Today, Tom Hamburger, a Los Angeles Times Staff Writer published a story called “Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates“. What a surprise, the US Chamber of Commerce playing hardball?
This is the same U.S. Camber of Commerce that has helped export over 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs in the last seven years. The same group of elitist authoritarians that have spurned the criminal sub prime mortgage scandals, degraded worker unions, lobbied for tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of the population and run more negative attack ads than any other political group.
To get an ideal of how anti-worker and elitist the Chamber of commerce really is, all you need to do is listen to read a quote from U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue.
“I’m concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media,” he said. “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits — and who it is that eats them.”
So what Tom Donohue is basically saying is that he is concerned that some cronies, err.. politicians are actually starting to “listen” to what the slaves have been complaining about. And waht the U.S. Chamber of Commerce needs to do is to “remind” these “wayward” politicians, by way of a $60,000,000 + public lynching, of who they really work for.
Sounds like Mr. Donohue is a real constitutional scholar and a true believer in human rights. Perhaps he could be appointed “Vice-Emperor” for life after tricky Dick Cheney’s heart finally gives up and decides to ditch the current Vice-Emperor body.
The group indicates it will spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it put out in the last presidential cycle.
By Tom Hamburger
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 8, 2008
WASHINGTON — 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.
The warning from the nation’s largest trade association came against a background of mounting popular concern over the condition of the economy. A weak record of job creation, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining home values and other problems have all helped make the economy a major campaign issue.
Presidential candidates in particular have responded to the public concern. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has been the bluntest populist voice, but other front-running Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, have also called for change on behalf of middle-class voters.
On the Republican side, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — emerging as an unexpected front-runner after winning the Iowa caucuses — has used populist themes in his effort to woo independent voters, blasting bonus pay for corporate chief executives and the effect of unfettered globalization on workers.
Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.
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