The Chamber of Congressional Influence
The Chamber of Congressional Influence
Last week, Congress passed restrictive class action legislation which will attempt to silence the American public while protecting corporations from being held accountable for injury, wrongdoings and error.
While it may not have come with a big pretty bow, the legislation definitely was a gift for the Chamber of Commerce and its Institute for Legal Reform. The group definitely got what it paid for. According to the Political Money Line tracking service, the Chamber of Commerce spared no expense last year, spending over $53 million in lobbying expenses in 2004. That’s more than any other group in that 12-month period. (Do the math: That comes out to nearly a hundred thousand dollars for every member of the House and Senate plus the president.)
This should come as no surprise: The group has aggressively pushed this industry-friendly legislation. The Chamber of Commerce last year, remember, entered the administration’s upside-down world of spin-as-journalism, launching the Madison County Record, a weekly newspaper in Illinois which billed itself as the county’s legal journal. In reality, it was a propaganda powerhouse, a slick piece of advertising disguised as a newspaper that the Chamber used as “a weapon in its multimillion-dollar campaign against lawyers” who file “frivolous lawsuits.”
Look for the Chamber of Commerce to only get stronger and more powerful on the Hill. The group is already planning to spend about $40 million of its budget to lobby Congress in 2005. And that’s just a drop in the bucket of the funds it has available to spend on influence: last year, this “staunchly” conservative group collected $90 million from America’s largest corporations.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
See also: http://tinyurl.com/3rza3
February 15th, 2005 at 11:43 amThanks for keeping the drumbeat going on the effects of the failure to defeat the class action legislation.
February 15th, 2005 at 11:54 amDoesn’t 535 legislators, plus the President, divide $53 million into hundred thousand dollar units, not ten thousand dollar ones? Makes this whole story all the more egregious! The pattern is clear, impoverish the people, increase the toxicity and pollution of their living environments, then make it impossible for them to seek any justice whatsoever. I keep seeing a future in the US that combines the core elements of Russian economic reform chaos, with Margaret Atwood’s vision in Handmaid’s Tale, melded into Blade Runner meets William Gibson’s Virtual Light.
February 15th, 2005 at 3:40 pmThere’s a reference to the “Chamber of Congress” in this story. Is that at typo?
February 15th, 2005 at 4:01 pmToday I received Howard Dean’s first message as Chairman of the DNC.
I’m stoked, and I’m not even a registered Democrat! I think I just might be joining now though… Dean’s election is a major step in revolutionalizng grassroots politics, and restoring progressive values, and fiscal responsibility back to our country.
Show your support for Dean, and your support for progressive values by going to http://www.democrats.org and making a donation!!! Lets show the DNC that when they elected Dean, that he brought his army of patriots along with him!!!
Viva la Revolution!!!
February 15th, 2005 at 8:36 pm