West Virginia Mine Tragedy Is No Accident

[Omaha Steve]

Labor notes wqas featured on the Thom Hartmann show this afternoon. Thom returns tomorrow.

http://labornotes.org/blogs/2010/04/west-virginia-mine-tragedy-no-accident

by Phil Smith | Wed, 04/07/2010 - 5:44pm

Four years ago, the American people watched their TVs in horror as 12 bodies were removed from West Virginia’s Sago Mine after a methane gas explosion. That, combined with a fire days later caused by criminal safety lapses at Massey Energy’s Aracoma Mine, helped spur Congress to pass the first major mine safety legislation in 40 years.

It seems as if the more things change, the more they stay the same.

We don’t have all the details yet regarding Monday’s explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, and our immediate focus is on the rescue of the four miners still trapped below. Our hearts and prayers are with the families of the 25 already lost, and with the courageous mine rescue team members who are putting their lives on the line, entering a highly dangerous mine to bring any survivors to safety.

But one thing requires no further investigation. Massey Energy, like so many American employers, consistently sacrifices the welfare of its employees in order to boost the bottom line. The latest disaster represents the fourth fatal accident in 12 years at the mine. The Upper Big Branch mine has racked up 1,342 safety violations since 2005, drawing $1.89 million in fines.

The company’s CEO, Don Blankenship, is something of a legend in the Mountain State. He has challenged hundreds of citations and refused to pay fines. Although he professes that safety is his top priority, a 2005 internal memo of his was more candid: “If you have been asked by your group presidents, supervisors, engineers, to do anything else other than to run coal (i.e. - build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) 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.”

Many outside of West Virginia first heard of him last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his spending $3 million on a successful campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently opposed him “had a significant and disproportionate influence” on the election’s outcome. West Virginia subsequently passed a law putting in place public financing for judicial elections.

FULL story at link.

[DCKit]

1. Well, he's done ONE good thing in his entire life:

"West Virginia subsequently passed a law putting in place public financing for judicial elections."

[HughMoran]

2. Nope

Execute that right-wing nut job who's guilty of 29 counts of manslaughter.

[arthritisR_US]

20. manslaughter does not carry execution as a possible penalty, only first degree does. n/t

[HughMoran]

28. lol

I know - though 29 counts is the equivalent in my mind.

[arthritisR_US]

30. I have to agree with you on that one! :-) n/t

[madmax]

25. How about negligent homicide?

May carry a longer sentence. Any Melvin Belli lawyers out there?

[bergie321]

37. You could probably make a case for

Second Degree Murder if you can show that the deaths occurred due to the actions of another crime. (not a lawyer but do watch Law and Order on the teevee)

[rhett o rick]

40. I agree with you, which doesnt happen often. nm

[Tansy_Gold]

3. + it is impossible to rec this enough times

Don Blankenship is the veritable symbol of all that is evil and unholy about American corporate enterprise. His face should be plastered on every utility pole in the country, with a big huge MURDERER stamped across it.

If anyone should bear the mark and curse of Cain, it is Don Blankenship.



"What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." (Gen. 4:10–12)



I can't help but compare this to the cases from A Civil Action and Erin Brockovitch. Ed Masry is gone, but Erin Brockovitch is still with us and Jan Schlichtmann.

I've been outraged by a lot of things lately, from Enron and Baghdad and Rumsfeld and Libby and Palin and AIG and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. But the evil that is Don Blankenship is something beyond even Cheney and KBR. There's a detachment to the Cheney evil. He, and all those others like him, exist in a carefully constructed bubble that isolates them from those whose lives they so easily discard. And that bubble likewise protects the Wall Street thieves from the lives of the real people that are destroyed so Dimon and Fuld and all the rest of those whose names escape me at the moment can live like mythical sultans.

With Don Blankenship, there's no such separation. His greed is direct, his disdain for the workers is direct, his evil is direct and palpable and hot-blooded.

Damn him. Damn him. Damn him.




Tansy Gold

[SusanaMontana41]

31. When people do it, it's murder. When Big Business does it, it's an accident.

I am so glad to see this thread! Call it what it is!

[joycean]

4. DAMN COMMIES

Always meddlin' and messin' things up for corporate Amircah. If only they watched Fox news and prayed to my version of Jesus, they'd know these boys died in the service of the Lord's work: the all mighty Dollah.

(my very bad impersonation of Don Blankenship)

[MadMaddie]

5. Well since corporations are considered persons at this point in

time then the corporation and it's leaders should be subject to voluntary manslaughter. That's right.....25 men dead...someone is responsible.

[Cleita]

6. What's interesting is, so are unions with that ruling.

Maybe something can be cooked up.

[MadMaddie]

7. All but 1 of the Massey mines are unionized

and all of the Massey mines aren't fit for any man to work in.

[Cleita]

10. I've really run into crappy unions who do it for the money and don't

do anything else. So what are legitimate unions going to do to push the profiteers out of the way?

[walldude]

8. What I am waiting to see is if this asshole had taken out life insurance policies

on his employees. Then it's time for murder charges.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. I worked in steel construction for....................

several years when I was young and I KNOW that the ONLY thing that prevents corporations like this one from killing their workers is a STRONG union. It's like self defense. You can't rely on cops to defend you when something goes down, you've got to defend yourself. Unions are the workers' first line of defense. And STRONG unions at that. If I may borrow a phrase, "WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!"

[Omaha Steve]

11. Thank you

OS

[arthritisR_US]

21. +1! n/t

[Richard Steele]

12. K&R

[BrklynLiberal]

13. I am still unable to comprehend the fact that with ALL THOSE VIOLATIONS, including one citation on

the very day of the explosion..THIS MINE WAS STILL OPERATING! WTF!!!!!!!!! hardly puts my thoughts into words.

[senseandsensibility]

14. Kick for the miners

K and R.

[gorfle]

15. Why do people keep working for these people?

Are people really that desperate for a job that going down into these death pits is worth it? Isn't it obvious by now how deadly a job this is?

[tallahasseedem]

16. Yes.

This question is ridiculous.

[gorfle]

17. Why is it ridiculous?

You couldn't pay me enough money to go down in those places, especially given the track record of the companies running them!

OK, I guess you could pay me enough money, but it would have be enough money so that I could retire after, say, a month. I might risk a month of that sort of work for a few million dollars. Otherwise, now way.

[EnlightenedOne]

18. Its their way of life

and one of the few ways high-school educated or less can make a decent living. My grandfather was a coal-miner in WVA - and my grandmother begged my dad to get out of there. And he did.


Also, didn't Lil Bush do something that eased coal mining restrictions??

[arthritisR_US]

22. he sure did...put the fox to guard the hen house. n/t

[EnlightenedOne]

23. Found article by Nader

http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/1258-NADER-ANNOUNCES-RELEASE-OF-REPORT-ON-COAL-MINE-SAFETY.html

[arthritisR_US]

29. excellent article, TY! The crap they have done makes me sick...

:mad:

[gorfle]

27. Wouldn't surprise me.

Also, didn't Lil Bush do something that eased coal mining restrictions??

Wouldn't surprise me. "The Great Unregulator". Worked out swell for the financial institutions, too.

[Rincewind]

35. On CBS news tonight,

they showed a miner who was just about to enter the mine to start his shift when the explosion happened. He said he was eager to get back to work in the mine. If he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid, and he has a family to support ( I assume, I don't know if he does). I worked commercial construction for 36 years, people get hurt, or killed, we go back to work.

[FlyByNight]

19. Blankenship is a sociopath...

and should be prosecuted. Blood is on his hands and his (probably non-existent) conscience.

Fucking pig.

:mad:

[arthritisR_US]

24. if he's a sociopath then a conscience is not probably non-existent it IS non-existent. n/t

[slackmaster]

26. Yesterday I heard Roger Hedgecock suggesting that it was an act of sabotage...

...by the Chinese.

[Jackpine Radical]

32. I regret that I have but one rec to give

for this thread.
:kick: <=========And this, of course.

[amborin]

33. K&R

[PA Democrat]

34. K & R.

[pleah]

36. K&R

I know a lot of people that have been killed in the mines over the years.

[gleaner]

38. This makes me heartsick ....

My late uncle was a coal miner in Utah. In that time and place you wither worked for the Church, for the mines or oil fields or tried to scratch a living from a small homestead or ranch.

Our family was desperately poor and my uncle worked hard in those mines for years and years. No safety precautions, no union no protection. He died of Black Lung gasping for every breath leaving my aunt a widow with minor children to raise and virtually nothing to raise them with. She had to go from a housewife to a barmaid with the only child care she had provided by other relatives. She worked hard and she made ends meet but that was it.

I had cousins maimed in mining "accidents" and injured in the oil fields. My father left there during the depression with my mother and my brother and sisters who were infants 15 months apart in age. They lived in a small trailer where our house now stands without electricity or running water. My father worked in construction and with his brother who had joined them built us a house which he added on to and remodeled over the years. He sent for family members one by one if they wanted to come and they stayed with us or my uncle who lived next door, until they got jobs and were able to afford housing. I came along a little after WWII when my father got back from his tour in the WPA which was the saving of our family and many other families.

Many of my relatives still live in poverty in Utah, still work at dangerous back breaking unskilled jobs because that is still all they can get.

This mine owner needs to be brought to justice for what he did to contribute to this accident. He needs to be brought to trial, all of his "cost cutting" measures need to be publicly exposed and stopped in other mines all over the country, because I am sure he is not the only one who treats his miners as if they were expendable. Then he needs to do the maximum penalty in prison for what he has done.

I doubt that it will ever happen though. We still have two justice systems here. One for the rich and one for the rest of us. This and the destruction of the environment for a finite amount of fossil fuel makes me ask again, why are we turning back to fossil fuel? Why are we still mining coal? Why do we want to destroy our coasts for a bit of oil that would not last us at our rate of consumption for more than about two weeks? Why are we not looking toward the future and researching and employing safe sustainable and abundant sources of alternate energy which will protect the environment and free us from dependence on other countries?

[James48]

39. Mine Owner Don Massey is a TEABAGGER

From: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/07/ceo-of-mine-where-25-workers-were-killed-is-a-teabagger/

Meet Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Company. Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce. In this speech above, he denies climate change, derisively refers to Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and others as “greeniacs”, and calls them all crazy. Watch the speech, you’ll see. In his mind, “the greeniacs are taking over the world.”

Massey Energy Company, Blankenship’s highly successful strip-mining and mountaintop removal operation is the parent company of Performance Coal Co, where a tragic explosion occurred on April 5th. As of this writing, 25 miners have died and 4 more are still missing. Twenty-five families are without a loved one. Four more may discover they have lost someone they love too. 29 families in all, forever changed by one single, violent event in a coal mine. One single violent event in a coal mine run by a company so obsessed with profit it runs roughshod over employees’ and neighbors’ health and safety.

Here’s something else about Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Company: Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year’s Labor Day Tea Party, also known as the “Friends of America Rally.” Here’s Massey’s pitch. Note how he makes it sound like he isn’t one of the corporate enemies of America.

The Friends of America Rally featured such notables as Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent, and Hank Williams, Jr., and was graced by Blankenship himself going off on a diatribe that seemed strange at the time, but has come to be commonplace these days. It concerned President Obama, Democrats, and any one who doesn’t salute God, coal, and apple pie. Oh, and we’re also going to ’steal their jobs,’ if Hannity is to be believed.

Blankenship and Massey Energy spend millions to defend unsafe workplaces....


(more:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/07/ceo-of-mine-where-25-workers-were-killed-is-a-teabagger/