How to Kill the Chamber of Commerce...

The Chamber of Commerce's outrageous stand against action on global warming, which has spurred a number of huge corporations to drop out, is not an anomaly, says Eliot Spitzer. From environmental protection to deregulation to fiscal policy to health care reform, it’s always on the wrong side of history, he writes. "And its “view of social justice would warm Scrooge’s heart.”  But it's stoppable, he argues in Slate, because we, you and me, own the damn thing—or at least most of its member companies.

Most chamber members are big, publicly-traded corporations. Since mutual funds and public pension funds are the biggest players in the equity market, you probably own a chunk of a Chamber member, and your retirement money is paying their lobbyists—an obscene $91 million dollars last year. Elected comptrollers need to demand the companies they own leave the Chamber. Some will argue, of course, that they’re injecting politics in corporate management. The response? “No, they are trying to take politics out of it!” (More Eliot Spitzer stories.)