Massey Energy - Don Blankenship Tea Party Sponsors - Meet Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Electricity Firm. Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors on the US Chamber of Commerce. In this speech above, he denies climate alter, derisively refers to Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and others as "greeniacs", and calls them all crazy. Watch the speech, you'll see. In his mind, "the greeniacs are taking over the country."
Massey Electricity Organization, Blankenship's highly prosperous strip-mining and mountaintop removal operation is the parent company of Performance Coal Co, wherever a tragic explosion occurred on April 5th. As of this writing, 25 miners have died and 4 additional are still missing. Twenty-five families are without the need of a loved a person. Four additional might discover they have lost someone they love as well. 29 families in all, forever changed by one single, violent event in a coal mine. One particular single violent event inside a coal mine run by a firm so obsessed with profit it runs roughshod more than employees' and neighbors' well being and safe practices.
Here's some thing else about Don Blankenship and Massey Vitality Business: Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year's Labor Day Tea Party, also recognized as the "Friends of America Rally." Here's Massey's pitch. Note how he makes it sound like he isn't 1 of the corporate enemies of America.
The Pals of America Rally featured such notables as Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent, and Hank Williams, Jr., and was graced by Blankenship himself proceeding off over a diatribe that seemed strange on the time, but has arrive for being commonplace nowadays. It concerned President Obama, Democrats, and any a single who doesn't salute God, coal, and apple pie. Oh, and we're also heading to 'steal their jobs,' if Hannity is to be believed.
Blankenship and Massey Power invest large numbers to defend unsafe workplaces
Even while coal dust settles on nearby schoolchildren, you'll find lessons to understand from this disaster about Massey Energy in general, and Don Blankenship in specific.
It seems that Overall performance Coal's basic safety record is spotty, at greatest. From the Mississippi Business Journal:
Massey ranks among the nation’s top five coal producers and is among the industry’s most lucrative. It has a spotty basic safety report.
The federal mine security administration fined Massey a then-record $1.5 million for 25 violations that inspectors concluded contributed to the deaths of two miners trapped in the fire in January 2006. The organization later settled a lawsuit naming it, various subsidiaries and Chief Executive Don Blankenship as defendants. Aracoma Coal Co. later paid $2.five million in fines after the organization pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges within the fire.
Massey and Blankenship also settled a lawsuit brought by the Manville Believe in in 2007 with regard to workplace safety and environmental compliance.
The Manville Trust filed the situation in July 2007 towards company Chairman, CEO, and President Don Blankenship and particular other existing and former officers and directors. The plaintiff sought various corporate governance reforms, particularly regarding environmental compliance and worker basic safety. Citing many incidents involving Massey Vigor, such as a main federal water pollution lawsuit, penalties for two coal miners' tragic deaths and also other protection and environmental compliance troubles, the lawsuit claimed that a "conscious failure" from the defendants to make certain compliance with federal and point out regulations and also other legal obligations posed a "substantial threat of monetary liability for violations."
Hold unions out, let teabaggers in
Don Blankenship inhabits a unusual and bizarre entire world. In his country:
It's good for elementary school-age youngsters to inhale coal dust whilst playing at college since Massey Coal "already pays thousands of dollars in taxes every single year".
Blankenship actually believes that government regulation means "we all much better discover to speak Chinese."
He has definitely no trouble paying $3 million to elect point out Supreme Court justice Brent Benjamin just ahead of your scheduled hearing of his appeal to overturn a huge injury award for driving competitor Harman Mining Corporation into bankruptcy.
Blankenship will commit millions to hold the Massey Energy's workforce non-union, is perfectly happy to discriminate against union workers even if it suggests becoming sued and losing, and could possibly hate unions as a lot as he hates 'greeniacs'.
This is the very same mine exactly where the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently ruled that Spartan Mining illegally discriminated against 82 UMWA members by refusing to hire them by reason of their union membership standing.
“This settlement highlights yet once again the treacherous and backhanded manner Massey treated the miners who had worked in the Cannelton mine for decades,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts mentioned. “While it was discriminating in opposition to these expert miners as a consequence of their age or union standing, the corporation was on the identical time publicly crying about the lack of knowledgeable miners from the coalfields.
“But it wasn’t that Massey couldn’t come across knowledgeable miners,” Roberts stated. “They were there all along and wanted to function. It was that the corporation would rather break the law than allow its employees to have a strong voice at do the job and also the tremendous rewards of a union contract.
Penny-wise, pound-foolish. An investment in seasoned employees trained in state-of-the art protection steps combined with OSHA compliance and mine security actions may well have saved at the very least 25, and possibly 29 lives.
Massey Energy - Don Blankenship Tea Party Sponsors - Instead Don Blankenship put in that funds and more on a US Chamber of Commerce corporate-sponsored tea party to convince very good, hard-working honest men and women to operate next to their best interests.
I hope those families take a big pound of flesh from him in return.
