Good afternoon, Daily Kos readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post your manifesto.
This is an open source project, so feel free to add your own insights. Here's the news I found lurking around the Internets...
Sen. Shelby brought to light the backup of nominees that existed at the time of that infamous 60-40 vote for health insurance reform. Shame! Shame!
And over the Snowapocolyse February break, inquiring minds turned to the idea of presidential powers mentioned the Constitution, recess appointments, and dusted off by none other than our friendly Bush administration Senate.
And a few were given those up-or-down votes, but the list had to be noticed.
The reconciliation bill will be signed tomorrow. Recess appointments will be made. And notice who they are and what positions are open. Treasury was chastised on the home mortgage programs.
********
Alaska politicians support labor more that I even though, Shanny Moore and Progressive Punch proved that to me at NN09, and Sen. Murkowski also voted for Mr. Becker the first time around in committee. Then, there is a pivot.
Earlier in his first term, Obama struck a bargain of sorts with Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)--the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Enzi agreed to support Becker, as long as Obama agreed to also appoint a business-friendly member to the NLRB. Enzi ultimately backed out of the agreement leaving Obama shy of the 60 votes he needed to break the filibuster.
As such, Obama appointed Becker...and a second pro-labor lawyer, Mark Pearce, to the NLRB.
The move, in other words, is meant to make the GOP pay a price for its tactics.
********
Other nominees have been put to work lately. And the building on C Street I am referring to is the Department of Labor.
David Lauriski was Emery's chief safety officer when Wilberg caught fire, an accident later attributed to numerous violations at the mine. The owners, it turned out, had been trying for a one-day production record. Seventeen years after the disaster, Lauriski became George W. Bush's first mine safety chief, a perch from which he halted a dozen new safety regulations initiated under Clinton, advocating instead a more "collaborative" approach with industry. His successor was also from private industry; during a stint as a state regulator, his lax enforcement played a role in another mining disaster, this one at the Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania.
Now, for the first time in its history, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), a division of the Department of Labor (DoL), is headed by a union man, Joe Main. Main began his working life as a teenager in 1967, doing the precarious work of sinking a coal mine shaft in West Virginia. By 19 he was a mine safety committeeman, later joining the United Mine Workers' health and safety department, where he worked for decades. He was working for the union at the time of the Wilberg fire and rushed to the scene. He recalls spending four or five days there during the grueling rescue and recovery operation. "It took us a year to recover the last miner," he recalls, "and I dealt with the families a lot during that time. It's something that's stayed with me my whole life." Main was confirmed by the Senate in late October; six weeks later he launched a major national initiative to end black lung disease.
We will take that home boy and the other one with a spot in the Final Four, thank you very much.
Mitch McConnell's wife wanted Justice Scalia'a son as her lawyer. The Senate would have nothing to do with this. Like one of many sharp sticks in the eye, (Bolton at the UN), he won a recess appointment over the Christmas break of 2001. You remember other gems from the Bush era Department of Commerce Labor?
Indeed, Solis threw her weight around on Capitol Hill when one key deputy, Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith, faced stiff opposition from business lobbies and the GOP. One of Smith's predecessors as labor solicitor--the nation's top enforcer of labor laws--was Eugene Scalia, son of the Supreme Court justice. Scalia's previous claim to fame was his successful campaign to block an ergonomics safety standard, using an industry-supported Astroturf group to question whether repetitive-motion injuries exist at all.
::::::::
After Senate Republican Mike Enzi put a hold on her nomination for months, Smith was finally confirmed on February 4.
The approach of having the foxes guard the hen house, like MSHA, had our state's senior senator fired up after tragedy at Sago. Several hearings have featured fellow W. Va. resident Davit McAteer, MSHA director under Clinton. It was never lunch in his brown paper bag, but safety equipment that the Republicans at the hearing said did not yet exist.
Mary Beth Maxwell, a leader in the fight for labor law reform as head of American Rights at Work, was brought on as a senior adviser to Solis. Deborah Berkowitz, OSHA's new chief of staff, was health and safety director for the United Food and Commercial Workers. And Main's deputy for policy at MSHA, Greg Wagner, is a doctor who spent more than a decade treating miners with respiratory illnesses at a West Virginia clinic. "It's fair to say," says AFL-CIO legislative director Bill Samuel, "that some of the president's best appointments have been at the Department of Labor."
... But in one forgotten corner of the administration, over on C Street and Constitution, at a department whose entire $1.5 billion enforcement budget couldn't pay for a single B-2 bomber, Solis has formed a rump group that's fighting on the right side of the class war.
Well, government for the people, what a novel idea. No incorporation papers necessary.
Within two months of taking office, Bush and his labor secretary, Elaine Chao, had rammed through Congress the repeal of a new ergonomics regulation that had been a decade in the making.
After that, the DoL didn't issue a single new regulation unless it was forced to by Congress or the courts. Chao not only imposed new restrictions on overtime pay; she produced guidance for employers on how to avoid paying it. She imposed onerous reporting requirements that applied only to labor unions. And she left behind a layer of like-minded middle managers who, AFGE Local 12 vice president Eleanor Lauderdale says, have yet to be replaced.
That was the money quote there, in bold, Mrs. McConnell's lasting impression on working families. Is it possible that Sen. Shelby felt better about Airbus and Alabama's prospects with the old guys still in place?
She revoked Chao's union reporting requirements and countered with a proposed rule that employers who hire union avoidance firms must publicly report it, the sort of sunshine that could easily act as a deterrent.
So regulation can work both ways.
At MSHA, Main has not only come out swinging on black lung; he's launched a big-picture safety campaign he calls Rules to Live By, which involves combing through the data to identify the top causes of miner deaths. First, Main says, he'll educate mining companies about the need to eliminate these risk factors; next will come "increased enforcement," with special attention to "serious" violations, which trigger the largest fines. For Main, there's a direct correlation between hefty fines and fewer deaths.
So what does my local paper's editorial board treat me to this weekend? None other than criticism of Sen. Byrd's black lung provision in the health care bill, special for a non-mining area of the state.
Amendment by Byrd could make it harder for those with black lung
Coal miners and their families deserve to be protected from occupational hazards such as black lung disease. We join U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., in that belief.
But miners also ought to be able to count on the good pay and good benefits provided by their industry.
Action by Byrd may make it more difficult for coal companies to remain competitive and able to offer such jobs.
Toady. The Journal. A Nutting paper.
We have a coal field paper reporting the way the law helps miners and their widows
Nearly half of our country’s power is generated by coal, and more than 130,000 miners put their lives at risk to provide it. Over the last decade, an estimated 10,000 miners have died of black-lung disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Worse, "this condition is entirely man-made," says Dr. Naftali Kaminski, director of the Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Disease at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It’s also preventable.
A paper in non-coal country defending the tactics of an industry that continues to pit us against each other.
********
Frozen in time, since the Executive Calendar is updated every day when the Senate is in session, three or four pages longer last December, the list is here starting on page five. Politely ask your Senatorial critter's staff, even the GOP that you say never listen, how they can block nominees. Pick you department. Use Search. Pick your issue.