health care chamber of commerce

It's been clear for a while that campaign finance reform is needed, although the opposite (less regulation) has been the recent norm. These last elections were some of the most expensive, and most secretive in history. Groups like American Compass and others funnelled millions and millions of dollars into local elections under the guise of "citizens" and the American Family Association spent MASSIVE amounts of money in Iowa to oust judges who, God forbid, determined that the state could not apply marriage laws unequally to gay and lesbian citizens.

The Health Care debate (debacle?) is a prime example of what happens when ridiculous amounts of money are spent and by whom is hidden. Bloomberg news just released an article with their findings about the matter. Apparently the Chamber of Commerce (not the local group that promotes small, local business, but the national group that fights against taxes, worker safety, unions etc.) had more than HALF...that's right HALF...it's budget paid by the Health Care Lobby.

What does that mean? When the government was attempting to write and pass a health care bill to ensure that all Americans had access to affordable health care (our country still falls on the bottom half of industrialized nations in terms of the health care available to our citizens even though we are the richest country in the world), the Health Care lobby was actively spending money fighting against it. They were, however, smart enough to know that people would see the blatant conflict of interest there, so just gave the money to a more innocuous sounding group...the Chamber of Commerce, who would do their dirty work for them.

Read the article here, and be upset.