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A Coal Miner's Catastrophe: Big Coal--Big Lies
The worship of money is the will of God according to Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Company that owns and operates the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia where 29 miners were killed on April 5 in a mining explosion. Blankenship is a member of the US Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and a rabid, right-wing Republican. Blankenship calls public officials concerned about climate change "greeniacs", says "greeniacs are taking over the world," and that Al Gore, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are "crazy". He accuses his critics of communism and atheism.
President Barack Obama says the pattern of management and oversight failures led to the mining disaster and called the company's safety record troubling. He instructed Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) Chief Joe Main to immediately send more inspectors to check a number of mines the agency believes are dangerous to ensure against conditions that might cause another disaster. On April 15, Obama said, "We all understand that underground mining is by its very nature dangerous. But we know what can cause mine explosions and we know how to prevent them. I refuse to accept any number of miner deaths as simply a cost of doing business,'' he continued, vowing to step up scrutiny of coal-mine safety standards. Obama pointed out that mining regulations are riddled with loopholes that allow companies to continually put miners in harm's way. The president has demanded that MSHA "streamline the rules" for a pattern of violations orders and take steps to eliminate the backlog of appeals by mine operators.
Gov. Joe Manchin has ordered the immediate inspection of all underground coal mines in West Virginia. He also asked for the state's more than 200 underground coal mines to cease production to mourn the victims of the nation's worst coal mining disaster in 40 years. The order tells state regulators to check mines that have repeatedly had combustion risks over the last year which will be partially evacuated or closed. In the past 18 months the Upper Big Branch mine was cited for over 600 safety violations, with 124 this year. Several citations were for the two chief causes of mine explosions, inadequate ventilation of explosive methane gas and illegal concentrations of coal, according to Federal records. They reveal that up to 2 million cubic feet of methane gas enter the Upper Big Branch mine every 24 hours. The ventilation system circulates less than half the volume of air needed to keep levels of combustible coal dust and methane within a safe range.
Pat McGinley, of West Virginia University law school and coal industry expert, said, "When a mine's ventilation system isn't working properly or there is an unacceptable accumulation of coal dust even for an hour, miners' lives are put at risk." It appears the giant explosion was caused by a buildup of methane gas, with high levels of coal dust. MSHA ordered the mine to temporarily cease operations at least 60 times in the last 16 months. The mine was cited for 458 violations in 2008 and 50 were "unwarrantable failures to comply."
An MSHA official said the mine had more than 11 times the national rate for the most serious type of safety violation. However, MSHA has not cited the Upper Branch Mine for a "pattern of violations" under the Miners Act of 2006, which allows closing the mine.
In Blankenship's weird world: School children can inhale coal dust while playing at school because Massey Coal "already pays millions of dollars in taxes each year." Government regulation means "we all better learn to speak Chinese." It's ok to pay $3 million to elect Brent Benjamin to the West Virginia Supreme Court just ahead of a hearing of his appeal to overturn a large damage award for driving competitor Harman Mining Corporation into bankruptcy. It's fine to hate unions and spend millions to keep them out of Massey's workforce even if he gets sued and loses. Virtually all of the major accidents in the coal industry took place in non-union mines.
Jeff Biggers, author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek, The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, says that virtually all the major accidents and disasters have taken place in non-union mines. He said, "Massey Energy...were part and parcel of being aggressive about breaking up the unions in the 1980s and the 1990s."
He explained that, "In a union mine, you had union fire bosses who came in, who pointed out the violations. And it was a brotherhood to really make sure that those violations were corrected and you have a safer mine, because those were members of the union that were in there." Now less than 20 percent of coal miners belong to a union. In seven of the last 10 years, Massey's nonfatal injury rate has been worse than the national average for similar operations.
Massey told employees that if they missed work to attend the funerals of fellow workers they would be fired. A Massey worker, who did not give his name because he is afraid of losing his job, said that his coworkers were outraged that they were not given time off to mourn their friends and brothers. He said it was all about Massey's profits. "Is a lump of coal that valuable to you that you can't even give miners a day off to mourn their friends?"
How about a few days in jail for Blankenship who committed criminal negligence that caused the deaths of 29 coal miners?
13 Comments so far
Show AllIn China, Blankenship would already have been executed. That is not because Chinese mining officials are any more concerned with miner safety than in the US, but because they would take a dim view of all the noise he's creating.
>>Massey told employees that if they missed work to attend the funerals of fellow workers they would be fired
Just when you think that Massey could not sink any lower...
A few days in jail???
How about 25 years in jail for Massey for 29 counts of negligent homicide plus other criminal behavior plus 10 million dollars in grievance pay for each of the families that sacrificed their love ones? I am sure parting with $290 million dollars would cause him to have a stroke thus saving taxpayers the prison expense.
Its time for Obimbo to put an end to the corrupt policies and behaviors carried over from Bush II. Give the power back to the unions.
When are we going to stop digging up this dangerous and dirty old black stuff and start getting our energy from the sun (and create millions of new jobs in the process)?
Hmmm
How about we send Don Blankenship and all the corporate officers to work down in that mine for say a year. And of course allow all of the dozens of safety violations to be tied up for the entire year in court. Utilize every trick
in their book to ensure that production is maintained and safety is ignored. OF course I am not suggesting that we do one single thing differently than Blankehship and his officers have already done to the miners that died.
And if god forbid something should happen we will extend to
their families our deepest sympathies.
Good one, ddearborn. "...we will extend to
their families our deepest sympathies." Don't forget, no time off for funerals. Business is business.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Obama makes me think of the old magician's trick- watch my lips, not my hands. Too many times, I've heard him say "what he wants" which is the exact opposite of what he will do. And here is another one: remember the health care public option? His lips were saying Yes Yes! But his eyes were saying Forget about it!
Blankenship is on the board of directors of the US Chamber of Commerce for God's sake! Considering how many right wing corporations funnel money through that organization, what are the chances of Obama taking it on? Below zero. Remember in the face of public fury over Wall Street bonuses, Obama said they were greedy? And they showed their teeth and he fell over backwards taking it back, praising how hard they worked for the money they deserved. The word that comes to me is... Toady.
Blankenship has become so bloated with power and self importance he has lost touch with reality. His pronouncements sound insane. How can he get away with saying profits are more important than lives? And why isn't Congress doing something about those appeals? That's like a meat producer selling E Coli contaminated beef and when ordered to recall it, appeals and goes on selling while the appeal is stalled in the bureaucracy and people die. I guess miner's lives aren't worth as much as customer's lives - as long as the customers have money to spend.
And then there's Obama, protecting the interests of them who brung him. There was no bar too low for Bush to crawl under, but Obama keeps surprising me with how low he can go. But hey, I hear he made over $5 million last year! Looks like the surest way to get rich is to go into politics.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Sounds like the old Railroad Barons TR shut them down then split the Oil Monopolys. and that was with no precident.
Granted Obummers no TR. or even Millard Filmore. but now the laws are on the books. USE THEM!
I wonder if Obama will have the same attitude when a spacecraft crashes killing astronauts, as a result of privatizing our manned space program. Capitalism kills.
I blame Charles Dickens!
This odious Blankenship villain is a latter-day Scrooge, Fagin, or worse-- the very caricature of the capitalist monsters so effectively rendered by Dickens.
Somehow Dickens managed to make Blankenship come to life in mid-20th Century Amerika.
Blankenship ought to be transported with extreme prejudice-- or "rendered", as we euphemistically call it now.
"Massey told employees that if they missed work to attend the funerals of fellow workers they would be fired."
This man is a monster. If there is a Christian god, St. Peter will receive you in heaven without question if you execute Blankenship. Or, if you are an Anarchist, you will galvanize the workers through an act of Propaganda of the Deed like we've never never seen! Either way, please practice your aim and please don't miss like Alexander Berkman did when he set out to do away with the comparable capitalist monster Henry Clay Frick.
Solidarity Forever!
Sounds to me like this should be the first action of the new Unionized miners. Time to step-up boys I can't do it for ya.
>^^<
P.S. your not lucky to have this job! no matter who sez it.
Obama's a joke and the statement "I refuse to accept any number of miner deaths as simply a cost of doing business" is the punchline.
The Uncle Tom will do what Don Blankenship tells him to do, period, don't be fooled by his deceiving words.
One the reasons I enjoy writing essays for CD is reading the comments. Stimpys are great:
"A few days in jail???
"How about 25 years in jail for Massey for 29 counts of negligent homicide plus other criminal behavior plus 10 million dollars in grievance pay for each of the families that sacrificed their love ones? I am sure parting with $290 million dollars would cause him to have a stroke thus saving taxpayers the prison expense."
His next paragraphs are also pretty good.
Obama is Bush lite in a smooth and sophisticated style with a wink at Bushes criminal and corrupt behavior, and we need to quit burning carbon coal and look to the clean energy from the sun. The jobs in solar will be more numerous and much, much safer than in coal mining.
The Seed