{"id":943,"date":"2017-05-12T14:18:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T18:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=943"},"modified":"2017-05-12T17:29:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T21:29:57","slug":"prison-rehabilitated-don-blankenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2017\/05\/12\/prison-rehabilitated-don-blankenship\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Prison Rehabilitated Don Blankenship?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Don Blankenship got out of jail this week<\/a> and instead of taking the path of penitence after a year of quiet contemplation, he went right back on the warpath.<\/p>\n

Blankenship, you may recall, was the CEO of Massey Energy who\u00a0was convicted in 2015 of a misdemeanor charge\u00a0of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards at Massey\u2019s Upper Big Branch Mine in southern West Virginia, where an April 2010 explosion killed 29 coal miners.<\/p>\n

Now he’s appealing his conviction to the Supreme Court, according to Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette<\/a>, who explains what all the fuss is about:<\/p>\n

Investigations by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Governor\u2019s Independent Investigation Panel, led by longtime mine safety advocate Davitt McAteer, the state Office of Miners Health, Safety and Training, and the United Mine Workers union agreed that the mine disaster was caused by a longtime pattern of safety violations by Massey and by Blankenship\u2019s insistence that the company put coal production and profits ahead of safety protections for miners.<\/p>\n

Despite the evidence assembled in the four investigations, Blankenship continues to insist on his innocence<\/a>\u00a0and that the explosion was an “Act of God,” insisting that an unavoidable inundation of natural gas — and not methane gas and excess coal dust\u00a0— caused the explosion. The reports dismissed that argument, as described here in a report from the United Mineworkers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the overall poor condition of the mine in general, it is not believable<\/em> that management personnel did not know that these conditions posed a substantial and immediate hazard to the miners and could possibly escalate into a catastrophic event,\u201d the report emphasized. \u201cMassey\u2019s knowledge of the hazardous conditions is confirmed by the practice at the mine of keeping two sets of record books. One set was for Massey\u2019s eyes only, that documented the actual conditions, and the other an official record which concealed the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report details the seemingly endless citations issued to the mine in the months and years leading up to the explosion. One month before the accumulated coal dust fueled the deadly blast, mine examiners reported the need for rock dust over 560 times, but management responded to only 65 of these. \u201cMSHA rock dust surveys demonstrate that Massey failed to maintain the incombustible content of the float coal dust at legal levels,\u201d the report also notes. In addition, West Virginia mine inspectors issued \u201cover a dozen violations for \u2018cleaning or rock-dusting\u2019 in the eight months of 2009 that an inspector was at the mine. Six additional violations were issued for these conditions in the first quarter of 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Blankenship should consider himself lucky for winning acquittal of felonies that could have put him in jail for 30 years, after one year in prison, he doesn’t seem to be repenting or contemplating\u00a0the error of his ways. \u00a0And worse, he seems to have gained a new role-model: Tweeter-in-Chief Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

In what the Huffington Post<\/a> called a “twitter meltdown,” Blankenship has fired off\u00a027 tweets in the last 2 1\/2 days, mostly criticizing former MSHA head Joe Main and challenging West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to a duel<\/del> debate about what caused the UBB explosion.<\/p>\n

\n

.@Sen_JoeManchin<\/a> .@Sen_JoeManchin<\/a> put politics over miner safety and truth. He uses families as political pawns. Shameful!!!!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Don Blankenship (@DonBlankenship) May 11, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n