We told you about it in March and described it last week; now a congressional committee reports it’s been going on since at least 2006: Elaine Chao’s been campaigning for her husband (and other GOP candidates) using taxpayer money.  According to a draft report released Wednesday, Elaine broke the law by using her office to support candidates in the 2006 election. As the Washington Post reported, she joined other officials in:

303 out-of-town trips by senior Bush appointees meant to lend prestige or bring federal grants to 99 politically endangered Republicans that year, in a White House campaign that House Democratic investigators Wednesday called unprecedented in scope.

Now, it’s illegal for federal employees to use public money to support candidates for federal office, but that didn’t stop Elaine, who went on 25 of these partisan excursions.

Federal law prohibits the use of public funds for partisan activities…but the agencies involved said most of the trips were paid by taxpayer funds, according to the draft report issued Wednesday by California Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Elaine certainly seems to be up to her old tricks this year. While Americans lose jobs and the economy tanks, Elaine makes campaign stops, attends awards dinners and rides in the Toyota Grand Parade of Horses.  While campaigning, she makes sure to praise Mitch’s votes against the interests of America’s workers and even brags that Mitch “…has stopped the majority in Congress from enacting climate change legislation.” (I guess no one has told her that green investment could create 2 million new jobs in two years.)

No matter who voters choose this November, let’s hope we end up with Secretary of Labor who spends time looking out for workers, not engaging in illegal partisan activity.

In the month of September, the United States lost an additional 159,000 jobs, with 9.5 million Americans being out of work. Combined with the collapse of our financial markets and increased economic uncertainty, you’d think Elaine Chao might be spending her last months on the job working to ensure that those who are laid off can find new jobs and receive assistance. Instead, she’s barnstorming Kentucky in an effort to help her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell, hang on to his hotly-contested Senate seat. In the last week alone, she’s made two campaign stops at opposite ends of the state. According to the press:

On Saturday, October 4^th:

Sen. Mitch McConnell made a campaign stop in Georgetown on Saturday evening and warned supporters against voting for his opponent, Bruce Lunsford.

“If I were replaced by a freshman, Kentucky would have a severe loss in clout in the Senate,” McConnell said while meeting supporters at the Scott County Republican Party headquarters.

McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, U.S. Labor Secretary, who called the senator her soul mate and roommate, shook hands and thanked supporters before riding in the Toyota Grand Parade of Horses.

          On Monday, October 6^th:

U.S Labor Secretary Elaine Chao spoke in London Monday, asking Laurel Countians to support the “entrepreneurial spirit” of America as well as her husband, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Chao spoke during the London-Laurel Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business dinner Monday evening, sharing a little about her life story - from arriving in America as part of a cargo ship, to becoming the nation’s 24th Secretary of Labor.

She also attended a meet and greet reception at the north London Hampton Inn hosted by the Laurel County Republican Party, where she talked about McConnell’s reelection campaign and the presidential race.

“This is going to be a tough, tough season for Republicans,” she told the crowd, “and I think when you are talking with your various friends and neighbors, and they want change, we need to ask them, ‘what kind of change are you talking about? What kind of change do you want?’… We need to be very careful that we’re actually opting for the right kind of change.”

America’s workers want change, and it starts with a Secretary of Labor who actually does his or her job. Elaine’s partisan and personal priorities couldn’t be any clearer.

Rising unemployment.  Unsafe workplaces.  Incompetent federal agencies.

You’d think with the important tasks left undone on Elaine Chao’s desk, perhaps she’d roll up her sleeves and work for the American people. Yet apparently Elaine’s greatest priority isn’t doing her job as Secretary of Labor, but rather helping her husband’s re-election campaign.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that this past weekend:

Kentucky Republican power couple U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao were on hand, along with more than 100 activists, to open the GOP’s Fayette County office Saturday.

And of course, Elaine couldn’t stop herself from being a good wife by making another partisan diatribe:

“You’re all going to be so important in ensuring Mitch McConnell remains the Republican leader in the United States Senate,” Chao said. “There’s one person in the Senate that basically is a bulwark, is a fire wall who contains all the bad ideas that … majority in the Congress is currently pushing. I’m very proud of Mitch for his steadfastness.”

If only she were so passionate about her job.

Yesterday Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao was accompanied by two SUVs and up to six security personnel in an afternoon trip to a nail parlor. Chao was apparently preparing for the evening’s big fundraiser in Louisville, KY with Republican Presidential nominee John McCain.

Kentucky video blogger James Pence was on the scene, and put together this video of Chao and her entourage leaving the parlor.

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We have lots of Elaine news from the last week, so kick back and check out what we have on our shady, shifty, shoddy Secretary of Labor.

Shady Appointees: Elaine lets appointee hide behind diplomatic immunity. Last month, Elaine met with the NAFTA council—the body that could waive diplomatic immunity for lobbyist and former official Mark Knouse. Knouse is the one whose numerous questionable expenses—nearly $10,000 in travel expenditures and about $1 million in shady contracts and vendor payments—forced him to resign. So did Elaine bring this to the NAFTA council? You guess.

Shoddy work: House votes to force Elaine to act. In April, we reported on a House hearing held because Elaine’s OSHA has failed to create comprehensive combustible dust regulations. Last week the House of Representatives got fed up, and voted to require OSHA to write safety standards for combustible dust in workplaces.

Federal regulators would have to come up with new ways to prevent combustible dust explosions in factories under legislation passed by the House… The bill now goes to the Senate, but the White House already has said President Bush would veto it. Despite worker deaths, Congressional votes, Elaine and her buddy President Bush still don’t seem to think combustible dust is a problem.

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Yesterday we observed Equal Pay Day on April 22, which marks how far into each year a woman must work to earn as much as a man did in the previous year. As Mary Beth Maxwell wrote recently:

In 2007, women earned only 80 cents for every dollar a man earned. This pay gap was substantially greater for minorities, with African-American women making only 70 cents and Hispanic women making only 62 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.

But Elaine and Mitch don’t see a problem: in 2006 Elaine claimed the pay gap had shrunk, when all that really happened was men’s wages fell, women didn’t gain. Under Elaine’s watch, the administration also tried to cut resources for the agency that gives women information about harassment, discrimination, family leave, and childcare.

Today, Mitch McConnell led the charge in the Senate that defeated the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a bill that would restore the law to its original intent and help ensure that women earn equal pay for equal work. Of course, Mitch got caught distorting the truth about the bill.

It is kinda funny that a female Labor Secretary would be so silent on the issue of equal pay. Then again, Elaine doesn’t have anything to worry about: her own pay has already been raised.

Ouch. After two separate government reports in ten days slammed Elaine Chao’s negligence on mine safety, her hometown paper decided to speak up. The paper is rightly furious: Elaine Chao’s negligence is inexcusable. (The editorial’s last sentence is the best.)

Why the delay? Yes, there’s a shortage of required equipment. But also, coal operators say they can’t get a straight answer from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration about what should be in their emergency response plans. But, the Government Accountability Office says enforcement of more than 350 citations written since 2006 by MSHA, for unsafe practices and conditions, varies widely.

What seems to be happening is that George W. Bush’s coal regulators, working under Labor Secretary Elaine Chao of Kentucky, are marking time until they get marching orders from the next administration.

If coal miners and their advocates, as opposed to coal industry givers, were part of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s re-election money machine, you might see some action.

Republicans like Big Coal. Their party took some $2 million from the mining industry in the 2006 election cycle alone. And Sen. McConnell objects to any suggestion that there’s something wrong with that.

Easy for Mr. McConnell and Ms. Chao to say. They don’t have to make a living in needlessly dangerous holes in the ground.

Read the whole thing.

It’s time to say bye-bye to the last Bushie from the President’s years in Texas.  Today Housing & Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson submitted his resignation, just weeks after two prominent Senators said he was unfit to lead:

Earlier this month, Dodd, Murray and other senators questioned Jackson closely about a federal lawsuit that accused him of using his public office to punish the Philadelphia Housing Authority after it refused to transfer a valuable property to one of the secretary’s business friends. Jackson refused in two Senate hearings to discuss his role in the matter.

Sketchy personal dealings?  Enriching friends?  Refusals to testify?  AND cults of personality?

Do you know of any other Bush appointee who fits this bill?  And when she’ll resign, too?

Now with my tongue out of my cheek, let me say that it would be very interesting to go through the $271 million in grants (87% of which were awarded *without* competition) from Elaine Chao’s Department of Labor.  Of particular interest would be any cases in which the businesses could be matched up with anything here.  Hypothetically, of course…

Check out this hilarious video from RoadblockRepublicans.com guest-starring Mitch and Elaine:

For the record, we’re not entirely convinced Elaine is sitting on the sidelines for Mitch’s Senate campaign. But still, you have to love this video.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education and Pensions, chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), recently issued a report calling for the prosecution of Robert Murray, co-owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah where 9 people died in 2006 and one of Mitch McConnell’s political contributors.

You remember Murray - one of Mitch McConnell’s “five finest men in America.” Murray has a history of bullying MSHA so he can get his way. As the Salt Lake Tribune reported:

Most egregiously, the report alleged, Murray Energy was mining into what little was left of the south barrier pillar after being told directly by an MSHA inspector not to cut that coal. The company also violated its mining plan by taking several feet of coal out of the mine’s floor, elongating the pillars and making them extra vulnerable to failure.

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