chamber of commerce

#rsrh POTUS ‘surrenders’ to Chamber of Commerce.

Honestly, though, when it came to President Obama and the Chamber of Commerce it was always, if you’ll pardon the pun, just business. He needed to come up with a believable villain for the over-educated, would-be elitist rubes that makes up the other half of his current coalition; and since said rubes hate business with the kind of baffled resentment that you’d expect from a band of Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers facing an electrified fence, the CoC was perfect. Well, not perfect, given that the demonizing project didn’t actually work, but the amped-up rhetoric and funding probably saved the Democrats a House seat or two.

But that was then, this is now, and Obama’s going to make nice with the Chamber of Commerce in January. Not that the CoC is going to put too many screws in, given that a). Presidents have quite a bit of executive and regulatory power when it comes to business issues and b). the CoC retains an interest in remaining an independent player. The latter reason is probably the more important one; after all, the recent history of the Democratic party reads as practically a how-to manual on the best way to geld special interest groups which rely too heavily on one political party for power. No sane group wants to emulate the fates of the NAACP, NOW, or MoveOn.org…

Moe Lane

CoC and dKos: a look at the progressive caste system.

Maybe this is why Markos doesn’t have a TV deal.

Let’s set the scenario. The Chamber of Commerce got told – much to their surprise – that they were supposedly funding a group (Americans for Job Security) that produced this anti-Halter ad accusing the progressive candidate of promoting outsourcing. They further discovered that The Daily Kos was using this (false) allegation to raise money for Halter. So the Chamber of Commerce did something dumb: they tried to (politely) explain to Markos Moulitsas that, no, they weren’t funding AJS and weren’t affiliated with them. The exact language:

…in the interest of setting the record straight I have again confirmed with every group at the Chamber who does political work that we are not associated with AJS and/or this ad. I also spoke with Stephen DeMaura at Americans for Job Security who confirmed this as well. Mr. DeMaura has also spoken with reporters about the ad and the WSJ has issued this update to their article on it:

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/05/04/thank-you-stephen-demaura/

UPDATE, 8.55 PM IST: Mr. DeMaura said his group had paid for stock footage for the ad but could not immediately provide more details about the source of the footage or the locations depicted in it. He also confirmed the ad cost around $900,000 to air but said the group was “not associated with the US Chamber of Commerce.”

Markos’ response? ‘Neener neener you guys lie.’ I paraphrase, but not by much. Continue reading CoC and dKos: a look at the progressive caste system.

Chamber of Commerce sues ‘Yes Men’ for commercial identity theft.

Frankly, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give this ‘activist’ group any more free publicity for their movie than they’ve already gotten:

The U.S. Chamber filed a lawsuit yesterday against activists who last week staged a fake news conference announcing that the business trade group had changed its policy on climate legislation.

The suit filed in federal district court cites trademark and copyright infringement and said that the Yes Men group staged the press conference stunt for financial gain.

“The defendants are not merry pranksters tweaking the establishment,” Steven Law, the chamber’s chief legal officer and general counsel, said in a statement. “Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.” The movie “The Yes Men Fix the World” opened Friday.

…but if you’re going to rip off an organization by using their logos and name for publicity purposes without paying for the privilege, well, it’s hard to do that without at least a little bit of publicity. The Chamber of Congress’ own post on the subject is here; they’re taking this lawsuit seriously – and given the current political climate, possibly so should the defendants. I can think of about forty or so ruling-party Congressmen who would just love to do the Chamber of Commerce a favor right now.

Moe Lane

PS: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, of course, thinks that this is a First Amendment issue. They don’t mention the film at all, because, well… it’s much more convenient for the EFF if everybody keeps thinking of this as a First Amendment issue, and not as commercial identity theft. I have a lot of sympathy for the EFF’s goals, but these guys that they’re defending shouldn’t have appropriated the CoC’s name and public identity to generate buzz for their film.

Crossposted to RedState.