Blankenship intentionally cut safety corners and it resulted in lost lives. He represents everything that is wrong in our society. EPA exists because of people like him.
Yes he is a real slime ball......what's even worse are the Democrat West Virginia government officials that allowed him to operate, they should all be in jail. But...that's no surprise to me since I've not been blind as to what was going on in our state for years and years.
"Upper Big Branch was the biggest catastrophe during Blankenship’s tenure, but it wasn’t the first. In the decade after Massey went public in 2000 with Blankenship at the helm, there were 54 fatalities at its mines, a dismal safety record that set the company apart from its competitors. Of those accidents, the one that offered the clearest warning of what was to come occurred in 2006 at a southern West Virginia site called the Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1. The facility bore several similarities to Upper Big Branch. Workers sometimes operated in flooded conditions and amid excessive amounts of combustible dust. They were under enormous pressure to produce. And they had no UMWA presence to press for safety improvements.
That January, a fire broke out in an underground storage unit. This was a common risk (it had happened before at Aracoma), which is why federal regulations require mines to adhere to strict fire safety codes. But the sprinklers didn’t work. Neither did one of the fire alarms. A carbon monoxide alarm hadn’t been installed. The emergency exits weren’t marked. And structures that would have contained the smoke within a confined area had been removed. After miners evacuated the chamber, 28 minutes passed before the rest of the mine was alerted. Meanwhile, the smoke spread to the designated escape passage. Two miners died when they were unable to flee fast enough. An Aracoma Coal Co. employee later testified that in his entire time at Alma Mine No. 1, the company never conducted a single fire drill.
In its official report on the fire, the MSHA detailed how Massey’s disregard for safety violations resulted in the tragedy: “In each case, no effective management system, policy or procedure was in place to assure compliance with the underlying regulations and safe mining practices,” the report declared. Included was a memo from Blankenship himself, directing all deep-mine superintendents to put aside safety projects and focus on moving product. “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 [ventilation] overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal,” he wrote. “This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills.” (Soon thereafter, Blankenship circulated a memo emphasizing Massey’s commitment to safety.) Aracoma pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges of mine safety violations in federal court and paid a $2.5 million fine. It also paid $1.7 million in civil penalties to the MSHA for “reckless disregard” of mine safety. Four Aracoma foremen pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, but a plea agreement prevented the Department of Justice from seeking charges against anyone at Massey. Blankenship, for his part, told a conservative talk show host that the miners probably died because they “panicked.” " - New Media
Which Democrats should we blame this on?