How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Became the Greatest (Bumbling) Enemy of America
I. Meet America's business cheerleaders.
People tend to view the Chamber of Commerce in the same colors as the Rotary Club or the Knights of Columbus: officious do-gooders lending a helpful hand in the name of economy and country. It's a largely accurate assessment – at least on the local level.
In Davenport, Iowa, it means hosting music festivals like River Roots Live, a "quality of life initiative" that brings 30,000 people downtown each year, says Jennifer Walker of the Quad Cities chamber.
In Largo, Florida, it means introducing the small and struggling to the guys with all the money. "They want to meet heads of the hospitals, heads of the banks, so they can generate business from one another," says the president of that city's chamber, Tom Morrissette.
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II. Now meet their weird Uncle Ed, who's ruining the family name.
Think of the U.S. Chamber as your crazy Uncle Ed. He spent too much time listening to talk radio, developed a raging victim complex and came to believe that the country was being destroyed by sloth and moochery. So he formed a lobbying group to defend the one true antidote: free enterprise.
Over the past century, the U.S. Chamber has sounded a lot like Ed when he's surrounded by a battalion of vanquished Budweisers.
The national organization was against America's rush to stop Hitler in World War II. It called Franklin Roosevelt's remedies for the Great Depression, among them Social Security, an attempt to "Sovietize" America. After the war, it cheered on Joe McCarthy's hunt for imaginary Commies.
More recently, the U.S. Chamber fought against civil rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act and safeguards for gays and lesbians. At one point, it even championed the need to discriminate against pregnant employees.
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