EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
In West Virginia, Coal Miners' Slaughter
The high cost of energy in America was paid in human lives this week, with the deaths of more than two dozen miners in a massive explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia. It's the worst mine disaster in a quarter of a century.
Upper Big Branch is owned by Massey Energy Company, which operates 47 mines in central Appalachia. According to the Los Angeles Times, it employs nearly 6,000 and in 2009 reported revenues of $2.3 billion, with a net income of $104.4 million.
At the center of this week's catastrophe is Massey's president and CEO Don Blankenship, a man so reviled nowadays he had to be escorted away by police when he and other company officials tried to address a group of distraught family and friends outside the Upper Big Branch mine in the early morning hours after the explosion. The crowd hurled invective -- and a chair.
Blankenship hates unions (Upper Big Branch is a non-union mine), thinks global warming is a figment of our imaginations and that those who do believe in climate change are crazy; supports destructive mountaintop-removal mining; serves on the board of the conservative, free market U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now, lucky us, shares his pearls of right-wing wisdom via Twitter. "America doesn't need Green jobs," he tweeted pithily last month, "but Red, White, & Blue ones."
David Roberts of the environmental magazine Grist described him as "the scariest polluter in the U.S. ...The guy is evil and I don't use that word lightly."
Just one example of Massey Energy's earlier history of environmental malfeasance was described in a May 2003 issue of Forbes Magazine: "In October 2000 the floor of a 72-acre wastewater reservoir built above an abandoned mine in Kentucky collapsed, sending black sludge through the mine and out into a tributary of the Big Sandy River. The sludge killed fish and plants for 36 miles downstream. Water supplies were shut down in several towns for a month. In total, 230 million gallons spilled out, 20 times the volume of the crude oil from the Exxon Valdez. Lawns nearby were covered in as much as 7 feet of muck...
"...The reservoir had shown signs of leaking right before the accident and Massey failed to report that fact to regulators as required, according to the U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration. The cleanup has cost $58 million so far."
This week's Upper Big Branch mine disaster is the latest in a string of environmental and safety-related calamities linked to Massey and Blankenship. In 2008, the company paid a $20 million fine to the Environmental Protection Agency, and that same year, a Massey subsidiary, the Aracoma Coal Company, pled guilty to safety violations and agreed to $4.2 million in civil penalties and criminal fines connected to the 2006 deaths of two miners in a fire.
According to The New York Times, "After the fire broke out, the two miners found themselves unable to escape, partly because the company had removed some ventilation controls inside the mine. The workers died of suffocation. Federal prosecutors at the time called it the largest such settlement in the history of the coal industry."
The Upper Big Branch mine has a long history of violations. Last month alone it was cited by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for 53 safety violations, many of them for inadequate venting of dust and methane and improperly maintained escape passages. Last year, the Times reports, "the number of citations against the mine more than doubled, to over 500, from 2008, and the penalties proposed against the mine more than tripled, to $897,325." So far, only $168,393 of those fines have been paid.
Blankenship's response? "Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," he told a radio interviewer. West Virginia and federal laws were toughened after the Sago mine disaster in 2006 that killed 12 men. But as the number of safety citations has increased, so, too, has the number of appeals by the mining companies, and while that long bureaucratic process unfolds, it's business as usual.
Blankenship and Massey Energy play our political system like a country fiddle, a system corrupted by money and influence. A certified public accountant (he's actually in the national CPA hall of fame -- I'm not kidding), Blankenship apparently sees the world as one big balance sheet, with human life an expendable commodity and -- especially if they're judges or other officials -- something to be bought and sold.
The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics says that since 1990, those associated with Massey and its political action committee have given more than $300,000 in campaign contributions to federal candidates. And in 2006, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Blankenship spent more than $100,000 trying to elect pro-business candidates to the West Virginia state legislature.
But it's in the courthouse that Blankenship has really tried to spread the wealth. In 2008, photos were published of him wining and dining West Virginia Supreme Court Justice "Spike" Maynard along the Riviera. They were popping corks in Monaco as Massey Energy was before the court appealing a $50 million judgment that had been won by smaller mining companies charging Massey with fraud. Subsequently, Maynard recused himself from the case and was defeated for re-election. Now he's running for Congress.
Blankenship had better luck when he went on the offensive against West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Warren McGraw, creating a PAC called "And for the Sake of the Kids." He contributed $3 million and created campaign ads described by USA Today as "venomous." They made particular hay with a case in which Justice McGraw was part of a majority that voted to free a mentally disturbed child molester who later got a job as a school janitor.
McGraw was defeated by Blankenship's candidate, Brent Benjamin. When the appeal of the $50 million came before the court, ABC News reports, "Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself from the case and twice provided the deciding vote in Massey's favor. The jury verdict against Massey was overturned."
So egregious were Benjamin's actions that even the current United States Supreme Court, so heavily pro-business in its recent decision-making, was appalled. It ruled that the judge and Blankenship were out of line. Even so -- and even with Benjamin finally recusing himself -- on a third vote, Massey again won its appeal.
When you can't beat 'em, buy 'em. Meanwhile, miners working for Massey Energy and Blankenship continue to risk their lives deep below the earth, digging out the fuel that helps keep our lights burning at the price of never knowing if the tiniest of sparks will ignite the next fatal explosion.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
14 Comments so far
Show AllBlankenship clearly thinks that lives lost and fines paid are just part of the cost of doing business. That attitudeis prevalent in China (where they do not even impose fines) but it is a shame that it happens here.
What I do not understand is why some prosecutor does not take advantage of the recent Supreme Court decision about "business personhood" and file criminal charges against the Massey corporation. It would be instructive to see of that would enable the prosecutor to argue (successfully) that Massey should be shut down.
If not, it would prove that as far as workers' lives are concerned, we are no different than China.
"Blankenship clearly thinks that lives lost and fines paid are just part of the cost of doing business."
That kind of thinking is not attributable to just this one foul man. It is unfortunately the thinking of every single Corporation and economist in the US. Lawsuits cost less than fines. It is easier to pay off the families of the victims than it is to fix the long term problem in the first place.
Ford Motors still does this. Firestone used to, before they went under. And they are just two out of hundreds of Corporations that do exactly the same thing. The EPA, OSHA, MSHA, and all the rest of the regulatory agencies are beholden to the very Corporations they are supposed to monitor and control. These agencies protect the Corporations, not you.
And if you do try to reveal the truth in court or in the streets, the Corporations hit you with a SLAPP (Selective Litigation Against Public Participation), ruining you financially. They have more money and lawyers, and are willing to do ANYTHING to keep their dirty secrets secret.
It doesn't help that Mr. Blankenship will have no trouble what so ever filling the 29 new job openings at his mine. As long as the American worker is willing to kiss the ass of corporate rats like Blankenship nothing at all is going to change. The American people stand by after the sinking of our economy and watch the President, Congress and the Fed give away the store. Senator Chris Dodd effectively kills consumer protection by putting it under the control of the fed. The so called healthcare reform starts in the middle and the Republicans and Democrats work it down to a giant corporate giveaway of the peoples tax dollars, and the people fight amongst themselves. The Republicans scream about the defecit, but had no problem adding to our defecit for eight years under Bush II. The American people are looking more and more like the 100th student in a graduating class of 99. In other words fucking MORONS.
This story should disabuse everyone of the notion that there isn't a two tier legal system in the US, one for the rich and powerful, and another more harsh one for everyone else
Maynard and Benjamin clearly accepted bribes and belong in jail along with Blankenship
just for my curisioty? Did anyone not know this before today.
More like a three tier, The Rich, the Poor, the rest of when we get draged in to jury duty, or have a accident.
You ask why someone does not do something? Well they have all been bought off. Check out the political contributions of the company and it's officers. How many politicians have been bought, how many judges, and the press?
The Supreme Court just ruled on campign spending and said there is not limit on many issues. So the rich and wealthy people can buy what ever laws and regulation or lack there of they want.
Now the comment about China is good, we should do the same as China did with the milk issue. I think they executed the CEO.
When it come to elections what side do the miners take? Do they look where the money is coming from? Take the money out of elections and we might get some true regulation but until we are willing to do that nothing will change.
In this country now life is less important than profit. Just look at the commets from some of the news services and the more vocal political groups.
How about the fines and any judgements for the deaths comes out of the mine owners, CEO,and mine managers personal funds and not form the company treasury or insurance company. I bet that the fines in the past were just passed along in the cost of business and that meant you and I paid them.
Indict Mr. Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Corporation, on twenty-five, no make that twenty-nine, counts of Negligent Homicide.
An interesting statistic leaps out of the article. There are 6000 employed to create 104 MILLION in NET income.
If we go back 30 years the numbers needed to provide that same NET Income would have been much higher. This is how a nation increases its productivity. Less people do the same work and produce more profits.
Yet these workers are not seeing a larger share of those profits. Instead they flow up to the owners and shareholders.
Indeed by the very FACT they are more productive , the labor pool grows as the Owners do more with less, thus pushing wages downwards.
So under this model which is promoted to no end by "The Economists" , less people are working for less wages while more in the way of profits flows to an ever diminishing few.
This is not sustainable.
After this He'll start doing commericials on how much safer Open Pit Mining is, You know as a community service.
Sheepherder said "...file criminal charges against the Massey corporation. It would be instructive to see of that would enable the prosecutor to argue (successfully) that Massey should be shut down. If not, it would prove that as far as workers' lives are concerned, we are no different than China."
Actually they do prosecute mine owners in China. In China the biggest problems are privately owned mines and corruption at the local level, not the central government. Although the numbers are still terrible, the (reported) number of deaths in coal mines dropped from over 6,000 in 2004 to 2,xxx, last year, an almost two thirds drop.
And last year:
"COAL MINE BLAST, HONGTONG COUNTY, SHANXI PROVINCE, 2007
The blast occurred at 11:15 p.m. on Dec. 5 at the Xinyao Coal Mine, killing 105 miners and injuring 18 others. Losses were estimated at 42.75 million yuan (about 6 million U.S. dollars).
Authorities said 78 people bore some responsibility for the accident, and 39 were referred to judicial bodies for criminal prosecution. Wang Donghai, the ultimate owner of the mine, and Wang Hongliang, legal representative, were sentenced to life in prison. Miao Yuanli, former vice mayor of Linfen, received a 14-year sentence." People's Daily Online, May 27, 2009"
I think the US should prosecute them as criminals just as they do in China. Based on the article above, I don't understand the comment above that seems to imply that China doesn't prosecute the owners as criminals.
There is nothing new about the poor dying so the rich can become richer.
I used to believe in progress. I have learned at least one thing in this life: no such thing as progress exists.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
While informative, this article misses the major problem.
Blankenship is not some rogue pig corporatist. He is actually typical of what passes for leadership in this smugly greedy, militarized, sadistic nation.
Monetary profit is the god of the United States of Global Domination and there are two archangels.
One is competition above justice. Winning.
The other is image above truth. Marketing.
Human life and the environment are merely fuel for the sacrificial fire.
Both sides of the blue and red tool we call Washington and Wall Street will ensure that this sadistic ceremony continues. The voices in the choir are the only things that change.
I was born one morning when the sun didn’t shine.
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine.
I loaded 16 tons of number 9 coal; and
the straw boss said ‘well bless my soul’
You load 16 tons & what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go.
I owe my soul to the company store.
--1955 song made popular by Tennessee Ernie Ford--
Conditions leadinmg to this disaster, would probably not have prevailed had men like John L Lewis ( powerful leader of the coal miners union from the 1930s to the i950s) still been in power. Considered a renigade by management and accused of being a communist, he was one person who managed to improve the horrible living and safety standards for the miners. Had his influance been carried on, this predictable tragedy would probably not have occurred.
What would actually change practices in a Massey mine? Clearly fines don't do it. Lawsuits are too long and costly. Shutting down a mine for safety violations and making management pay for the costs incurred in idling miners would do it. Sending an owner or operator of such a mine to jail for manslaughter or 2nd degree murder would do it also. Since these are the only options which would work with executives like Blankenship, these are the remedies that would have to be used. They would be used if there were actually any uncorrupted sense of justice in this country but clearly there isn't. After all these are only miners' lives-- rough, dirty brutish men who we don't know, we don't like, and who don't know us either. We'll just let this pass.