The Center for Responsive Politics has an important post about the campaign donations of Massey Energy, the company that owns the West Virginia coal mine where at least 25 miners were killed in a methane explosion on Monday. There is still faint hope that some survivors might be saved; this should indisputably be the focus of attention right now. But there is also a political dimension to the story.
The vast majority of Massey's federal campaign donations go to Republicans -- no surprise, since Republicans are dead set against climate change legislation that might begin to tamp down our country's addiction to dirty coal energy. Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, has taken to lecturing Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi about climate change, saying, according to the Washington Post, that they "don't know what they're talking about." In this sphere Massey's actions can at least be understood, from the point of cold corporate calculation, and ignorance.
But Massey also has a long history of safety violations, including 50 in March at the deadly Upper Big Branch mine. And it's also dead set against allowing more of its workers to unionize, preventing workers from standing up for their own safety. The Upper Big Branch is a non-union mine.
If Massey Energy's name sounds vaguely familiar to you, there may be a good reason. Just a few years ago their CEO played a critical role in a cynical -- and halfway successful -- scheme to put the company's very own judge on the West Virginia Supreme Court, where they had a case pending. Again from the Washington Post:
[Blankenship] has also thrown his weight around West Virginia, shelling out more than $3 million of his own money for ads to help defeat a West Virginia state Supreme Court justice. Blankenship expected the justice to rule against Massey in an appeal of a $50 million award for a small coal company owner, who convinced a jury that Massey had driven his company into bankruptcy. The new judge cast the deciding vote against the $50 million award. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that the new judge should have recused himself.
While of course Monday's devastation was an accident, accidents have causes, and at this preliminary point it's not irresponsible to ask if Massey's abysmal safety record at the Upper Big Branch had something to do with the explosion. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has received $13,550 from "people and PACs associated with Massey Energy," according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This is not a company America's leaders -- the ones tasked with writing our mining and climate change laws -- should be doing business with. Senator McConnell should return all of that money.
Leo W. Gerard: Wrongful Fatalities, Failed Worker Protections
When an explosion occurs at a refinery or mine that has been repeatedly fined for heath and safety violations, one question that ought to be asked is just how unexpected was the event.
But not to Don B.
He should distribute the dirty money to those who lost family members and admit how he assisted in causing this tragedy.
Even as many thousands of Kentuckians struggle with unemployment, their Senators have blocked extension of Federal extension of unemployment benefits. Shame on them. And more shame on the voters that continue to re-elect them.
I was about 12 when they passed them out while campaigning and when kids play a phonogragh record player, they play with the speed to laugh at the sounds if the record is boring. I took it to Officer Joe of the PAL and played it and he just laughed but after that, they kept a closer eye on Nixon, and not long after that the impeachment.
Why do they do the mind thingy, playing with people's phychi and games of political misinformation to keep the populace blind to the things "they DID in their party while in power?"
Because they got nothing but tricks in the party. Con men and women in it for the money and NOT the People.
Fire them.
Stand up and take responsibility for your rhetoric!
Why that would be all union-like and WE all know the miners are working in "red states" of deregulation.
If they don't vote the bums out that do this dirt allowing violations to pile up and not take their lives seriously, they will forever be killed by this greed over worker's lives political corruption.
But they are too busy being distracted by hate to realize this. i guess it's more fun to hate those of another race or ethnicity, then it is to face the problems and solve them for the republican voters who gave them donations to kill them.
Even so, mining is a lucrative job in depressed West Virginia. The Carter administration shut down a mine once, and miners all across the US went out on a sympathy strike. The miners accept that some of them will die from time to time. They only wait for their mine to reopen. Then, they walk past the floral wreathes set out to commemorate the dead and go back to work.
If any of this was intolerable to those affected, the mine would be unionized, the miners would have a voice and unsafe conditions might be reported. Also, McConnell would be retired. Also, which may be the important thing, the mine might be shut down by the owners.