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Using this picture two posts in a row, because I can. And because Don Blankenship is a PATRIOT, dammit.
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.
12 Comments
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Ya, it’s good PR until after the Byrd act passes(if that’s it’s name now?)
Yep, Byrd Act.
Mr. Murder walks free though, don’t he?
Murdering employees gets you kicked off the Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Some nerve of them. /s
Hey, isn’t this guy coming to the National Press Club
sometime soon
They’ll just fill the spot with some other turd.
You should have asked “who replaced him”. It is probably someone equally despicable. You really don’t think the US Chamber represents any but the biggest and highest dues paying members which are the big boys from all industries. So, the Chamber didn’t get a conscience, it got someone who is Blankenship’s equal in industry stature and not as publicly condemned.
A pity Louis Freeh didn’t run for office after leaving the FBI, he could have cosponsored the most awesomely named law ever. Oh well.
The Washington Monthly profile of Chamber president Tom Donohue is worth reading, James Verini asks Donohue:
I asked Donohue what, exactly, the Chamber does. “Two fundamental things,” he replied. “We’re advocates. Sure we do studies, sure we do events, sure we do meetings, sure we have all kinds of stuff, but we’re advocates.” And then he surprised me again with his candor. “The second thing we do is really more interesting,” he said. “We’re the reinsurance industry for individual industry associations and state chambers of commerce and people of that nature.” An example, said Donohue, was when Wall Street found itself on the defensive in opposing new banking regulations. “They can’t move forward, they can’t move back, or maybe they’re being overrun, and they’ll come to us and say, ‘Can we collect our reinsurance?’” he explained. “And then we build coalitions and go out and help them.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.verini.html
Looks like Blankenship and Massey Energy just joined the rank of the uninsured, so to speak. Maybe he really was term-limited out of his directorship, but how could the other board members not see that he’s like a mob capo with the unfortunate habit of killing innocent bystanders? Forget morality and all that church stuff, the issue is that is its always bad for business to get the press and the public riled up. That can only lead to trouble, such as politicians who stop looking the other way.
So it was only that murderer Blankenship’s term of office was “up.”
We’re not even being tossed a crumb here, folks.
Unsurprising. The elites don’t give a **** about loss of serf lives; that’s for **** sure. And frankly, I don’t think they give a **** about “bad publicity” (whatever that means anymore). So: meh. Blankenship walks free. Some other amoral rip off elite just takes his place. Same old, different day.
I’m sure that this was simply a normal term of office lapse. Why else would the good folks at the Chamber of Commerce lose such a valuable resource? Maybe he needed time with friends and family. But, it would be entirely out of line to conclude that he made his peers as sick as he makes the rest of us. We are talking about the Chamber of Commerce, right?!
It would be difficult to find someone as despicable as Blankenship to replace him on the board.
This is excellent news for all America and it should be a headline on the WashPost and NYTimes…but probably won’t.
Thanks again for real important NEWS you won’t see on t.v.
Michael, did you actually check the bylaws and Massey’s tenure on the Board to see if the explanation was correct, at least on the surface?
This reminds me of the very dark days of Lenin and Stalin in Moscow and Mao in Beijing: Observers had to look at official photos of events to see who was still in power, like scrying the entrails of chickens. No announcements of purges or assassinations or jailings were ever made until much later.