US Chamber of Commerce ‘entering the news business’: report

[Ian David]

The US Chamber of Commerce is quietly developing its own network of media outlets to push for changes to the law that would make life easier for corporations, says a report from Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab.

According to the Lab's Laura McGann, in the past few years a subsidiary of the Chamber has built a network of business-focused print and online publications across the US with the intention of pushing for tort reform -- changes to the law that would make it more difficult to sue corporations for wrongdoing, among other things.

McGann reports that in 2008, the last year for which data is publicly available, the chamber spent $41 million on campaigning against tort reform. Its publications -- which do not identify themselves as sponsored by the chamber on their sites -- have been "critical of the decisions of local courts" when it came to corporate law.

The news comes as many critics of the Chamber grow increasingly alarmed over its spending on political ads in the current election campaign. The group has said it plans to spend $75 million on the current election cycle. This year through September, the Chamber spent a record $144 million on lobbying.

More:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/chamber-commerce-news-business/

[tridim]

1. They're going for the big "F"

Since it's probably their last chance.

They will fail.

[RKP5637]

2. The ultimate pinnacle of runaway capitalism without a conscience. This is really going

to be one confused country with the various MSM outlets. Secret money will eventually take this country under. Sadly, many will eventually not give a F about the country, I guess that is their ultimate agenda.

[OlympicBrian]

3. The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country...

The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country...and that applies so pointedly to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Now the floodgates are open, given the recent Supreme Court decision, and it's not just elections that are for sale. The US Chamber of Commerce is the largest corporate lobbying entity in the world. So, lawmaking is also wide open to the highest bidder, including foreigners, via lobbying.

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country."

- Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.

"Shall we make our own comforts, or go without them at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these; experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort."

- Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin, 1816.

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain."

- Thomas Jefferson to Larkin Smith, 1809.