The long road to justice for Don Blankenship

[_MeDotOrg]

King Coal looks forward to spending part of his retirement on the taxpayer's dime:

To hear Donald L. Blankenship tell it, the U.S. coal industry has been undone by inept regulators, evil unions, the media and “global warming hoaxers.” But for jurors at his criminal trial in Charleston, West Virginia, it’s the king of coal himself who bears responsibility for his fall.

Blankenship, 65, the former chief executive of Massey Energy Co., was found guilty by a federal jury on Thursday of a single misdemeanor charge for orchestrating a conspiracy to violate mine safety rules before the April 2010 deaths of 29 miners.

The verdict marks the first time a CEO of a major company has been convicted of a workplace crime, prosecutors said. They mounted a painstaking case that took years to play out against an influential CEO. The misdemeanor conviction, though, fell short of their goal. Had Blankenship been convicted of all charges, he could have been jailed for a maximum of 30 years. Acquitted of two counts of securities fraud, he now faces a prison term of no more than one year. His lawyer vowed to appeal.

...Although he didn’t testify at the trial, Blankenship’s own words came back to haunt him as jurors reviewed internal memos and listened again and again over seven weeks to recordings he secretly made of telephone conversations.
Company managers were told by Blankenship to keep quiet about safety issues and instead focus on what “pays the bills,” according to one memo. Their job, he said, was simply to “run coal.”

Then death came to the Upper Big Branch Mine in rural Montcoal, West Virginia, and Blankenship’s tightly run empire crumbled.

You can read the entire article in Bloomberg Business.

Two years ago I read a book about Blankenship: The Price of Justice, which detailed the long, tortuous 14-year road two lawyers traveled to bring him to justice, but to little avail.

One of the lawyer's daughters, whose father spent many a night of her childhood away from home trying to bring Don Blankenship to justice, wrote this poem:

Devils slipping through the cracks
Of courtroom floors and laws in books
Filling up their piggy banks
With proof from lives in which they took

Vacationing on sweat and blood
Of those they will not think of twice,
Sipping cocktails victoriously
‘Cause they’re the men and we’re the mice

But judgement comes in many forms.
Though some may start out mild or vague
What a shame they don’t recall
That it was the mice who brought the plague

[_ldsfaqs]

Did he actually say "keep quite about safety issues"....? Or did he simply say "focus on what pays the bills"?
Cause, you'll note they don't "quote" that first part, but seem to add it themselves.

Further, if regulations, unions, etc. etc. were making it hard to pay the bills, which is why he would say focus on paying the bills, then clearly that's a legitimate problem, and a causal effect of him trying to focus more on the bills, and less on safety, likely thinking things were fine (though clearly incorrectly).

So, I don't think this is as clear a case as you claim. From this information it seems liberalism trying to destroy Coal created an unsafe environment because they were desparetly trying to save the business, and thus had to take "shortcuts". Sure, he's ultimately to blame for whatever wrong decision he made, but like with Mountain Meadows Massacre, things don't occur in a "box". Other things led to that accident, and it doesn't simply appear to be him "wanting" to not practice safety.

[_MissTish]

Deleted.

[_ldsfaqs]

Omfg. Are you claiming the MMM was an 'accident'? Like a car slipping on ice, or a fall down a flight of stairs?

Your pathology runs deep.

God!!! Your pathology runs deep!
The CONTEXT of my statement was talking about the Coal Mining incident. IT was the "accident".
I wasn't saying MMM was an accident. Only about it, I was saying things don't occur in a box that other things ignighted that.

Anyway..... I've had enough of you fuckwit liars and slimeballs today, damned waste of life and time you people are.. By....

[_MeDotOrg]

Did he actually say "keep quite about safety issues"....? Or did he simply say "focus on what pays the bills"?
Cause, you'll note they don't "quote" that first part, but seem to add it themselves.

Less than a year before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, then-Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was warned by one of Massey’s top safety officials about serious problems at his company’s operations, according to a new memo that surfaced earlier this year and now is among the key evidence prosecutors hope to use to prove criminal charges against Blankenship.

The June 25, 2009, memo to Blankenship from then-Massey lawyer Stephanie Ojeda summarized the safety concerns being raised by Bill Ross, a former U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration official who had left MSHA for a job as a top mine ventilation expert for Massey.

“We need to change the way we do business,” says the memo, which is stamped “CONFIDENTIAL — ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGED — ATTORNEY CLIENT WORK PRODUCT.”

“The rules of mining have changed, but we and the way we do business have not,” says the eight-page memo, which was emailed to Blankenship and then-Massey officials Chris Adkins, Shane Harvey and Stan Suboleski.

Ojeda wrote that the memo was a report of a meeting she held with Ross and Suboleski on June 17, 2009, to discuss safety violations Massey operations were receiving. Ross had talked to a variety of Massey miners and became extremely concerned.

“Bill has often heard in his travels around Massey, ‘We have been told to run, run, run, no matter what. We will fix it when they find it,’ ” the memo from Ojeda says. “Bill explains that this is no way to run a coal mining business. When we receive one violation, it means that we have failed.”

The memo references large numbers of violations for mine ventilation problems, “clean up,” roof control and electrical issues. It says that Massey miners and foremen complained they are “continually forced to operate with skeleton crews” that don’t provide enough staff to operate mines properly.

“Most say that if they had the opportunity, they would leave because of the long hours and because they are given more to do than they can reasonably get done,” the memo says.

- See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article/20 ... XKJyF.dpuf

Further, if regulations, unions, etc. etc. were making it hard to pay the bills, which is why he would say focus on paying the bills, then clearly that's a legitimate problem, and a causal effect of him trying to focus more on the bills, and less on safety, likely thinking things were fine (though clearly incorrectly).

So, I don't think this is as clear a case as you claim. From this information it seems liberalism trying to destroy Coal created an unsafe environment because they were desparetly trying to save the business, and thus had to take "shortcuts". Sure, he's ultimately to blame for whatever wrong decision he made, but like with Mountain Meadows Massacre, things don't occur in a "box". Other things led to that accident, and it doesn't simply appear to be him "wanting" to not practice safety.

So the cost of complying with safety regulations was so onerous it created the climate where management was tempted to bypass the regulations to increase profits?