In light of last night's horrendous mine explosion in West Virginia, Steven Mufson has a good article about the mine's owner, Massey Energy, and it's ultra-reactionary CEO Don Blaneknship:
And although the company says that its safety record is better than the industry average, Massey has frequently been cited for safety violations, including about 50 citations at the Upper Big Branch mine in March alone. Many of those 50 citations were for poor ventilation of dust and methane, failure to maintain proper escape ways, and the accumulation of combustible materials.
The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the mine for 1,342 safety violations from 2005 through Monday for a total of $1.89 million in proposed fines, according to federal records. The company has contested 422 of those violations, totaling $742,830 in proposed penalties, according to federal officials.
The article also recounts something else you may remember: Blankenship and Massey were the parties who donated more than $3 million to a challenger in a judicial election in order to get a more pliant court, an effort that was successful. This shocked Anthony Kennedy's conscience enough that the Supreme Court held that the Massey-supported judge's failure to recuse himself violated the due-process clause. The fact that four of the Court's conservative Republicans thought that a judge taking more than 3 million bucks from a company and then ruling in its favor was perfectly consistent with the due process of law, however, tells us something about the policy environment that can allow Massey to get away with repeated violations of its worker's safety, which yesterday seems to have led to at least 25 preventable deaths.
--Scott Lemieux
