Massey CEO Don Blankenship is back in the news again, and so are the Senators from West Virginia. One still trying to make money and keep unions out of mines, the other fighting for better mine safety regulations. I’ll let you guess who’s who.

Via Climate Progress/The Wonk Room: “…Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is promoting a two-year moratorium on EPA climate action.” He has support from other Senate Democrats.

Long-serving United States Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) Faces Heat from Environmentalists and more

My Mom is where I learned about public service. For 17 years she was a County Commissioner in the second largest county in Michigan by population. During that time she had opportunities to run for higher office, but stayed where she was because she though it was the highest level of public office where one could see the affect of the work one was doing.

It wasn’t always an easy row to hoe. Being that it was Michigan there was always a problem with finding enough money in the budgets to fill all the priorities. There were times when she did what she thought was right, even though people complained. When she set up two health clinic where teens could get condoms without shame or hassle (in the ‘80’s) there was a lot of out cry. Still Mom knew that with the 17% teen pregnancy rate in her district something had to be done.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

On June 10th, we all celebrated the defeat of the Murkowski resolution, which would have gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide pollution. Why we needed to defeat Murkowski was explained well by NRDC Action Fund Executive Director, Peter Lehner, who wrote the following prior to the vote:

The US Senate, the world’s greatest high school debate squad, continues to fiddle on the climate and energy bills. And while oil gushes into the Gulf, and we enjoy the warmest spring in recorded history, and prepare for a heavy hurricane season, our esteemed Senators are concerned that we’re moving… too fast. Jay Rockefeller (D-Coal Country), actually wants to roll back what little HAS been done.

The solid front of Democratic Party progressives supporting the Senate’s health care form bill, has now cracked wide open with Howard Dean’s call to kill the Senate bill and start over in the House with reconciliation. Dean’s call hasn’t cracked open the floodgates among the Senate and House Democrats and in recent days people like Bernie Sanders and Anthony Weiner have indicated that even though they’re sympathetic, they’re not with Howard yet, while others like Ben Cardin, Jay Rockefeller, and a veritable hallelujah chorus of other Democratic Senators have registered strong disagreement with him, insisting that the bill should still be supported. Meanwhile, Harry Reid continues to oppose using reconciliation to pass a bill. Why?

Both the best-intentioned leaders of health care reform and those whose intentions have been questionable have come together to declare in one voice that the one who’s doing the most to block what they call “health care reform” (though it is not) is Governor Howard Dean.

Apart from whether the President gets hurt politically, and even whether the real interests of the people in the area of HCR are served, there is the larger issue of restoring the Congress and the Senate as institutions. Today, the Senate needs a group of progressives like the liberal Senators of the ’50s and ’60s. It needs people who have the courage of their convictions, and who can negotiate successfully for what they believe in. But the problem is that jello progressives, like Jello Jay can’t do that. The reason is basic to the process of successful negotiation. In any such process, you have to be prepared to walk away from the table to get anything good at all. You have to be able to say “no.” When you lose something in negotiation, you have to be able to deny your negotiating partner something. You have to make that partner pay a price for the concession they denied to you. Jello Jay and his jello progressive colleagues can’t do that. They can’t say no. Until they can, every other party to the negotiations they take part in will roll them. It’s as simple as that. The old liberals were prepared to walk away. But Jello Progressivism says “yes,” no matter how much it loses in negotiation. Jello progressives are so afraid of failure that they always fail, even while they tell themselves they’ve accomplished something. That has to stop, or these progressives have to be replaced, because as things are now they are neither any good to us, nor to themselves.

Senator Jay Rockefeller says the House health care reform bill’s repeal of CHIP is “intolerable,” and that he’ll fight to save CHIP and “shield children from harm.”