Big Coal Throws Scapegoat to the Enforcement Sheep

No, nothing's going to change in the mines - or the oil rigs, or the factories, or the crop fields - until owners go to prison as frequently as workers die on the job.

KeninNY:

"They're moving up in the food chain. This will cause some sleepless nights for people high up in the corporate ladder."

-- Kentucky miners' lawyer Tony Oppegard, quoted by the NYT's Sabrina Tavernise in "Mine Supreintendent Charged in 2010 Disaster"

First off, let me say that I'm not so sure about those "sleepless nights" for the mining bigwigs. But I'm guessing that this development will at least get their attention, and get them thinking about deeper questions than "Who did we pay off, or not pay off enough?"

So no, I don't think we've advanced into a New Era of Accountability. But the charging of a third mine supervisor (the NYT had to correct its report that he was "indicted" to indicate that he was merely "charged") in the wake of the 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia does raise the possibly alarming -- to the economic elites -- specter of facing paying a price for making your business economic pillage, plunder, and rape. And in this case not just economic.

Howie and I have written a fair amount about the West Virginia disaster
(see, most recently, Howie's December 11 post "India Commits A Big No-No -- Holds Elites Responsible For Something; West Virginia, On The Other Hand...") and the shocking irresponsibility of the mine owner, Massey Energy, and its head cheese, Don Blankenship. So let me make clear that by "paying a price," I don't mean the kinds of fines that predatory corporate execs of Donny's ilk have come to accept as a cost of doing business.

Actually, in the U.S. mining industry, fines don't even appear to be thought of as a cost of doing business, since the companies seem to regard payment of fines as optional. Massey Energy certainly doesn't seem to have taken them seriously. What I guess Don Blankenship and his kind consider a cost of doing business would be little mishaps like the one at Upper Big Branch. You know, a few miners maimed or killed here, a dozen there, a couple of dozen way over there -- hey, it's not as if there's any shortage of would-be miners.

I would say that something like justice has been done when erstwhile Don Blankenship and his top lieutenants begin conducting business meetings from their lockups on Death Row. (For the record, Massey Energy was sold last year to Alpha Natural Resources. I'm going to trust the prosecutors to get liabilities sorted out in time for the start of the trials and executions.)

Oh yes, here's the gist of the story.

Mine Superintendent Charged in 2010 Disaster

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Federal prosecutors filed charges Wednesday against Gary May, a superintendent of the West Virginia coal mine where an explosion left 29 dead in 2010, continuing an emotional case that has been closely watched by the mining industry and the families of the dead miners.

Mr. May is the third mine supervisor to be charged in the disaster, the worst mining accident in the United States in 40 years. Last year charges were brought against two others -- the mine's security chief and a foreman who had not been at the mine on the day of the explosion.

But Mr. May, one of the mine's two superintendents, is the most senior, and industry observers say the charges against him are an indication that prosecutors are getting closer to the executives who ran the company, Massey Energy, which has since been bought by Alpha Natural Resources.

"They're moving up in the food chain," said Tony Oppegard, a Kentucky lawyer who defends miners. "This will cause some sleepless nights for people high up in the corporate ladder."

The way the charges were filed -- directly to the court by prosecutors from the United States attorney's office, instead of by a grand jury indictment -- indicates that Mr. May is cooperating with prosecutors, a strategy that observers say could eventually lead prosecutors to top executives, including Don L. Blankenship, the former head of Massey, who state investigations concluded had enforced a culture of cutting corners and ignoring risks for the sake of profit.

The charges, filed in federal court in West Virginia, include conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding a federal agency, a felony that is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The charging document paints a picture of deception with Mr. May at its center, directing workers to falsify record books and speaking to them in code as a way of warning that inspectors were coming.

According to a person close to the investigation, those phrases included "bringing in a load of blocks," and "it's raining outside" or "there's a hailstorm outside." Another warning phrase was "I had a hamburger (or cheeseburger) for dinner last night," the person said.

The conspiracy charges against Mr. May were an unusual strategy, lawyers said. Few violations qualify as federal felonies under existing law, and law enforcement has been hampered by weak misdemeanor penalties. A conspiracy charge allows prosecutors to be more flexible in their strategy, and if it is successful, could give them a tool to reach senior mine officials who have traditionally been insulated from criminal charges because they are rarely involved in actual coal mining.

Mr. May began working at the Upper Big Branch mine, as it was known, in February 2008 as a foreman, according to the charging document. He was promoted to superintendent in 2009 and held that position through April 5, 2010, when the explosion happened.

In a statement e-mailed to reporters, Alpha said that Mr. May became an employee of an Alpha subsidiary after that company acquired Massey Energy last year. It said he had been placed on administrative leave.

At the heart of the charges is an accusation that Mr. May knowingly misled federal inspectors from the Mine Safety and Health Administration when they made regular checks to ensure that the mine was safe, signaling to workers on site, sometimes using code phrases, that inspectors were about to arrive. That allowed them to conceal violations for which they would have otherwise been penalized.

Charges also include making changes in the ventilation system in the mine just before federal inspectors arrived to make it appear that the parts of the mine being examined by inspectors had better air than they actually did. . . .

Mine supervisors are just a couple of life-form rungs above sub-human miners - light-years below the corporate owners and Wall Street enablers who are the real criminals.

Wake me when Don Blankenship goes to a SuperMax.

Big Coal's Massey Energy Fined for Deaths

The deal was cut to avoid prosecution of the company. $10.8 million is slightly more than a wrist-slap, but it isn't likely to stop Massey or any other coal company from continuing to feed its human serfs to the insatiable maw of the fossil fuel gods.

Only company execs spending many years in maximum-security federal prisons with other rapists and murderers will accomplish that.

From Page One Kentucky:

Today the Mine Safety and Health Administration fined Massey Energy (its subsidiary, Performance Coal) $10,825,368 following an investigation into the April 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster that left 29 dead. Some 369 citations and orders were issued. 21 flagrant violations, which carry the most serious civil penalties under the law, were part of that.

“The tragic explosion at Upper Big Branch left dozens of families without husbands, fathers, brothers and sons,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “I made a pledge to the families of those we lost, and the entire mining community, to conduct the most complete and thorough investigation possible in order to find the cause of this disaster. The results of the investigation lead to the conclusion that PCC/Massey promoted and enforced a workplace culture that valued production over safety, and broke the law as they endangered the lives of their miners. By issuing the largest fine in MSHA’s history, I hope to send a strong message that the safety of miners must come first.”

The announcement comes as part of a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in West Virginia, the DOJ and Massey/its various company names. It includes nearly $210 million for remedial safety measures at all Massey mines, a trust fund for improvements in mine safety and health, payment of outstanding civil penalties for all former Massey mines and restitution payments for victims’ families. The agreement, according to the White House, resolves criminal liability for Massey/Alpha but doesn’t provide protection against criminal prosecution of any individuals.

Read the whole thing.

And oh, yes: evil, liberal, job-killing, freedom-strangling Big Gubmint regalashuns are responsible for that fine, and for any prosecutions of the individual company executives whose actions - and refusals to act - caused the deaths of those miners.

Murdering Repug Douchebag of the Year

Tom B summons righteous rage in this passionate rant against the Murderer of Mountcoal.

Even before the explosion in West Virginia that killed 25 of his company's employees, Don Blankenship was a Hollywood-caliber villain.

If this doesn't convince you that the chickenshit CEOs who sit on their ultra padded asses on ultra padded swivel chairs in ultra swanky board rooms making life and death decisions for all of us will cheerfully kill you in large numbers in order to add a quarter a share to their stock price and simply chalk up the meaningless fines thereby incurred as a "normal" business expense, then I suppose nothing will and you might as well stop reading right now.

In Ms. Bingham's excellent piece we learn that the CEO of Massey Energy, one Don Blankenship, is not a whole more than a mass murderer... if not in the eyes of the law, then in the eyes of any sane, rational human being. He's a prick... one of a caliber not seen often, even in the sacrosanct halls of Korporate Amerika. A bully and a toad totally devoid of even the smallest shred of humanity that belongs in some dark corner in the far reaches of the reptile house at your local zoo.

OK, had to get that out of my system. Ms. Bingham starts off by saying: (Emphasis added)

For the past five years, I’ve watched Don Blankenship like a hawk.

Several reporting trips to West Virginia’s devastated coal fields have led me to an irresistible and macabre fascination with the state’s richest and most politically powerful coal baron. Blankenship’s rags-to-riches story is colorful, and his belligerence is infuriating. Hollywood couldn’t have invented a better villain than this CEO of Massey Energy.

Read the whole thing.