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Big Business's
Favorite Senator East of the Mississippi
Lieberman
and the Secret Chamber
By RALPH NADER
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, through
its front groups such as the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR)
and Voters Education Committee (VEC), has been deeply involved
in opposing or supporting hundreds of state and federal candidates
for both legislative and judicial offices. (See "The
Secret Chamber: The Inner Workings of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce..")
Chamber CEO Tom Donohue bragged
in 2004 about defeating Senator Tom Daschle (S.D.), the leader
of the Democrats in the Senate.
A Chamber endorsement leads
to more business campaign contributions and other supportive
activities from mass mailings to phone calls and media strategies
that have involved "dirty tricks" against their opponents.
Citizen groups that have contended
with the Chamber's agenda and lobbyists view this giant organization's
pursuit of corporate greed and power, at the expense of peoples'
economic well-being, health and safety, to be without peer in
Washington, D.C. By a large margin, the Chamber is the worst
of them all.
The Chamber demands that the
federal government subsidize corporations, take the federal cop
off the corporate crime, fraud and abuse beat, weaken its laws
protecting the environment, workers, consumers and small taxpayers,
keep enlarging the bloated, wasteful military contracting budget
and generally accede to the Chamber's ideology of becoming a
corporate government.
This year, the Chamber endorsed
many Republican Senators, but only two Democratic Senators -
- Senator Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (Conn.).
In supporting Senator Lieberman,
the Chamber wrote that "his cumulative voting score with
the Chamber is the highest of any Democratic Senator in the Northeast."
The Chamber praised Lieberman
for supporting the latest globalization boondoggle - - CAFTA
- - a cousin of NAFTA - - and for backing one of the Chamber's
top priorities - - so-called "class action reform."
This law allows corporate defendants to move most state class
action lawsuits to federal courts in ways which place aggrieved
consumers and workers under serious disadvantages.
Senator Lieberman is the Chamber's
favorite Democratic Senator east of the Mississippi. He voted
with them for the notorious Cheney/Exxon energy bill, prompting
one political observer to say "he cannot be both against
global warming and for this energy bill."
He supports every globalizing,
outsourcing, pull-down trade agreement - - NAFTA, WTO and CAFTA
- - notwithstanding their rejection of labor, consumer and environmental
safeguards for the American people.
Senator Lieberman is waffling
on asbestos legislation (pending) that would drastically reduce
the financial liability of corporations for this long epidemic
of cancer and lung disease and would create a large corporate
bailout of liability, with costs to the taxpayers.
In 1998, he voted to give immunity
to the tobacco industry in return for weak FDA regulatory authority.
Eleven years ago he backed one of the Chamber's top objectives
- - weakening the litigation rights of defrauded investors and
shielding accounting and law firms from proper accountability.
Then he voted to over-ride President Clinton's veto of the bill.
Although Senator Lieberman
is straying from their "tort deform" stable on the
medical malpractice legislation, Senator Lieberman has sided
often with the Chamber's relentless drive to weaken the civil
justice system's ability to recognize the rights of wrongfully
injured plaintiffs and federally pre-empt the common law of Connecticut
and the other 49 states. In 1996, for example, he voted three
times to federalize and weaken the law of product (defect) liability.
The Chamber also likes what
Senator Lieberman does not do. He has not met a weapons system
he doesn't like, ignoring repeated, critical reports by the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) of the Congress. It is not for Senator
Lieberman to be worried about what President Eisenhower warned
Americans about - - the military-industrial complex. Such a
background helps to explain his continuing support and cover
for George W. Bush's serial and costly war crimes invading and
occupying Iraq.
Senator Lieberman has emitted
many signals over his 18 year tenure that he can accommodate
business lobbyists. He has been and is generously rewarded with
contributions from corporate PACs and such powerful corporate
groups as the Associated General Contractors of America which
the New York Times reported "give 90 percent of its campaign
contributions to Republicans."
Other corporations - - insurance
companies, nuclear electric utilities and corporate law firms,
which give overwhelmingly to Republicans, have found money for
Senator Lieberman.
All the foregoing and much
more in the public record - - see, for example, the U.S. Chamber's
policy Priorities for 2006 (including positions that are anti-labor,
anti-universal health care coverage, pro even more corporate
tax cuts) raises a basic question for Senator Lieberman:
Are you going to repudiate
publically the endorsement* and campaign support of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and its operating groups that are working
overtime to undermine your Democratic Party and its more progressive
candidates?
If not, are you going to explain
why not?
* P.S. Senator Lieberman's
website does not list the Chamber as one of his supporters.
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