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Massey Energy: Worst mining company ever?
Massey Energy kept two sets of safety log books at their Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, where 29 miners died after an explosion last year— one for the federal inspectors and one showing actual mine conditions.
Fri, Aug 05 2011 at 4:47 PM
Photo credit:D.D. Meighen/Flickr
When a person kills another person, he usually ends up being tossed in jail for a decade or three.
When a corporation kills a person, it usually is slapped on the wrist and told to never, ever, ever do that again.
Such has been the case with Massey Energy, one of the leading contenders for Most Evil Corporation of all time. The company, lead by soulless CEO Don Blankenship, has amassed a huge collection of safety violations over the years and has seen disaster strike their mines over and over again in the form of explosions, cave-ins, and other nasty accidents that were anything but accidental. The latest was last year's explosion at the Big Branch mine in West Virginia which killed 29 miners.
On June 28th, federal investigators revealed that Massey Energy was keeping two sets of safety logs at Big Branch- one that showed actual mine conditions and another that was fluffed up for government safety inspectors.
It doesn't get more clearcut criminal than that. Massey Energy was/is actively working to hide the deplorable safety conditions in their mines from the people with the power to shut them down. The blood of those 29 miners (and countless before that) are soaked into Don Blankenship's skin. He, along with the other greedy executives at Massey Energy need to be put in jail for as many days as they have left on the planet.
Or better yet, make them work in their own mines. They wouldn't last long doing that job.
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Based on how the goverment went after those responsible for the recent financial crisis, you know the teachers and public service workers. I don't have high hopes for a mining crisis witch hunt. It's really hard for me to guess who the targets would be. But I do think that Mr. Blankenship is quite safe.