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.

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.

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.

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.