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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.
Previous: Massey CEO Indicted for Acts Resulting in Coal Mine Explosion that Killed 29
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 16 2017, @01:35AM (7 children)
Well, what does the "other side" want? I mean, besides closing the mines. Coal is demonized in almost every publication in existence. The left wants to shut down all the coal burning mills and generators in the country. Voting against people who want to keep the mines open is not in the coal miner's interest, is it? They need jobs.
In this case, we can point to an individual in a position of authority who made the decision to ignore regulations. He should have been punished much more severely than he was.
Alas, those who attend Ivy League colleges, and build strong networks are never held responsible when they screw up. Most often, they are rewarded, just like Wall Street executives were rewarded in the aftermath of the meltdown in 2008. A few worker's lives don't matter much, now do they?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:33AM (4 children)
Voting against people who want to keep the mines open is not in the coal miner's interest, is it? They need jobs.
Then they're going to get jobs that kill them. There's other jobs out there, they just need to move. You can't have everything you want in life handed to you on a silver platter, and the whole reason people of European descent even live in West Virginia is because a bunch of people in Europe got tired of having poor or no jobs, and decided they had to pack up and try living someplace else. Modern-day West Virginians don't even need to go across an ocean, just a state or two away. There's plenty of jobs out there, people just don't feel like doing them because they think they're entitled to jobs in whatever podunk town they currently live in. I see this a lot with Trump supporters: they're mad that their jobs have left whatever rural place they live in, yet they absolutely refuse to move elsewhere, especially any kind of city, to get another job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:35AM
Suppose your city was dying, and all the jobs were in rural places. Would you want to move out to that podunk town full of strange people and strange things, and missing all the comforts of where you live now?
I know somebody from West Virginia. Until he moved away as an adult, he had never tasted Chinese food.
So imagine that, Grishnakh. You have to move to a place that doesn't even have a Chinese restaurant. All concerts take place at the church, on Sunday. Your new neighbors shoot animals in their yards. One of them flies the confederate flag. Public transportation is a single van with a wheelchair lift. Most people smoke. There is no Starbucks; you can get coffee at the gas station. You'll be leaving your friends and family behind.
How would you feel about moving there? Might you instead try to survive in your declining city and vote for somebody who might bring back jobs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:52PM
It takes money to uproot and move a whole family to a city. A lot more money if you actually want significant certainty the move will be a success (many cities are lot more expensive to live in).
Money people with no/crap jobs don't have.
So what happens is one person goes and leaves the rest behind.
Welcome to poor country lifestyle...
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday May 16 2017, @05:14PM (1 child)
I wonder if the beautiful irony of this statement will be lost on the right... anytime the left argue that wages are too low, or that a job is too dangerous, unethical, etc, the right is always eager to trot out the "just move to a better job" line, and that they knew better but "chose" to continue working in a bad job.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:07PM
Yeah, the irony isn't lost on me. It's like the sides have switched. These days, it's the right-wingers that I see who are refusing to move to a better job. The left-wingers have all packed up and moved to the big cities (and any that haven't are planning to when they can); so that's left a bunch of angry and bitter right-wingers clinging to their rural lifestyles and refusing to leave, and then whining that there's no jobs for them any more, and voting for Trump who promises to fix it somehow.
The left still thinks many wages are too low (minimum wage, obviously), and that it's wrong for part-time jobs to have zero benefits. But this is a somewhat separate issue, and really a non-issue for rural right-wingers since they don't believe this (or else they'd be left-wingers).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:38AM
Coal is demonized in almost every publication in existence. The left wants to shut down all the coal burning mills and generators in the country.
Coal *should be* demonized. It's a horrible fuel, with horrible pollution. And these days, it's not even economically viable: thanks to fracking, natgas is cheaper for making power, and it's far cleaner-burning to boot. And of course renewables (mainly solar) are getting cheaper all the time. Coal is on the way out, no matter what. These people might as well be involved in the horse-buggy industry. Most coal now is being shipped out of the country, and China is cutting back on it now too.
So they can either start looking for some jobs that aren't on the verge of total obsolescence, or they can sit around and whine. Somehow I doubt they're going to choose the former.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:19PM
Well, what does the "other side" want? I mean, besides closing the mines.
Considering there have been absolutely zero legislative attempts from the "other side" to do anything but let economics do it's work I'd say the answer is proper, life-saving regulation.