Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

February 22, 2011 Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Chamber of Carbon Consider it a tale of two speeches and a grim parable for our American moment. On March 24, 2010, Treasury Department Deputy Secretary Neil Wolin arrived for his lunchtime speaking slot at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's impressive headquarters, a short walk from the Treasury building and the White House. When his time came, Wolin strode onstage and, before hundreds of its members, tore into the chamber and its policies. As an organization, it was dishonest and "backward," he said. An ongoing three-million-dollar lobbying campaign was not intended to bolster badly needed financial reforms on Wall Street, as claimed, but "designed to defeat them." A stunned audience mustered only the weakest of applause. At the time, there was no love lost between the White House and the chamber.  Later that fall, with the help of a crucial Supreme Court decision, the group would act on that animosity, spending a staggering $33 million in the 2010 midterms and ushering in the biggest Republican landslide in generations. Fast forward to Barack Obama's address to the chamber earlier this month. The president's appearance was cast as an “olive branch,” an attempt to smooth over a tumultuous relationship.  It lived up to the billing. "I’m here in the interest of being more neighborly,” Obama began. “Maybe if we would have brought over a fruit cake when I first moved in, we would have gotten off on a better foot. But I’m going to make up for it.” The toughest the president got was when he pled with the chamber's corporate membership to "get in the game" and use trillions of dollars of reserves piled up in the worst of times for American workers to create much-needed jobs. No one should be surprised that the Obama administration is now trying to buddy up with the chamber, not after the Democrats' historic "shellacking" last November and the president’s subsequent mad dash to court corporate America big time. But make no mistake: Even were the White House to get down on its proverbial knees and beg the chamber for mercy, it would only embolden that organization when it comes to its make-life-easy-for-monster-corporations positions on issues like climate change (a figment of the liberal imagination), reforming Wall Street (don’t even think about it), and limiting corporate campaign spending (never!). As TomDispatch regular, founder of the climate-change group 350.org, and author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet Bill McKibben writes, it'll take far more than a few weak-kneed elected officials to push back against the chamber's ever-growing power, money, and dominance on the American political scene. Andy Kroll Money Pollution The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Darkens the Skies By Bill McKibben In Beijing, they celebrate when they have a “ blue sky day,” when, that is, the haze clears long enough so that you can actually see the sun.  Many days, you can’t even make out the next block. Washington, by contrast, looks pretty clean: white marble monuments, broad, tree-lined avenues, the beautiful, green spread of the Mall. But its inhabitants -- at least those who vote in Congress -- can’t see any more clearly than the smoke-shrouded residents of Beijing. Their view, however, is obscured by a different kind of smog.  Call it money pollution.  The torrents of cash now pouring unchecked into our political system cloud judgment and obscure science. Money pollution matters as much as or more than the other kind of dirt.  That money is the single biggest reason that, as the planet swelters through the warmest years in the history of civilization, we have yet to take any real action as a nation on global warming. And if you had to pick a single “power plant” whose stack was spewing out the most smoke? No question about it, that would be the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose headquarters are conveniently located directly across the street from the White House.  On its webpage, the chamber brags that it’s the biggest lobby in Washington, “consistently leading the pack in lobbying expenditures.” Click here to read more of this dispatch.