A few weeks ago on a panel at the America's Future Now conference ("The largest gathering of progressive activists and leaders from across the country") a Twitter user reported that MoveOn campaign director Ilyse Hogue said "Part of progressive agenda needs to be fracturing US Chamber." Given that "progressive" policies don't hold up well to public scrutiny we can certainly understand why they would want to silence opposing views, though perhaps a more positive approach would be to develop policies which would, you know, actually promote progress.

Also on the panel was Anna Burger from the SEIU, who have done their part to support their political allies by recently launching a full-court, albeit lame, press against the Chamber. Again, it seems like their resources would be better served by programs in support of their members, but hey, its their borrowed dime. In case at some point they do decide to focus on workers, James Sherk at Heritage has identified a great resource for them, former union organizer Kate Bronfenbrenner, who writes:

"American unions themselves must shoulder a good portion of the responsibility for their organizing failures. Although our results demonstrate that even in the most difficult contexts, unions can dramatically increase their organizing success when they run more multifaceted strategic campaigns, the majority of unions organizing today still run weak, ineffectual campaigns that fail to build their strength for the long haul."

As Sherk notes: "The union movement's lead researcher has found that unions could fully offset the effect of employer education campaigns by conducting more intelligent organizing campaigns themselves." Or in other words "Spend More, Sell Less" isn't an effective way to sustainably reverse fifty-years of declining membership - as any savvy small business owner could tell you.