Chamber: Dem regulations onerous ("a tsunami of government regulations.”

Politico.com ^ | 10/6/10 | CHRIS FRATES

[raybbr]

It’s become sort of a mantra in business circles: Democrats’ vast array of new regulations is strangling innovation and job growth.

And the mantra gets a much bigger megaphone on Thursday, when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launches a national grass-roots and media campaign aimed at driving home the message to voters ahead of the Nov. 2 midterm elections.

The push is aimed at reminding them what the so-called Big Government Democrats have wrought.

“Polls are showing discontent among the American people about the growth of government and the lack of focus on job growth,” said Chamber spokeswoman Tita Freeman. “So we, with four weeks left until the election, want to get out there and highlight the importance of this rush to regulate and urge people to support free-enterprise candidates.”

To deliver the message, Chamber executives plan to run print ads inside the Beltway and national ads online, offer op-eds, fire up local Chamber members, send top officials on a speaking tour and launch a new website, ThisWayToJobs.com.

The lobbying group has even devised a board game, to be sent to Capitol Hill staffers, that allows each player to be a business that must navigate “burdensome regulations.”

The monthlong push is the culmination of similar events the Chamber has held since the summer. Compared with the millions of dollars it regularly spends on issue advocacy, the latest effort is relatively small. Freeman estimates her group will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Chamber President Tom Donohue kicks off the October blitz Thursday with a speech to business owners in Des Moines, Iowa.

“The impact of these regulations on businesses large and small is pervasive and insidious,” Donohue says in prepared remarks. “America is sinking under the crushing weight of a vast and ever-expanding regulatory state.

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[jettester]

I was recently in Detroit for a wedding and then at a family and friends breakfast the day after. At my table was my very-lib, intellectual sister; an older woman neighbor; and the neighbor’s trendy lawyer daughter from DC. The discussion came around to “how things have changed over the years” and specifically, how much freedom we have lost in that time.

I shared how I used to be able (while in the 5th and 6th grades) to put on my orange Safety Patrol belt, watch the foot traffic coming at my post, walk into the busy street and stop traffic to let the kids cross the road. Now, I joked, you probably would need an act of Congress and an Environmental Impact Report to give some kid that kind of authority and put the “poor child” at such risk.

My question was simple: Are we better off today then we were before with all of the oversite and regulations? Man, you should have heard all of the lame howling and whinning went on around that table!

[CPOSharky]

The lobbying group has even devised a board game, to be sent to Capitol Hill staffers, that allows each player to be a business that must navigate “burdensome regulations.”

Based on Momopoly, the board has a "pay the government half of what you have" every other square.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

I used to be a patrol boy myself. Quite a sense of importance and responsibility, and yes, things have definitely changed. For one, drivers were more courteous back then and, two, today our job is done by paid security people.

[Nick Danger]

Don't you just love the way this reporter refers to complaints about regulation as a "mantra" and puts scare quotes around "burdensome regulations"? I think reporters should have to file a report for each story they've written. They should have to say how many words they used, how many of those were nouns and how many were prepositions; whether they referred to any minorities in their story, and if not why not; how long it took them to write the story and whether they used a telephone during that time; their latitude, longitude, and altitude when they wrote the story; and whether they used any sort of dictionary or spell-checker. Then if it is later determined that they got any of it wrong, they should be fined $1,000.

[TexasFreeper2009]

Is this the same chamber that backed Obama?

[JSDude1]

Funny that politco always quotes these leftists at the end of the article with their talking points..

blah, blah, blah people will like heathcare: FAIL.