On The Road to Fascism

This post comes to you directly from Think Progress and Brad Blog. It’s scary stuff, but it is accurate. If you go to the 14 signs of a country drifting towards Fascism, check how many of them are evident in our country today; it will make the hair on your head stand straight up!

The Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Tom Donohue, has gone from a well respected trade organization to an extremist political organization dedicated to corrupting American democracy by elevating the profits of big corporations over the well being of the citizens they serve.

Recent examples of this corrupt behavior is the Chamber's spending of more than $100 million to defeat initiatives to protect the environment and provide affordable health care to everyone, and its massive attacks on democracy through the use of secret money in the 2010 election.

The Chamber is the biggest lobbying operation in the United States, spending billions of dollars on behalf of big business over the past decade to corrupt the political system. Polluters like Big Coal, Big Asbestos, and Big Oil only need call the Chamber to stop any accountability for their toxic destruction.

Wall Street banks and CEOs need only make sure that they have paid their Chamber dues to ensure that they can continue to rip off the taxpayers. And killers like Big Tobacco need only form a partnership with the Chamber to ensure that they will be given immunity from lawsuits that seek accountability for the death and sickness of millions of Americans.

Tom Donohue has turned the once respected and even-handed Chamber into an extremist organization, bragging that the Chamber gutted the Clinton tobacco settlement, killed the Clinton health care plan, and scuttled previous oversight of Wall Street and the banking system.

Now the Chamber is spending tens of millions on ads and lobbyists to repeal health care for all, protect polluters from accountability, and shield the financial industry from government regulation.

Think Progress: Despite Denials, New Email Confirms US Chamber Had Spoken ‘Directly’ With Private Security Firms' Espionage Work

February 14, 2011 --- On Friday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the big business lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and other major corporations — released its second denial in the ongoing ChamberLeaks controversy.

In it, they claimed that HBGary’s proposal “was never discussed with anyone at the Chamber” and that “the Chamber was not aware of these proposals until HBGary’s e-mails leaked.”

However, at least six separate leaked HBGary emails suggest that, contrary to their denials, the Chamber was repeatedly made aware of the activities of HBGary and two other private security firms.

As ThinkProgress laid out last week, the lobbying firm Hunton & Williams (H&W) served as the go-between for the Chamber and three private security firms — HBGary, Palantir, and Berico Technologies — who were collectively known as “Team Themis.”

Emails indicate that three top lawyers at Hunton & Williams — John Woods, Bob Quackenboss, and Richard Wyatt — met on multiple occasions with the Chamber in order to brief them on Team Themis’s proposals.

The Brad Blog: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thugs Used 'Terror Tools' for Disinfo Scheme Targeting Me, My Family, Other Progressive U.S. Citizens, Groups

And why they are likely to get away with it...

February 14, 2011 -- As I learned late last Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful Rightwing lobbying group in the country, was revealed to have been working with their law firm and a number of private cyber security and intelligence firms to target progressive organizations, journalists and citizens who they felt were in opposition to their political activism, tactics and points of view.

As I went on the air Thursday night --- my fifth in a six-day guest hosting stint on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show --- revelations about the planned multi-million dollar political hit job by the security/intelligence firms working to develop a scheme for the U.S. Chamber (and another one, almost identical to it, on behalf of Bank of America) were just beginning to come to light.

Both plots were being developed by the Chamber and BofA by the very same law firm, Hunton & Williams and with the cyber intelligence firms HBGary Federal, Berico Technologies & Palantir Technologies.


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