Monday, December 20, 2010

A Cycle: the GOP, the Chamber, and China

What cycle could wrap together the Republican party, the Chamber of Commerce, and China (among other foreign interests)?  The natural cycle of money, influence, and power, of course.  China is just one of the homes of the foreign companies behind the US Chamber of Commerce.  We can't tell how many of the Chamber's dues-paying members are from each foreign country; although given the size of China's economy, we can guess that a fair amount of the dues probably come from China.  (China is the world's 2nd largest economy and of the top 50 economies, China is by far the fastest growing.)  The Chamber in turn funds much of the political campaign effort for the Republican party, operating in the interest of their members as best they can.  For their part, the Republicans seek to promote the causes of their donors.

The steps of the cycle:
  1. Of the dues that make up the general budget of the US Chamber of Commerce, the biggest spending lobbying organization in the United States, much comes from foreign members.  (Such as operations in China and India to whom we outsource work from American companies.)
  2. The Chamber of Commerce funded many of the campaign commercials that lead to Republican wins in the 2010 elections, enough that a Republican would have to be fully brain-dead to not understand that the Chamber is a big source of the power the party has.
  3. The Chamber of Commerce lobbied
    1. against the 9/11 health bill to "keep open a tax loophole benefiting foreign corporations", which makes perfect sense given that many of their members are foreign corporations
    2. against the DISCLOSE act, which would have shed light on their funding situation and campaign activity
    3. on behalf of foreign companies that are some of the highest growth investment opportunities and thus likely to get a lot of investment money from the upper class tax cuts
  4. The GOP voted
    1. against the 9/11 health bill (most House Republicans voted against the bill; the Senate Republicans successfully filibustered it)
    2. against the DISCLOSE act
    3. for upper class tax cuts.  That's an understatement:  they didn't just vote for it, they made it their top priority and refused to let anything else through the Senate until they got it.  It'll mean more money for the wealthy to invest wherever they choose, which might be in foreign companies ... especially if they decide to invest where there's the highest potential rate of return.
  5. The Republican efforts bring more money to foreign business.
  6. Foreign businesses pay more dues to the Chamber, which feeds back into step #1
    Foreign business gives cash to the Chamber, the Chamber gets the GOP elected, the GOP supports foreign business, foreign business has more cash to give to the Chamber, repeat ad nauseum.

    I'm not saying the Republicans have thought this out and realize all the implications, but there they are.

    It's not a conspiracy.  Let's be clear about that.  A conspiracy would require that those responsible were knowingly working together towards a common goal.  A cycle just means that individual parts are acting in a manner where the set of relationships feed into each other in a repeating chain.  It's a cycle.

    Anyone else find this to be a rather bad cycle?

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