Marriage Of Hypocrisy And Corruption

David Sirota

March 29, 2007

David Sirota is the author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government —And How We Take It Back. This article appeared in The Denver Post.

We all know that special interests talk out of both sides of their mouths whenever they are trying to buy public policy. But in recent weeks, we have seen glaring examples of sheer hypocrisy that are eye-popping, even by Washington standards. On issues from pharmaceutical prices to democracy to trade, lobbyists are stepping all over their own rhetoric in attempts to keep Congress from embracing a populist, middle-class agenda.

The first example came when corporations recently pulled out all the stops against the Employee Free Choice Act, the legislation that strengthens workers' democratic rights to form unions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a press release claiming it opposed the bill because it supposedly "undermines the fundamental concept of our workplace democracy." Yet, just days later, the president of the Business Roundtable attacked legislation strengthening company shareholders' ability to vote down exorbitant executive pay packages, saying that "corporations were never designed to be democracies." Yes, Corporate America wants Congress to believe that it is worried about workers' democratic rights at the very same time it is telling shareholders (the owners of the companies) that they should have no democratic rights at all.