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The World Socialist Web Site reports
Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was released from prison [May 10] after serving a one year sentence in connection with the April 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, which killed 29 coal miners. The Upper Big Branch blast was the worst US mine disaster in 40 years.
Blankenship served the first ten months of his sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution in Southern California. The facility, which houses many white collar criminals, boasts baseball diamonds and soccer fields along with tennis and racquetball courts. Blankenship was then moved to a halfway house for a month and spent the last month prior to his official release at his home in Las Vegas.
In tweets [that] Blankenship posted after his release, the millionaire coal boss showed no remorse for the deaths of 29 miners. He complained that at Taft he had to return to his room several times a day to be counted and could not choose what to watch on TV.
[...] In 2015, Blankenship was convicted on a single misdemeanor count of violating federal safety laws at the mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. The disaster occurred when a spark from a longwall machine ignited a pocket of methane gas, which, in turn, set off a massive coal dust explosion throughout the mine.
Multiple and grave safety violations occurred at the mine when Blankenship issued an order to "run coal", flouting regulations designed to prevent explosions. In an October 2005 memo to the company's deep mine superintendents, Blankenship outlined his priorities. "If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers, or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal", he wrote.
[...] Four investigations of the disaster found that bits on the longwall machine were broken and worn out, causing sparking. Water nozzles meant to keep the bits cool and prevent sparks were also broken. Proper ventilation to prevent the buildup of methane gas was lacking. Explosive coal dust was allowed to accumulate throughout the mine.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:32AM (2 children)
it may sound cold, but maybe more people need to DIE before america gets with the program and stops electing republicans.
yes, the dems suck, but they are nowhere near as bad in terms of rolling back SAFETY regulations.
the religious folks keep listening to their churches, which are all in the pocket of the R party. they won't go against their church leaders and this will KILL THEM.
but maybe that's what has to happen.
its cold an cruel but what's the choice? MORE R's in charge wanting to turn back MORE regulations because it 'costs money to companies'?
my god. when are we going to stop being pawns to religion???
yes, I 100% blame religion here; the southern states are all owned by big religion and the R party owns them all.
they simply don't even think about what they are doing - the voters. they simply have that feel-good-jesus feeling when they agree with their churches. even when they DIE, they seem to not learn their lessons.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:55PM (1 child)
From what I gather the electoral college means that more rural folk dying will just make the rural votes worth more.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:12PM
Um, no. If, for instance, 100k rural voters in Pennsylvania drop dead tomorrow, and for some reason we have a Presidential election the next day, the liberals in Philly will have their votes count more, because there's fewer rural conservatives voting against them.
Long term, meaning after a census (3 years away), this could change the relative numbers of voters in the states, so states that had more rural voters will now have fewer, so they'll lose electoral votes.