CEO of WV Mine: Douchebag of the Century

[Iason Ouabache]

I know the century is still early, but this guy is a major league asshole of the first order:

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/massey-energy-don-blankenship-million-dolla

Meet Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Company. Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce. In this speech above, he denies climate change, 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 world."

Massey Energy Company, Blankenship's highly successful strip-mining and mountaintop removal operation is the parent company of Performance Coal Co, where a tragic explosion occurred on April 5th. As of this writing, 25 miners have died and 4 more are still missing. Twenty-five families are without a loved one. Four more may discover they have lost someone they love too. 29 families in all, forever changed by one single, violent event in a coal mine. One single violent event in a coal mine run by a company so obsessed with profit it runs roughshod over employees' and neighbors' health and safety.

Here's something else about Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Company: Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year's Labor Day Tea Party, also known as the "Friends of America Rally." Here's Massey's pitch. Note how he makes it sound like he isn't one of the corporate enemies of America.

The Friends of America Rally featured such notables as Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent, and Hank Williams, Jr., and was graced by Blankenship himself going off on a diatribe that seemed strange at the time, but has come to be commonplace these days. It concerned President Obama, Democrats, and any one who doesn't salute God, coal, and apple pie. Oh, and we're also going to 'steal their jobs,' if Hannity is to be believed.

Don Blankenship inhabits a strange and bizarre world. In his world:

*It's fine for elementary school-age children to inhale coal dust while playing at school because Massey Coal "already pays millions of dollars in taxes each year".
*Blankenship truly believes that government regulation means "we all better learn to speak Chinese."
*He has absolutely no problem paying $3 million to elect state Supreme Court justice Brent Benjamin just ahead of a scheduled hearing of his appeal to overturn a large damage award for driving competitor Harman Mining Corporation into bankruptcy.
*Blankenship will spend millions to keep the Massey Energy's workforce non-union, is perfectly happy to discriminate against union workers even if it means being sued and losing, and might hate unions as much as he hates 'greeniacs'.

This is the same mine where the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently ruled that Spartan Mining illegally discriminated against 82 UMWA members by refusing to hire them because of their union membership status.

"This settlement highlights yet again the treacherous and backhanded manner Massey treated the miners who had worked at the Cannelton mine for decades," UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said. "While it was discriminating against these experienced miners because of their age or union status, the company was at the same time publicly crying about the lack of experienced miners in the coalfields.

"But it wasn't that Massey couldn't find experienced miners," Roberts said. "They were there all along and wanted to work. It was that the company would rather break the law than allow its employees to have a strong voice at work and the tremendous benefits of a union contract.

Penny-wise, pound-foolish. An investment in experienced workers trained in state-of-the art safety measures combined with OSHA compliance and mine safety measures might have saved at least 25, and possibly 29 lives.

Instead Don Blankenship spent that money and more on a US Chamber of Commerce corporate-sponsored tea party to convince good, hard-working honest people to work against their best interests.

[Cramulus]

whattadouche!

The elevator at work is constantly spewing these little news factoids on a TV screen. I wish they printed the citations too. One of today's headline news bullet points was:

For miner families, risk is a "fact of life."


wtf -  I mean, it's bad enough that there are people still trapped underground, is it necessary to go "Oh, but this isn't such a big deal because they knew they were working a dangerous job." I didn't realize that the mine owner refused to let in unions.. that's crap, coal mining is one of the worst jobs in the world.

[President Television]

Evil is just about the only word I can think of to describe this guy. What an asshole.

[Kai]

Sounds rather sociopathic.

[BabylonHoruv]

I wonder if this guy realizes that people like him are the reason unions were invented?

[Requia ☣]

For miner families, risk is a "fact of life."

OK, I ran the numbers, and this is a load of bullshit, there's over a hundred thousand coal miners in the US, and only about 30 have died each year at work for the last ten years (including accidents suffered in office buildings).  The risk is, or at least should be, minimal (less risk than driving to work in a city).  Not only that, but I'm hearing that the only reason anybody died at this mine is that somebody refused to comply with safety regs, that are there to prevent coal mining from being such an insanely dangerous job.

Also, if this guy has repeatedly discriminated against union workers, and lost multiple times, why the hell hasn't he or the company been slapped with contempt of court?

Edit: I can't spell at all it seems.

[Cain]

Also, if this guy has repeatedly discriminated against union workers, and lost multiple times, why thee hell hasn't the or the company been slapped with contempt of court?

Because

Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Just saw Hank Williams Jr's name in there.  I feel ill.