After Deadly Mine Explosion, Will Massey Corp. Ever Face Justice?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5781/at_least_25_dead_at_mine_will_corporate_outlaw_massey_ever_face_justic/

Wednesday April 7 10:03 am


A section of Massey Energy Company's Upper Big Branch Coal Mine, where 25 miners died during an explosion on April 5. (Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images)


By Roger Bybee

What corporations can get away with legally in the United States while ignoring the costs they impose on the public is bad enough. But it's even worse to see a corporation brazenly and repeatedly break mine-safety laws, destroy pristine mountains and rivers, and crush worker rights—and get away with it all, again and again.

One of the country's worst corporate outlaws is Don Blankenship, CEO of the Virginia-based Massey Energy Corporation, which owns the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia where 25 miners met their deaths yesterday after an explosion collapsed the mine's roof. Four others still in the mine are presumed dead.

Given Massey's egregious record of safety and environmental violations, this latest mining disaster should ignite an outcry for serious federal action to hold accountable a corporation that has obviously outgrown the restraints of democracy at the state level. The horrific deaths of at least 25 people buried alive or blown up in the Upper Big Branch disaster have all the earmarks of large-scale corporate negligence of the worst sort, with Blankenship pushing his managers for more coal production—at any cost.

With Massey Energy growing in wealth and political power, Blankenship has been able to far outspend the organizations and candidates—both political and judicial—who might stand up against his ruthless policy of pillage and plunder.

When Blankenship became infuriated with all the safety, environmental, and labor-law violations with which Massey was being hit, he took action. He used his wealth to essentially buy two State Supreme Court seats in West virginia, where many of Massey's mine operations are located.

He was unfazed by a firestorm of public criticism over his spending millions to buy sleazy, deceptive ads that clearly drowned West Virginia democracy with his dollars. Blankenship's $2.5 million worth of TV ads in 2004 falsely accused the court's chief justice of freeing a child molester—cynically hiding the CEO's real agenda of getting a pliable court on environmental violations and other corporate concerns—and replaced him with a reliable friend of business.


FULL story at link.

[RandomThoughts]

1. How does a corporation face justice?

Will the people at the corporation setting policies face justice, yes, everyone faces justice eventually.

[Oregone]

2. Everyone except rich powerful people

Like Bush and Cheney

[RandomThoughts]

3. Are you sure of that?

Although that brings up an important point, most people don't change there basic view once they pick a side, they have to believe they are in the right, if they let something convince them differently, then they have to face retribution or justice for there previous actions.

Hence why redemption is so important, so those on wrong paths, and we all take wrong paths at one time or another, can find a way back to a better way.

So will Bush and Cheney see justice, I think so, but that is my belief. Interestingly many people that think they do wrong, think they are sacrificing themselves, they may think that themselves. An idea of martyrdom in a next level thought. It is a way to make an ego feel better. Many people need to feel like they made a difference at high cost, so there are some that think they will pay a price for there actions, and in that they use that as a justification with an added twist that they think there actions were better in the long run, even if dark side by there action. And then they get a warm fuzzy by thinking they were so strong to have done wrong even though it means they will be judged badly.

So they think they have given something up, like there day of judgement for some better thing, giving them an idea of why they will pass there day of judgement. It is an interesting phenomenon.

[Oregone]

4. Yeah, pretty sure

If there was anything alive to judge half these atrocities, Id reckon they'd never happen in the first.

[katandmoon]

5. Nope! Never.