Is the Chamber of Commerce the new NRA? And is that a good thing?
A generation ago, the National Rifle Association was a fairly mainstream sportsman’s group. A lot of us first learned to shoot in NRA safety programs and being a member was sort of like being a member of Rotary.
(My wife Susan still has her NRA marksman certificate on the wall of her office. Our son Nicholas received his first rifle, a .22, at the age of 11.)
But over the last couple of decades the organization has evolved into a front-line conservative culture-war institution, with uncompromising stances on issues like assault rifles, extended ammo clips, background checks, and concealed weapon laws.
The organization’s positions are now well the right of most law enforcement organizations in the US, and even well to the right of most gun-owners. This from Time magazine.
According to a 2009 survey by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, 69% of NRA members and 85% of gun owners support background checks at gun shows.
A separate poll showed that about 90% of gun owners support plugging gaps in federal databases, enforcing existing requirements for stocking those databases and forcing agencies to swap that information.
The NRA’s transformation is a given now, a done-deal.
And it’s worth noting that by adopting a take-no-prisoners approach to even the most modest gun-control measures, the organization has expanded its power significantly.
Which may be one of the reasons that another once-ho-hum organization appears to be following in its tracks.
The Chamber of Commerce used to represent a fairly snoozy, mom-and-pop business take on American political life.
But over the last few years, the organization has become a major conservative player in the fight to block or dismantle Democratic and progressive policies pushed by the Obama administration.
The Chamber opposed the healthcare law, climate change legislation, and a consumer protection bureau.
Fox News noted in 2009 that President Obama was trying to “neutralize” that opposition by speaking directly to the Chamber’s members.
“We have an open door to the ideas and suggestions of the business community including the Chamber,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, noting that administration “representatives” met with Chamber representatives last week.
“But it does give us pause that they continue to throw millions of dollars against productive efforts under way to reform the regulatory structure, provide access to affordable health insurance for more Americans and reduce the impact of greenhouse gas emissions — all plans essential to the continued growth and recovery of our economy.”
More recently, liberals have been complaining that in a new Chamber report, the organization argues that “blue” states aren’t as good a place to do business as “red” red states — even when Democrat-dominated states appear to have much larger and more successful economies. This from Salon.
How about this — Americans, by an almost 2-to-1 margin, seem to prefer living in [what the Chamber described as] excessively regulated states — 139,270,097 — than they do in free market capitalist paradises like Alabama or Idaho — 67,475,959.
It’s not just lefties and progressives who have questioned the Chamber’s NRA-style approach. In 2009, the Apple corporation quit the Chamber because of its stand on climate change. This from the Washington Post.
In a letter to the Chamber’s president, Apple Vice President Catherine Novelli wrote, “Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.” As a result, Novelli said, “we have decided to resign our membership effective immediately.”
Also in 2009, three major power utilities quit the Chamber over the same issue, according to Reuters.
Exelon Corp, PG&E Corp and PNM Resources Inc, said they were leaving the Chamber. Other companies have criticized the Chamber, which has pushed for public hearings to challenge the scientific evidence of man-made climate change.
Those departures represent a tiny blip on the Chamber’s membership rolls, and the organization has continued to push hard against Democratic and union policies.
As with the NRA, it’s hard to question their effectiveness. Serious climate change legislation is now off the table in Washington and Bloomberg is reporting that the group is also gaining traction in the fight over labor regulations.
The Washington-based Chamber has protested an “explosion” of federal rules in the past few years that the group said cost the economy $1.7 trillion a year.
Chamber President Thomas Donohue urged officials on Jan. 11 to “rein in excessive regulation,” and a week later President Barack Obama ordered elimination of rules that hamper economic growth.
So what do you think? Is it a healthy thing that the Chamber has adopted a more aggressive, partisan approach in Washington, taking on Team Obama?
Or is it a bad thing for a centrist, Main Street organization to tilt so heavily toward one side of the aisle?
Tags: politics
“Or is it a bad thing for a centrist, Main Street organization to tilt so heavily toward one side of the aisle?”
It’s a sad thing.
That our own government has encroached on our freedoms to the extent that these organizations have to take a strong stand just to fend off their own government.
It seems to me that siting back and letting gov’t grow in the wrong direction, establish policies and laws that harm business (or gun owners if you want to talk NRA), raise taxes and deficits, etc. wasn’t working too well for the Chamber. They represent a constituency that is being harmed by gov’t, shouldn’t they object loudly and clearly? It’s no different than the unions protesting cuts in Wisconsin or Code Pink storming the House.
The days of people remaining in the middle and keeping mum are gone. Everyone has a stake in the future and whether you fall on the global warming side or the skeptical side there is nothing inherently wrong with expressing your opinion, or of your advocacy group expressing that opinion. No one questions the unions right to protest and they certainly take a “no holds barred” position. The Chamber is pretty milquetoast about it IMO.
Simple answer – Yes the Chamber has become radicalized and I have no idea why.
I dropped my NRA membership when it decided to support the death penalty. Never could figure out what that had to do with guns and hunting unless the jerks look upon hunting as a form of executing deer and geese.
I left the Chamber of Commerce about 12 years ago because the groups national policies seemed to favor large corporations over the interests of very small, mom and pop type businesses.
The only freedoms the Chamber is interested in is the freedom for their big-business sponsors to maximize profits at the expense of worker safety, public health and our environment. It is a display of the raw, shameless power of mega-corporations that have no soul, morals or ethics and are focused only on short-term profiteering with no regard for the average person, small business or long-term impacts on society.
The Chamber has the most money. Most money wins, most of the time. By a lot. This is America. Them’s the rules.
More important, I’m troubled by your hyphens, Brian. A few days ago, you put a one in “hubbub,” which to my knowledge has never needed a hyphen since being handed down to us from the old Irish word “hooboobes.” Today, it’s “done-deal” with a mad dash. Conserve, Brian. Conserve.
Pedantically yours…
The salon article of course does not mention unemployment, disparity between the rich and poor and job growth and population movement.
But I don’t think it is a bad thing to have regulations and it is not a bad thing for business to say look this is how those regulations hurt employment and growth. The Chamber is taking an advocates role for business, we don’t always have to agree with business and shouldn’t agree with business, but we should listen.
The United States Chamber of Commerce is presently losing some very significant local members. It seems those who leave don’t want to be identified with an organization whose thrust is anti-labor, pro-pollution, and for export of American jobs. Fifty local chambers have disaffiliated in recent months and some of these are very large and significant. Among those who left are the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber spent $75 million in the last election cycle.
Just an observation on the like/dislike system.
I thought a hallmark quality of “centrists” or “liberals” or “progressives” was accepting of the ideas of others.
Hmmm. Just an observation.
This is why a lot of small businesses are abandoning the Chamber.
“I thought a hallmark quality of “centrists” or “liberals” or “progressives” was accepting of the ideas of others.”
I accept your ideas. I don’t necessarily “like” them.
“I accept your ideas. I don’t necessarily “like” them.”
Hmmm. Not sure about that explanation.
Given Bret, Mervel, and I tend to lean a little to more to the right than the “average” post, it might be more intellectually honest to change the words to “left” and “right” instead of “like” and “dislike”.
Look at this one thread.
I don’t believe the wording of my first post contained any racial statements, any insults, any personal challenges. There is no hyperbole or metaphors.
It’s just my opinion, like everyone else’s.
To “dislike” an opinion is not to “accept” an opinion…
… in my opinion.
I do like the red highlight on my opinion, however.
:)
I do think it intellectually wrong to assign a positive connotation to one way of thinking and a negative connotation to another.
Maybe Brian Mann should think about that a little.
The way it is currently set up, left-leaning equals “thumbs-up” and “like” and right-leaning equals “thumbs-down” and “dis-like”.
I plan on contributing just the same, but it’s an obvious assignment of positive/negative connotation to one way of thinking. The question is, “is it intentional?”
I propose changing it to agree/disagree, and no thumb-direction.
This is off subject, but Brian Mann or Dale, why do we suddenly have this Like/Dislike thing? Is that a part of some new program that is just built in or was this a conscious choice made by someone at NCPR? I’ve avoided using it for the most part, I don’t think it adds anything to the discussion. Reminds me of high school popularity contests.
Like your son, my father gave me a .22 for my 12th Christmas, and I still have it 52 years later. My hunter safety certificate came from an NRA instructor who was also an ROTC instructor when I was cadet at Clarkson. I agree about the NRA’s increasingly hard line stance. Of course, I have no interest in anyone coming to get my old rifles and shot gun, but there is line and I wonder how many NRA members, sticking to absolute principals, will write in to the Post Standard to decry, as an attack on 2nd amendment freedoms, the harsh (123 years) sentence imposed on a young man in Syracuse yesterday for importing from Ohio hand guns to sell on the street, some used in recent street shootings.
As to the US Chamber, it is a far cry from the small town Chambers across the North Country and elsewhere that are truly grass roots civic organizations working to improve their communities.
JDM – maybe agree/disagree would make more sense – but this is probably the way the package was delivered. Its pretty common.
It does feel like a popularity contest though.
or change the “like” highlight to “blue”.
Then we could have the “red comments” and the “blue comments”
1. “Hmmm. Not sure about that explanation.”
I don’t think it’s that hard to understand. I accept that you may have a reasonable, legitimate basis for your opinion but I have a different point of view. It’s pretty much the basis of a civilized democratic society.
Just for balance’s sake, I went through and troll-rated anybody who didn’t have a dislike, except JDM. Which shows how immature this system is. Gotta go update my MySpace page. TTFN!
JDM,
I just gave you a “dislike” because it made me laugh.
oa too.
When resources are limited focus on what you want most and on your strengths.
If there is no one to hold onto core issues there is no way to have an impact on those issues. The salt would lose its savor.
Did APPLE, PG & E, Exelon and PNM leave because of a single issue? If so who is intolerant? Same goes for the “greater” chambers who remove themselves from affiliation. Do they think they are right absolutely or that they wanted some flexibility by the chamber and got none?
In a larger organization there are likely to be somethings one does not fully accept. Same goes for the two larger political parties. The right to lifers and the log cabin Republicans are joined in the soup if not at the hip. In the opposite vein, the tea partiers are Republican lite- free of lifers, log cabins; closer to a single issue concept.(there is no cohesive organization). Maybe it is all more of sign of our national progression from Time to Life to People to Us to Self to O.
There is so much political noise out there organizations have to remove distractions.
Regarding the Like/Dislike feature on comments.
I added this rating plug-in into the blog after receiving the suggestion from a regular reader who rarely wanted to post a comment, but found there was often already one that represented his view. And he wanted a way to express disagreement as well.
I’m not sure of the ultimate value of this feature either, and I have already tweaked the language in the labels once. But I think agree/disagree is better language than like/dislike–though it is possible to agree with a comment, but also dislike it for tone, needless length, etc. I’ll have to think about that.
The built-in feature that I like the least about the rating system is that it will collapse a comment that is widely disliked so that you have to do an extra click to even see it. I think that unpopular views are sometimes the ones I would profit most from hearing, so I have set the range pretty high on that feature. I would turn it off altogether if I could figure out how. I was an English major, not a comp. sci. guy.
And one glaring lack in the rating system is that you can rate the comments of others, but you can’t rate the blog post itself. Sauce for goose and all that. I will be looking for a tool to rate the posts as well.
Let me know what you think of the rating feature by liking or disliking this comment. Even better, write a comment about it.
The fact that so many readers have rated comments already without any real promotion of the feature tells me that it does strike a chord.
Dale Hobson
NCPR Online
ALS- as a hard core, die hard, gun rights advocate I agree completely with the sentence this criminal got. He not only broke the law, he hurt the law abiding gun owners because there are a lot of people that can’t make the leap between legitimate, law abiding gun owners and criminal scum like this guy.
Thanks for weakening the “ghost comment” feature, Dale. I vote for agree/disagree, or no rating at all and just continued virtual shouting matches with Bret.
Gosh, I get all warm and fuzzy when you get emotional like that….
Jeeze OA, you got a red mark for being tolerant!