in science.

When it came my turn to respond, I asked why he continued to pay dues to

business associations that for much of the last 15 years had set out to

deliberately undermine the public's confidence in government and starve the tax

revenues. I never got an answer.

Pearlstein can be reached at pearlsteins@....