Chamber PR Helping its Foes?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The US Chamber of Commerce, a huge, controversial player in the battle to reform Wall Street and beef up consumer protection, launched its latest attack on financial reform efforts today, criticizing a proposed small tax on financial transactions. The tax would take something like 0.1 percent or 0.25 percent of financial transactions such as stock trades, and could use those funds to offset the cost of, say, health care reform or to lower the federal deficit. One liberal policy center said the tax could raise $100 to $150 billion a year.

Today, as part of its PR push, the Chamber released a study (PDF) claiming the tax would damage US markets and hurt Main Street by reducing investments and retirement savings. “This proposal would starve cash-strapped companies and cripple our efficient, transparent, and liquid markets,” said David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness. “The good news is that a majority of Americans agree that it’s a bad idea.” (Mind you, that “majority of Americans” claim is based on poll of 800 people; everyone can agree that 0.000002 percent of Americans speak for all of us, right?)

Asked about the Chamber’s latest PR move, Dean Baker, an economist at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research who favors the tax, actually thanked the Chamber for releasing the study and making the conclusions it did. For instance, one of the report’s biggest conclusions is that the new tax would raise trading costs to what they were in the 1980s—something that Baker says is far from a bad thing. He also said the poll accompanying the report (PDF) actually shows there’s a fair amount of public support for the tax. 31 percent of respondents said they thought the tax was necessary because of the damage big financial institutions did to the economy—and that’s with polling language clearly intended to sway people against the tax. Tweak the questions a bit, and you might’ve seen majority support for the tax. “I’m kind of happy,” Baker says. “They’re doing our work for us. And we didn’t have to pay anything.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate