Chamber villainy exposed

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today is hosting two of our favorite Governors Gone Wild, Scott Walker and Rick Scott, at some sort of crazy-person confab. That's where Walker made the odd comment about putting up a sign that said, "Wisconsin is open for business."

The Chamber president, Tom Donohue, looks like a dime-novel villain, but he's actually quite dangerous. He pretends that the Chamber wants to create U.S. jobs in the same way the Joker promotes Batman's well-being. Today Donohue said,

What will unite everyone here today is our pursuit of a single goal—creating jobs. … Given the freedom and incentive to do so, states and businesses can jumpstart our economy, create millions of new jobs, and put us on a path to long-term prosperity...

For starters, the Chamber really shouldn't have "U.S." in its name because it doesn't give a shit about the U.S. representatives of foreign companies serve on its board. It represents some of the biggest job cutters on the planet. Among its board members are the following companies and the number of jobs they've sent overseas in the past six years:

Accenture (based in Ireland) 451
Alcoa 5,508
Caterpillar 3,134
Eastman Kodak 4,453
Emerson Electric 6,303
IBM 3,208
Lockheed-Martin 1,158 (the No.1 government contractor in the U.S.)
3M 3,473
Xerox 1,613

Our friends at ThinkProgress offer this charming tidbit about the Chamber: It helps teach American companies how to send jobs to China.

Among the many lies told by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently, chief Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten said that his organization's foreign affiliates, called AmChams, are only "comprised of American companies doing business abroad in those countries." In fact, the Chinese AmCham is comprised of Chinese firms like Northern Light Venture Capital; the AmCham in Russia is comprised of Russian state-run companies like VTB Bank; and, the AmCham of Abu Dhabi is comprised of UAE state-run oil companies.

The ties between the AmChams and the U.S. Chamber are deep. In addition to sharing staff members, the Chinese AmCham has worked closely with the U.S. Chamber and the Chinese government to sponsor a series of seminars in America to teach American businesses how to outsource jobs to China (called the China Grassroots Program).

So when the Chamber says, "Look down!", cast your eyes to the heavens.