After getting roundly whacked by basically the entire internet, the US Chamber has officially apologized for its blog post yesterday that suggested women seeking equal pay have a “fetish for money” and suggested women should “choose the right partner at home.” But don’t let it fool you: the US Chamber has for decades advocated in private the very sentiments posted to its public blog yesterday. We just got a look behind the curtain.

The US Chamber of Commerce has apparently spent too much time watching Mad Men: in a blog post this morning, Chamber blogger Brad Peck called women’s fight for pay equity to be nothing more than a “fetish for money,” and said women complaining about their pay should focus instead on “choosing the right partner at home.” The Chamber’s Peck also approvingly quoted a post that asked, “Should government force gym-man to share his beautiful babes with couch-potato man?”

There seemed to be an otherworldly presence in the hearing room Tuesday when a Congressional committee began formal consideration of new coal mine safety legislation.

I was physically far away, watching on C-SPAN, so I couldn’t tell whether the unseen spirits were the ghosts of the 29 miners killed three months ago in a preventable explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia — or the malignant aura of corporate power that seems to haunt the halls of Congress.

It appears as though Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, in whose coal mine 29 people died earlier this year in an entirely preventable disaster, has been booted from the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce.

As recently as June 29, Massey was listed as a member of the Chamber’s Board. But now, his name doesn’t appear on the list of current board members, and his specific profile page has been deleted from the website.

Tom Donohue, President of the US Chamber of Commerce, thinks BP is getting a bad rap and wants the government to lay off already. That’s the ticket. The solution to a massive failure of government regulators to enforce existing regulations is to just wait, and then “figure out what happened.” But don’t do anything once you figure out what happened! Cause that’s regulation, and that’s bad.

The Arkansas Times editorializes against Blanche Lincoln’s recent “surge” in her “war on workers,” slamming the Arkansas senator for cozying up with the US Chamber of Commerce while sucking money from the local chamber and local businesses.

The US Chamber of Commerce is again thanking Senator Blanche Lincoln for opposing the Employee Free Choice Act before it even comes up for a vote. The following half-page ad ran in Wednesday’s edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In a letter to Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, 66 labor law academics say Craig Becker should be immediately confirmed to serve on the National Labor Relations Board.   The letter, obtained by Firedoglake, can be viewed in full here. Becker, counsel to both the AFL-CIO and SEIU and himself a former academic at [...]

How desperate is the US Chamber of Commerce in its fight against health care reform? The Chamber now warns of the increased cost of blue jeans if reform passes.

The Wonk Room sat down with Rep. Rosa DeLauro to talk paid sick leave and the US Chamber of Commerce.  Said DeLauro: [The Chamber of Commerce] is just ignoring the needs of a bulk of a workforce, people who get up every day, go to work, want to work, but you know what? They get [...]