Not much of a surprise (0.00 / 0)

People with big money reserves, and the organizations they construct and support, have become accustomed to being able to buy off, buy out or buy their way through any inconvenient or uncomfortable obstacles that appear to stand in the way of their continued opulence. The Chamber is just a big fraternity of people like this. I have this vision of a bunch of fat cats sitting around the "club", smoking cigars and downing brandy, complaining vociferously about the EFCA and what a troublsome and annoying problem it might pose to their ongoing, well-financed bliss. I should suppose many of them are sub-prime mortgage brokers.

I am confident that they see absolutely nothing wrong with using tax-payer bailout monies to finance a campaign against equality and shared, fair voicing. But as long as they have the money to remain isolated and insulated from the real world, nothing short of a revolution will change the status quo.  

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by: hivanh @ Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 10:37:10 AM CDT

The Chamber of Commerce Can't Be Believed (4.00 / 1)

While many local Chamber of Commerce branches are genuinely concerned with their communities, and actually do promote certain forms of public-spiritedness, the same cannot be said of state and national branches, or of large city branches, either.

Indeed, as just one example, both the state and LA regional Chambers of Commerce have long been at odds with the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce in their blind support for expansion of trade through the Port of Los Angeles without respect to environmental and community health costs.  As ignoring and denying such costs has become increasingly impossible, the state and regional branches have shifted to embracing a hollow rhetoric of "green growth" while continuing to oppose the most effective and far-reaching measures, while supporting obstructionists.

They do not serve the interests of local businesses, or even, necessarily American ones.  It's the global corporate behemoths who are calling the shots, and the Chamber functions as a sort of front group for them, often bullying, coercing or deceiving smaller businesses into line to support them against their own interests.

One of the clearest examples of this has been the record of the fight to impose a state-level cargo container fee which would be used to offset some (not all) of the (environmental, health and infrastructure) costs associated with container traffic. The state and regional CoCs have bitterly opposed this, on behalf of the large retailers like WalMart, their overseas suppliers, and the shipping companies.

But many local business groups--including several CoC branches, as well as Latino business organizations--have supported the bill, because they, too, suffer negative consequences from the externalized costs of the goods movement industry.  They are not at all being served or represented by the larger Chamber branches that pretend to speak in their name.

I should add that while I frequently talk to and quote members of our local San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, I've had the distinct pleasure of being hung up on by the state CoC media representative, because she didn't like the sorts of questions I asked.  It seems she thought the questions I asked were "not objective."

What she meant was that I asked her to respond to community and environmental critics whom the Chamber wants totally excluded from the public discourse.  It was not enough to lie in response to them.  She didn't want any part of talking to someone who actually let their views be heard in the first place, and ask her to respond to them.

Says it all.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 10:56:20 AM CDT

Money is fungible... (0.00 / 0)

that means it is impossible to trace the source or origin of any particular dollars expended by companies receiving bail-outs, because a dollar from the fed might make it possible to send another dollar, form another account to the CoC.

Which means the USCoC is shuckin' ya brother.

As usual/always (see Pablo's account above).

I cannot understand why you'd think any different?

Binness does NOT "play by the rulez." It always seeks ways to break the rulez to its own advantage and then, when caught, they pay tiny fines, swear not to do it again, and proceed to find more ways to break the rulez.

Nobody EVER got really rich playing by the Rulez. and everybody in binness who wants to get rich already knows that, and it's a (tacit) part of every binness plan ever made...

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by: konopelli @ Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 13:47:42 PM CDT