“..who will be held accountable.”
Let’s see now – the list could get pretty interesting, in terms of who should be held accountable for this.
Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao. How much money has McConnell (yes, I know he’s KY, but he appears to be mining’s Big Dog) taken from mining interests since he’s been in the Senate? How much pressure did his wife, as the Labor Secretary, put on mining companies to make workplaces safer? How hard did her Labor Dept. fight to try to get Massey to pay their fines and ameliorate the safety issues? Obviously the answers to those questions are: Too much. And not enough.
Others on the list, include the entire roster:
Don Blankenship, CEO
Eric Tolbert, VP/CFO
David Owings, Controller
Board of Directors:
James Crawford
Robert Foglesong
Richard Gabrys
E. Gordon Gee
Bobby Inman
Lady Judge
Don Moore
Baxter Phillips, Jr., President (his salary, by the way is 1.36 million dollars a year)
Stanley Subuleski

“Now the process begins to figure out…who will be held accountable.”
Answer: In the U.S. of A. circa 2010…no one.
P.S. My prediction: hearings, hearings, more hearings. And lots of theater: finger wagging. Scolding. Frowns. Sad, emotional eulogies. And plenty of harsh words for the cameras. Then, once it’s all over…back to business as usual, with Blankenship getting a substantial bonus, and “contributions” flowing even more generously to our esteemed members of Congress.

who will be held accountable

BawHaHAHAHAHAHA!

Boxturtle (Odd how everybody so far has picked the same line to comment about)

The Upper Big Branch’s ventilation system was sucky and everyone there knew it: http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=14377

I would still like to know basic info about how fines are assessed -

how is the $$ arrived at ? are these set formulas/figures ?? how much discretion does Interior/Bureau of Mines have ?

clearly Big Coal sees fines as mere cost of doing business – that has to change. there’s going to be a lot of talk (and ass covering) in the coming days about “unprecedented number of citations” and “enforcement” blah blah blah – all well and good, but until the dollar amounts hit ‘em where they live, nothing’s going to change for these poor families

No one will be held responsible in any meaningful way, by which I mean no jail time and no fines of sufficient magnitude to actually matter.

There’s a difference betweened assesed and paid. There is actually a formula for computing fines, but I don’t know that any company has ever paid that amount in my lifetime.

Once the government announces the fine, the company will say it’s excessive and promise a court fight. The government will then cut a deal with the company for a much lower amount, and in return the company will agree to fix the current violations and promise they’ll never happen again while denying they ever happened in the first place.

Boxturtle (Then everybody adjourns to the bar for a round on the Company)

I realize my reasoning may perhaps appear silly and empty theatre, but the Supreme Court just said the corporations are people. You can’t be a ‘person’ and still get away with being not held liable for your actions. I’d like to see the Federal Department of Labor charge, individually and as a corporation, the senior management (at the very least – I’d like to see the members of the Board of Directors as well)with criminally negligent homicide (I’ll put up with a charge of man slaughter, but it’s certainly not my first choice; I think the phrase ‘depraved indifference to human life’ definitely applies to people such as Blankenship who sent his mine supervisors memos that claim that they were spending too much time on safety issues and not enough attention on coal production). People like Blankenship (and all of these folks who are on the Board of Directors)depend on not being touched by this stuff PERSONALLY – it’s someone else’s problem; it is certainly someone else who goes down in the ground and gets killed and whose family is then made destitute. It is not as if individual owners/presidents/senior managers of corporations have not been arrested, charged, tried and convicted for the deaths of workers. I recall a food processing plant case in Chicago where the top two guys in the company were convicted of criminally negligent homicide and sent to prison. A lot will depend on what is on the books in terms of what they can be charged with – but until people at the top are punished in a personally accountable way for the deaths of workers that they cause by their negligence, then nothing will happen. Management and members of boards will hide behind their liability insurance coverage and workers will continue to die. Massey obviously feels that the fines are a cost of doing business, as is the legal fees that they spend challenging them. Until Blankenship et al. do the ‘perp walk’ for the cameras, they have no reason to do anything to make the workplace safer for their employees.

Well said, pointed. Thanks

thanks.

broadly and personally speaking -Blankenship et al are souless beings – there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to change them. Govt agencies charged with safety enforcement otoh, should be held accountable. when there’s an unruly, out of control 11 year old bullyng the other kids on the bus, I fully expect the school district to take the matter in hand – and will hold them accountable when they don’t period

Thanks, Toby.

E. Gordon Gee

Way to go, Buckeyes. E. Gordon Gee is a well-known
operator in academic administrative circles, and currently the president
of Ohio State, reportedly the highest paid president
of any public university in the country.
His Massey Energy board membership became
controversial and he resigned last May
under pressure from activists.

ooo, that’s interesting but now makes sense – I got that list from the 2009 Annual Report.

You don’t need to worry about the supreme county decision. You can just do it. Pennsylvania did last year(over the case of several years). Only 2 papers covered it really, the Pottsville Republican and Allentown Morning Call(In my times back home over the past year I tried to find people who knew more, but it was west Skook and I lived in the East):

http://republicanherald.com/news/mine-owner-foreman-each-plead-to-5-charges-stemming-from-death-1.301073

http://republicanherald.com/news/mine-owner-foreman-sentenced-in-miner-s-death-1.393257

Talking to my dad who works in a strip mine he thinks Blankenship needs much harsher. He’s pro-gun semi-anti-obama, but doesn’t blame MSHA for a second. I think that ruling shifted the way many people in Eastern Pennsylvania saw workplace safety. Imagine what one with CNN’s and FOX’s camera would do for the nation.

“Mourn for the dead, fight for the living”

- attributed to Mother Jones

Since these corportate crimes occurred in the past, prosecution will be “off the table”.

29 fewer potential social security recipients.

29 fewer potential medicare recipients.

29 fewer potential unemployment recipients.

From a capitalist standpoint, the most easily renewable natural resource is the worker.

When a capitalist economy is the most important focus of a government, there will be blood.

Drip, drip, drip.

You can’t be a ‘person’ and still get away with being not held liable for your actions.

I loved all of what you said but this sentence has me scratching my head and going WTF????

You haven’t paid much attention to Marcy’s posts about torture have you? *g*

Or the economic meltdown. Or the mishandling of Katrina. Or shitting all over the US Constitution instead of defending it as the oath requires. Or Abul Graib (sp???). Or the last horrible mine disaster just a few years ago in Pennsylvania IIRC.

Actually, I’m having a really, really, hard time trying to figure out when any elected official or CEO or any elites have been held accountable for anything. I’d always assumed all of those were people. Real fucking assholes, but technically people.

It seems to me that the rule is no one is held accountable and the exception is when someone actually is. Person or “person” (corp).

Oh, and it’s a bipartisan deal too (something that surprises me).

I always knew rank and file Republicans never, ever, held the Republican politicians they voted for liable for ANYTHING. EVER. That’s why they have always been able to get away with saying the dumbest fucking shit in the world and still be re-elected.

Well, come to find out, that’s a Democratic trait too. Because no one can seriously argue that Obama didn’t lie his ass off during the campaign of 2008, and no one really seriously argues that this POS health care bill is of any value other than what they insist is “the message it sends.”

Yet Democrats too are going all out here in an election year to support those lying assholes, for passing a bill that effectively ends any and all hope of ever reaching the goal of real health care reform, something these same so-called Democrats say they want.

Nope, politicians are most definitely NOT held accountable. EVER. Both sides are so fricking scared shitless of the other winning an election or two that they never hold liars and scum accountable for lying, and being scum.

So, if the voters don’t hold the politicians accountable, why would they expect the politicians to hold anyone else accountable???

When someone figures that one out, I’d love to hear it.

Unfortunately, most of the commenters are laboring under a misapprehension. The actual corporation that will be held responsible is the contractor (not subsidiary)Performance Coal. You will find that Massey only owns the mine and the equipment and that the actual entity that employs the miners and is responsible for the activity, violations, liabilities, etc. is the small corporation Performance Coal. You will never touch Massey, and Blankenship is sheltered behind two corporations by the sacred “corporate veil”.

This is the way the whole industry is set up to protect the real money behind these shell companies.

If they abandon a mine and leave it un-reclaimed and spouting polluted water, for example, and you go after them for fines and violations, you will find only a bankrupt and dissolved corporation with no assets.

When the investigations are complete you will get, as always, a report saying that the mine was operating in compliance with all regulations, violations were being addressed through proper legal channels and the accident was an unforeseeable act of God. At Sago, it was lightning that struck the mountain and traveled underground to blow it up. Something like that will be found here.

Any damages will be paid by Performance Coal, a small, soon to be bankrupt company that has its headquarters in a construction trailer.

Excellent point tetercreek. And the ultimate tragedy is that the press, which focused laser-like on the happenings in the drift mine below, failed to even see the larger picture of the ravages that both indergroound and mountain top mining are having on Upper and Central Appalachia and its people. People should Google-Map Montcoal, WV and take a look at the shit just west of the Coal River Rd. It’s just one, very graphic example of the rape of West Virginia for cheap electricity and corporate profit. The real irony has been various reporters sending in their stories from Naoma and the Marsh Fork Elementary School which sits below the Brushy Creek Impoundment Area – a multi billion gallon lake of toxic sludge which is the by-product of King Coal.
The deaths of 29 miners is indeed tragic. But it is also a reminder of how callous corporate America has become. The task masters care little for people and even less for the environment the labor force lives in. Massey and Blankenship will, as you say, most likely be protected by the corporate veil. But in a more perfect world they and their ilk should be sentenced to work in their own mines and drink the water from surrounding wells. It would be a deserving punishment – as severe as hell.

From the Christian Science Monitor’s webpage:

Other countries aren’t so sanguine when it comes to mine safety. In 2004, China executed a party official for helping to cover up a 2001 tin mine disaster in Guangxi, which killed at least 81 miners.

I’m against the death penalty, but criminal prosecution would be a damn good idea in these cases. Too bad it’ll never happen.

Thanks Toby.

FWIW According to this, Gee resigned from the Massey Board in 2009

Just what I was thinking. If corporations are people, can Massey be charged with negligent homicide?