This is what I love about the people who are occupying these different venues. Is there a better metaphor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce than a human red carpet?

This was from the U.S. Chamber holiday party last night, and if there was ever a better venue for the 99 percent to confront the 1 percent, I'm not sure what it might be.

Via International Business Times:

"This is Bruce Josten's let-them-eat-cake moment," Christie Setzer of Chamber Watch told Mother Jones, although the publication reports she refused to directly approach Josten.

The event was one of several protests that took place in Washington, D.C. this week. On Monday, unemployed protesters from across the country gathered in D.C. for a week of demonstrations dubbed "Take Back the Capitol," during which thousands of Americans occupied the offices of several members of the U.S. House and Senate and swarmed K Street to speak out against the influence of corporate lobbyists on the nation's political discourse.

A report released on Wednesday from the non-partisan Public Campaign found that 30 major U.S. corporations have spent more money lobbying Congress than on paying federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010, an example of the undue influence Occupiers argue has corrupted the American political system.

In the 2012 campaign cycle, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has used their resources to alter a photograph of Senator Sherrod Brown to make him look like a wild-eyed lunatic. They are backing the evil SOPA initiative to kill the internet with big lobbying dollars, lobbying against food and consumer product safety regulations, and will likely throw a lot of money at the Massachusetts Senate race between Elizabeth Warren and the bankers' handmaiden, Scott Brown.

Did anyone actually dare to walk on the red carpet? According to ThinkProgress, no, though Bruce Josten stood in front of it to greet his guests as they arrived.

In a new video released last week, pro-labor organization American Rights at Work takes on the ridiculous arguments anti-labor organizations are using to attack the recent rule issued by the National Labor Relations Board that requires employers to hang posters that inform workers of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The humorous video shows the absurdity of the slippery slope claims organizations like the National Federation of Independent Business is making about the potential effects of the poster. A blog post from American Rights at Work about the new video says:

This August the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a rule that requires private sector employers to post a notice advising employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—rights they’ve had for more than 70 years. Like other notices of workplace laws regarding safety and health, compensation, and discrimination, the poster raises awareness without unduly burdening employers.

But anti-worker politicians and corporate interest groups are up in arms over this modest step forward for everyday Americans. So we put together this short video on the poster to expose the right-wing hysteria for what it really is: political theater intended to undermine even the most basic protections for the 99 percent.

The right-wing pundits featured in our video have tried to make the argument that this simple poster will kill jobs and threaten our economic recovery, even though small business owners blame low consumer spending for their hesitance to create jobs—not regulations like this one. As for the millions of employees struggling to make ends meet in this upside down economy, knowing their rights to form a union and bargain collectively for a better life has never been more important.

The quotes featured in the video include:

• "A punitive new rule..." Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business
• "Just when we thought we had seen it all from the NLRB, it has reached new low it its zeal to punish small-business owners." Harned again
• "This is nothing more than labor regulation run amok," Robin Conrad of the National; Chamber Litigation Center
• "The National Labor Relations Board is making sure that unemployment remains high in America," Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute
• "The NLRB has...required that employers litter their workplaces with guidelines for unionization," Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Association
• "...the NLRB is causing great uncertainty among manufacturers at a time when our economy is struggling to recover," Jay Timmons of the National Association of Manufacturers
• "It's unnecessary, needlessly provocative and will only serve to create division rather than cooperation between small-business owners and their employees," Farrell Quinlan of the National Federation of Independent Business

So, in summary, anti-labor groups would have you believe that hanging a poster is punitive punishment litter that is government run amok in an effort to keep unemployment high and creates certainty among manufacturers. And that it is provocative to inform employees of rights they've had for 70 years. Much like it is provocative for teachers to educate their students about the Bill of Rights, I'm guessing. The idea that the posters are divisive is also ridiculous. The 1 percent and the 99 percent are already divided and it was the 1 percent that did the dividing, not a poster.

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There you go. Orrin Hatch has sent the signal: If we want a jobs plan, we'll have to give up any right to access our current health care system.

Of course, he buries the threat inside a rant about the individual mandate, because that's unpopular with many, not just those on the right. So now we have Republicans saying "Want a job? Die."

These people make me sick. Oops. Guess that's their goal.

Update: Eric Cantor has taken up the hostage-taking on behalf of the House. Washington Post:

But by putting the disaster aid funding on a separate piece of legislation that’s required to keep the government running, House leaders seem to be calculating that the Senate will have no choice but to go along or risk a partial government shutdown.

Oh, and this:

Besides being about half the overall size of the Senate’s disaster aid measure, the House bill ties cuts to an Obama-backed loan program to encourage the production of fuel efficient vehicles to pay for the $1 billion in immediate aid for 2011. Typically disaster aid is added to the budget as an emergency expense, and the insistence by Republicans on so-called offsets has Democrats fuming.

Oopsies. The US Chamber of Commerce spent a whole lot of money in the last election supporting conservative candidates and causes. Turns out, local Chambers aren't so happy about being associated with that and are looking to end their memberships.

The Chamber’s ads were particularly sleasy; many were patently untrue, while others criticized Democrats for supporting legislation that the Chamber actually asked them to support.

Part of the Chamber’s strategy has been to manipulate the press and the wider public by falsely portraying itself as a community of small businesses and local chambers of commerce. Meanwhile, local chambers are upset that they are being unfairly associated with the U.S. Chamber’s far right partisanship. Politico reported today reported on the growing rift:

“We were getting pounded. We felt here, in Central Pennsylvania, that the ads they were running were not professional ads,” said David Wise, president of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, which is considering dropping its national membership. “This was not a unifying event. It was divisive.” [...] Other chambers plan to take the extraordinary step of ending their affiliation with the U.S. Chamber, including The Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Its leaders reported being inundated with angry — and sometimes profanity-laced — telephone calls from people objecting to the U.S. Chamber-backed ads. [...] Looking ahead to the 2012 elections, if more local chambers publicly declare their independence, it could undermine the power and credibility of attacks launched from the Washington office.

You know, when the Chamber was first formed in 1912, its focus was strictly a non-partisan one, encouraging the growth of American businesses and the hiring of American workers. By the 1970s, however, the Chamber turned undeniably right-wing and stopped expending energy protecting American workers. But now those ultra-conservative, America-hurting policies--ones in which the US Chamber of Commerce fought for the right of corporations to out-source American jobs and benefit foreign interests--are running counter to the needs and interests of the local Chambers and they've had enough.

Karma, baby.

It isn't like this is a complete surprise, but still, there is something incestuous about News Corp. donating $1 million to the Republican Governors' Association in order for the Republican Governors' Association to mount high-profile attack campaigns on Democratic candidates. I think it's safe for everyone to eliminate the terms "fair" and "balanced" from any discussion of Fox News.

More disturbing to me than even the editorial compromise that comes from such a contribution is the fact that the largest shareholder (besides Murdoch) in News Corp is Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is launching an Arabic News Network in partnership with News Corp. That raises all sorts of ethical and political issues for me. Does the corporate veil shield News Corp from the ban on contributions from foreign countries? It likely does, but it certainly should disqualify Fox News from being considered a "news outlet."

News Corp. isn't the only member of the RGA Million Dollar Roundtable, either, though they hold the record for the most compromised by it. David Koch has also donated $1 million to the cause, and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce has given $2,547,500 in 2010.

There are many other corporate members of the Six-Figure club. Keep in mind these are cumulative totals through June 30, 2010. Expect them to at least double by November:

Continue reading »

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Glenn Beck starts the smearathon of President's possible Supreme Court nominees with his usual racist-homophobic-Bircher philosophy. Righties try to preempt their smears by saying that if they comment on race, gender or the ethnicity of a candidate---they will be the ones who are smeared.

Riiiight.

Replacing a liberal judge with a liberal judge is too much for right-wing ideologues, who constantly bitch and complain about "activist" judges and insist that Obama must pick a centrist (whatever a centrist is) or he hates America.

Beck really should be outraged at the Citizens United activist ruling by the Roberts court, if he was being honest about the "activist judges" thing, because that overturned decades of settled law on how big business was regulated in what they can spend in politics, or so I've been told. Though the California Chamber of Commerce pulled their smear attack ad of Jerry Brown because some of their members objected to it (and didn't even know they had made it), nonetheless, this ad is one of the previews of what will happen as we move forward with elections because of that ruling.

Not good.

Meet Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Company. Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce. In this speech above, he denies climate change, derisively refers to Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and others as "greeniacs", and calls them all crazy. Watch the speech, you'll see. In his mind, "the greeniacs are taking over the world."

Massey Energy Company, Blankenship's highly successful strip-mining and mountaintop removal operation is the parent company of Performance Coal Co, where a tragic explosion occurred on April 5th. As of this writing, 25 miners have died and 4 more are still missing. Twenty-five families are without a loved one. Four more may discover they have lost someone they love too. 29 families in all, forever changed by one single, violent event in a coal mine. One single violent event in a coal mine run by a company so obsessed with profit it runs roughshod over employees' and neighbors' health and safety.

Here's something else about Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Company: Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year's Labor Day Tea Party, also known as the "Friends of America Rally." Here's Massey's pitch. Note how he makes it sound like he isn't one of the corporate enemies of America.

The Friends of America Rally featured such notables as Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent, and Hank Williams, Jr., and was graced by Blankenship himself going off on a diatribe that seemed strange at the time, but has come to be commonplace these days. It concerned President Obama, Democrats, and any one who doesn't salute God, coal, and apple pie. Oh, and we're also going to 'steal their jobs,' if Hannity is to be believed.

Blankenship and Massey Energy spend millions to defend unsafe workplaces

Even while coal dust settles on nearby schoolchildren, there are lessons to learn from this disaster about Massey Energy in general, and Don Blankenship in particular.

It seems that Performance Coal's safety record is spotty, at best. From the Mississippi Business Journal:

Massey ranks among the nation’s top five coal producers and is among the industry’s most profitable. It has a spotty safety record.

The federal mine safety administration fined Massey a then-record $1.5 million for 25 violations that inspectors concluded contributed to the deaths of two miners trapped in a fire in January 2006. The company later settled a lawsuit naming it, several subsidiaries and Chief Executive Don Blankenship as defendants. Aracoma Coal Co. later paid $2.5 million in fines after the company pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges in the fire.

Massey and Blankenship also settled a lawsuit brought by the Manville Trust in 2007 with regard to workplace safety and environmental compliance.

The Manville Trust filed the case in July 2007 against company Chairman, CEO, and President Don Blankenship and certain other current and former officers and directors. The plaintiff sought several corporate governance reforms, specifically regarding environmental compliance and worker safety. Citing several incidents involving Massey Energy, including a major federal water pollution lawsuit, penalties for two coal miners' tragic deaths and other safety and environmental compliance problems, the lawsuit claimed that a "conscious failure" by the defendants to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations and other legal obligations posed a "substantial threat of monetary liability for violations."

Keep unions out, let teabaggers in

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