On October 5th Lee Fang of ThinkProgress.org reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been instrumental in defeating bills aimed at repealing the tax incentives that encourage outsourcing, has opened its membership to foreign entities. These entities run the gamut of American businesses based overseas, to foreign corporations such as British Petroleum and Siemens, to foreign corporations OWNED BY FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS, such as the Bank of India and Bahrain Petroleum Company.
Entities that join the Chamber, which pay dues depending on the size of their organization, can pay dues ranging from $500 to hundred of thousands of dollars a year. The ThinkProgress piece does not specify what portion of the Chambers budget is used to influence political legislation, elections or discourse, but the Center for Responsive Politics reported that in 2009, for the first time, the "U.S." Chamber of Commerce outspent BOTH the Republican and Democratic parties in terms of lobbying activities, organizing and political advertising. It seems those who have long sought a viable third party need wait no longer. That party is now here, even if its hand is hidden. Shades of the "Trade Federation," that morphed into the Evil Empire in Star Wars. Was George Lucas a prophet of sorts?
The ThinkProgress piece notes the twin developments of the Chamber's aggressive overseas fundraising campaign, mostly through "business councils," and "AmChams" and the fact that the Chamber has pledged "an unprecendented $75 million" to defeat mostly, if not entirely, Democratic candidates in a number of states, including California, Pennsylvania, among others. Also since the Chamber has been largely successful in seeking to stop oversight of political monies, (in fact, the activities of the Chamber's branch in Russia are conducted in secret) there is no means to independently verify whether or not the Chamber is transferring dues and other payments from its foreign members into its political war chest in the U.S. If any internal firewall exists, the Chamber is not revealing it or its workings even amidst the firestorm these revelations have created.
The ThinkProgress piece has resulted in members of the Senate calling for a Federal Elections Commission investigation into the Chambers funding of political ads this election season. A follow-up piece at ThinkProgress reported those calls for investigation as well as the statement Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, who had no doubt that the Chamber was using a "back-door way to get around long-standing and legitimate restriction," such as the restrictions against foreign money funding campaigns in the United State. Of course, if the Chamber is successful in promoting its own candidates the likelihood that it will be held to account for campaign violations becomes much more remote.
Unasked, however, was the role that foreign money had in the lobbying efforts to defeat the "Create American Jobs and End Offshoring Act," the so-called anti-outsourcing bill which I described in an earlier article. It as though there has been a very quiet and very successful coup in Washington. An unelected group called lobbyists are now in charge. Worse, we can no longer even assume that they are Americans, at least in any meaningful sense of the word.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/05/foreign-chamber-commerce/
http://www.examiner.com/city-buzz-in-denver/multi-nationals-again-stop-anti-outsourcing-bill-media-is-complicit
Comments
While you're at it, why don't you mention NASSCOM - which spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year lobbying OUR government. Why are foreign lobbyists allowed to manipulate our government?
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot).
Apple R&D CLOSED in India in 2006
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America.
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int
Dell - call center (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Delta call centers (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers)
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing.
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled)
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed).
Qantas - See AirBus above
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired)
Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired)
State of Indiana $867 billion FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued
State of Texas failed IBM project.
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, has to be sold off to Oracle).
United - call center (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure)
World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data).
I like the Star Wars analogy, cool but very scary at the same time. I could easily see Cheney, with the mechanical heart that he has keeping him alive, as Darth Vader
Correction, that is the State Bank of India, not the Bank of India that is owned by the Indian government
The AP is now reporting that there is no proof that the Chamber is using foreign money politically and it is stirring up a real s___storm on Yahoo but they don't mention the very obvious fact that unless they put the foreign money they receive into a charitable entity that has no ties to the Chamber that is false on its face. Foreign money is part of their budget. Their biggest budget item is political activity.
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