The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has longed claimed, and I've probably printed, that they've got a membership roster exceeding 3,000,000 businesses. When a company like, oh, say, Apple, decides to dis-affiliate, the Chamber press shop has been able to say, apparently with a straight face, that 2,999,999 entities still support the group. The implication: Apple (and Excelon and Nike) are just a few crumbs off the side of a mountain. (Privately, Chamber officials contend that these companies caved to pressure from Democrats and are afraid of retaliation from the administration.)
Well -- it should have been obvious to those of us who've written about
the chamber at the 3 million figure was, to say the least, an
exaggeration. And not an innocuous exaggeration either. As Mother
Jones points out,
the 3 million figure includes every member of local and regional
chambers of commerce, many of whom want nothing to do with the
mothership -- and some of whom have no formal affiliation with it
whatsoever. Indeed, many state and local chambers are members of the
national chamber, just like businesses are. Indeed, the Chamber's brand
-- in part because of the hard work done by
state and local chambers -- remains pretty solid outside of
Washington.
Computed correctly, the Chamber has about 200,000 small business
members. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's not 3,000,000 either. To
the Chamber's credit, as of yesterday, they've begun to use the regular number.
Hopefully, everyone else will follow suit. The truth is that, whatever
the merits of the Chamber's stand against the largely Democratic
climate change legislation is, the debate has cost them significant
coalition partners. It's becoming harder for the Chamber to mount the
sort of astroturf campaigns that've been so effective before.
As a senior exec in a company that was a chamber member everyone in the business community, apart from Washington journalists apparently, has always known the three million number was chamber spin. Unfortunately the chamber is under the control of certain constituencies on various issues. The financial industry on financial issues, oil companies on climate change, etc so there is a lot of you scratch my back that goes on when it comes to funding and mounting these "issue" campaigns. Chamber management has to keep everyone happy and is in any case largely recruited from Republican politics or right wing think tanks so if anything they tend to push debate to the most extreme position particularly as their political spokesmen tend to be either Republican doctrinaires or representative/senators from states with a big investment in the issue eg. coal and WV. I'm not surprised to see an increasing number of large companies pulling the plug because a lot of this reality denial is stifling business opportunities(for example, it's obvious mass transit has a huge future but America is nowhere in this business) and actually offends the commonsense of a surprising number of business people who are not always the neanderthals that they are painted.
I appreciate this random act of journalism.
The Chamber's website still claims 3,000,000 members.
http://www.uschamber.com/about/history/default
They are masters of the big lie.