Restore Our Future, American Crossroads, and Club for Growth Action – all three names kindle both fear and hatred among liberals, and rightfully so. Spawned out of a pair of 2010 Supreme Court decisions, these conservative SuperPACs, like their smaller leftwing counterparts, represent an unprecedented intrusion of private capital into politics. With the vast majority of their funds originating from just 24 individuals and a handful of multibillion-dollar corporations, many see political action committees as the taproot of a burgeoning American plutocracy.
Still, as destructive as these newly formed SuperPACs are, they may not be the most insidious creations of the Citizens United and SpeechNow.org court cases. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of many 401(c)(6) nonprofits also empowered by the recent decisions, laid out more cash than all SuperPACs but one during the 2010 election cycle. Its cash outlays will be even greater during the presidential race, it will suffer fewer regulations than the SuperPACs, and by most standards the organization is quite evil.
Fewer regulations, because unlike political action committees, the USCOC and affiliated nonprofits are not required to disclose the identity of their donors. As anonymity is often a benefit for corporations attempting to buy Congress, Chamber members almost always invoke this right.
In a brief glimpse behind the curtain of secrecy, a two-year-old New York Times exposé found that the biggest donors to the Chamber in 2010, during the height of the debate over Dodd-Frank, were Prudential Financial and Goldman Sachs. Both used the USCOC to dumb down the soon-to-be-enacted set of financial regulations. Dow Chemical, an aggressive opponent of proposed legislation that would have tightened security at their plants, made a $1.7 million donation that same year. Another large contributor according to the report, insurance giant Aegon, is based in the Netherlands, and was one of hundreds of foreign member corporations that donated heavily.
Foreign corporate lobbying is illegal, and the USCOC claims in its defense that membership dues are not poured into an all-purpose slush fund. Although the Chamber receives funding from foreign companies, this money, they say, is not directly funneled into the Chamber’s lobbying branch. But in practice, this difference is a matter of semantics: if I were a lobbyist, I could receive millions of dollars from a foreign company, fight for its interests in Congress, and claim it was coincidental. But no matter how money is rearranged, a lobbying entity must, to some extent, represent the interests of its paying members.
From this unwholesome composition of foreign and domestic corporations springs the USCOC’s poisoned ideology. On top of a monolithic anti-regulatory agenda, the Chamber seems to have declared war on the environment. And though the organization claims to support renewable energy, their official policy subtly implies that the sources of global warming are unknown:
Along with world economic growth, global greenhouse gas emissions are increasing. Regardless what this means for climate change … measures taken to address any stated climate change challenge…must not harm the United States economy. (Officially policy position stated by USCOC)
In a similar, anti-environmental vein, Don Blankenship, ex-CEO of mountaintop removal giant Massey Energy, claimed in a speech to West Virginia industry insiders that very few high-ranking Chamber officials believe in global warming. Blankenship, then a board member of the USCOC denounced the Democratic caucus as a gaggle of “greeniacs,” claimed that the coal-critical WV Charleston Gazette was written by “communists,” and lambasted mine safety regulations. Blankenship would resign from the USCOC after the Big Branch Mine disaster killed 29 employees, but not before providing an amusing and tragic glimpse into Chamber culture.
Fortunately for the journalist, the USCOC still publishes a true gem of a pamphlet entitled, The Environmentalist’s Little Green Book. It’s pages are peppered with what the Chamber calls “stupid, extreme, and even misanthropic” comments by Greenpeace and Sierra Club officials, all of which supposedly prove that environmentalists are out of the “mainstream.”
The Chamber’s litigation history is also as amusingly heartless as it is tragic. In its most recent battles, the Chamber defended the right of Mingo Coal and Massey Energy to obliterate more mountains, bulwarked the unconditional American right to purchase Canadian oil sand energy, and attempted to abridge the federal list of endangered species. The USCOC’s litigation branch is unscrupulous. But at least there’s one source of aid for strip mine corporations kicking octogenarian Mountain Staters off their land.
Still, as much as the Chamber has taken control of American politics – spending more than the next three lobbying organizations combined – there is light at the end of the tunnel. Much of its lobbying power comes from its suspect claim to represent three million local businesses. In reality most companies are members of local chambers, which are themselves members of the umbrella organization. But now some of these local chambers of commerce, including those in Seattle, New York and San Francisco, are cutting ties, and many corporations, including Apple, Nike, and Microsoft are also leaving the USCOC. For the first time in its history, the Chamber is beginning to face nascent legitimacy issues, and, aided by nonprofits such as chamber.350.org, the anti-USCOC lobby is growing.
As patrons and small-business owners we finally have firm ground to stand on when trying to dissociate ourselves from the Chamber. Let’s not squander the opportunity, but rather turn up the heat, and perhaps, instead of providing this poisoned lobbying giant with a false moral foundation, we can melt its corrupted, corporate shell from the inside out.