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Chamber Ripped On Its Facebook Page

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Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue

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The Chamber of Commerce, whose intransigent stance on global warming has lately been in the spotlight, is now being slammed in comments on its own Facebook page.

Many of the comments, which appear on the "Just Fans" setting, accuse the Chamber of vastly inflating its membership numbers. Mother Jones reported earlier this month that the Chamber's claim to represent 3 million members is off by a factor of 10.

A sampling of comments (be sure to click on "Just Fans"):

Why are you lying about your membership numbers? You are pathetic.

And:

I am a small business owner and have been for 25 years. You do NOT represent me!

The comments -- which presumably were deliberately engineered by a Chamber opponent -- appear to be automatically deleted every 15 minutes, but are still coming thick and fast.

The Chamber has been in the news a lot lately, and not for the right reasons. Several companies in recent weeks have distanced themselves from the organization, citing the Chamber's opposition to serious efforts to address climate change. And this week, the Chamber filed suit against the Yes Men, after the activist pranksters held a hoax press conference to announce that the business lobby was shifting its stance on the issue.

Here's a screengrab of the page:


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12 comments

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October 30, 2009 4:13 PM   

With the right pair of glasses Tom Donohue could muster a great Halloween costume as Futurama's Dr. John A. Zoidberg.

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October 30, 2009 4:31 PM   

What a stupid name for an organization. "We are the Room of Business!" LOL.

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October 30, 2009 5:40 PM   

That might be the most biased and leading poll I have ever seen.

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October 30, 2009 6:34 PM   

guys with small johnsons should stop lying about their members, too.
Just sayin'

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October 30, 2009 6:57 PM   

They must have gotten FreedomWatch to count their membership.

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October 30, 2009 7:18 PM   

Often the right's answer to their ripping off of the middle class and the endless hoarding of wealth is that they want to leave money to their kids.

Does the Chamber of Horror want to leave a stable environment for their kids?

You would think that this one issue would foster cooperation between Republicans and Democrats.

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November 1, 2009 11:30 AM    in reply to stanjz

Their belief in the power of money is omnipotent; that with enough wealth their kids can choose or create a safe environment to live in - and finance a police state to control the hordes left to live in the remaining wasteland.

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October 31, 2009 7:42 AM   

Tom Donohue has used the Chamber of Commerce as a tool for the Republican Party, to the irritation of many of its members. I don't have the link handy, but look back around 2005 for an article in the Washington Post. He was essentially using the Chamber as a way to fund-raise for Republican candidates, and to engage in "advocacy ads" that tried to shift the news agenda onto a Republican "framing" (Lakeoff). The Post article was explicit that this marked a shift in Chamber norms, interjecting itself in a much more clearly partisan way. It included quotes from Donohue that left little to the imagination.

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October 31, 2009 11:45 AM   

I dare them to publish the full list of 3 million. I dare them to publish even a verifiable list of 500,000.

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November 1, 2009 11:39 AM   

The fan photos section is pretty fun, too. Lots of variations of "pants on fire".

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November 1, 2009 11:51 AM   

Dishonesty has increasingly become a revered corporate value and it's also reflected in the Washington establishment big business controls. The terms "marketing" and "spin" are euphemisms to make lying seem acceptable in both sectors. Not surprising that one of corporate America's major lobbying groups even lies about it's size.

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November 1, 2009 12:06 PM   

How about that poll on the left there.

Pretty childish.

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