A few weeks ago, for the second time in two months, Senate Republicans objected to an extension of unemployment benefits. While the last dispute was resolved in time to keep benefits from expiring, as of Monday, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers are seeing their benefits come to an end.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) led the GOP obstruction last time (telling the Democrats “tough sh*t” when they asked for unanimous consent to move the extension forward), but this time Sen. Tom “Dr. No” Coburn (R-OK) has stepped up to the plate. And he evidently has no remorse about his actions, as he feels they affect a “relatively small amount of people”:

The easiest thing in the world is to pass this bill unpaid for, but consider the millions of Americans whose financial futures would be damaged, versus the relatively small amount of people who will be affected by this delay. Now you tell me which vote takes the most courage.

First, Coburn is wrong on the economics. Providing unemployment benefits is one of the most effective steps that a government can take in terms of economic stimulus, and unless the economy starts moving again, long-term deficits (“financial futures”) will never be brought under control. As the National Employment Law Project’s Judy Conti explained, “every economist from every side of the political spectrum will tell you that unemployment benefits are most stimulative when they are not offset. In the history of the unemployment program, we have never offset these programs.”

And then there’s the human angle. Because of Coburn and the GOP’s obstruction, more than 200,000 people per week will lose their benefits. About one million are slated to lose their benefits this month. And this is taking place while 44 percent of unemployed Americans (about 6.5 million people) have been unemployed for six months or more. Plus, the same package that Coburn blocked included a renewal of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), while the Northeast United States has been hard-hit by flooding.

If you thought this whole sordid episode would prompt some soul-searching among the GOP, you’d be mistaken. They are, instead, circling the wagons around Coburn and trying to blame House Democrats (who objected to their proposed offset) for preventing the extension. In fact, Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) takeaway is that the GOP should have lent more support to Bunning when he blocked the extension. “We didn’t give [Bunning] as much help as we probably should have,” Kyl said. “It took an act of courage like Sen. Bunning’s to perhaps jolt people into the awareness of how bad it had really gotten.”

After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, used his company’s ties to the industry-dominated Bush administration to paper over Massey’s egregious environmental and health violations. Massey rewarded Republicans with massive donations after the company avoided paying billions in fines for a 2000 coal slurry disaster in Martin County, three times bigger than the Exxon Valdez. After both mine inspectors and Massey employees got the same message that it was more important to “run coal” than to follow safety rules, a deadly fire broke out in the Aracoma Alma mine in 2006, burning two men alive.

Blankenship was abetted by former employees placed at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was named a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board. After being rejected twice by the Senate, one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler was put in charge of the MSHA in a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.

Below are further details of these two past incidents that foretold Blankenship’s latest disaster:

THE FATAL ARACOMA MINE FIRE

Blankenship Branded Deadly Fire At Dangerous Aracoma Mine “Statistically Insignificant.” In the most egregious case of preventable death before the Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines” after two workers died in a fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]

Federal Mine Inspector Who Wanted To Shut Down Mine Told To “Back Off.” Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but “was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.” Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/23/06]

Blankenship Memo: “Coal Pays the Bills.” Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06]

THE MARTIN COUNTY COAL-SLURRY DISASTER

Three Times the Volume of the Exxon Valdez Spill. Massey Energy is the parent of Martin County Coal, responsible for the “nation’s largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi” until the 2008 Tennesee coal-ash spill In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek,” in Martin County, KY. [Lost Mountain, p. 128]

Site Denied Superfund Status. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency “determined that the slurry spill was not a release of a hazardous substance” and thus ineligible for Superfund status. [KY EQC]

Sen. McConnell and Wife Stopped MSHA Investigation. U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/2/06, OpenSecrets]

$2.4 Billion Becomes $20 Million. In May 2007 the EPA filed suit for $2.4 billion against Massey for violating “Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2006″ in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Martin County spill. In January 2008 Massey agreed to pay $20 million to settle the case. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 1/18/08]

Photo credit: Bill Rhodes

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

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The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber noted last week that the Senate Banking Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), was floating a compromise regarding an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), which is one of the major sticking points in the financial regulatory reform effort. The Washington Post added today that Shelby’s proposal “includes limits on the consumer agency’s authority, including a commission of regulators that could serve as a check on rules put forth by the agency.”

Obviously the details here matter a lot, but on the surface, this is a reversal for Shelby, who has said that creating an independent consumer protection agency would be “folly and dangerous” and lead to a “nanny state.” In fact, it was Shelby’s stark opposition to a CFPA that led Dodd to end negotiations with him in the first place.

Just last month, Shelby appeared before the American Bankers Association and said that “safety and soundness [of banks] trumps everything. It trumps the consumer finance whatever.” So for the moment, I am skeptical that Shelby really favors a consumer agency with enough teeth to make it truly independent and effective. The fact that he wants to give a commission of regulators veto authority seems to confirm this, particularly since the regulatory reform legislation that passed out of the Banking Committee already gives the proposed Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) the ability to overrule the consumer agency with a two-thirds vote.

It’s also interesting that, at least so far as it’s been reported so far, Shelby’s proposal seems to forego placing the new consumer division inside of the Federal Reserve, which was a compromise Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) made in order to try and garner some conservative support for his legislation. So Shelby may be trying to tap into some of the anti-Fed fervor out there by proposing an agency outside of the Fed, but still one that is toothless and has limited reach.

As the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson pointed out, Shelby’s move raises two questions: “First, will Dodd agree to a CFPA that fudges the meaning of the word independent and essentially recasts Shelby’s previous counter-offers to give the CFPA glorified recommendation status? Second, will the White House — which has gone from lukewarm to crusading on the consumer protection issue — respond to Shelby’s offer with clear approval or disapproval?”

Dodd’s Consumer Protection Bureau represents the bare minimum in terms of independence that an effective regulator needs (which is why it earned the cautious endorsement of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren). Any more infringements on that independence and we’ll be right back with the status quo: consumers relegated to secondary status, behind the bottom lines of financial firms. I hope Dodd fights the urge to accept Shelby’s offer in the name of bipartisanship if it weakens Dodd’s proposal even more and leads to the GOP demanding concessions on other parts of the bill.