In Virginia, it is always surprising that the talking heads, lobbyists, politicians and others always regard the “Business Community” as a monolith that thinks and speaks with one voice and must be protected because of the Old Dominion’s coveted status as being “business friendly.”
Gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, for instance, is running a campaign that espouses this unilateral view. If it’s not “Drill Baby Drill” for oil and gas off the coast it’s nip carbon dioxide cap and trade in the bud because it will cost jobs, such as the few remaining in the state’s dwindling coal industry and threaten paper company MeadWestvaco’s huge, 100-year-old paper mill in Covington. Opponent Creigh Deeds takes a more moderate stance.
But what is the “Business Community,” anyway?
A few weeks ago, for reasons that are unclear, I was asked to participate in a background briefing hosted by a powerful Richmond law and advocacy firm on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That’s a body I know well from previous journalism work.
Headquartered in a grand old building steps from the White House with imposing marble hallways, the U.S. Chamber revels as being THE most prominent spokesman for U.S. business. I have interviewed the chamber’s combative president Thomas J. Donohue who is never afraid of taking his Irish temper out on anyone who goes against what he considers America’s, and the Chamber’s, business interests.
Somehow, I got mixed in for a phone chat with a bunch of bloggers who are conservative and reliable, which I am neither. Their mistake. The point of the meeting was to marshal blogger support for an attack on the Obama Administration’s efforts to create a new agency to protect consumers. The Chamber hates the idea. I kind of like it.
But the Chamber is getting itself into deep trouble as it takes a monolithic position against cap and trade and greenhouse gases and global warming. Like many right wingers, Donohue seems to doubt the veracity of the threat and says that any efforts to stem carbon dioxide are exorbitantly expensive and pointless.
As dying BusinessWeek magazine, my old employer, points out, Donohue has the gumption to lecture Apple’s Steve Jobs on the issue and even on technology. Jobs and Apple, by the way, back cap and trade and are fearful of climate change.
Donohue’s feisty views are costing him and his organization. Apple has since toned down its support of the Chamber. Electric utilities PG&E, Exelon and PNM Resources have quit the chamber since they back cap and trade. Duke down in Charlotte, backs cap and trade even though it has a fair number of coal-fired generating plants as does Richmond-based Dominion whose position isn’t clear. Most of these utilities have something in common, they have nuclear power stations which don’t affect global warming.
True, lots of companies back the U.S. Chamber. But as the media, notably the Richmond Times-Dispatch, continue to dumb themselves down as they lay off experienced reporters, we’re served up a bunch of simplistic slop that business always speaks with one voice.
Doing so isn’t new. Thirty plus years ago when I was a cub reporter on The Virginian’Pilot covering efforts to build an oil refinery in Portsmouth. Proponents such as the late Portsmouth major Richard J. Davis pretended that all of business backed the refinery, when in fact, the state’s entire seafood industry, also a business, fought it tooth and nail.
The refinery was never built, which makes McDonnell’s cheerleading for offshore drilling so curious. If there really were lots of profitable oil and gas off the Virginia coast, why hasn’t it been drilled by now? How come the Portsmouth refinery was never built? In the late 1970s, Texas leviathan Brown & Root bought hundreds of acres of land near Cape Charles at the tip of the Eastern Shore as a potential staging area for offshore rigs. The facility was never built and is now an upscale residential community with two expensive golf courses. Should we blame government intrusion. Or could it be that global market forces make drilling in other countries the way to go. Maybe similar market forces are telling us there’s more profit in pricey condos for seniors on the Eastern Shore than steelworks for rigs.
And who would you rather have provide leadership for Virginia’s economic future? Some coal company executive? Or someone such as Steve Jobs whose phenomenal success has changed the world?
Peter Galuszka
