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3 26 Don Blankenship - Wikipedia
ODDLY NO TALK
Donald Leon Blankenship (born March 14, 1950) is an American businessman. He was chairman and CEO of the Massey Energy Company—the sixth-largest coal company (by 2008 production) in the United States[2]—from 2000 until 2010 when an explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine resulted in the death of 29 workers. He served one year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards.[3][1]
Blankenship has frequently spoken out about politics, the environment, unions, and coal production. In the 2018 United States Senate election in West Virginia, Blankenship lost a three-way Republican primary to Patrick Morrisey.[4] Citing false information and dirty politics for his loss and claiming a personal unwillingness to quit,[5] Blankenship attempted to run as the Constitution Party nominee, but was unable to get on the ballot and later endorsed Morrisey.[6][7][8] In January 2024, he declared his candidacy as a Democrat for the United States Senate seat held by retiring Senator Joe Manchin in the 2024 election, losing the primary election to Glenn Elliott.[9] Blankenship was also the Constitution Party's nominee in the 2020 United States presidential election.
Early life and education
Blankenship was born in Stopover, Kentucky, and raised in Delorme, West Virginia. His father served in the Korean War and his mother, Nancy McCoy, was a member of the McCoy family. The two divorced soon after Blankenship was born, and with the money from her divorce settlement Blankenship's mother ran a convenience store and gas station for 40 years.[10] After graduating from Matewan High School in Matewan, West Virginia, in 1968, Blankenship earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Marshall University in 1972 in three school years, having worked as a coal miner during summertime.[11][12][13]
Blankenship is certified as a public accountant.[14] In 2002, he was inducted into the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Business and Industry Hall of Fame.[15] Blankenship has also been included in the Tug Valley Mining Institute Hall of Fame.[14]
Business career
Blankenship joined Massey Energy subsidiary Rawl Sales & Processing Co., in 1982. He went on to serve Massey Energy in a number of capacities.[16][17] He was promoted to president of Massey Coal Services, Inc. (1989–1991), then president and chief operating officer from 1990 to 1991.[18] In 1992, Blankenship was named president, chairman of the board of A.T. Massey.[18] He is the first non-Massey family member to be in charge of the company. When A.T. Massey was spun off from Fluor Corporation as Massey Energy in 2000,[19] Blankenship became the newly independent company's chairman and CEO. On December 3, 2010, Blankenship announced that he was retiring as CEO at the end of the year and would be succeeded by Massey President Baxter F. Phillips Jr.[20]
Blankenship had a reputation for resistance to spending money, willingness to litigate for contract difficulties, and personally going into mines to persuade workers to abandon union organizing efforts.[21] In a 1980s documentary, he said, "It's like a jungle, where a jungle is survival of the fittest. Unions, communities, people—everybody's gonna have to learn to accept that in the United States you have a capitalist society, and that capitalism, from a business standpoint, is survival of the most productive."[22]
In 1996, Blankenship was elected to the board of directors of engineering and construction company Fluor Corporation.[23] He also serves as a director of the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a director of the National Mining Association, Mission West Virginia Inc, and was on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors.[16][24][25]
Blankenship was paid $17.8 million ($25.2 million in 2024) in 2009, the highest in the coal industry. It was a $6.8 million raise over 2008, and almost double his compensation package in 2007. Blankenship also received a deferred compensation package valued at $27.2 million ($38.5 million in 2024) in 2009.[26]
In 2011, Blankenship incorporated McCoy Coal Group, a coal company in Kentucky (not to be confused with the James River Coal Company subsidiary McCoy-Elkhorn Coal Corp). McCoy has yet to seek mining permits.[27]
Political campaigns
Blankenship is an active participant in West Virginia politics.[28] During a speech at the Tug Valley Mining Institute on November 20, 2008, Blankenship called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid and former Vice President Al Gore "crazies" and "greeniacs."[29] He has spoken out against media coverage and what he calls false attacks by liberal media. He has also said "the truth needs to be told about what happened at the Upper Big Branch coal mine" on the basis that a single individual from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration was chosen to investigate the disaster.[30]
U.S. Senate campaigns
2018
Main article: 2018 United States Senate election in West Virginia
Citing his displeasure with federal handling of the coal industry, and his longtime criticisms of the condition of West Virginia politics in general, Blankenship ran for U.S. Senate in the 2018 Senate election,[31] challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. His television ads were aimed at "getting the truth out" about the Upper Big Branch explosion and "exposing the government cover-up."[32] The ads further claimed Blankenship had documents showing that the MSHA Upper Big Branch internal report was falsified and that the company was forced by the MSHA to use a defective ventilation system.[33][34]
He also expressed a belief that Donald Trump's proposed Mexico-United States border wall in conjunction with ending sanctuary cities would help stop drug trafficking.[35]
Blankenship said he was "Trumpier than Trump" but that the establishment was misinforming him because they did not want him "to be in the U.S. Senate and promote the president's agenda." The national Republican leadership and allied groups made statements and ran ads against Blankenship,[36] and the day before the Republican primary, Trump posted a tweet urging voters to vote for either of Blankenship's major primary opponents, Evan Jenkins and Patrick Morrisey, because Blankenship would not be competitive in the general election.[37] Trump's tweet came in the wake of reporting that internal Republican polling had shown a surge in Blankenship's support among likely primary voters.[38] Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom Blankenship harshly criticized in his campaign, reportedly urged Trump to express opposition to Blankenship.[39]
During the Republican primary campaign, Blankenship received criticism for calling McConnell's wife Elaine Chao a "Chinaperson."[40][41][42]
After Patrick Morrisey won the primary, Blankenship reentered the race as the nominee of the West Virginia Constitution Party.[43][44]
Throughout his campaign he made a claim that the Upper Big Branch explosion was caused by the negligence of Mine Safety and Health Administration officials.[45][46]
In the wake of his unsuccessful campaign, Blankenship sued numerous media organizations and individual journalists, alleging defamation, false light, invasion of privacy, and civil conspiracy because they misstated he was a "felon" after being convicted and served one year in prison for a federal criminal conspiracy offense when it was actually classified as misdemeanor; the case was dismissed at the federal district court level and that decision was affirmed on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on February 22, 2023.[47] In October 2023, the United States Supreme Court declined to overturn that ruling.[48]
2024
Main article: 2024 United States Senate election in West Virginia
On January 26, 2024, Blankenship announced that he would run for Manchin's Senate seat again that year, this time as a Democrat. Manchin had announced his retirement in November 2023. The West Virginia Democratic Party almost immediately disavowed his candidacy, with chairman Mike Pushkin stating that "Blankenship, or as he'll forever be known, federal prisoner 12393-088," does not represent the party's values. Blankenship himself has indicated that he would not join the Senate Democratic Caucus if elected.[9]
Blankenship finished third and last in the Democratic primary, winning 18.5% of the vote and placing behind Zach Shrewsbury and winner Glenn Elliott. He carried Gilmer, Logan, and Mingo counties.
2020 U.S. presidential campaign
Blankenship presidential campaign logo
Main article: 2020 United States presidential election
See also: 2020 Constitution Party presidential primaries
Wikinews has related news:
Blankenship launched his campaign for the Constitution Party nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election in October 2019 during a meeting of the Constitution Party national committee.[49] He was nominated for president at the virtual Constitution Party Convention on the second ballot on May 2, 2020, with William Mohr as his running mate.[50] Blankenship and Mohr went on to receive 60,080 votes.[51]
Political positions
Blankenship supports Friends of Coal, a West Virginia advocacy group founded as a countermeasure to environmental protection movements.[52] He later released statements urging Trump to avoid legislation enacting harsher punishment for coal mine supervisors that violate health and safety protocols, saying that "coal supervisors are not criminals", and that harsher laws would not improve mine safety.
In 2016, Blankenship supported conservative advocacy groups to remove Democrats from the legislature.[53] That same year, Hillary Clinton's campaign criticized him after he appeared at her campaign stop in Williamson, West Virginia.[54]
Climate change
Blankenship rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In a speech at the Tug Valley Mining Institute, he said, "I don't believe climate change is real."[55] Blankenship reiterated his views on global warming in interviews with The Hill and Forbes.[56][57]
In an October 30, 2009, letter to the editor of The Charleston Gazette, Blankenship denied that climate change, or global warming, exists, writing, "Why should we trust a report by the United Nations? The United Nations includes countries like Venezuela, North Korea and Iran."[58] According to Blankenship, "the environmental movement isn't a great cause, it's a great business", and in addition to lying about the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, the government has also lied "about the science of global warming."[59]
In 2018, at a Senate campaign town hall, Blankenship said that "climate change is probably a fact", but added that American-made climate change is not, arguing that China's increase in coal production is the reason.[60]
Mine safety
At a 2009 Labor Day rally in West Virginia,[61] Blankenship said that federal and state mining regulators are ineffective at improving mine safety, and that the mining companies themselves are better suited to the task and should have less oversight,[62] saying, "Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miners' safety."[63]
Before and during his 2018 Senate campaign, Blankenship blamed the federal regulators of the MSHA for the Upper Big Branch Disaster for directing airflow targets in the mine.[64][65]
Controversies
Deborah May
A former employee of Blankenship, Deborah May, filed a lawsuit claiming that stress from personal abuse forced her to quit her job in November 2005. The lawsuit claimed that such comparatively minor mistakes as a wrong breakfast order from McDonald's, misplaced ice cream in the freezer, and an improperly hung jacket in the closet caused difficulties with Blankenship.[66]
In June 2008, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that May was entitled to unemployment benefits because due to "the unrefuted evidence" that Blankenship had "physically grabbed" May, had thrown food after she brought back the wrong fast-food order, and tore a tie rack and coat hanger out of a closet after she forgot to leave the hanger out for his coat. Blankenship's conduct, referred to as "shocking" by the court, contributed to their decision that May should get unemployment benefits as she was in effect fired because she was put in a position where she felt compelled to quit.[67]
Upper Big Branch explosion
Main article: Upper Big Branch Mine disaster
On April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 miners. It was the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since 1970, when an explosion killed 38 in Hyden, Kentucky. NPR reported Massey executive Stanley Suboleski as saying that MSHA-ordered airflow changes, made hours before the explosion, "were changes the company opposed but complied with anyway."[68] On April 12, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund which held 303,550 shares of Massey stock, called for Blankenship to resign immediately. "This tragedy was a failure both of risk management and effective board oversight. Blankenship must step down and make room for more responsible leadership at Massey."[69] On April 22, Massey Energy's lead independent director Bobby R. Inman announced that "Blankenship has the full support and confidence of the Massey Energy Board of Directors."[70] On April 25, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and state officials paid tribute to the 29 coal miners at a memorial service in Beckley, West Virginia.[71]
"Prosecutors said Massey manipulated the ventilation system during inspections of the Upper Big Branch mine to fool safety officials and disabled a methane monitor on a cutting machine a few months before the explosion on April 5, 2010....[72] In March 2013 Blankenship was directly implicated in conspiring to skirt safety regulations when a former Massey Energy official accused Blankenship of conspiring and plotting to hide safety violations from federal safety inspectors. The implication was that Blankenship would order his officials to warn mine operators when the federal inspectors were coming for "surprise" visits, and to quickly cover up any safety violations.[73]
Blankenship was convicted of a single misdemeanor charge of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards and went on to serve a one-year prison sentence. He called himself a "political prisoner", feuded with United States Senator Joe Manchin and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) over the explosion,[74] considered running against Manchin for the Senate,[75] and called for a new investigation into the explosion.[76] On May 25, 2017, he formally appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. His petition argued that the U.S. District Court in Charleston and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, "both erred in rulings, and they claim Blankenship was a victim of politics."[77]
In August 2017, Blankenship funded a television ad featuring the sister of one of the miners killed in the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion. The sister, Gwen Thomas, asks in the ad "if the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration insisted that changes be made which reduced Upper Big Branch's airflow before the explosion." She asks the government to publicly release the gas analyses taken after the explosion, and asks for help from Trump and Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito in getting answers.[78] The US Center for Disease Control's (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that the initial explosion could have been prevented by MSHA forcing Massey to avoid a build up of gas, and that subsequent injury could have been prevented by forcing Massey to avoid build up of coal dust.[33] The NIOSH's page on Mining, says that to avoid Methane buildup "Large fans circulate air in mines to provide ventilation to the working areas."[79]
In August 2018, Blankenship for Senate released a statement outlining a finding of the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (DOJ-OPR) which had investigated Booth Goodwin and Steve Ruby, the prosecuting attorneys in Blankenship's federal trial. The DOJ-OPR found that both prosecutors were responsible for "recklessly" disregarding their discovery obligations, though the errors were not found to be deliberate.[80] The conviction was upheld on appeal.[81]
Groundwater
Blankenship has been accused of withholding knowledge of pollution. According to court papers read by Geoff Goodell at Rolling Stone, groundwater pollution from coal slurry injection by Massey Energy was contaminating wells around his home. Blankenship had a water line built to his home from a nearby town. According to the accusation, Blankenship did not offer to provide uncontaminated water to any of his neighbors, and failed to inform them of any problem.[82]
Campaign against Warren McGraw
In 2004, Blankenship contributed $3 million to the "And For The Sake of the Kids" PAC, campaigning against the reelection of West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. Brent Benjamin went on to defeat McGraw in the general election. Of the election, Blankenship said, "I helped defeat a judge who had released a pedophile to work in a local school, who had driven doctors out of state, and who had cost workers their jobs for thirty plus years. I think this effort helped unchain West Virginia's economy and benefited working families."[83] USA Today called Blankenship's ads "venomous."[84] According to a USA Today editorial dated March 3, 2009, Blankenship "vividly illustrated how big money corrupts judicial elections. It puts justice up for sale to the highest bidder."[84]
Notably, Blankenship's coal company Massey Coal had recently lost a civil case in West Virginia state court prior to the judicial campaign and had been ordered to pay a $50 million judgment. The case was pending on appeal as he sponsored Benjamin's campaign for a seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court. When the case was taken up on appeal, Benjamin was one of the judges in a position to decide the case. The plaintiff requested that Benjamin recuse himself owing to a conflict of interest stemming from Blankenship's contributions to his campaign, but he refused. Benjamin ultimately cast a decisive vote to vacate the lower court's judgment in a 3–2 decision. In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the Supreme Court ruled that Benjamin's refusal to recuse himself in light of such an obvious conflict of interest constituted a violation of the plaintiff's constitutional right to due process and remanded the case to the West Virginia Supreme Court.[85]
Washington political journalist Michael Tomasky, a native West Virginian, claimed that Blankenship was "famous in West Virginia as the man who successfully bought himself a State Supreme Court Justice in 2004 and then tried to buy himself the state legislature, failing spectacularly at the latter effort."[86] In his 2008 book Coal River, Michael Shnayerson reports that no such foundation was ever set up.[87] Although Blankenship was the primary donor to "And For the Sake of Kids," other groups, including Doctors for Justice, contributed over $1 million to ASK. Another group, Citizens for Quality Health Care, funded in part by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, spent over $350,000 to defeat McGraw.[88] Meanwhile, several groups spent millions opposing Benjamin and supporting McGraw, including West Virginia Consumers for Justice and Hugh Caperton, CEO of Harmon Development Corporation.[89] Blankenship is featured in Laurence Leamer's 2013 book The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption[90] and Peter Galuszka's 2012 book *Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal.[91]
Conflict of interest with Spike Maynard
On January 15, 2008, photographs of Blankenship vacationing on the French Riviera with West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard, while Massey had a case pending before that court, appeared in The New York Times.[92] On April 3, 2008, ABC News reported that Blankenship attacked an ABC News photographer at a Massey facility near Belfry, Kentucky as the photographer attempted to question him about the photos. "If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot!" Blankenship stated in the video.[93] Maynard later lost his bid for reelection to the West Virginia Supreme Court in the primary election.[94] On February 14, 2009, Blankenship told The New York Times, "I've been around West Virginia long enough to know that politicians don't stay bought, particularly ones that are going to be in office for 12 years... So I would never go out and spend money to try to gain favor with a politician. Eliminating a bad politician makes sense. Electing somebody hoping he's going to be in your favor doesn't make any sense at all."[95]
Comments on Mitch McConnell
In April 2018, Blankenship released an ad in which he calls Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "cocaine Mitch", urging potential voters to "ditch" McConnell.[96] In May 2018, he released another ad attacking McConnell, his wife, Elaine Chao, and his in-laws as his "China family", and again called McConnell "cocaine Mitch".[97][98]
The premise of the moniker was that McConnell's father-in-law owns a shipping company that in 2014 was found to have 90 pounds (41 kg) of cocaine on one of its vessels set to leave Colombia.[99] The Colombian authorities did not accuse the company of conspiring to transport the cocaine, and the company was never investigated for the matter. McConnell, who has no role in the operation of his father-in-law's shipping business, was never suspected by any authorities of having any involvement in the incident. The Washington Post's Fact Checker column investigated the "cocaine Mitch" claims and gave them a "Four Pinocchios" rating, concluding that "Blankenship has no evidence to support his crude and incendiary attack."[100]
McConnell was undisturbed by the moniker, and began to answer Senate calls as "Cocaine Mitch."[101][102] After Blankenship lost his primary race, an official campaign account for McConnell posted a photoshopped picture of McConnell surrounded by a cloud of cocaine dust with the accompanying text, "Thanks for playing, Don."[103] The picture was based on promotional materials for the Netflix TV show Narcos.
Racism controversy
When asked if Blankenship's rhetoric in the "China Family" political ad was racist, McConnell suggested that his answer would depend on the results of the Republican primary election.[104] When pressed on the ad's alleged racism, Blankenship said that his ad was not racist because the Chinese are not a race. He said, "Races are Negro, White Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian."[105][106]
Personal life
Blankenship has two children.[107] He was profiled in a 2005 West Virginia Public Broadcasting documentary, The Kingmaker.[108]
References
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BLOOMBERG 2025?
Trial Update: Ex-Massey CEO Blankenship Downplayed Black-Lung Threat to Miners
By George Hohmann and Jef Feeley | October 14, 2015
Ex-Massey Energy Chief Executive Officer Donald Blankenship downplayed the threat that miners develop black-lung disease in shafts choked with coal dust, jurors in the executive’s criminal trial heard in a recorded phone call.
Blankenship, a vocal opponent of government regulations, dismissed efforts by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration in its 2009 campaign to cut down on black lung, a respiratory condition that makes it difficult to breathe. The executive secretly recorded some phone conversations with subordinates and others.
“The fact is black lung is not the problem in this industry that is worth the effort they are put into it.,” Blankenship told an unidentified man about the government’s campaign. Mine safety officials say the disease has been a contributing factor in the injuries and deaths of more than 76,000 miners since 1968.
Federal prosecutors in Charleston, West Virginia, played the call to buttress charges that the former CEO plotted to disregard safety measures and set the stage for a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners. The government played the conversation Tuesday to open the second week of trial testimony.
Blankenship, 65, is accused of scheming with other Massey officials to subvert safety rules and impede mine inspectors. He’s also charged with lying to investors about the company’s compliance with regulations.
U.S. District Judge Irene Berger ruled last week that jurors could hear some of Blankenship’s phone calls that were turned over by officials of Alpha Natural Resources Inc., a rival coal company that acquired Massey in 2011 for $7.1 billion.
The safety agency launched an effort to cut down on black lung among miners in 2009 and issued a rule in 2014 requiring mine operators to reduce concentrations of coal dust in their shafts.
While Blankenship criticized the government’s black-lung efforts, the executive can be heard on another recording saying the agency plays a valuable role in keeping operators focused on safety issues.
Blankenship questioned whether “we’d blow ourselves up” without inspections by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Over the years, he had routinely criticized the agency in public for setting up regulatory roadblocks to coal production.
“I know MSHA is bad, but I tell you what, we do some dumb things,” Blankenship said on the call. “I don’t know what we’d do if we didn’t have them.”
In another recording, the executive is heard saying a confidential memo outlining safety problems at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine, site of the 2010 blast, would be “a terrible document” to be turned over in litigation, prosecutors said earlier.
Prosecutors introduced the recordings into evidence through the testimony of Sandra Davis, Blankenship’s former administrative assistant, who handed his e-mails and memos for eight years.
The case is U.S. v. Blankenship, 14-cr-00244, U.S. District Court, Southern District of West Virginia (Charleston).
Related:
- Massey Mines Alerted Workers When Safety Inspectors on Site: Testimony
- Blankenship Pleads Not Guilty to Charges Linked to Massey Mine Explosion
- Former Massey CEO Pleads Not Guilty to New Indictment in Mine Blast
- Deadly West Virginia Mine Explosion Trial Puts Spotlight on Massey’s King Coal
- U.S. Judge Denies Motion to Drop Mine Blast Charges Against Ex-Massey CEO
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
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MOJO
Disgraced and once-imprisoned former West Virginia coal magnate Don Blankenship is hoping to occupy Senator Joe Manchin’s soon-to-be-vacated seat, as the long-time Democratic lawmaker retires in 2024. Having rununsuccessfully in 2018 as the GOP Senate candidate, and in 2020 as a candidate for the Constitution Party, this time, the Appalachian strip-mining baron, who once called himself “Trumpier than Trump,” is running as a Democrat.
Blankenship explained toWV News that he switched parties because of personal animus: the Republicans pushed false stories about him, according to his telling, and were not properly focused on his state’s opioid crisis. West Virginia has the highestrate of deaths from opioids in the country.
State Democrats did not cheer his announcement. “I don’t care what letter he has after his name this week,” West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Pushkin wrote in a statement to news outlets, “Don Blankenship is not a Democrat and does not represent the values of our party.”
Blankenship once called himself “The most hated man in Mingo County.” As the head of Massey Energy, a massive coal company, Blankenship helped lead a program of mountaintop removal—an extreme form of strip mining that involves destroying mountain tops and ridgelines to be able to mine coal more cheaply. Mountaintop removal has dire consequences for the environment and for anyone who doesn’t have equity in the company doing the mining. These can include poisoning nearby drinking water sources, and increasing the likelihood of flooding—both of which happened in Mingo County (large floods happened multiple times).
As my colleague Tim Murphy revealed in a 2015 profile, after Blankenship was indicted “for allegedly conspiring to commit mine safety violations, conspiring to cover up those violations, and providing false statements about his company’s safety record,” the magnate worked overtime to make sure that the damage he inflicted on the state extended far beyond environmental devastation.
Blankenship crushed the mine workers union that was baptized in his backyard. Voluminous court records and government investigations show that he presided over a company that padded its profits by running some of the most dangerous workplaces in the country.
This, predictably, resulted in the worst mining tragedy in decades:
A mascot of the coal industry’s worst excesses, Blankenship pumped millions of dollars into West Virginia’s political system to promote an anti-regulatory agenda and curry favor with state lawmakers and officials. But Massey’s pursuit of profits at any cost ultimately proved to be Blankenship’s downfall. When, on April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 workers—the worst mining disaster in the United States in 40 years—prosecutors began slowly building a case against the powerful mogul.
Blankenship was sentenced in 2016 and spent a year in prison after being found guilty of conspiring to violate mine safety regulations.
Now, eager for a new challenge, the senatorial hopeful told WV News,that he was running for office in order “to help residents realize that ‘our enemy is the government and the politicians, and which party you’re in doesn’t really matter.'” Former miners and family members of those who were killed while he was in charge of Massey Energy have criticized the newly-minted Democrat, AP reports. For others in the state’s coal community, he’s “assertive” and a “man of integrity.”
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kos 10 23
I know, its decesis. Doesnt really matter now anyway, it appears deceased either way.
Just caught an article by Reuters’ Andrew Chung about SCOTUS tossing out Donald Blankenship’s suit against several media outlets and reporters for defamation in a 2015 case where he accused both Fox AND MSNBC among others of mischaracterizing him as a “felon” though he was only convicted of a misdemeanor for responsibilty in an explosion that killed 29 of his employees in 2010 in his West VA mine while running to unseat Joe Manchin and served a year in prison for it, no doubt completely consoling the families of the 29 lost. He accused these outlets/reporters of derailing his campaign due to “actual malice,” a bar that must be met for a public figure to be able to hold a media outlet accountable for a case of defamation. That bar was set in 1964 with the seminal NY Times v. Sullivan case where a unanimous Supreme Court agreed that said bar needed to be pretty high in order to enforce the protections of a free and independent media enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Because OTHERWISE, any disgruntled multi-million dollar CEO/company with bottomless pockets and an army of corporate lawyers who got their employees killed would, on a whim, be able to sue any unfriendly media outlet who reported on it into OBLIVION. See: Donald Trump suing everybody that ever said anything bad/true about him.
but... Again enter Clarence Thomas, who in his statement about the court ditching Roe v Wade and other such previously decided interpretations of the 14th Amendment (Obergfell, eg, though he didnt mention the legalization of interracial marriage for some reason, weird) should come into question, because, you know, Originalism. The Framers weren’t contemplating The Gays. so, no. I guess they were contemplating AR-15s though. yup, no doubt. Mr. T opined, though not in an actual dissent, that should the appropriate case arise, the (unanimous) decision in Sullivan should be revisited because the high bar instituted by that case to protect media freedom is not enshrined in the constitution (word for word, i guess). Apparently recusing yourself from 1 obvious conflict of interest case before the court, FINALLY, after months of media scrutiny of your corruption, absolves you of, once again, doing away with stare decisis when its not jibing with your bogus originalist interpretation of what-ever-the-hell-Harlan-Crow and Leonard Leo need this week to help them undermine democracy.
He said, again, this should be an issue for the states and not federal government to decide. Really? HOW??? Its federal law. It’s in the Constitution. It’s the duty of the federal government to enforce. & How’d that whole Roe v Wade thing go, dude/ the states should decide? so now its ok that the state of Idaho just became a real-world Margaret Atwood book???
Look, John, Clarence, Brett, Amy, et al im sure it’d be nice to sue every media outlet out there that isn’t Fox or Breitbart for reporting on your blatant corruption, and thanks for not voting your (donor’s) conscience on this one. & Also way smart to throw the MSM a bone, SCOTUS. Nothing to see here! Look! We voted to keep one of your rights this time, so chill! It should be no problem when the 6 of us decide what and what not your rights are AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT regardless of what they were for the last 50 years.
It seems to me the Constitution is kind of like the bible. You can use it for good, and you can use it for bad, because almost any part of it can be selectively co-opted to suit your purposes. You can “Love thy neighbor as thy self,” or you can stone your wife for cheating on your ass. Its all in there and you can use it however you want. REASONABLE CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATION of foundational documents is the only way they can survive. This premise does however decimate “originalism” which is a pretty made up concept in the first place. If the “Founding Fathers” ever thought that was a reasonable approach they wouldn’t have created that whole AMENDMENT PROCESS in the first place. They didn’t foresee planes, trains & automobiles either, maybe we should see if the bible bans those too? They knew that society would change as radically as it did in their own lifetimes, and they engineered the document that would be the blueprint for this new country to be A LIVING DOCUMENT.
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https://www.alternet.org/strategies-let-super-pacs-delay-revealing-their-donors-until-after-elections-are-gaining-popularity
NEW
Strategies That Let Super PACs Delay Revealing Their Donors Until After Elections Are Gaining Popularity — With Both Parties
In total, super PACs have spent at least $21.6 million this cycle in 78 congressional races before disclosing who donated that money — $15.7 million of it during primary races. In many cases, that disclosure came after voters had gone to the polls.
:{ProPublica October 10, 2018,
no many lnx
Allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used a blind spot in campaign finance laws to undercut a candidate from their own party this year — and their fingerprints remained hidden until the primary was already over.
Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money in elections, are supposed to regularly disclose their funders. But in the case ofMountain Families PAC, Republicans managed to spend $1.3 million against Don Blankenship,a mustachioed former coal baron who was a wild-card candidate for a must-win West Virginia Senate seat, in May without revealing who was supplying the cash.
The move worked like this: Start a new super PAC after a deadline for reporting donors and expenses, then raise and spend money before the next report is due. Timed right, a super PAC might get a month or more undercover before being required to reveal its donors. And if a super PAC launches right before the election, voters won’t know who’s funding it until after they go to the polls.
The strategy — which is legal — is proving increasingly popular among Democrats and Republicans. The amount of super PAC spending during the 2016 congressional primaries in which the first donor disclosure occurred after the primary election totaled $9 million. That figure increased to $15.6 million during the 2018 congressional primaries and special elections.
Backers of Mountain Families PAC didn’t respond to a request for comment. It is one of 63 super PACs this election cycle that have managed to spend money to influence races and postpone telling voters who funded them, according to an analysis by Politico and ProPublica of Federal Election Commission data.
Voters bear much of the cost when they head to the polls without information on who funded a PAC that tried to sway their votes, said Meredith McGehee, executive director at the nonpartisan watchdog group Issue One.
“The whole idea behind disclosure is that one of the factors that voters can, and understandably should, take into account in judging the message is who the messenger is,” McGehee said.
In total, super PACs have spent at least $21.6 million this cycle in 78 congressional races before disclosing who donated that money — $15.7 million of it during primary races. In many cases, that disclosure came after voters had gone to the polls.
Super PACs were created after the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision ruled that people and corporations had the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent expenditures such as funding ads or mailers, but that they couldn’t hide that spending from the public.
But while they can’t keep donors secret forever, super PACs are increasingly figuring out methods of temporarily masking donor identities that are either legal or fall into gray areas that rarely attract regulators’ attention.
One tactic is the one Mountain Families PAC used, which is likely to be replicated for the general election. A new super PAC that starts between Oct. 18 and Nov. 6 could spend money right before Election Day without having to disclose its donors until after the midterm results are tallied. (There are 11 super PACs that together have spent at least $5.8 million since the primaries but should begin disclosing their donors on Oct. 15, when the next FEC filing is due.)
Another involves going into debt to pay for advertising and other campaign-related activities, and fundraising later to pay off those debts. A super PAC that does this would not have to disclose donors until well after the money is spent.
In the case of Mountain Families PAC, Blankenship was increasingly popular among the state’s anti-Washington set. So D.C. Republicans behind the PAC avoided disclosing they were behind ads attacking Blankenship — “Isn’t there enough toxic sludge in Washington?” asked one of them — until after the primary.
Then they revealed their identity and dissolved the super PAC entirely.
Here are more examples of PACs that have delayed disclosing their donors this cycle — and how they did it:
As Republican Martha McSally battled two opponents in the Arizona Senate primary, a super PAC called Red and Gold spent $1.7 million attacking McSally, airing television ads that said McSally had supported an “age tax” on older people’s health insurance. But shortly after filing its initial paperwork with the FEC, Red and Gold notified the commission it was going to file on a monthly basis, which meant its first disclosure wasn’t due until Sept. 20, three weeks after the primary election.
When Red and Gold finally disclosed its funders, it was revealed that Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, was the main funder of Red and Gold and had meddled in the primary in an attempt to hurt McSally’s chances of victory and boost a weaker Republican. Chris Hayden, spokesman for Senate Majority PAC, said that “Senate Majority PAC and Red and Gold have followed the FEC reporting schedule and follow the law governing super PACs.”
A super PAC called Ohio First PAC has been in operation since the start of April and has spent $774,822 helping Republican Jim Renacci in the Ohio Senate race. But it has only disclosed raising $79,200 from donors. Instead of disclosing donations, Ohio First’s filings with the FEC show the committee has hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to vendors for advertising and mailers, and almost no fundraising yet. The PAC did not respond to a request for comment.
The FEC has sent the PAC twoletters about possible late filings for some of its spending; the committee said in correspondence in August that it is working to resolve any issues.
During the week leading up to a seven-way Democratic primary in Illinois in March, a super PAC called SunshinePAC blitzed the battleground 6th Congressional District with $130,000 in mailers and phone calls. Because it started spending money so late in the race, SunshinePAC didn’t have to reveal its donors before the primary.
But nearly a month after the election, SunshinePAC revealed its lone funder: Tom Casten, the father of primary contender Sean Casten — raising questions about whether the super PAC was really independent from the campaign. By then, Sean Casten had eked out a victory in the primary by 2,177 votes.
Tom Casten said in an interview that “there was no effort or conversation about reporting in the delayed form” when he gave to SunshinePAC, and that “I certainly didn’t ask for it.” Greg Bales, campaign manager for Casten for Congress, said in an email that “as with any outside group, there was no coordination between Sean or the campaign and that group on their spending or disclosure practices.” SunshinePAC did not respond to a request for comment.
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https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/coal-baron-and-ex-con-loses-primary-still-running-senate-how-sore-loser-election-laws
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update so dem will win?
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/racist-west-virginia-republican-primary-loser-blankenship-defies-law-stay-senate
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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/outlandish-gop-senate-candidate-launches-racist-attack-mitch-mcconnells-china
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http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/382030-gop-worries-blankenship-surge-will-cost-party-w-va-senate-seat
OMFG
W.VA. — A former coal CEO’s post-prison rise is scrambling the GOP battle to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin(W.Va.).
Don Blankenship, released from jail less than a year ago, now appears to be within striking distance of the party’s nomination.
Strategists — and even his primary opponents — acknowledge he’s managed to turn an expected showdown between Rep. Evan Jenkins(W.Va.) and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey into a three-way fight with roughly a month to go until the May 8 primary election.
“It is a weird little race right now, [but] it’s looking like a legitimate three-person race,” said a national GOP strategist who is monitoring the Senate fight.
Blankenship’s anti-establishment message is resonating in a state that has turned increasingly red. Recent internal polling from Morrisey and Jenkins place him in second place — with first place varying based on the candidate releasing the polling.
“I’m an anti-establishment. Have been long before I ever heard of Trump or looked at politics,” Blankenship told The Hill outside a candidate forum in Martinsburg, W. Va.
It’s a dramatic turn around for a man who has been out of prison for less than a year. Blankenship was sentenced to a year after the 2010Upper Big Branch Mine exploded killing 29 miners. Government investigators concluded the blast was caused by Blankenship’s company’s failure to clean up coal dust sufficiently.
In Blankenship’s version, he was targeted by the Obama administration and Manchin, who said in the wake of the accident thatBlankenship had “blood on his hands” While in jail, Blankenship published a manifesto describing himself a “political prisoner.”
“The people that are knowledgeable of the mining and what happened at UBB know that ... if anyone blew up the mine, the government did, and they have the privilege of being able to investigate themselves ” he said, when asked how frequently the issue is brought up as he’s campaigned around the state.
Blankenship’s rise has been fueled, in part, by deep pockets that have allowed him to crisscross the state and flood the inexpensive media market with TV ads. Blankenship had the airwaves largely to himself until last month.
“I’ve lived in the poor house. I’ve lived in the big house. ...I’ve got more experience, more understanding of what it
takes to turn this country around than those who have been in Washington drinking the swamp water,” he said.
His ascendance is setting off alarm bells in Washington. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The New York Times earlier this year that he didn’t want Blankenship to win the primary. Trump won the state by more than 40 points in 2016, suggesting it should be an easy win for the GOP — but Republicans worry Blankenship would be too controversial to win in the general election.
Republicans have grown increasingly worried about their chances to hold on to the Senate in November, making a pick-up in West Virginia crucial to the majority. McConnell told the Kentucky Today editorial board that Republicans “don’t know whether it’s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5” storm.
But they’ve also acutely aware of the Alabama Senate race, where Republicans went all in fighting conservative firebrand Roy Moore in the primary, only for the strategy to backfire.
Patrick Hickey, a professor at West Virginia University, added Blankenship is a “very polarizing figure” but an “anti-Obama argument in general is something people buy into" in West Virginia.
“A lot of people outside of West Virginia look at this guy who did a year in prison … so they’re like how can this be a serious candidate?” said Mike Plante, a Democratic strategist based in West Virginia. “[But] the idea that the cultural elites are out against me … finds fertile ground.”
The GOP strategist acknowledged that voters are wary of outside involvement in Senate primary races. Blankenship, meanwhile, predicted such attacks would be a “positive” and said outside groups “don’t really carry much weight in the election.”
A spokesman for McConnell declined to comment. But Blankenship says the tight-lipped GOP leader won’t support him because “he doesn’t want the swamp to be drained.”
Blankenship added that, if elected, he wouldn’t support McConnell to be majority leader, if the party keeps control of the Senate, or GOP leader, if they lose the majority.
“I have no intention of working with the party. The parties are too powerful,” he said.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is in contact with each of GOP campaigns and, with the lack of a GOP incumbent, hasn’t picked a side.
Trump appeared at an event with Jenkins and Morrisey on Thursday, where he criticized Manchin and told both of the men "good luck" in the primary fight. A GOP strategist noted the event “seems very telling on where Trump is at politically with the ... primary.”
But Blankenship brushed aside a question about the event—he said his campaign had been assured it is an “official visit, not a political visit”— and predicted the White House will stay on the sidelines. He’s also met with White House political advisors, calling the meeting “very cordial.”
“I think they’re going to stand aside, if you will, and let the Republican race be what it is, and then I’ll go up and tell them how we’re going to beat Manchin,” he said.
Manchin has been tight-lipped about Blankenship’s bid. In a statement from his campaign, he called the GOP race a “nasty primary” but declined to comment “out of respect for our coal miners and their families who are still grieving the loss of their loved ones.”
To get to Manchin, Blankenship first has to win next month’s GOP primary. Jenkins and Morrisey have largely trained their fire on each other, not Blankenship.
Blankenship’s time in prison or the mine explosion didn’t come up during the hour-long candidate forum in Martinsburg. Morrisey separately released a statement on Thursday — the eight-year anniversary of the explosion — that didn’t mention Blankenship.
“We’re primarily focused on ... talking about Patrick’s conservative record and contrasting that with Jenkins’s liberal record,” said Nachama Soloveichik, a spokeswoman for Morrisey, while acknowledging it would be a “close race.”
Jenkins’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. Jenkins has accused Blankenship of spending nearly $2 million to attack him — a figure Blankenship’s campaign says is inaccurate. Jenkins told Fox News that “there’s a clear distinction between my candidacy .... a convicted criminal [and] opioid industry peddler.”
Outside observers say Morissey and Jenkins could be reluctant to attack Blankenship out of concern that it could only give Blankenshipmore of the spotlight while making them look like the establishment.
“The danger [is] that if you give someone too much oxygen it helps them. It doesn't hurt them,” Hickey said.
Blankenship also warned during the Martinsburg event that he would hit back if he felt that another candidate lied about him. Greg Thomas, a longtime consultant and spokesman, noted the campaign doesn’t have limits on its budget and “Mr. Blankenship is going to spend whatever it takes to win.”
“I’m the most popular hostile campaigner in the country probably,” Blankenship said. “I’m not running to make friends with the candidates you see up here.”
Instead, the forum in the state’s eastern panhandle was largely about the candidates competing to align themselves close to Trump.
But Blankenship and outside observers are quick to paint the former CEO as a sort of pre-Trump Trump: a wealthy, anti-establishment figure who has been a part of the state’s political scene for more than a decade, is willing to spend his own money and isn’t afraid to battle with the media.
“I’m closer to his beliefs than any candidate or any official in Washington,” Blankenship said, when asked how closely he’ll align with Trump if he’s ultimately elected.
“[He’s a] business guy with immense resources and sort of an immense cult of personality about himself who is not afraid to take on the media and take on the establishment,” Plante, the Democratic strategist, added. “Who is more like Donald Trump than Don Blankenship?”
Blankenship shot down a Washington Post reporter’s attempt to interview him before the Martinsburg event, quipping that he was “afraid” of the publication.
“I just know they lie. There’s no upside for me. I’m ahead in the election. ... So what’s the upside by giving the Washington Post the chance to add credibility to their article by saying they talked to me?” he said.
But whether or not Blankenship can mimic Trump’s surprise victory and ultimately pull ahead in the primary remains to be seen.
"I didn't think he was really a serious candidate who could possibly win, but I'm very reluctant to say that now,” said Hickey.
A GOP strategist noted that “any Republican should be competitive in the state” but suggested that Blankenship had “baggage”—his time in jail and the mine explosion—that made it more likely Jenkins or Morrisey would win.
Asked why his candidacy wasn't take seriously initially, Blankenship pointed to the media, and predicted people would come around as they got to know him. “The truth is, they thought people were going to vote for the Don Blankenship that the media describes. And that’s not Don Blankenship,” he said. “ I wouldn’t vote for the guy that the media describes.”
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Don Blankenship's Castle Overlooking the Site of Another Tragedy
ohvec.org/blankenship-sprigg-castle/
2.
Don Blankenship - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Blankenship
2.
Criminal charge**: conspiracy to violate mine saf...
Years active: 1972 - 2010
Children: 2
Criminal penalty: 1 year in federal prison; $25...
Don Blankenship, Fresh Out of Prison, Begs Trump to Have Mercy on ...
https://www.desmogblog.com/.../don-blankenship-fresh-out-prison-begs-trump-have-...
1.
Don Blankenship: American Competitionist
www.donblankenship.com/about-me/
2.
http://ohvec.org/blankenship-sprigg-castle/ eh
Don Blankenship, who just wrapped up a year in federal prison for criminal conspiracy to violate mine safety and health rules — a coordinated and concealed series of violations that lasted for at least 15 months leading up to the tragic Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 coal workers — emerged from his incarceration unrepentant, and none the humbler.
On Tuesday, the former CEO of Massey Energy released an open letter to President Trumpurging the administration to ignore any legislation that would strengthen punishments for mining company executives and supervisors who knowingly flout safety rules.
“Coal supervisors are not criminals, and the laws they work under today are already frightening enough for them. More onerous criminal laws will not improve mine safety,” Blankenship wrote. He said that Congress “too often wants to punish coal companies, coal operators, and coal supervisors versus helping them to improve coal mine safety.”
Blankenship, who has never admitted to any wrongdoing and never apologized to the families of the workers killed in his mine, was convicted for “conspiracy to violate mandatory federal mine safety and health standards.” The explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine was the worst coal mining disaster in 40 years, and was labeled “entirely preventable” by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, which investigated the accident and found that the explosion was caused by “systematic, intentional, and aggressive efforts” to conceal, rather than fix, hazards.
Dubbed the “dark lord of coal country” by Rolling Stone, Blankenship was found guilty of overseeing the conspiracy to cover up these safety violations that created the dangerous conditions that caused the explosion. Before Blankenship, four other Massey supervisors had already been convicted for their roles in the conspiracy, including, as DeSmog reported in 2014, “the Upper Big Branch mine superintendent who admitted he disabled a methane monitor and falsified mine records. And while lower-ranking supervisors received sentences measured in months, Blankenship's closest subordinate was sentenced to three and a half years for his role in the tragedy.”
Blankenship's conviction was punished with a one year sentence in federal prison, which is the maximum for this particular crime, as Ken Ward Jr. of the Charlestown Gazette-Mail explained:
“Under federal law, violating or conspiring to violate mine safety and health standards is classified as amisdemeanor, or a minor crime, with a maximum jail sentence of one year. Mine safety advocates have been urging Congress for years to make such crimes felonies, but the legislation has made little progress.”
In his letter, Blankenship calls a proposal by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to increase criminal liability for coal mine supervisors to be “a prime example of bad legislation.”
He may also have been motivated by a recent statement by Virginia Representative Bobby Scott, a ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, who advocated for harsher criminal penalties for the violation of federal mine safety laws. Rep. Scott wants to make the willful violation of mine safety rules into a felony offense that could carry up to a maximum five year sentence, a far stiffer penalty than the one year maximum currently allowed as a misdemeanor.
When reintroducing the Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety Protection Act in April, Rep. Scott wrote:
The release of the former Massey CEO who served the maximum possible sentence of only one year for willfully violating mine safety standards that led to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster should serve as a reminder that the criminal provisions in the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 remain woefully inadequate … The maximum penalty for the willful violation of a mandatory health and safety standard is a mere misdemeanor — rather than a felony — regardless of the number of miners killed because of criminally reckless conduct.”
The Two Dons
Blankenship clearly sees in President Trump a kindred spirit. In his letter, he wrote:
“You and I also share something. We share relentless and false attacks on our reputation by the liberal media. The attacks on me have been relentless since 1985 when the miners at a group of mines I supervised chose to decertify their union membership. I am hopeful that in considering this request to improve coal miner safety, you will put aside the media’s false claims about me and help me expose the truth of what happened at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine in West Virginia on April 5, 2010.”
Like the President, Blankenship refuses to acknowledge facts that don’t agree with his personally crafted narrative, and dismisses investigations that betray his account of what caused the explosion.
[twit]
And like the President, Blankenship has taken to Twitter to not only defend himself (with 11 tweets on the day of his release and at least 43 tweets in less than a week since) but also to peddle conspiracy theories — blaming the regulators themselves for the fatal explosion, theories that have been disproven by four separate investigations. After he was convicted, Blankenship self-published a book called An American Political Prisoner.
Again, like the President, Blankenship endears himself as a hero to the working class, though the communities where his mines operate have been left in ruin, their economies shattered, their drinking water poisoned, and their workers left sick and dead.
“I shared most of my life with coal miners and I owe them a great debt,” Blankenship wrote in his letter to Trump. However, the former coal CEO did not make mention of any plan to repay that debt with the $80 million golden parachute he receivedwhen he was forced to resign from Massey in disgrace.
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on the board of CoC
july 2010:
It appears as though Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, in whose coal mine 29 people died earlier this year in an entirely preventable disaster, has been booted from the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce.
As recently as June 29, Massey was listed as a member of the Chamber’s Board. But now, his name doesn’t appear on the list of current board members, and his specific profile page has been deleted from the website.
Blankenship’s bio on Massey Energy’s website still says he is a director of the Chamber. I requested comment from the Chamber of Commerce to confirm, but they have not responded at this time (updated below). Massey Energy also has not replied to my request for confirmation.
Besides sacrificing the lives of his employees for profit, Blankenship is primarily known for his rabid denial of climate change, in addition to his blind defense of corporations. (He once said that safety regulators were “as silly as global warming.”)
Ideologically, Blankenship is right in line with the Chamber of Commerce. As a member of the Board of Directors, Blankenship had a hand in directing the chamber’s finances, political expenditures, and campaigns. Last year, while prominent brand names left the Chamber of Commerce in droves due to the corporate group’s war against climate change legislation, Blankenship wrote an op-ed to defend the Chamber’s position.
But if it’s true that Blankenship got the boot from the Chamber’s Board, as the evidence online suggests, it appears the Chamber of Commerce drew a line: yes to denying the reality of climate change, no to killing your employees. It’s a step, I guess.
UPDATE:Tita Freeman of the Chamber of Commerce says Blankenship’s turn was up: “Don Blankenship’s term on the Chamber board expired in June of this year. He served 3 consecutive terms of 2 years each, which is the maximum per Chamber bylaws. As such, it was a routine rotation off of the board.”
Couldn’t come any sooner for the Chamber.
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People v. The Coal Baron
Posted on July 8 2015 by Bri Holmes
West Virginia — In 2010, a disastrous coal mine explosion at the Upper Big Branch facility claimed the lives of twenty-nine miners. An independent report investigating the blast found Massey Energy directly responsible for its neglect. Massey’s parent corporation agreed to criminal and civil penalties, but such recklessness deserves harsher penalties than a fine or a slap on the wrist.
The Report of the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel (the “Report”) concerning the April 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine explosion and deaths describes in more than 100 pages how Massey repeatedly placed profits ahead of worker safety and compliance with the law, and has a long history of criminal and civil violations of law.
Driving Massey Energy’s aggressive growth and misconduct, is former CEO Don Blankenship. Blankenship’s “quasi-dictatorial management style as chief executive produced spectacular results for Massey.” During his tenure as CEO, Blankenship elevated Massey Energy from a modest business to a multi-billion dollar corporation, and the sixth-largest coal company in the country. Various accounts tell of Mr. Blankenship spending millions of dollars to thwart the efforts of politicians and judges that he saw as threats against his free-market and anti-regulatory views.
Federal prosecutors found the deadly explosion resulted from Massey cutting corners on important safety measures, and last November a grand jury indicted Blankenship on four criminal counts. The counts include conspiracy to violate mine safety standards and conspiracy to impede federal mine safety officials. If convicted, he could face up to 31 years in prison.
The people of West Virginia hailed the indictment as a major breakthrough.
Although the charges against Blankenship mark a shift in improving mine safety and accountability, Massey Energy got off easy.
Revoking Massey Energy’s corporate charter in Delaware is a way to hold the corporation accountable for its lethal neglect.
A corporation is an artificial entity. It exists only because we the people — represented by a state government — allot a charter. Just as we the people can grant that charter, we can also revoke it. Most major corporations in the U.S., including Massey Energy, are legally based in Delaware. To revoke a charter, the state of Delaware must take action.
In 2011, Free Speech For People, Appalachian Voices, and Rainforest Action Network delivered a petition with 35,000 signatures calling for Massey’s corporate charter to be revoked.
With increasing consequences of unrestrained multinational corporate power in America, corporate charter accountability is more important than ever. Individuals, like Don Blankenship must be brought to justice for their actions, but corporations should not be let off the hook.
To learn more about our initiative to revoke Massey’s corporate charter, click here.
Watch the video below to find out more about our Model Corporate Charter Revocation Act.
http://freespeechforpeople.org/people-v-the-coal-baron/
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apr 2010
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/04/massey_energy_blankenship.html
(In Montcoal, W.Va., 25 coal miners are known to have been killed by an explosion that happened Monday afternoon. The fate of four others remains unknown. Here's a post that sheds some light on the political influence in the state of Don Blankenship, who heads the company that operates the mine where the tragedy happened.)
As deep as Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch minegoes into West Virginia's mountains, the company reaches even farther across the state. One measure: In 2004, Massey CEO Don Blankenship essentially bought a state supreme court seat.
The case drew a line on how far money can go in judicial elections. It made Blankenship a poster child for advocates of tighter restrictions. And author John Grisham said on NBC-TV's The Today Show that it was a model for his 2008 novel The Appeal.Blankenship poured in $3 million, to unseat a justice he expected would rule against Massey in a lawsuit. It was so much money, his strategy backfired. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the newly elected state justice was too tainted by Blankenship's money to rule on the case.
The chronology:
In 1998, Hugh Caperton, president of Harman Coal Co, sued Massey. He alleged it had committed fraud and destroyed Harman. In 2002, Caperton won in trial court. The jury said Massey should pay Harman $50 million. Massey appealed.
In 2004, with the case headed to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, Blankenship was determined to oust a probable opponent, Democratic Justice Warren McGraw, in favor of a likely ally, Republican lawyer Brent Benjamin.
Blankenship financed an independent group, And For The Sake Of The Kids,which ran TV ads painting McGraw as a friend of liberal trial lawyers and a radical who was soft on sex offenders, including this one:[vid?]
Blankenship's $3 million was about 2 1/2 times as much as Benjamin's campaign spending, according to the non-partisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.
Benjamin — Blankenship's preferred candidate — was elected to a 12-year term. When the case reached the court, he opted not to recuse himself, and twice was the key vote in overturning the jury award.
The U.S. Supreme Court, not known these days for confining political money, treated Caperton v. Massey differently. In a 5-4 ruling, it reversed the West Virginia justices and told them to try again, without Benjamin participating.
Blankenship's money "had a significant and disproportionate influence on the outcome," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. "Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias can arise when — without the other parties' consent — a man chooses the judge in his own cause."
(Peter Overby covers the intersection of money and politics for NPR.)
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http://grist.org/climate-energy/will-the-dark-lord-of-coal-country-finally-be-brought-to-justice/
A federal appeals court ruling has lifted the veil on months of legal jockeying in the upcoming criminal trial of West Virginia coal baron Donald Blankenship.
Blankenship, the former CEO of one-time coal giant Massey, allegedly conspired to systematically skirt safety regulations in the company’s mines, ultimately resulting in the April 5, 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va., that killed 29 miners.
The explosion was caused when a sparks from a longwall shearer ignited a pocket of methane, generating a fireball that caused a second, more deadly explosion when it traveled down the mine and hit a bunch of coal dust. That blast tore through two and a half miles of mine, killing 29 of 31 men working in the area. State and federal investigators blamed Massey and a culture of skirting mining safety regulations.
A grand jury indicted Blankenship in November on four charges: conspiring to willfully commit routine violations of federal mine safety laws; conspiring to impede administration of the federal mine safety laws; making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the wake of the explosion; and securities fraud. If convicted, he faces 31 years in prison.
But documents made public for the first time Thursday suggest that Blankenship, who has famously avoided prosecution for past misdeeds, has no intention of serving that time. At the least, he’s going to put it off as long as possible.
The documents, released after media organizations challenged a court-instated gag order on the case, show a Blankenship defense team bent on throwing whatever obstacles it can — requesting delays, a venue change, an entirely new set of circuit judges, and the kitchen sink — into the prosecution’s way. Prosecutors filed responses to each, and the thrust and parry between the two sides demonstrates a months-long process of legal one-upsmanship that occasionally descended into snide digs from both sides.
One motion from the defense seeks to dismiss the four charges against Blankenship on the basis of “selective and vindictive prosecution.” Essentially, Blankenship’s lawyers claim that in the months following the Upper Big Branch explosion, the U.S. Attorney’s Office repeatedly told him he was not a target in its investigation. That changed, the defense claims, after Blankenship released a film called Upper Big Branch – Never Again, which accused the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration of forcing a subpar ventilation on the mine and blamed the explosion on the unexpected release of natural gas in the area. The defense claims charges against him came as a result of the film and therefore violate his First Amendment rights.
Federal prosecutors dismissed the claim that they’d charge Blankenship “because of a Youtube video” as “incredible,” citing a series of prior cases brought against Massey and its subsidiaries, including one case against a former Upper Big Branch employee who pleaded guilty to faking a foreman’s license during mine safety inspections and lying to inspectors (the employee was transferred from Upper Big Branch before the explosion).
If he must face trial, Blankenship’s defense team wants it to take place outside the Southern District of West Virginia. The motion to change venue still isn’t available, but the federal prosecutors’ response is. That response refers to a survey in Beckley, W.Va., where the trial is scheduled to take place, and a collection of news stories that Blankenship’s lawyers say proves he can’t get a fair trial. In response, prosecutors cite the case of Enron’s former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and argue that the defense’s claims “show less evidence of pre-trial prejudice than existed inSkilling [v. United States] where no venue change was required.”
If the trial must remain in Beckley, Blankenship’s lawyers seek the disqualification of all the judges within the Southern District of West Virginia. The reason? The district’s U.S. attorney, Booth Goodwin II — who, allege the lawyers, “committed serious misconduct both in deciding to prosecute Mr. Blankenship, a public figure in West Virginia, and in misrepresenting to the grand jury the law and the facts of the case” — is the son of a judge in the district. Blankenship’s lawyers therefore argue that other judges will be biased due to their presumed friendship with Goodwin’s father.
Prosecutors respond that imputing one judge’s conflict to every other judge on that court is “unprecedented” and ridiculous.
They are particularly ridiculous when you consider Blankenship’s history with the courts. And to understand that, it helps to know a little bit about the man himself.
The title of Blankenship’s website, “American Competitionist,” hints at his personality and motivations. Blankenship grew up dirt-poor in southern West Virginia, where his mother worked 80 to 90 hours a week running a gas station and convenience store. He studied accounting at Marshall University and worked for a decade before moving to the coal industry in 1982, when he was hired by a Massey subsidiary. He won his reputation waging a battle against the United Mine Workers to de-unionize a mine. Blankenship won the PR battle after the dispute turned violent. Many credit his victory as the beginning of a national downtown for the UMW that continues to this day.
As he rose through the ranks at Massey, Blankenship built a reputation as an aggressive capitalist, always looking to cut costs, squeeze competitors, and press his advantage by whatever means necessary. By 1992 he was named president and chair of the board for Massey, and by 2000 he became CEO.
Massey became the largest coal producer in Appalachia and the fourth largest in the U.S. Under Blankenship, the company aggressively pursued mountaintop removal, ripping apart landscapes to get at the coal buried beneath. As environmentalists squealed in protest, Blankenship labeled them “greeniacs” and began speaking out against them, helping innovate some of the talking points still used today by Appalachian politicians offended by the “war on coal.” Not coincidentally, Blankenship took an interest in Republican politics and helped start West Virginia’s tilt toward the GOP — a move that the aforementioned “war,” and President Obama’s unpopularity within the region, accelerated.
Blankenship’s strongarm tactics, however, didn’t win him notoriety as “The Dark Lord of Coal Country” until Hugh Caperton, who ran a small mining company, took Massey to court, alleging that it had twisted the law to force his company into bankruptcy. When the jury awarded Caperton $50 million, Blankenship’s legal team appealed the ruling to the West Virginia Supreme Court.
While the case straggled to its hearing, Blankenship took advantage of the fact that West Virginia elects its judges, spending $3 million to help a Republican challenger unseat a Democratic incumbent on the West Virginia Supreme Court, shifting its make-up in his favor. Despite Blankenship’s hefty investment, the newly elected judge declined to recuse himself and was part of a 3-2 majority that overturned the original jury decision. After photos emerged of another supreme court justice wining and dining with Blankenship on the French Riviera, the case was kicked up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which called for a redo. Despite that outcome, Blankenship somehow still won out, and Massey never did have to pay the $50 million originally awarded.
All of this created the impression that Blankenship was somehow above the law,especially in a state with an economy so reliant on coal. That impression was strengthened after the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, as four-and-a-half years passed with no legal repercussions for Blankenship. That ended with November’s indictment.
While prosecutors and the defense continue their fencing match in Blankenship’s criminal trial, he remains active in other court cases too. Last month, he sued Alpha Natural Resources, the company that bought out Massey in 2011 (but only after Blankenship retired as CEO the prior year). Blankenship’s suit alleges that Alpha agreed to pay for the cost of his legal defense in the criminal trial, only to renege on that promise in January.
That previous agreement led to one of the zingers filed by prosecutors in early December, when they noted that Blankenship “has been able to hire the crème de la crème of criminal defense counsel.”
We’ll see whether that crème de la crème of criminal defense teams can keep Blankenship from seeing the inside of a prison cell once his trial begins next month — if it’s not delayed further.
==
whoohoo, bit odd in war on coal bs rhet?
AlterNet [1] / By Cliff Weathers [2]
CEO of Coal Mine Where 29 Workers Died Is Indicted
November 14, 2014 |
Don Blankenship, the CEO of the Massey Energy coal mine that exploded and killed 29 workers in 2010 has been indicted on charges that he conspired to violate federal mine safety and health standards.
The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury in Charleston, West Virginia, says that Blankenship hid safety violations at the West Virginia mine between January 2008 and April 2010, when the disaster took place. The suppressing of the safety violations impeded a federal mine safety investigation following the blast, the indictment alleges.
Blankenship can face 31 years in prison if convicted.
The four-count indictment [3], filed in U.S. District Court includes conspiracy to violate mandatory federal mine safety and health standards, conspiracy to impede federal mine safety standards, securities fraud, making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and impeding the post-explosion inquiry of federal mine safety investigators. Three of the charges are felonies and one is a misdemeanor.
“It’s an important day for many, many families in the Central Appalachian coal fields,” said Bruce Stanley, an attorney representing the widows of the miners who died in the blast. “For the first time in my memory, the CEO of a major coal producer is being held criminally accountable for the atrocious conduct that occurred on his watch.”
Calling Blankenship “as criminally culpable as any mass murderer,” labor and environmental activists have been calling for the former Massey CEO to face legal consequences since soon after the blast, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had actively defended him. Massey was a director of the Chamber of Commerce at the time.
The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster was the worst in the United States since 1970. The Mine Safety and Health Administration released its final report in December, 2011, which was that flagrant safety violations by Massey Energy contributed to a coal dust explosion. The MSHA issued 369 citations, assessing $10.8 million in federal penalties. Alpha Natural Resources, the company that acquired Massey in 2011 for $7.1 billion, later settled all corporate criminal liabilities for $209 million. Blankenship is not associated the current management.
Alpha Natural Resources announced that it would close the Upper Big Branch Mine in 2012.
See more stories tagged with:
coal mining [5],
west virginia [6],
worker safety [7]
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/ceo-coal-mine-where-29-workers-died-indicted
Links:
[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/cliff-weathers
[3] http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20141113/GZ01/141119629#sthash.9VgARQ9v.dpuf
[4] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on CEO of Coal Mine Where 29 Workers Died Is Indicted
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/coal-mining
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/west-virginia
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/worker-safety
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
==
Wellpoint was one of the insurance companies that funneled $86 million to the Chamber last year. Other Chamber CEOs stand to benefit: JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon stands to gain about $1.1 million annually if the tax cuts are extended; Don Blankenship, former Chamber board member and (recently resigned) CEO of Massey Energy, stands to gain about three quarters of a million dollars each year that the Bush tax cuts are extended.28 It stands to reason that the Chamber is working hard to protect the CEOs of some
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price of justice laurence leamer
pricejustice
12/18/2013
6k workers, 40 mil tons coal /yr p 14 28 yrs at massey
survival of fittest = most productive
massey bought United, sub-cvo Wellmore had longterm contract to buy Harmon coal, but DB decidedd too $, Caperton wartne not to sue by DB, but won 50 mil$ Boone cty WV. before appeal, DB spent 3 mil $ to elect brent d benjamin jusge (1 of 39 states that elect) p 15 also japan ans swirzerland; $ 2x 8 yrs before n elections; big % 40% 15 DB #1 by far anywhere? 15
Ted O pal of scalia and chf just JRoberts 17; took cap case b/c of 4th wife lady booth demo?, image makeover 17
coal co's used cts to prevent miners from marching or even meeting in a church 35
100k miners kia, more than VN and Korea 35 1940 130k miners, by 97 20K p 35
we spend a mil/mo on lawyers" cap offered to settle for 6 when owed 17m$, DB didled for mos, then walked, had to default so ut of biz
took over M 1991, fired 12%,ended retirement rx for new hires49
db born? 6 mi from matewan 1920, next eat 100 kia Blair Mtn
2000 fluor spun off massey, so no oversight
elliot spike maynard judge mingo
2000 massey spill 230 mil gal coal slurry in E kty 3 others too
made 200m$ 1999 to 1 mil loss 2001? 154 fines
db could afford to pay caperton off, but had to win
sup ct appels WV progressive: starcher cherry bomb dad was to send to ref school but teachers got him 2nd chance, felt sorry for kid accused of molestation 205
USCoC war on judges 2003 100M$ 3 yrs 198 target McGraw (trial lawyers)
july 2004 DB meets pol ops Gregory Alan Thomas,
WV maj dems and historically as liberal as Mass denied gore 5 votes, coal fired victory, looking for payback in mtntop 210
DB 527 "and for the Sake of the Kids' 212 davis set up? let child rapist go free to work in our school ads Robin Jean Davis wrote both maj opinion and dissent/ 218 3m$ = 60% got 90% of vote; DB said he spend 4m$ to get starcher next time
maynard partied on riviera w/ 42 yo paraleglal
starcher wrote in jrnl decided now 75M caperton case in less 60secs; benj and maynard pals and robin kiss butt for her husb.
ted o intersted in recusal
stanley tied to nullify maynrd vote
nyt do sammuels taunted to scotus on recusal 304 kennedy, steven, souter gins and breyer rule w/345 kennedy swing vote
11/09 sup ct appeal w v rejected cap 3rd time, now 4-1
apr 5 2010 upper big branch, cited 3K x since 95, twice on day of expl 356, rahall heard probs 2 mos before; bobby ray inman w/ DB for press conf (aslo ex head mine safety Suboleski appt by b2 357 inman attacked press.
Rawl Sales dumped 1.4 billion gal into mine shaft; ppl got sick; DB ran pvt water supply 359
1972 slurry spill kia 118 ppl
dr thot meth b/c one tooth left, but water manganese 360
july 2010 db press conf rant marathon, bd fired/ quit dec 2010 10 mil salary, 40 mil retirement, 15 mil assorted (p 370) office and sec 5 yrs...1965 chevy pickup
competitonist www
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new book http://www.amazon.com/Price-Justice-Story-Greed-Corruption/dp/0805094717/ref=la_B000APIQUQ_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372024100&sr=1-1#reader_0805094717
The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed a… by Laurence Leamer
Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal
Peter A. Galuszka (Author) http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250000211/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_2#reader_1250000211
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2007
Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future
Jeff Goodell
==
Coal River
Michael Shnayerson http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374125147/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_1#reader_0374125147
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forbes 2009 interview : http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/28/massey-coal-environment-business-washington-blankenship_print.html
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Don “Blank-Check” Blankenship has spent $5 million getting his coal cronies into the WV Supreme courts and state legislature, or at least trying to, as in the last election, 39 of the 40 candidates he funded lost. Blankenship’s company Massey has a history of union busting, safety violations and violating water pollution standards more than 4500 times over six years.
:{:{}:
}:
Massey was recently subject to a 2.4 billion fine for said water violations, but only had to pay $20 million of that. Massey’s subsidiary in Martin County, Kentucky was responsible for the “biggest environmental disaster in the history of the southeast” when 250 million gallons of toxic sludge were released. Luckily, Blankenship has friends in high places, as he was recently documented vacationing in Monaco with WV Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard.
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pals:
Coal Country
Coal Country premeired on The Discovery Network in the fall of 2009
Billionaire Jim Justice vows to allow water taken from Greenbriar Golf Resort, and food from their garden… if someone from the government would only come to pick it up.
I wanted to write in to this blog to tell about how billionaire Jim Justice is seen here telling everyone how lucky the locals are near the Greenbriar Golf resort, as utilities were restored quickly. And how his resort has plenty of water to give to the disaster efforts as well as food from their Greenbriar Garden. The only problem was that he needed the government to send trucks and make it happen. Let me ask you… what would Ross Perot do? Organize a rescue mission maybe?
Now I don’t know if you might feel the same way I do, but given that people and children are starving without water in 100+ degree heat, if I had a billion dollars at my disposal, I’d probably have more to say about what I was personally going to do to help my home state of West Virginia. But, hey… golf has to go on no matter what. Right?
By the way: More on the PGA classic party going on in the midst of a food and water and gas shortage…: “People need to know the real story behind Jim Justice. Jim Justice and his buddy Joe Manchin worked out a deal so Jim Justice could buy the Greenbrier resort for a bargain price. Part of the deal involved a union strike when Governor Manchin had responsibility to respond to the demands of the striking workers. Manchin allowed the value of the resort to deteriorate so Justice could buy it at a bargain price. Justice sold his Bluestone coal company to the Russians around the same time. Now Jim Justice is hiding as a criminal coal operator with close ties to Don Blankenship as he puts on a show for the world at his Greenbrier Glassic PGA Tour Golf event.”
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BEAVER, W.Va. — Money – even a lot of it – is cold comfort to some relatives of the 29 men who died in the worst mining disaster in decades. They want justice, the kind that comes with a courtroom and a prison cell.
The families listened in shock Tuesday as federal prosecutors announced the biggest settlement in a U.S. coal mining disaster with the new owners of the Upper Big Branch mine. The former owner, Massey Energy, had been accused of putting profits ahead of safety, soAlpha Natural Resources agreed to pay nearly $210 million, with checks of $500,000 headed to the grieving families before Christmas.
Federal regulators explained how thedeal wiped the slate clean for some 370 safety violationsrelated to the April 5, 2010, explosion, the worst U.S. mine disaster in four decades. Though the Mine Safety and Health Administration also pledged to review its own handling of the mine, the words failed to placate. No criminal charges were announced.
"It was an act of murder," declared an angry Clay Mullins, whose brother Rex was among those killed. "They murdered 29 men, and I'm not satisfied one bit."
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possible loss of charter http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/massey-energy-beau-biden-revoke-corporate-charter_n_874358.html
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CEO of Massey Energy Company. Blankenship is also on the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce.
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/massey-energy-don-blankenship-million-dolla
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Blankenship — whose $23.7 million annual compensation includes the use of the company jet and helicopter and a mansion with several servants— has made no effort to hide his “radical” philosophy of unfettered capitalism. He explained this philosophy most clearly in a 1986 documentary by Anne Lewis on his role crushing the union miners at Massey’s Blackberry Creek mine, saying that “everybody’s going to have to learn to accept” that the United States is ruled by the law of “survival of the fittest”:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/11/flashback-don-blankenship-warned-west-virginia-that-he-believes-in-survival-of-the-fittest/
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CBS) A government whistle-blower says the Bush administration covered up the reasons for a toxic coal slurry spill in Appalachia that ranks among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. [6]
Jack Spadaro tells Correspondent Bob Simon that political appointees in the Department of Labor whitewashed a report that said an energy company that had contributed to the Republican Party was responsible for the 300-million gallon spill.
Simon's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Spadaro was until recently the head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy and played a key role in investigating the spill, which was 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.
"It polluted 100 miles of streams, killing everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River," says Spadaro of the October 2000 spill that affected West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.
"The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened. I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career...interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States."
Spadaro says his investigation found Massey Energy, the owner of the impoundment containing the viscous and toxic liquid, knew the containment was weak, and in fact, had leaked once before. The company was going to be cited for serious violations that could have resulted in large fines and criminal charges, Spadaro says.
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3/11 security chief indicted http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/massey-energy-company
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dangerous to speculate on intention, but Blankenship seems to have more instrumental than ideological reasons for Tea party affiliation? //koch vs scaife
forced to quit by board/fund that held stock
--
massey #4
trips to riviera w. chief justice (eliot spike maynard) brent benjamin 1st gop in decades
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I doubt anyone will face any criminal liability at all for the deaths of 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch mine, owned by Massey Energy and its dictatorial CEO, Don Blankenship. (Blankenship, if you’ll recall, spent more than $3 million of his own money to defeat a West Virginia Supreme Court justice who was expected to rule against his firm in a $50 million case, by accusing the justice of sympathizing with child molesters.) In the unlikely event someone at Massey is convicted of bribing mine-safety officials, it certainly won’t be Blankenship: no doubt he kept himself well insulated.
But at a Congressional hearing today, miners from Upper Big Branch testified that it was Massey policy to cover up mine safety violations and to fire workers who pointed them out. Of course, they couldn’t complain to their union: Blankenship had defeated all organizing attempts by the simple tactic of promising to shut down any mine where the workers voted to exercise their legal right – internationally recognized as a human right – to bargain collectively.
Last year Blankenship earned – or at least was paid – $17.8 million, which was somewhat more than the $12 million Massey had to pay in fines for mine-safety violations. That works out to more than $600,000 for each of the men who were killed due to the illegal practices of the company he runs.
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legal:
I’ll start with Rolling Stone’s description of Don Blankenship:
The country’s highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office,” Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. “He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”
...
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.
Blankenship and Massey Energy spend millions to defend unsafe workplaces
Even while coal dust settles on nearby schoolchildren, there are lessons to learn from this disaster about Massey Energy in general, and Don Blankenship in particular.
It seems that Performance Coal's safety record is spotty, at best. From the Mississippi Business Journal:
Massey ranks among the nation’s top five coal producers and is among the industry’s most profitable. It has a spotty safety record.
The federal mine safety administration fined Massey a then-record $1.5 million for 25 violations that inspectors concluded contributed to the deaths of two miners trapped in a fire in January 2006. The company later settled a lawsuit naming it, several subsidiaries and Chief Executive Don Blankenship as defendants. Aracoma Coal Co. later paid $2.5 million in fines after the company pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges in the fire.
Massey and Blankenship also settled a lawsuit brought by the Manville Trust in 2007 with regard to workplace safety and environmental compliance.
The Manville Trust filed the case in July 2007 against company Chairman, CEO, and President Don Blankenship and certain other current and former officers and directors. The plaintiff sought several corporate governance reforms, specifically regarding environmental compliance and worker safety. Citing several incidents involving Massey Energy, including a major federal water pollution lawsuit, penalties for two coal miners' tragic deaths and other safety and environmental compliance problems, the lawsuit claimed that a "conscious failure" by the defendants to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations and other legal obligations posed a "substantial threat of monetary liability for violations."
Keep unions out, let teabaggers in
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.
I hope those families take a large pound of flesh from him in return.
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http://workinprogress.firedoglake.com/2010/04/06/who-is-don-blankenship/
Who is Don Blankenship? Massey CEO Has Much Explain in Wake of West Virginia Coal Mine Disaster
By: Michael Whitney Tuesday April 6, 2010 2:23 p
Don Blankenship is CEO of Massey Energy, the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine that exploded yesterday, killing at least 25 miners with four still missing in the mine. Blankenship is well known as a right-wing crackpot and global warming denier, but I want to paint just a brief picture with regard to this disaster. I’ll start with Rolling Stone’s description of Don Blankenship:
The country’s highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office,” Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. “He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”
In late 2005, Blankenship issued a memo to company employees instructing supervisers to “ignore” any directive except to “run coal,” because “coal pays the bills.” That apparently included safety measures to protect the workers who help Blankenship “pay the bills.” This amazing graph from Brad Johnson at Think Progress shows that Blankenship’s employees got the memo. Violations skyrocketed at Massey mines, but most notably at the Upper Big Branch Mine as illustrated below.
Graph via Think Progress
Brad Johnson gives some more context to these numbers:
Massey is now contesting $1,128,833 in fines for safety violations at the deadly Upper Big Branch-South Mine, with a further $246,320 in delinquent fines:
Over $2.2 million in fines have been assessed against Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine since 1995, with $791,327 paid. Massey is contesting $1,128,833 in fines. Massey’s delinquent fines total $246,320. [MSHA]
Massey is contesting $251,613 in fines for citations for Upper Big Branch-South Mine’s ventilation plan. [MSHA]
Not that that should phase Blankenship. Mike Lillis at Washington Independent finds a 2003 quote that shows just how little Blankenship cares for his own damn employees.
Over the two years through 2001 Massey was cited by West Virginia officials for violating regulations 501 times. Its three biggest rivals, mining twice as much coal in the state as Massey, were cited a collective 175 times. [CEO Don] Blankenship says Massey is unfairly targeted by regulators.
“We don’t pay much attention to the violation count,” he says.
Blankenship has a day of reckoning coming, or at least he better. As Jeff Biggers, author of several books on coal mining disasters, wrote at HuffPost this morning: “All coal mining safety laws have been written in miners’ blood.” One can only hope there’s an indictment for Blankenship written in the same blood that he spilled.
Oh, and for good measure, Attaturk finds this video that sums up the entirety of the mess that is Don Blankenship.
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Blankenship has called opponents of his coalocratic worldview “communists,” “atheists,” and “greeniacs.” In reality, dependence on coal breeds the same kind of economic instability and injustice seen in petrodictatorships. Fossil fuels, requiring capital-intensive extraction and rewarding centralized control of distribution, reward oligarchic power structures that are profoundly anti-democratic. Furthermore, when the costs of pollution are borne by society instead of the coal and oil corporations, the divide between the economic costs and benefits grows wider.
The coal-dominated economy of West Virginia is a troubling example of the cruelty of coalocracy. Despite $118 million in coal-mining annual income, West Virginia has the nation’s lowest median household income, worst educational services, worst social assistance, the highest population with disabilities, and nearly a quarter of West Virginia children in poverty. A recent study by West Virginia University found that the “human cost of the Appalachian coal mining economy outweighs its economic benefits”:
The coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region. But, they put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at — by a most conservative estimate — $42 billion.
If Blankenship, who sits on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also tweeted that a cap and trade system is a “Ponzi scheme.” If Blankenship truly believed in the power of the free market and cheap energy to lift up democracies, he would support closing coal pollution loopholes — putting a true value on the majesty and diversity of Appalachia’s mountains instead of blowing them up, and putting a price on the carbon pollution that is destabilizing our climate. Instead, he and his fellow right-wing coalocrats are the Charles Ponzis of the entire planet.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/07/27/blankenship-coalocracy/
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Views
At a public speech to the Tug Valley Mining Institute on Nov 20, 2008, Blankenship called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid and former Vice President Al Gore "crazies" and "greeniacs."[25] In the same speech, he also stated, "I don't believe climate change is real."[26] He associated President Jimmy Carter's support for energy conservation in the 1970s with communism: "Buy a smaller car? Conserve? I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia and China, and that's the first stage."
In a letter to the editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette dated Oct. 30, 2009 Blankenship denied that climate change, or "global warming," existed, and stated: "Why should we trust a report by the United Nations? The United Nations includes countries like Venezuela, North Korea and Iran." [27]
At a 2009 Labor Day pro-coal rally in West Virginia,[28] Blankenship expressed his true views on the role of the federal government and state authorities in ensuring miner safety:[29]
"We also endure a Mine Safety and Health Administration that seeks power over coal miners versus improving their safety and their health. As someone who has overseen the mining of more coal than anyone else in the history of central Appalachia, I know that the safety and health of coal miners is my most important job. I don’t need Washington politicians to tell me that, and neither do you. But I also know — I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming".
Controversy
Warren McGraw
Washington political journalist Michael Tomasky, himself a native West Virginian, claimed that Blankenship was "famous in West Virginia as the man who successfully bought himself a State Supreme Court Justice in 2004 and then tried to buy himself the state legislature, failing spectacularly at the latter effort."[30] Tomasky wrote:
“ The Justice he succeeded in having replaced in 2004 was Warren McGraw. McGraw was up for reelection in 2004, and Blankenship wanted him out. That McGraw had sided with workers was not likely to stir much passionate opposition, so Blankenship found a case in which McGraw had been part of a 3–2 majority that had freed a mentally disturbed child molester who then went to work in a school. Blankenship established and funded an independent tax-deductible group called "And for the Sake of the Kids," which ran ads attacking McGraw's part in the decision. McGraw was defeated, and Brent Benjamin, the conservative candidate took his seat on the court. To demonstrate that his interest in the children was sincere, Blankenship had vowed that after the election, he would endow a foundation to help the state's needy children.[30] ”
Michael Shnayerson, in his book Coal River (2008), reports that no such foundation was ever set up and that Blankenship's tactics didn't help other Republicans in the state. In 2006, the $3 million that he had provided to forty Republican challengers to Democratic state legislators brought just a single victory.[31] Although Blankenship was the primary donor to "And For the Sake of Kids," other groups, including Doctors for Justice, contributed over $1 million to ASK. Another group, Citizens for Quality Health Care, which was funded in part by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, spent over $350,000 to defeat McGraw. [32]. Meanwhile, several groups spent millions opposing Benjamin and supporting McGraw, including West Virginia Consumers for Justice and Hugh Caperton, CEO of Harmon Development Corporation.[33]
[edit] Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.
Main article: Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.
As of April of 2010, Massey had a $77 million case pending, Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co. in which a smaller coal mining company, Harman Mining, made allegations of contract interference on Massey's part.[34] In November of 2008, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear Harman Mining's appeal of the case.[35] Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Common Cause and Public Citizen all filed briefs in the case urging the Supreme Court to throw out the West Virginia Supreme Court's decision in favor of Massey. The corporations contended that Justice Brent Benjamin was biased in the case--specifically, in favor of Massey. Blankenship made approximately $3 million in independent expenditures against McGraw, the incumbent judge in the 2004 campaign for the West Va. Supreme Court, and only contributed $1000 to Benjamin's campaign. On June 9, 2009, The New York Times opined that the case involved "egregious ethical myopia" on the part of Justice Benjamin. [36] [37].
Following the decision, many legal scholars disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision: "If the U.S. Supreme Court rules that an 'appearance of impropriety' such as to require recusal by a judge may be determined by forces external to the judge's own conscience...it will place our system on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries." [38]
[edit] Photographer incident
On April 3, 2008, ABC News reported that Blankenship attacked an ABC News photographer at a Massey facility near Belfry, Kentucky as the photographer attempted to question Blankenship about photos published in the New York Times [20] showing Blankenship on vacation in Monaco with West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard. "If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot!" Blankenship stated in the video.[39] HMMN
Following the incident, Justice Maynard lost his bid for re-election to the West Virginia Supreme Court in the West Virginia primary election.[40]
Upper Big Branch disaster
Main article: Upper Big Branch Mine disaster
On April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 miners. It was the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since 1970, when an explosion killed 38 in Hyden, Kentucky. In 2006, a fatal accident at Aracoma Alma (also owned by Massey Coal Co.) was one of the explosions prompting Congress to upgrade federal mine safety laws for the first time since 1977.[41] As Blankenship came under increased scrutiny, a Business Week article said that he has a reputation for resistance to spending money, a willingness to litigate, and to personally go into mines to persuade workers to abandon union organizing efforts.[42] On April 12, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the sole trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund which holds 303,550 shares of Massey stock worth about $14.1 million, called for Blankenship to resign immediately. "Massey's cavalier attitude toward risk and callous disregard for the safety of its employees has exacted a horrible cost on dozens of hard-working miners and their loved ones," DiNapoli said in a public statement reported by Reuters and others. "This tragedy was a failure both of risk management and effective board oversight. Blankenship must step down and make room for more responsible leadership at Massey."[43] On April 22, Massey Energy's lead independent director Bobby R. Inman announced that "Blankenship has the full support and confidence of the Massey Energy Board of Directors."[44] On April 25, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and state officials paid tribute to the 29 coal miners at a memorial service in Beckley, WV[45]
[edit] Other
A former employee of Blankenship, Deborah May, similarly filed a lawsuit which claimed that stress from personal abuse forced her to quit her job as Blankenship's personal maid in November of 2005. The lawsuit claimed that such comparatively minor mistakes as a wrong breakfast order from McDonald's, misplaced ice cream in the freezer, and an improperly hung jacket in the closet caused difficulties with Blankenship.[46] In June 2008, West Virginia's top court ruled that May was entitled to unemployment benefits because "the unrefuted evidence" showed that Blankenship "physically grabbed" the maid, threw food after she brought back the wrong fast-food order, and tore a tie rack and coat hanger out of a closet after she forgot to leave the hanger out for his coat. "This shocking conduct" showed May was in effect fired because she felt compelled to quit, the justices said. They said the conduct was "reminiscent of slavery and is an affront to common decency.":[47]
In 2005, Blankenship wrote a memo to employees telling them that maximizing coal production was more important than spending time constructing things like support beams or ventilation shafts:[48]
“ If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal. ”
In October 2006, Grist.org, Seattle-based environmental e-magazine, chose Blankenship as "the scariest polluter in the U.S."[49]
[edit] References
^ "Major U.S. Coal Producers". Energy Information Administration. September 18, 2009. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/acr/table10.html. Retrieved April 7, 2010.
^ "The Kingmaker, part 1 of 5". YouTube. 2005-11-03. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykNMQZXfc_0&feature=related. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ Berkes, Howard. "Massey CEO's Pay Soared As Mine Concerns Grew". NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126072828&ps=cprs. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ "The Massey mine disaster isn't just tragic, it's criminal". OregonLive.com. 2010-04-15. http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/04/the_massey_mine_disaster_isnt.html. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ Parker, Mario (2010-12-03). "Massey's Blankenship to Retire Dec. 30, Be Replaced by President Phillips". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-03/massey-energy-says-don-blankenship-to-retire-as-chief-executive-dec-30.html. Retrieved 2010-12-03.
^ "Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition". Ohvec.org. http://www.ohvec.org/links/news/archive/2003/fair_use/01_07.html. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ Deborah Solomon (2006-02-13). "A Coal CEO's Unusual Pastime: Firing Up West Virginia Politics". The Wall Street Journal, page A1. http://www.stopdown.net/gov%20W%20VA%20coal%20exec%20wsj.htm. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
^ "Blankenship to speak at energy symposium". The Herald Dispatch. 2008-10-23. http://www.herald-dispatch.com/business/x802979294/Blankenship-to-speak-at-energy-symposium. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ a b "ON THE RECORD: Don Blankenship, Massey's Don Blankenship talks candidly about his company and its future in southern West Virginia | North America > United States from". AllBusiness.com. 2002-09-23. http://www.allbusiness.com/environment-natural-resources/environmentalism/11428264-1.html. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
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^ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=658508&symbol=MEE o http://www.wvec.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8E477907.html
^ a b Don L. Blankenship. "Don Blankenship: Executive Profile & Biography - BusinessWeek". Investing.businessweek.com. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=658508&symbol=MEE. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ "Horsehead Industries, Inc. - Company History". Fundinguniverse.com. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Horsehead-Industries-Inc-Company-History.html. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=658508&symbol=MEE o http://www.uschamber.com/about/board/all.htm
^ "Corporate Governance || Massey Energy". Phx.corporate-ir.net. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/preview/phoenix.zhtml?c=102864&p=irol-govBio&ID=140028. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ a b [3][dead link]
^ http://www.blankenshipracing.com/
^ a b Liptak, Adam (2008-01-15). "Motion Ties W. Virginia Justice to Coal Executive". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/us/15court.html.
^ Liptak, Adam (2009-02-15). "Case May Alter Judge Elections Across Country". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/washington/15scotus.html?ref=washington.
^ "Don L. Blankenship Addresses the U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Caperton v. A.T. Massey...". Reuters. 2009-06-10. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS159711+10-Jun-2009+PRN20090610. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ a b "Usatoday.Com". Usatoday.Com. 2009-03-02. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090303/editorial03_st.art.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ "Community || Massey Energy Company". Massey Energy. http://www.masseyenergyco.com/community/groups.shtml. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ "The Big Lies Of Big Coal: Don Blankenship Speaks". YouTube. 2008-12-10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M_XbeXDNnM. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ "Big Coal, Big Lies #1: Climate change does not exist". YouTube. 2008-12-09. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEl7dF8N-ZU&e. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ http://www.wvgazette.com/Opinion/Letters/200910290659
^ "Friends of America Rally". Friends of America Rally. 2009-09-07. http://friendsofamericarally.com/. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ "Don Blankenship called safety regulators “as silly as global warming” « Climate Progress". Climateprogress.org. 2010-04-12. http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/12/don-blankenship-mine-safety-regulators-silly-global-warming/. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ a b Tomasky, Michael, “Night Comes to the Appalachians” New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 14; 25 September 2008.
^ Shnayerson, Michael (2008), Coal River, New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
^ Nyden, Paul (Jan. 7, 2005, Charleston Gazette), "Coal, Doctor's Groups Donated to Anti-McGraw Effort."
^ O'Brien, John (West Virginia Record Jan. 24, 2008) "Caperton was Anti-Benjamin from the Start."
^ http://wvgazette.com/News/200811080381
^ US Supreme Court agrees to hear Massey Energy case | http://www.coaloutlook.com/Coal/News/6020386.xml
^ "Honest Justice". The New York Times. 2009-06-09. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09tue1.html.
^ [4][dead link]
^ http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/200902090107
^ "Coal Boss: If You Take Photos, 'You're Liable to Get Shot' - ABC News". Abcnews.go.com. 2008-04-03. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4582452&page=1. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ Urbina, Ian (2008-05-15). "West Virginia's Top Judge Loses His Re-election Bid". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/us/15judge.html?pagewanted=print.
^ "Churchgoers Honor 29 Dead Miners _ and Profession - ABC News". Abcnews.go.com. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10343122. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ "Massey’s Blankenship Fought Regulators, Town, Maid as Coal CEO". BusinessWeek. 2010-04-10. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-10/massey-s-blankenship-fought-regulators-town-maid-as-coal-ceo.html. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ Steve James (2010-04-13). "Massey faces shareholder anger over mine disaster". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63C2Q920100413. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ Coal Boss Don Blankenship Has Full Support of Massey Energy Board
^ Obama eulogizes 29 West Virginia miners -- 'Don't let this happen again'
^ http://dailymail.com/News/Kanawha/200804010144
^ Margaret Cronin Fisk, Brian K. Sullivan and Karen Freifeld. "Massey Energy: The Accountant of Coal". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_17/b4175048798671.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-15.
^ Investing Daily. "Massey Energy: A Dirty Coal Company". Investingdaily.com. http://www.investingdaily.com/id/17176/massey-energy-a-dirty-coal-company.html. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
^ "Massey Energy CEO is a really bad dude". Grist. http://www.grist.org/article/don-blankenship-seventh-scariest-person-in-america/. Retrieved 2010-04-07.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Blankenship"
Categories: 1950 births | Businesspeople in coal | Coal mining in the United States | Businesspeople from West Virginia | Living people | People from Mingo County, West Virginia | Massey Energy | West Virginia Republicans
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The Supreme Court talks about judicial bias. Kinda.
By Dahlia LithwickPosted Monday, June 8, 2009, at 6:53 PM
Sonia Sotomayor.
Today the Supreme Court decided the odd, Grisham-like story of Caperton v. Massey—finding that a justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court should have recused himself in an appeal involving a party who spent millions of dollars to put him on the bench. But lost in all the high-power judgery is this fascinating fact: Both the majority and the dissent are pretty worried about judicial bias, the appearance of judicial bias, confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and what to do about public confidence in human-seeming judges. These are precisely the issues Judge Sonia Sotomayor has openly grappled with in her now-controversial speeches about race, gender, and judging. Indeed, if you read the opinion and the dissent in Caperton alongside Sotomayor's famous 2001 Berkeley speech, you can't help but see that she was merely giving voice to the same judicial anxieties aired by the justices today. So perhaps instead of accusing her of racism, bias, and generalized unfitness to judge, we should recognize that she, like her soon-to-be-colleagues at the Supreme Court, understands that talking about bias aloud is ultimately better than whispering about it from the shadows.
In his opinion for the five-judge majority today, Justice Anthony Kennedy—who was more or less born to author this opinion, touching as it does on Big Issues and Public Sensibilities—lays out the "extraordinary situation" in the case: In August 2002, a West Virginia jury returned a verdict finding A.T. Massey Coal Co. liable to the tune of $50 million for fraudulent misrepresentation, concealment, and tortious interference with contractual relations against Hugh Caperton and Harman Development Corp. While the appeal was still pending, Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, spent $3 million of his own money to remove one state supreme court justice and seat another—his contributions amounting to more than two-thirds of all the funds raised. Brent Benjamin won the election, then refused to recuse himself from Blankenship's appeal, ultimately casting a vote in favor of Massey in a 3-2 verdict overturning the $50 million jury verdict.
Justice Benjamin insisted he did nothing wrong in refusing to remove himself from the case, having searched his own soul and motivations and determined that he had no "direct, personal, substantial, pecuniary interest in this case," and the Supreme Court today declined to second-guess him. The Supreme Court disagreed, however, that the test for recusal stops at the judge's own perceptions of his bias, recognizing that "there is a serious risk of actual bias—based on objective and reasonable perceptions—when a person with a personal stake in a particular case had a significant and disproportionate influence in placing the judge on the case by raising funds or directing the judge's election campaign when the case was pending or imminent." The majority concluded that in this case, "Blankenship's campaign efforts had a significant and disproportionate influence in placing Justice Benjamin on the case." After today, "the probability of bias" is the new constitutional test....
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The Dark Lord of Coal Country
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-dark-lord-of-coal-country-20101129?print=true
...
For the past two decades, Don Blankenship has been the undisputed king of coal in West Virginia. Other Big Coal CEOs who operate in Appalachia are business-school types who have offices in other states and leave the dirty work to their minions. Blankenship, by contrast, is a rich hillbilly who believes that God put coal in the ground so that he could mine it, and anyone — or any law — that stands in his way needs to be beaten down, bought off or tied up in court. Blankenship is hated, feared and respected, but nobody wants to tangle with him. "He's a throwback to the old coal barons of the 19th century," says Cecil Roberts, the head of the United Mine Workers of America, who has battled Blankenship for nearly 30 years.
From a strictly business point of view, it's hard to argue with Blankenship's success: He has taken a sleepy old coal company and built it into the most powerful economic and political machine in Appalachia. Massey Energy and its subsidiaries operate 56 mines in the region, employing nearly 6,000 workers and producing some 40 million tons of coal a year. Even after the disaster at Upper Big Branch hammered the company's stock, it's still worth about $4 billion. To the degree that West Virginia's future is tied to coal, it is also tied to Blankenship: His company owns more than a third of the remaining coal reserves in the region.
Blankenship has never hidden the fact that, when it comes to mining coal, he'll do whatever it takes to make a buck. "It's like a jungle, where a jungle is survival of the fittest," he told a documentary filmmaker in the 1980s. "Unions, communities, people — everybody's gonna have to learn to accept that in the United States you have a capitalist society, and that capitalism, from a business standpoint, is survival of the most productive."
In Blankenship's view, being productive means getting coal out of the ground as fast and cheap as possible, no matter the cost to workers or the environment.
"He has been hugely influential in the coal industry in Appalachia," says a rival coal executive. "He basically transformed a gentlemanly, Democratic, union-based industry, where deals were done on a handshake, into the aggressive, partisan industry that we know today." Blankenship helped popularize the style of mining known as mountaintop removal, in which the mountains are removed from the coal, rather than the coal from the mountains — a practice that has destroyed 2,000 miles of streams and damaged more than a million acres of forest. He has fought labor unions and federal regulators at every turn, exposing miners to dangerous conditions. And he has injected toxic coal slurry near underground aquifers, a practice that has allegedly sickened hundreds of residents. "All in all, Blankenship has probably caused more suffering than any other human being in Appalachia," says Roberts.
A right-wing Republican in a traditionally Democratic state, Blankenship has also used his wealth and influence to go after anyone who opposes him. "Unlike the old coal barons, who mostly shunned the limelight, Blankenship is a very flamboyant character," says Robert Rupp, professor of political science at West Virginia Wesleyan College. When it comes to politics, Blankenship doesn't waste time twisting arms: Massey spent less than $20,000 on federal lobbying last year and has contributed only $300,000 to federal candidates since 1990. Instead, he goes for a more direct bang for his buck. He spent more than $3 million electing a state Supreme Court judge who would provide a favorable verdict in a lawsuit, funneled nearly $1 million into advertising this year to improve coal's image, and served on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, which has attacked the Obama administration for waging a "regulatory jihad" against coal.
...
At the time, Appalachia's coal industry faced increasing competition from big Western mines and from natural gas, which is cheaper and cleaner. To cut costs, Blankenship started blowing up mountains to get at the coal, since blasting is cheaper than digging. He also used Massey's financial strength to buy up smaller coal companies that were having a rough time, often at fire-sale prices. "Blankenship is a master at recognizing and taking advantage of distressed assets," says Bruce Stanley, a lawyer who grew up in Mingo County not far from Blankenship. In 1997, hoping to sell more of a special type of premium-priced coal used in steelmaking, Blankenship set his sights on a small outfit called Harman Mining.
First, Blankenship bought the company that processed Harman's coal and broke its contract with the smaller firm. "I didn't know it at the time, but his goal was to replace my coal with cheaper, lower-quality coal from his own mine," says Hugh Caperton, who served as president of Harman. Then, after offering to buy out Harman, Blankenship used information he had obtained during the negotiations to buy up the coal reserves around Harman's mine, effectively making the company unattractive to other buyers. "His goal was to drive me into bankruptcy, so he could buy me for nothing," Caperton says.
Caperton lost a company he had spent 10 years building, and his 150 employees lost their jobs. Not long afterward, Blankenship stopped in to see his vanquished rival. "It was one of the strangest conversations I've ever had," Caperton recalls. "He just walked into my office, and if I would have had a couch, he would have laid down on it. He said, 'I don't understand why people don't like me anymore. In high school, I played ball. I was really popular.'?" Then Blankenship abruptly stood up and left.
Despite Blankenship's power, Caperton decided to fight back. He sued Massey, arguing that the company had set out to destroy him. In 2002, a jury awarded Caperton $50 million in damages.
Blankenship was furious. "He took this fight personally," says Stanley, who represented Caperton in the case. "His whole persona is based on the idea that if you mess around with Don, he will take you to the wall." Massey appealed the verdict to the state's Supreme Court. But rather than trusting in the wisdom of the justice system, Blankenship tried to rig the outcome in his favor. In 2004, he spent $3 million — an enormous sum in West Virginia politics — to finance a political hit machine to take down Justice Warren McGraw, who was likely to serve as the swing vote in the court's decision. The group deployed every sleazy trick in the book, accusing McGraw of letting child rapists out of prison and putting them to work in local schools. The smear tactics worked: McGraw was defeated, replaced by an industry-friendly judge backed by Blankenship. In 2007, the court overturned the $50 million verdict against Blankenship by a vote of 3 to 2. His $3 million investment had saved him $47 million.
"Don didn't put $3 million into the election because he wanted a fair and balanced court system," says Robert Rupp, the political science professor. "He wanted to buy himself a favorable verdict."