Considered the worst mining disaster in 25 years, the death toll in Tuesday’s mine explosion near Whitesville West Virginia has reached 25 fatalities. Thus far, seven bodies have been identified and 18 remain underground. Four persons are still missing.
According to a spokesperson for Massey Energy, the owner of the mine, the rescue mission has been suspended because rising levels of methane gas made further rescue and recovery operations unsafe. The mission will continue after boreholes are drilled to vent the mine of combustible gas.
One deceased miner, Benny Willingham, age 62, was only five weeks away from retirement, according to his sister-in-law, Sheila Prillaman, who said family members only learned of Willingham’s death from a list posted by the company. Prillaman is angry because no company representative contacted the family in person to inform them of their loss.
Don Blankenship, the Chairman and CEO of Massey Energy, confirmed the casualty count with this statement (source):
For a nation so jaded by corporate spin and the lack of investigative journalism, the statement renders itself invisible to scrutiny. Too bad it takes a tragedy of this magnitude to shed light on an Inconvenient Truth: Massey Energy, the nation’s sixth largest mining concern, is a repeat offender, a notorious scofflaw, and now … mass murderer.”Our top priority is the safety of our miners and the well-being of their families.”
According to federal records, Massey Energy has amassed over 3,000 safety violations (including 57 in the last month alone) for failing to develop and follow a safety plan. Data kept by the Mine Safety and Health Administration show three fatalities at the Upper Big Branch mine in the past 12 years. Last year, Massey paid a record $4.2 million in criminal and civil fines for “willfully violating mandatory safety standards” that led to the deaths of two miners (source).
Mining operators such as Massey Energy thwart new safety rules by overloading the regulatory system with appeals that clog the system and bog down enforcement. Operators employ this tactic to avoid paying fines, evade scrutiny, and stop regulators from shutting down mines for violations that put workers’ lives in risk. To date, the backlog of outstanding appeals has risen to 16,000 cases (source).
Blankenship is the epitome of a corrupt and morally bankrupt plutocrat. As the highest paid coal executive in the land, he has used his fortune to corrupt the system, bust unions, buy politicians, and influence justice. He is infamous for spending $3.5 million to defeat the election of a West Virginia Supreme Court Judge in order to overturn a $50 million fraud verdict against his company (source). These days, it has never been easier for a crook like Blankenship to dodge charges of graft.
How does the energy industry literally get away with murder? Companies such as Massey Energy and Koch Industries spend millions of dollars each year to confound the issues and distract the public by enlisting unwitting citizens to serve as their proxies. Here is Don Blankenship inviting the public to a Labor Day Tea Party event called Friends of America Rally:
Environmental extremists? Corporate America? Destroying your jobs? It is an audacious deception worthy of Grima Wormtongue. Certainly we understand how free markets, union busting, and lower wages put more money in the pockets of Don Blankenship and David Koch. How does the gutting of occupational safety regulations benefit American workers? How do higher allowable levels of arsenic in public drinking water benefit growing children? How does toxic wash from mountaintop removal benefit downstream communities? Our news media covers the Tea Party rabble while our most pressing questions go unanswered.
At the 1992 Republican Convention, Vice President Dan Quayle attacked the concept of progressive taxation with this question: “Why should the best people be punished?” His remark affords us a glimpse into a mindset where the richest people are considered “the best people” at the pinnacle of an economic, social, and moral order (source) while the rest of us are mere serfs and vassals for their self-enrichment. What profits the plutocracy is defined as “freedom;” what benefits middle-class America is derisively termed ‘socialism.’
