Chamber of Commerce goes from 3 million members to just 300,000 in one day.
Chamber of Commerce goes from 3 million members to just 300,000 in one day.
As Mother Jones reported yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce consistently says that its membership is 3 million, even though it’s actually closer to 200,000. The reason for the artificial inflation is that the organization is counting the memberships of 2,800 state and local chambers around the country, even though many of these businesses have no relationship with the national organization. Some of these members are now protesting the Chamber’s numbers game:
– “They don’t represent me,” says Mark Jaffe, CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, which is a dues-paying member of the national group. … Jaffe also scoffed at the US Chamber’s oft-repeated claim to “represent 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions.” … “They are playing games” with their numbers, Jaffe said. “They don’t have half the businesses in America as registered, dues-paying members.”
– Jaffe’s objections to the US Chamber’s policies were echoed by Rob Black, vice-president of public policy for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “We take a fundamentally different approach than the US Chamber,” he said, adding that while the national Chamber opposes the Waxman-Markey climate bill, “we support a market-driven cap-and-trade system.”
A day after this public scrutiny began, the Chamber is quietly backing down. At a press conference this morning, Chamber officials “repeatedly cited a membership of 300,000. That’s a tenth as many members as the Chamber claimed a day earlier.”
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Sounds like a tea bagger protest , as 1st reported by FAUX ; and then properly reported upon by a credible news outlet………
October 14th, 2009 at 7:41 pmHmmm. a conservative organization that, when confronted with reality-based refutation of its claims, quietly backs down and accepts reality…
That’s a new one.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:43 pmThe US Chamber of Commerce will be experiencing an extended refractory period…
This is gonna take a while.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:44 pmWhen even Big Business ditches you, you are pretty radioactive. I never thought I would see the day when Big Business looks like the good guy.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:49 pmThe wonders of the internet! The idiots don’t seem to grasp the fact that ever claim can be checked by multiple sources, and quickly.
Rude awakening for the wingnuts!
October 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pmThe CoC is run by c0cksucking liars’ just shocks me. NOT!
If it’s business it sucks.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:57 pmRepublicans and big business groups are mostly just wind-bags and blow-hards. Bush never won either Presidential Election, for example. The 2000 Election was rigged and stolen the old-fashioned way in Florida by his brother, Jeb and Katherine Harris, the then Florida Secretary of State and a few of their operatives. Some 50,000 black voters in Florida were tossed off the voter rolls, because their names resembled those on a list of Texas felons… 2004 was stolen electronically by Rove and some GOP pigs in Ohio. And their alleged Senate majority in 2002 was created by electronic election thefts in Georgia and Minnesota, after Senator Wellstone was murdered by right-wing thugs…
October 14th, 2009 at 8:01 pmIt is too bad that the G.O.P. base hates most of the people it features on their home page!
October 14th, 2009 at 8:05 pmFigures lie,
October 14th, 2009 at 8:06 pmliars figure.
How embarrassing, the more the planet heats up the more the Chamber’s numbers are baked.
October 14th, 2009 at 9:22 pmI have owned a successful business for 25 years now, and I avoid the local Chamber like the plague.
The local chapter is run by a bunch of hard-drinking racists who still live in the 1950’s, even though most of them were born in the late 1960’s.
If my area’s local chapter is any indication of the national group, it would be no surprise that they are having a bit of a time getting folks with actual ideas.
Needless to say, the local chapter in my area is nearly 100% repiggie, and they prattle repiggie nonsense constantly.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:07 pmDenial has its price.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:17 pmIt’s an old story. When I had a business I belonged to the local Chamber of Commerce which provided education, professional networking and opportunities to participate in community enrichment. The local chamber belonged to the national chamber.
To consider every member of local chambers to subscribe to the silliness of the national chamber is like calling everyone who has a drink an alcoholic.
There are even Democrats in the local chambers.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:37 pmWhat’s a few zeroes?
October 14th, 2009 at 11:40 pmEvan Dicks…..what have you been selling for 25 years?
October 15th, 2009 at 12:47 am.
10:1 odds that tomorrow, they’ll swell up to 300 TRILLION!
.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:38 amThis is interesting in which if the Nebraska State Chamber of Commerce is telling the Nat’l Commerce it is behind them 100% when in fact businesses in the state are not all represented by the state’s commerce itself.
Before EFCA got set back because of health care reform. Most in Nebraska was being fed much propaganda. It came from our state treasurer who since had some very tough personal family scandals.
Besides setting up a web site they were in papers, TV, radio and blaring loud with scary torrents of fearing for ones job.
The state treasurer even boasted of establishing a “workers rights” guide.
This is the guy;
http://www.journalstar.com/news/local/article_9f20f176-49c3-546c-b304-4f107dc87789.html
and this is the site that sits in ready for when EFCA resurfaces:
http://www.neworkersrights.com/
So it was helpful information for me as you might see.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:22 amThanks…………..
If the right wingers can’t win at the Chamber of Commerce, they sure as hell aren’t going to win in 2010, 2012, and so on and so forth!
October 15th, 2009 at 6:38 amThe difference between 3 Mil and 3 hundred thousand is just a zero.
October 15th, 2009 at 8:56 amEveryone knows a zero is nothing.
Lying with numbers is nothing new to the business world.
Ha ha ha! Hysterical! With that sort of disparity, I’m guessing they were relying on Matt Kibbe and Michelle Malkin for the member count!
October 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pmIn North Carolina, we are being deluged with advertising by the CofC on the health care debate. burun estetigi
October 21st, 2009 at 5:36 am