The disaster the CA Chamber of Commerce played in election

[realFedUp]

http://goldenstateblog.latimes.com/goldenstate/2005/11/the_chamber_dro.html

The Chamber Drops the Ball
Michael Hiltzik

One of the dirty little secrets of the recent special election campaign is the disastrous role played by the California Chamber of Commerce. To its tradition of being utterly useless to the average Californian, this organization has now added the distinction of becoming a dead weight around the neck of its chief spear-carrier, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Anthony York touches briefly on some of this background in his incisive post-mortem today in Capitol Weekly. To flesh it out, the calamitous "Live Within Our Means Act," otherwise known as Proposition 76, was drafted jointly by Chamber President Alan Zaremberg and Bill Hauck, president of the California Business Roundtable. Hauck is a public-spirited man who has served ably on a number of state panels over the years, some of which have made some very sensible recommendations for real reforms. The same can’t be said of Zaremberg, whose organization has had nothing but a noxious influence on the state.

The Chamber’s input is plainly what gave Prop 76 its coloration as an instrument of special interests. This is par for the course. The Chamber has consistently defined the interests of its membership in the narrowest possible terms, boiling them down to little more than lower taxes and less regulation. In so doing, it has come to represent the interests of a narrow spectrum of California businesses—chiefly department stores and fast food restaurants. When it labels a universal health care mandate a "job killer," it’s speaking up for McDonald’s franchisees, not for the responsible corporations that already provide health care for their employers and are losing out to lose out to freeloading competitors, like Wal-Mart, that let Medi-Cal and public hospitals treat their workers—at the expense of the rest of us.

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[kineneb]

1. I have read some of their propaganda

in my (soon to be ending) position at a chamber of commerce. The list of directors are mostly huge SoCal corporations, and they do not speak to the issues of small business or the consumer/citizen. They are, well, swine (sorry to pigs out there).

My cue for voting is to see what they endorse and vote "no."

[realFedUp]

2. good clue to future ballot measures.

hope you find a better job. :-)

[kineneb]

3. leaving job for number of reasons

1. They don't pay enough and have no benefits
2. Hubby is now on dialysis and needs ride to clinic (25 miles away) 3X/week, job has no paid time off.
3. We can survive on his disability without me working for someone else.
4. I want to finish my Master's so I can at least teach some night classes.
5. I didn't like the "cheap labor conservative" attitude I was getting- we had to spend down our assets to get Hubby on MediCal/CMSP so he could get medical care.
Job became an intellectual version of a MallWart greeter's position. Kind of embarrassing if I had really chosen to pound it home to them: $10/hour x 35 hours or less a week is under 200% of poverty for two people, and I was sole income provider.

...hence the reason I despise the Cal Chamber and their political positions