Thom's blog - Wednesday October 27th, 2010
You need to know this about the Supreme Court. If you think the radically pro-Chamber of Commerce decision reached in the Citizens United case was an anomaly, you’d be wrong. According to a new study by the Constitutional Accountability Center, since 2006, when Justice Alito joined the bench, the Roberts court has ruled in favor of the Chamber 68% of the time. This is an overwhelming increase compared to the 43% success rate of the Chamber under the previous Burger Court during the 1980’s. And in cases decided by a narrow 5-4 margin, basically down party lines on today’s court, the Chamber was even more successful – walking away with legal victories nearly three quarters of the time. Strikingly, Justice “not true” Alito has never, not even once, sided against the Chamber in a narrow margin decision – thanks for shopping with us, please come again. Its getting worse too. The most recent data, from October 2009, shows the Chamber enjoyed its highest rate of success winning 13 out of 16 cases heard that term. Showing the glaring divide on the court, the more moderate or liberal bloc of Justices only supported the Chamber on 15% of narrowly divided decisions. Unfortunately their opinion has now been drowned out by Chief Justice John Roberts who, with the assistance of his 4 other Republicans colleagues on the bench, have been successful in putting the highest court in the land firmly under the employ of the US Chamber of Commerce. They’re now on the payroll along with the United States Congress. Let’s see who wins the Employee of the Month award.
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When the Chamber of Commerce was called out recently for using contributions from foreign affiliates for U.S. political campaigns, its denials were fierce. But, of course the Chamber is using money from foreign affiliates to fund its political mission, and you can be sure that mission isn’t to help workers. The Chamber’s foreign affiliates, called AmChams, aren’t American companies doing business in foreign companies, like the Chamber wants us to believe. AmCham in China is comprised of Chinese firms like Northern Light Venture Capital, AmCham in Russia includes state run banks and AmCham in Abu Dhabi is mainly state-run oil companies. What do these AmChams do? A big part of their work with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is to convince U.S. businesses to send even more jobs overseas. A recent seminar in Jacksonsville, Florida had local businesses meeting with Chinese government officials and U.S. Chamber leaders, to learn all about how to offshore even more jobs. And the U.S. Chamber is getting a lot of foreign donations to the political account it’s using to attack candidates that support issues like financial reform and an end to tax breaks for corporations that move jobs overseas. According to Think Progress, more than 80 foreign firms have contributed at least $885,000 so far to the Chamber’s political program. And a Campaign Money Watch report found that more than 1.4 million jobs were offshored since 1994 in the nine states in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce currently is spending significant money. Check out the foreign-owned companies that give money in U.S. political races. T-Mobile USA comes in at more than $310,000. So one last note about money: when you hear that right-wing talker Glenn Beck tells his radio audience to donate hard-earned dollars to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, think about where that money’s going. It’s not going to support jobs in the U.S. or protections for workers and consumers. It’s going right into the pockets of executives who want to send your job overseas.
This is the link to the chart of PAC $ given to Chamber:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1350/5102362471_1e16e8dff1_o.jpg
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Let's all remember when you refer to Citizens United that is a brain wash. It is citizens un-united or reclassified and the ruling itself, nor the fact that the case was presented was not a mistake. The ruling class on both sides of the privately traded political spectrum have made their intentions clear.