Exposing The U.S. Chamber Of Foreign Commerce

The new appropriately named DNC ad: “Stealing Democracy”

Over a year ago in a post titled Soylent Green And Corporations Are People Too, I warned about the implications for our democracy if the corporatist dominated US Supreme Court ruled the way I expected them too in the Citizens United case. And when they ruling came down last January, in A Supreme Screwing I noted that there was nothing in the majority opinion that would prevent both domestic and foreign corporations from buying the US government outright.

A month later during his State of the Union speech, President Obama underscored the foreign money angle, looking at the members of the Supreme Court that were in attendance as he did so. Recall the camera shot of Justice Alito shaking his head and mouthing something like “not true.”

Seven months later, Alito is being proved wrong and Obama right. Outside money from anonymous donors is flowing so fast into the US Chamber of Commerce and into Karl Rove‘s and Ed Gillespie‘s hot little hands that they are out-raising the Democrats something like five to one.

According to Think Progress, the Chamber has a network of offices around the world that collect money–“dues”– that goes into their general ad buying account, including Bahrain, India, Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Russia, Brazil, and China. Not to mention multi-national corporations like BP, Transamerica, and Shell Oil whose interests in fighting little things like taxes and government oversight are all too obvious.

Shortly after the Citizens United ruling was handed down, Senator Chuck Schumer promised that Congress would, at the very least, require full disclosure of which companies were writing checks directly from their corporate treasuries to buy our elections. I remember laughing at that. Predictably, his proposed legislation went down in flames. As if the Rethugs and the worst of the corporatist Dems would ever bite the hand that feeds them.

Though it might be too late now to educate and warn the American people about what all this means for American democracy, the DNC is finally getting off its ass, running a national commercial called “Stealing Democracy.”  And President Obama got into the act Thursday warning:

[J]ust this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations…groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections, and they won’t tell you where the money for their ads come from.

Meanwhile, you would think that for all their patriotic rhetoric about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants, the Teabaggers would be at least talking about Second Amendment remedies to prevent a one world corporate government from taking root here in the U.S.  Instead, they continue to be duped by multi-national corporatists like the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch who have succeeded in mis-directing their anger at a Kenyan anti-colonialist president trying to engineer a socialist, Muslim government takeover. If they really want their country back, they should at least know who’s stealing it right from under their noses.

Finally, as I did in my original post, here’s Stephen Colbert‘s  take on what was then impending Citizens United case, in a skit he called Let Freedom Ka-Ching.