Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Chamber of Carbon Posted by Bill McKibben at 9:58am, February 22, 2011.

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 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!).

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Wow, that final image was truly pathetic. Since when is groveling before a bully the best option? The President groveling at the feet of the Corporatocracy so that they/it would have mercy on him, or some such? Truly disturbing. The President having to ‘court’ Big Business with hat in hand? I don’t remember any other President humbly having to mend fences with the US Chamber of Commerce. Not in my lifetime. Eisenhower, Clinton? The notion is absurd. Who the fuck is in charge here?

Obama is never going to get ‘off on a better foot.’ Hell, he isn’t even on the same side of the Tracks as these masters of the universe. And despite his academic cred no one cares what he has to say. He’s the mistake President who somehow slipped in. That Barack Obama is a ‘colored’ guy is at the very heart of what motivates Birthers and Teabaggers and John Birchers and all the rest. And it is no mere coincidence that the infamous John Birch Society is enjoying a new found acceptance; praise the Lord!!

Fred C. Koch is a Bircher. As a result, “…the John Birch Society is no longer banished; it is listed as one of about 100 co-sponsors of the 2010 CPAC.” [http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/02/farright-john-birch-society-2010.html]

I mean, when I was a teenager, these were right wing demented racist hawks. I thought they were as anti-American as the KKK or, later, skinhead neo-Nazis (cf, the 1998 movie, “American History X”). Just ugly, stupid fanatics.

The down and out workers who should have directed their resentments against the boss man, instead lashed out against the niggers and wops and spics and kikes - the only group beneath them in the social and financial order - the racial or ethnic other. Kill ‘em all is their unspoken motto. And short of that, disenfranchise them, marginalize them, oppose them by whatever means.

And these are the knuckleheads now gaining political momentum? Gaining a foothold and moving more broadly into politics to influence our Government? Seriously? And via a John Bircher supported PAC called the Tea Party?

The Republican governor of Wisconsin who takes calls from an avowed member of the John Birch Society as if it were a call from the Pope? The analogy is strained, but, nonetheless, that’s the essence. Why would any government official kowtow to a John Bircher? Or accept the maximum campaign contribution from one? Isn’t it like taking the call from some filthy rich Grand Poobah of the KKK or Aryan Nation who contributed to the election and letting him know how things are going with the unruly parasites that leach off the government?

Crazed insular xenophobic types who belong to the KKK, the John Birch Society, Aryan Nation, Hell’s Angels, whatever, are sociopaths. Probably psychotic to some degree. Certainly filled with hatred. That’s what I always thought.

And this asshole governor takes a call from one of them and updates him on how his standoff against the public employees is progressing.

Unbelievable.

Chris Hedges

Re: Death of the Liberal Class
Researching the word Columbia, I had made my way to the Wikipedia article on a magazine that had its run ended in 1918, “Puck”. So I checked, and there is no reference to it in the Index.

The single most acerbic, satirical, opinionated, muckraking and popular political magazine during its 40 year run.. But by 1918 it was history.
I smell a rat.

I find it no small coincidence that William Randolph Hearst bought the magazine in 1916 and just 2 years later, after 40 successful years, it was dead. Why would he purchase a tormentor of the establishment if not to kill it? Did he save the government the trouble of bringing the Espionage Act of 1917 and other measures to bear on it? Would that have caused something of a reaction among populists and progressives? But with Hearst engineering its demise, it’s just a business decision.

It seems that, given the rising ‘corporatocracy’ and the imperial ambitions of the government, that the clampdown and mass propaganda campaigns might have targeted this magazine. A scathing critic, a scorching journalist writing in a popular magazine that for all its flaws was the horsefly on the State? Intolerable (given your account of the conditions that prevailed during that Era).

I bring this to your attention as a possible occasion when media moguls and the Federal government might have been in collusion to determine and censor what We the People can read. Which would seem to be unconstitutional.

In the vain hope that I am mistaken….I offer “Puck”.