How foreign money helped defeat a U.S. constitutional amendment

It shouldn't be a surprise that corporate lobbyists last year helped defeat a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The court ruled corporations are people and can spend as much as they want on influencing elections. 

Common Cause recently analyzed who lobbied against the amendment. The list includes the usual suspects: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers, the National Association of Manufacturers.

What's alarming about the list is that these groups represent the interests of businesses outside the United States. In other words, the corporations that the Supreme Court ruled are people aren't really American people.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which has some nerve putting 'U.S.' in its name) has on its board of directors representatives from

• DHL, a German stock company, 
• Pfizer, which held $74 billion overseas in 2014 to avoid paying U.S. taxes,
• Accenture, which moved its headquarters to Dublin, Ireland, after splitting from scandal-plagued Arthur Andersen,
• Deloitte, a United Kingdom private company that has offices throughout the world,
• Sanofi U.S. Services, a subsidiary of the French multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi.

Many more of the Chamber's directors represent multinationals, like Xerox and IBM. Many are Wall Street firms that invest globally.

And who can forget the Koch brothers' disloyalty to the United States when they sold oil equipment to Iran, flouting a ban on trade with that sponsor of terrorism. 

The National Association of Manufacturers would more properly be called the International Association of Manufacturers. Its board of directors is filled with representatives of multinational corporations like Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., BP America; our old friends Pfizer, Deloitte and Sanofi from the Chamber; and a slew of companies that offshore jobs like Whirlpool, Westinghouse, Ford and General Motors.

U.S. law does allow foreign corporations to form political action committees (PACs) so long as they're formed by U.S. citizens employed by the corporation, and so long as the U.S. citizens are contributing the money and the foreign corporations don't finance them.

What could possibly go wrong?

As WNYC pointed out, 

The worry is that domestic subsidiaries would put their foreign parent company's political and economic interests ahead of their country's. (Note: Ya think?) Even with the prescribed separation of the U.S. subsidiary’s political activities from the foreign parent, it’s easy to imagine a situation in which those rules are bent or broken. It’s even easier to imagine this happening in a post-Citizens United world. In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama said that the Supreme Court had “reversed a century of law that…will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.”

Be very concerned.

Fast-tracking trade deals is the last thing workers need right now

Be very afraid. Corporate CEOs are lobbying Congress for a renewal of fast-track authority.

That means they want lawmakers to quickly approve trade deals negotiated in secret -- without any amendments and limited debate.

The last thing we need is for Congress to fast-track a trade deal with secret provisions that help their corporate benefactors but screw working and middle class families.

While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable rolled out a new coalition this week falsely touting the benefits of fast-track for regular Americans, Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, gave the real low down:

With a powerful gang of corporations eager to use massive agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now under negotiation, or the looming U.S.-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) to steamroll policies supported by the public and enacted by Congress, the threats posed by such an extreme procedure are severe.

Like what? A rollback of Congress' recent Wall Street reforms, says Sen. Elizabeth Warren. An undermining of the medicine cost savings of Obamacare, says a groups of state legislators trying to implement that policy. Plans to expand extreme investor privileges that offshore thousands of jobs. A ban on Buy American provisions that create thousands of jobs. Gutting of critical food safety improvements, says Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Congress' greatest food safety champion. And, then there is a backdoor sneak-in of draconian copyright rules reminiscent of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Wallach said fast track authority limits the public's ability to comment on trade agreements and allows bad policy to be put in place. Most Americans would feel the fallout from the use of fast track because the agreements they push through would affect job security, food safety, and environmental protections. It also gives unelected trade representatives the authority to set policy.

So why would the Obama administration want fast-track authority? A big reason is the TPP. The 17th round of secret TPP talks just concluded in Lima, Perus.

Wallach notes the White House will need all the help it can get to have the trade agreement approved. That's why opponents need to work hard to sack the idea:

Getting U.S. trade negotiators under the control of Congress and the public could not be more urgent, given the TPP and TAFTA negotiations and the vast implications of those looming agreements. In fact, as my new book shows, about every two decades Congress has come up with a new mechanism to manage trade pact negotiations and approval as the scope of agreements changed. Until now.

The Teamsters believe U.S. citizens, not unelected trade negotiators, need more say in the process. Join us in opposing the granting of fast-track trade authority. Contact your congressional representatives and tell them to say no to corporate interests and yes to American workers.

Today's Teamster News 06.27.12

Inquiry Looks Into a Shield for Donors in Elections  New York Times   ...Mr. Schneiderman issued a wide-ranging subpoena on Tuesday to executives at a foundation affiliated with the chamber, seeking e-mails, bank records and other documents to determine whether the foundation illegally funneled $18 million to the chamber for political and lobbying activities, according to people with knowledge of the investigation...
Biden: Romney is a job creator in India, China  CNN   ...Romney's former private equity firm – owned companies that were "pioneers" in outsourcing U.S. jobs to countries like China and India...
Secretary Vilsack Testifies on Behalf of Russia Trade Bill  Trade Reform   ...Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack testified Thursday before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance on behalf of a recently proposed bill to move Russia from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, thereby establishing permanent normal trade relations with the country...
"Bankruptcy Only Choice Left" As Stockton Set To Become Largest US City Chapter 9  zero hedge   ...As mediation with the city's creditors fails, the California city of Stockton looks set to become the US' largest ever city bankruptcy. The city with the second largest foreclosure-rate in the nation has seen its property taxes and other revenues decline while retiree benefits drained city coffers, according to the SF Chronicle...
Coca-Cola, Teamsters Negotiating  Hartford Courant   ...Representatives from Coca-Cola and the Teamsters Union are actively negotiating in an effort to end a strike that has gone on for more than five weeks...
JOBS: Striking Teamsters, Anheuser-Busch talk  The Press-Enterprise   ...Teamsters Local 166 President Mike Pharris on Tuesday indicated there has been movement in an attempt to resolve a strike against Anheuser-Busch Sales in Riverside...

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.

Scott Walker. Delusional.

Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today. He just made a puzzling comment:

Instead of putting my name up on the podium, I put up a sign that said “Wisconsin’s open for business.”

(There's a sign just crying out to be stolen.)

We don't understand why Walker would make such a claim. We thought his agenda is to open Wisconsin for predatory corporations to feast on the decaying systems created for the middle class.

Walker's budget, after all, costs Wisconsin jobs. Reported the State Journal in March,

Gov. Scott Walker's plans to balance the state budget by cutting spending and public workers' take-home pay will slow the state's economic recovery, according to projections by a UW-Madison economist.

An estimated 21,843 jobs will be lost over the next year or two as public agencies and workers are able to spend less in their communities, said Steven Deller, a professor of applied economics who studied the ripple effects of Walker's budget-repair bill and two-year budget proposal.

And he refused $810 million in federal money that would have created thousands of jobs.

Maybe that wouldn't fit on a sign.

Meanwhile, you can complain to CNBC for allowing Walker to appear on their morning show over the weekend to tell more lies.  Fill out the form here.

Petition: Investigate the chamber's spying operation

The mainstream media is beginning to pick up the story about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's plans to run an undercover smear campaign against critics of its agenda to send jobs overseas and destabilize working families by lowering their wages.

Yesterday both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times had stories. Reports the LA Times:

Hoping to win a lucrative agreement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, three data security contractors for federal defense and intelligence agencies developed a proposal to monitor and manipulate the chamber's left-leaning critics, according to recently released e-mail correspondence.

Employees of the firms compiled short dossiers on a few activists that included photographs, references to their families and charts of their relationships with other liberal and labor leaders.

A review of the correspondence, dating from late October through last week, suggested that the surveillance and intelligence gathering had begun only on a superficial basis in anticipation of a coming meeting with chamber officials.

The proposals were received by Hunton & Williams, a law firm that represents the chamber.

Brad Friedman, founder of StopTheChamber and therefore a target, is pretty steamed. He has posted an online petition calling for Congressional and Department of Justice investigations into these outrageous and unconstitutional activities. Sign the petition here.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is "incredulous" that anyone would accuse it of running an undercover smear campaign against its critics, which also include Change to Win (the Teamsters' labor federation) and the ThinkProgress blog.

Critics, though, have picked apart the Chamber's "non-denial denial." The Chamber issued a statement saying:

The security firm referenced by ThinkProgress was not hired by the Chamber or by anyone else on the Chamber’s behalf. We have never seen the document in question nor has it ever been discussed with us.

As emptywheel points out, the Chamber isn't denying that its lawyers were planning to hire spies to spread lies and false accusations against its critic. The Chamber's lawyers managed to get a spy firm called BGary to do a month of work for free to decide whether they wanted to hire them.

Note also that the Chamber is only denying that it hadn't seen "the document in question." As emptywheel points out,

That’s not a denial they’ve seen a proposal offering to create false documents to try to fool USChamberWatch and hire false personas to try to impugn the reputation of those who criticize the Chamber.

Today's Teamster News 02.15.11

Union heads try to get studio chiefs to keep working in Massachusetts  Boston Globe   ...Boston union chiefs traveled to Hollywood this week to deliver a message to film studio honchos: We’re good guys. Really....
Analysts: ABF doing better, but lowering 2011 expectations  The City Wire   ...the company “is headed in the right direction in its quest to return to profitability...”
UPS arranges $22.5 million for franchisee lending  Associated Press   ...The program allows the company to expand its network of stores...
FedEx slashes earning forecast  Financial Times   ...blaming the move on bad weather and volatile fuel prices that have increased expenses and reduced revenues...
YRC: Zollars' omission from internal memo "not significant"  DC Velocity   ...Absence from recent YRC communiqués has fueled speculation of CEO's imminent departure...
Minnesota Teamsters Local 320 Public Employees Enter Budget Battle  Local 320   ...Teamsters Local 320 launched a statewide print and radio campaign on Sunday ... urging citizens to tell their legislators to stop the proposed 15% slash to public employee rolls...
Workers Question Emanuel's Visit to Secured Airport Warehouse  Fox Chicago News   ...Emanuel was apparently escorted in by leaders of Teamsters Local 700...
Hacked e-mails reveal plans for dirty-tricks campaign against U.S. Chamber foes  The Washington Post   ..."While many questions remain in the unfolding ChamberLeaks controversy, what's clear is that this multitude of emails clearly contradicts the Chamber's claim that they were 'not aware of these proposals until HBGary's e-mails leaked,' "...
Workers rally against proposed cuts to state workers  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...A rally of more than 300 people at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee...

Chamber, Bank of America spy targets speak out

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's plan to run an undercover smear campaign against its critics (including the Teamsters' federation, Change to Win) received little attention in the mainstream media. That is unsurprising, as the concerns of working people don't interest corporate-owned newspapers and television networks. (And they wonder why they're dying.)

The Chamber wasn't happy that its critics pointed out its true political agenda: making it easier for multinationals to ship jobs overseas and destabilize working families by lowering their wages. (The Chamber, by the way, gets support from the union-busting billionaire Koch brothers.)

The dirty tricks story got plenty of buzz, though, in the blogosphere, tech media and alternative news outlets. firedoglake, for example, interviewed one of the targets:

Brad Friedman is the co-founder of the group VelvetRevolution.us, which created StopTheChamber.com, which is unaffiliated to the union-led US Chamber Watch effort. ...“We created this campaign calling these guys out for the creeps and the criminals that they are,” Friedman said. “What’s amazing is, US Chamber watch is affiliated with unions, they have some funding. We don’t. We’re a citizens group, period. We raise 5 or 10 bucks wherever we can.”

“But these guys” in the Chamber of Commerce, he continued, “the money they were playing with is our fucking tax money. They’re funded by corporations like AIG and Bank of America who received billions in bailout dollars, and Exxon-Mobil with billions in tax subsidies. They take that money and use it to attack private citizens and private organizations for having the temerity to stand up and say, you guys are wrong. We’re fighting against how our own tax dollars are being spent against us.”

...Last year Fox News ran a story about StopTheChamber.com claiming that they put a bounty on the head of Chamber CEO Tom Donohue. “Like clockwork we received hundreds of death threats,” said Friedman. “The article came out of the blue, so somebody clearly tipped off Fox News. We don’t have direct evidence, but it’s interesting.”

Another target is journalist Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald was spied on by the same private security companies used by the same lobbying firm hired by the Chamber to run its smear campaign. In this case, the companies were hired by Bank of America because WikiLeaks claimed to have damaging information about the bank, and Greenwald (a constitutional lawyer) defended WikiLeaks.

Greenwald makes a convincing case in Salon that the lesson here is the frightening power of corporations aligned with the government to destroy individuals. He writes:

...this should be taken seriously...As creepy and odious as this is, there's nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns. The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous' hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is....

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power....it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

Well said, brothers.

Today's Teamster News 02.12.11

Hoffa: Middle-Class Needs Jobs, Not Economic Warfare  IBT   ...concerted and coordinated attacks on government workers will kill jobs in the states where the attacks are launched...
Walker says National Guard is prepared  Associated Press   ...the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond wherever is necessary in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state employees...
What Hath Florida Wrought?  Washington Monthly   ...it's hard not to wonder if Florida's new chief executive is some sort of super-villain...
United Parcel Service Stock Hits New 52-Week High (UPS)  The Street   ...The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas...
Jackknifed trucks snarls I-15 traffic  San Diego Union Tribune   ...A jackknifed FedEx semitrailer truck leaking diesel fuel created a commuting nightmare Friday...
Obama's high-speed rail faces political challenge  AFP   ...Republicans are likely to hone in on $8 billion in proposed rail funds in their effort to slash spending...
U.S. lawmakers write to Clinton for Keystone-XL approval  Calgary Herald   ...the letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is signed 30 congressional representatives from 18 states...
As U.S. Exports Soar, It’s Not All Soybeans  New York Times   ...American exports of goods rose 21 percent in 2010 to $1.28 trillion, as the world trading system shook off the effects of the financial crisis, according to figures released on Friday...
Trouble in Acapulco's Paradise  Wall Street Journal   ...Acapulco was once the playground for Hollywood's jet set. Nowadays, the resort has become a battleground for Mexican drug cartels...

Wisco gov says he'll call in National Guard if employees balk

This is not a joke. The news just came in that Wisconsin's union-busting, job-killing governor, Scott Walker, said he will call in the National Guard if government workers balk at his proposal. According to BizTimes, Walker

...made the dramatic announcement this morning that he is prepared to call in the Wisconsin National Guard to respond if there is any unrest among state employees in the wake of his announcement that he wants to revoke nearly all of their collective bargaining rights.

Walker said he has not called the National Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any labor problems.

Walker’s plan to resolve the state’s budget deficit would require higher pension and health insurance contributions by state employees and remove bargaining rights except in a limited way over wages.

So now we have a governor who wants to reduce workers to poverty and threatens them with violence, and a powerful business group (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) that hires spies to run an undercover smear campaign against working-class groups.

Is there any doubt that there's a class war going on, and the middle class is losing?

Wisconsin's union-busting gov. hearts the Chamber of Commerce

If you have any doubt where Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker is coming from with his massive job-killing budget proposal, consider this: He wants to eliminate the state's department of Commerce and replace it with a Chamber of Commerce. According to Statehouse News Online, Walker wants a "public private partnership" (ALWAYS beware when you hear those words) Walker wants a public-private partnership called the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.  Reports Statehouse News,

“Think about this corporation kind of like being the local chamber of commerce,” Walker said. ”We need to have an entity that’s about promoting Wisconsin, about promoting jobs, telling the world and everybody in the state that we’re open for business and what we can do to help make that possible.”

What the chamber of commerce really does is hire high-tech goons to run undercover operations to smear  unions. As far as job creation, well, not so much. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is basically dominated by multi-national corporations -- including non-U.S. companies -- that lobby to move more jobs overseas, destablizing working families by forcing down wages even as unemployment is close to 10 percent.

As Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein wrote last year,

...it is the private businesses the Chamber purports to represent that eliminated 8 million jobs in 2008 and 2009 and have managed to add a scant 600,000 since then. If Chamber President Tom Donohue wants to round up those responsible for the lack of job growth in this country, all he has to do is call a meeting of his board of directors.

And this just in from the Land of Cheddar (thanks to the Associated Press)

Gov. Scott Walker says he won't negotiate with unionized state workers because Wisconsin is broke and he has nothing to offer them.

Walker on Friday spoke about his plan calling for the removal of almost all collective bargaining rights for most state and local workers. Only wages would be left as a negotiable item, but any raises higher than the consumer price index would have to be approved by voters.

Walker says he won't negotiate new contracts with the unions because the state faces a $3.6 billion budget shortfall and has nothing to offer.

He says his plan calling for increased pension and health care contributions from state workers is a modest one that workers should support to avoid massive layoffs.

We assume Walker will agree to take a salary cut as a way to share the sacrifice.