Thread: Chambers of commerce priorities not always Main Street USA

Chambers of commerce priorities not always Main Street USA

February 05, 2011|By Scott Maxwell

If you knew of a group fighting campaign and ethics reform in local government, Fair Districts at the state level and immigration reform at the national level, what would you call it?

Undemocratic? Anti-populist?

How about: The chamber of commerce?

That last one is certainly accurate.

In recent years, the big chambers have advocated everything from secrecy in campaign donations to higher taxes for homeowners.

And, frankly, I've found it puzzling.

There are still lot of smaller-town chambers doing the work most of us expect: helping local businesses thrive. (More on that in a moment.)

But on the national, state and even regional level, the big chambers have lost their way, becoming little more than a tool for corporate America, advancing agendas that come at the expense of the middle class — and sometimes even the small businesses they claim to represent.

Not convinced? Let's talk specifics.

The best example at the state level involves Fair Districts — the popular amendments that Floridians overwhelmingly passed last year. Not only did the Florida Chamber of Commerce oppose Fair Districts in principle, it actually funded the opposition.

You'd be hard-pressed to argue that it did so on behalf of Main Street USA.

At the local level, we saw a similar fight against the public will in Orange County a few years ago. Teresa Jacobs and others were leading a fight for ethics reform and greater transparency in politics — and the single greatest force of resistance was the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Is that really what small businesses throughout Central Florida were craving? The right to mask campaign donations through shell corporations?

The list of chamber-backed issues at odds with most of Main Street America continue at all levels.

In Tallahassee, the Florida chamber wants to shift more of the property-tax burden on to homeowners and make it easier for development to encroach into rural areas.

And at the federal level, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is fighting one of the few immigration-reform ideas to receive widespread public support: requiring businesses to electronically verify the status of their hires.

That's right. It's not some group of amnesty-loving liberals challenging the Arizona state law. It's the U.S. Chamber — which vowed to fight it the way to the Supreme Court.

Hiring illegal immigrants, after all, can be good for profit margins.

http://oneoldvet.com/

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com

IMO at the national level the Chamber represents the interests of CEO's of global corporations. It's more than just cheap labor. Those CEO's want to water down national sovereignty, so that they can control the nation states in which they do business.
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