Plutocrats Clutch Their Pearls
by digby
The Chamber of Commerce responds to Think Progress's expose of their foreign money laundering into the election with "I know you are but what am I" silliness:
Having been roundly repudiated in the mainstream media over their allegation that the U.S. Chamber is using money from American Chambers of Commerce abroad (AmChams) to fund political ads, John Podesta and his folks at ThinkProgress have shifted to a new target in their increasingly pitiful attempt to silence the voice of business in the upcoming election--our bilateral business councils.
This allegation is equally false and baseless, not to mention tiresome and desperate...
ThinkProgress is grabbing at straws. We look forward to debunking some of their upcoming "investigations": "U.S. Chamber Using Cash From Space Aliens to Fund Political Advertising" and "U.S. Chamber Producing Counterfeit Currency in its Basement to Pay for Attack Ads."
ThinkProgress, huh? Hurling unfounded allegations for political gain is progress, with a sputtering economy and near 10% unemployment? How about: ThinkRationally? These wild and irresponsible allegations make you wonder who is funding ThinkProgress ... and why.
That's the Chamber of Commerce blog, not some idiotic poster on Red State. And people wonder why our economy is a disaster ...
Here's an official spokesman for the Chamber, obviously another member our elite American business braintrust, sniveling about how multi-millionaires and corporations need to remain secret because they are in physical danger from liberals:
Joston: ...We're under no obligation as any organization or association in the United States is, to divulge who its members are, who its contributors are. We are under legal obligations to account and have an accounting method that ensures that in our accounts that funds or any aspect of money that comes from a foreign source is not in any way utilized in any political sense. We ensure that we do that...
What this administration wants is a list of who the companies are who are contributors, and we saw last year, Jake, why, when we very publicly ran ads against the Patients Protections and Affordable Care Act, quoting the CBO, quoting the head of CMS, the Centers for Medicare Services, that it would not in fact bend the cost curve down, that it would bend the cost curve up as they testified before the senate finance committee, there was an attempt to try and find out who were the corporations that were contributing to that effort.
When some of those corporate names were divulged, not by us, by others, what did they receive? They received protests, they received threats, they were intimidated, they were harassed, they had to hire additional security, they were recipients of a host of proxies leveled at those companies that had nothing to do with the purpose of those companies. So we know what the purpose here is. It's to harass and intimidate...
Much like we've seen in California with ballot initiatives -- when the proponents of ballot initiatives’ names have been divulged to the public -- those people were harassed, they were threatened with violence and they were intimidated...
A year ago when we ran issue ads across this country, hundreds of them, against the patients protection and affordable care act, citing the CBO report, citing the Center for Medicare Studies--Services report, the companies that got divulged publicly were harassed, were intimidated.
TAPPER: How?
JOSTEN: The outside allies of this administration, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, HCANN - Health Care Action Now network and Moveon.org, all combined and coordinated protests at those companies, at the CEOs' homes in some cases, as they did here with us. And they began a proxy campaign, through outside groups, the Center for Political Accountability, and another group, Walden Asset Management. This is a game, ok? And they like to play that game out. So it's clear that the game here is to harass and intimidate.
When I cited what took place in California, there is a gentleman who has done research for the Institute for Justice in California, on Prop 8 and what happened with the CA marriage protection act, when personal information about those donors to support Prop 8 was posted on the internet.
It led to death threats. It led to physical violence, vandalism and economic reprisals from against those people and their homes. So we know, how the public, if outed in supporting some controversial causes, if you will, we know what happens. We know what happens to our people.
Oh boo fucking hoo.
He even has the brass to compare these cowardly oligarchs to civil rights workers.
Ayn Rand would turn over in her grave if she heard these so-called "leaders" whining like a bunch of babies and refusing to own their ideology. Who in their right mind would trust any of them if, with all their billions, they run to the Chamber to launder their money so they don't have to take responsibility for what they are doing. Of course, that's pretty much how the titans of commerce in America operate these days. They screw everything up, take their profits, fuck over the plebes and then run and hide.
I don't think there's a better example of the American elite failure than these pearl clutching plutocrats. Yuck.
*Read the whole Tapper interview with the psycho Chamber spokesman. These people really need to stop powering the diet pills and Red Bull.
Update: Oh, and I just want to thank the mainstream media for their epic failure on this as well. As Eric Boehlert points out, there was a decade or so when the press was thrilled to chase every convoluted financial scandal the crazy wingnuts dreamed up, regardless of the evidence. Now they've decided that such allegations are unsubstantiated merely on the word of a powerful partisan institution. It's quite an evolution.
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