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.