Chamber of Commerce is finally outed.

[The Backlash Cometh]

It's not just the churches you have to look out for, it's the Chamber, too. These are Bush's allies: Businessmen who have no ethics, and church leaders who claim to be on higher moral ground than anybody else. Often, they're one and the same. You look at Ralph Reed and you will see the embodiment of the future.


Anyway, this is the article regarding the chamber:

A Quiet Revolution In Business Lobbying
Chamber of Commerce Helps Bush Agenda
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 5, 2005; Page A01


After brief pleasantries on the phone the other day, Thomas J. Donohue got down to business with a top health insurance executive. "We're in a new year and a new time," Donohue said smoothly. "Can we put you on the list and get your money?"

The executive said yes, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was $100,000 richer. So, in effect, was President Bush's push to rein in trial lawyers and lower taxes.

The chamber is at the forefront of a quiet revolution in business lobbying. Corporate groups now raise big money to advance broad issues, largely to help the Republican president enact his fiscal agenda. That's a long step away from what trade associations traditionally did: concentrate on narrow concerns while shunning partisan spats.

The big money has become commonplace in day-to-day lobbying, and few people are more responsible for that than the outspoken Donohue. When he became the group's president in 1997, the chamber took in only about $600,000 from its largest corporate members. Last year, collections for that category, called the President's Advisory Group, totaled $90 million.

That's a major reason Bush will rely on him and the chamber this year. "When the White House looks for the go-to people on business issues," said fellow Bush enthusiast Dirk Van Dongen of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW), "the chamber is among the very first groups that it talks to."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64725-2005Feb4.html

[Ezlivin]

1. I was on the Board of Directors of a local chamber

And it was very evident that they were completely beholden to the corporate world.

I served on the board of the Colleyville Area Chamber of Commerce (near DFW airport) for two years. It was like serving on a church committee in many ways. Our monthly chamber luncheons were held in a local church and always began with a prayer to Jesus.

I discussed this with the President of the Chamber, reasoning that our members were from diverse religious backgrounds, but this never was convincing enough.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. I don't think it's an accident that churches suddenly got proficiently

run as businesses. I always thought it was the beginning of the end when they started computerizing their congregation and keeping track of annual donations. What is sad is how businesses use them as a moral shield to sley anyone who gets in their way of public resources.

[Ezlivin]

3. When I was in church I noticed the creeping corporatism

Back in the late '80s it started happening in many of the medium- to large-sized churches. Businessmen started advising churches on how to make things "work better". Pretty soon the entire church started taking on a corporate structure.

Mega-churches are defacto businesses, working with budgets of several million dollars. If they were taxed as such, many of our social ills would vanish.

[paineinthearse]

4. Wasn't it a local CoC that started a "newspaper"

Posing to print "news" but was a spokespiece for corporate interests? Think it was in Illinois.