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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's economic free enterprise offensive openly acknowledges the right's definition of "economic freedom", which claims for corporations equivalent constitutional rights with persons. The U.S. Chamber is reacting to the government bailouts of failed banks and the auto industry and tighter regulation of the credit card industry. Economic freedom means an environment in which these monopolistic businesses are free to control people's lives. When government won't let them trample individual rights, they freely spend their profits to attack President Obama's health care and energy initiatives. The propaganda campaign will ramp up the rhetoric to try to enlist ordinary Americans in a faux grass roots effort. This article explains that the fear campaign will attack reform by raising the spectre that government intends to take away individual rights, make decisions that will limit what mortgage you can have, what car you will drive, control your choice of doctors and ration your medical care. (Editorial Comment by 26dems)
POLITICO
By JEANNE CUMMINGS | 6/10/09 4:15 AM EDT
As the Obama administration encroaches deeper into the private sector and Congress contemplates more regulations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to defend the free market system.
“Dire economic circumstances have certainly justified some out-of-the-ordinary remedial actions by government,” said Chamber President Tom Donohue, referring to the bank bailouts and the $787 billion economic stimulus program.
“But enough is enough,” he added in a statement to POLITICO.
The Chamber’s efforts, budgeted for as much as $100 million, come at a time when the government’s influence in the automobile, banking and credit card industries already is expanding dramatically. Taxpayers, for instance, are now majority owners of General Motors.
Business leaders fear the health care and energy sectors could be next as Congress weighs reform legislation for both. And the financial community is bracing for yet another congressional brawl when the Treasury Department releases its plan for revamping the regulatory framework that oversees the industry.
The administration’s aggressive action on so many fronts has put the business community on defense in a way not seen in more than a decade — and it’s losing more often than it’s winning.
Taken together, the government could soon determine who gets a mortgage, which cars consumers can buy, the type of treatments patients will get and how many credit cards a person can carry.
The business community also is trying to fend off higher taxes and salvage a free trade agenda that slid from the national stage as the economic downturn revived protectionist arguments.
Donohue said the new campaign, which he’s dubbed the Campaign for Free Enterprise, could become the most important project the Chamber has embraced in its nearly 100-year history.
“We have got to go out in a big-time way and remind all Americans that it was a free enterprise system based on the values of individual initiative, hard work, risk innovation and profit which built our great country,” he’s expected to tell Chamber board members Wednesday in a speech unveiling the program.
Donohue will begin raising money for the project this summer and roll it out in stages.
As envisioned, the campaign will include a grass-roots lobbying component that will tap the strength of the Chamber’s network of small businesses and business and trade associations.
A public education ad buy defending the free enterprise system is in the works, as well as an issue advocacy program tied to the 2010 midterm elections.
“We’re going to hold politicians accountable as we defend and advance economic freedom,” Donohue said.
