Washington Post: Defections Expose Chamber's Dirty Little Secrets

October 16, 2009- It's been a lousy week for Tom Donohue and his pals over at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

For months now, Tom has been crisscrossing the country looking for corporate donations with which to launch a campaign to "remind, educate and persuade" Americans that the free enterprise system is what has made America great and is what will once again "lead us back to prosperity."

Normally, it wouldn't take a $100 million propaganda effort to convince most Americans of the value of "individual initiative, hard work, freedom of choice and free exchange of trade, capital and ideas." But inasmuch as the country is now mired in the worst recession in 75 years after a decade in which the government pursued the rabidly free-market agenda espoused by the Chamber, you can appreciate Tom's problem.

The Campaign for Free Enterprise, of course, is not really about creating 20 million jobs over the next decade -- if Chamber members could double their profits while creating not a single new job, that would suit them just fine. Rather, it's nothing more than a desperate attempt to repackage the same old anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-government rhetoric in hopes of derailing the major initiatives of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress.

FULL STORY HERE: