– One might be forgiven for thinking that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is simply the national aggregation of all the smaller Chamber of Commerce’s scattered around the country.
– But, in fact, it is not so. It is a front group and represents 30 million businesses but 30% of its incomes comes from only 19 of those businesses. These are big businesses with a big vested interest in controlling how government works and what laws government passes that my affect their bottom line.
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Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need? How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be? How many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed into a life?
After all, as billionaire movie director Steven Spielberg is reported to have said, when all is said and done, “How much better can lunch get?” But since greed is not self-governing, hardly anyone raking in the dough ever stops to say, “That’s it. Enough’s enough! How do we prevent it from sweeping up everything in its path, including us?”
Look at the health care industry saying to hell with consumers and then hiking premiums – by as much as 39 percent in the case of Anthem Blue Cross in California. According to Congressional investigators, over a two-year period, Anthem’s parent company WellPoint spent more than $27 million dollars for executive retreats at luxury resorts. And in 2008, WellPoint paid 39 of its executives more than a million dollars each. Profit before patients.
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