Mass Murderer Gets Off With Hand Slap
By 
Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who murdered 29 workers at his Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010, has been convicted of only a misdemeanor conspiracy charge and will serve at most a single year in prison. Let us remember what he has done:
Two government and two independent investigations blamed the Upper Big Branch deaths on a pattern by Massey of violating federal standards concerning mine ventilation and the control of highly explosive coal dust, both of which set the stage for a small methane ignition to turn into a huge coal-dust-fueled explosion.
Those investigations all generally agreed that the explosion erupted when the mine’s longwall-machine shearer cut into a piece of sandstone. The resulting spark, investigators said, ignited a pocket of methane gas. Investigators concluded that worn-out bits on the cutting shearer contributed to the explosion, while missing water sprays allowed the ignition to spread. Illegal levels of coal dust had not been cleaned up, providing fuel that sent the blast ricocheting in multiple directions throughout more than two miles of underground tunnels, investigators said.
The 43-page indictment outlines a long list of repeated and serious violations at Upper Big Branch of rules that require proper ventilation of underground mines and mandate that operators prevent the accumulation of highly explosive coal dust.
In one instance cited in the indictment, a federal inspector in June 2009 discovered fresh airflow of 147 cubic feet per minute in an area of the mine where flow of 9,000 cubic feet was required. In another example, the indictment notes that in January 2010 a federal inspector found coal dust accumulated along the entire length of the conveyor belt used to carry coal out of Upper Big Branch.
The indictment alleged that the mine’s own regular safety examinations revealed “near-constant” violations of dust-control rules that were seldom corrected by the company.
Blankenship pressured Upper Big Branch management to violate safety standards in favor of maximizing production and profits, the indictment alleges. One mine manager received a handwritten note from Blankenship in March 2009 “chastising him” for “insufficient attention to cost-cutting,” telling the manager, “You have a kid to feed. Do your job,” the indictment alleged. That same mine manager at Upper Big Branch was told, when he wasn’t producing as much coal as Blankenship demanded, “I could Khrushchev you. Do you understand?”
The indictment alleges that, after the Upper Big Branch explosion, with Massey stock prices — and thus Blankenship’s personal worth — dropping, Blankenship made false statements to both the SEC and to the investing public about the company’s safety practices.
The people who attack workplaces and Planned Parenthood and black churches with high-powered guns are horrible human beings. They are rightfully seen as pariahs (although not always by conservatives but I digress). But Don Blankenship is no better than these people. Yesterday, 14 people died in San Bernandino. The surviving member of the murderous party will no doubt receive life in prison. But I fail to see how that person is any more a monster than Don Blankenship, who also should have received life in prison. But if you are a capitalist, you can kill as many workers as you like with very little chance of prosecution at all. The only reason Blankenship received even this slap on the wrist was because of his personal involvement with daily conditions inside the mine and the huge paper trail he left. Other, somewhat less involved CEOs, can kill far more workers and never see the inside of a courtroom. It’s a disgrace.