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Blankenship Knows No Shame
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank discovered what those of us who watched Massey Energy CEO Donald Blankenship operate over the years have known for some time.
Blankenship, who has made a career of busting unions, violating mine safety laws, attacking environmentalists and shilling for the far right and corporate America, has no shame.
Blankenship didn’t hit the national stage until one of his coal mines blew up and killed 29 West Virginia miners in April. In the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster, Blankenship has sued the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), implied the deadly blast was God’s fault and told the government to keep its hands off patriotic business like Massey. Writes Milbank:
If Don Blankenship had any sense of shame, he’d crawl into a mine and hide.
But Blankenship must have no sense of shame, because he visited the National Press Club last week to complain about “knee-jerk political reactions” to mine deaths and to demand that the Obama administration lighten regulations on his dirty and dangerous company. “We need to let businesses function as businesses,” an indignant Blankenship proclaimed. “Corporate business is what built America, in my opinion, and we need to let it thrive by, in a sense, leaving it alone.”
While Milbank powerfully indicts Blankenship’s incredible arrogance, he also writes that the coal baron is a poster child for the corporate world’s newly aggressive campaign to paint government as the heavy-handed bully with crushing safety, tax and environmental laws that is beating up these poor companies that are just trying to save the nation’s economy.
It’s easy to paint Blankenship as a villain, with his moustache, double chin and rough edges (he twice lamented the “abstract poverty” in the world). But his theme—and his complete absence of corporate responsibility—is very much the message corporate America has adopted in this mid-term campaign year: If you’ve got a problem, blame the government.
Milbank then goes on to blow up the myths the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “a sort of radicalized corporate Tea Party,” and the Blankenships and other Big Business bullhorns are spreading. Click here to read his full column.
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11 Comments
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Blankenship is just another CEO who will never be indicted and charged with MURDER! We now live under a Lawless Society where those at the very top,with all their connections and corruption are using that as leverage to stay out of jail and instead pay a small fine as they continue to pillage and destroy the very fabric of the economy the rest of us rely on.
BANKSTERS= Nobody charged!
OIL SPILLS= No criminal charges!
BUSH/CHENEY=Get off scot free!
Military Industrial Complex= continued looting!
Laws are only enforced on the Masses while the deal making and the Destruction of what’s left of our AMERICA continues unabridged!!!
Now? Cutting Entitlements seems to be these FUCKERS answer to the DEFICIT?
MEET YOU AT THE BARRICADES!!!BRING A LOT OF AMMUNITION!!!
We see here that the only remedy to the misbehavior of people like Blankenship is an all out effort to oust his precious supporters(REPUBLICANS)from office,remodel the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and unionize every worker in America who pay REASONABLE union dues and have a say on who leads each union,preferably someone who actually works and not just lead the union’s activities!
He should be in jail!
You are joking about no sense of shame, aren’t you, you have to be being facetious.
Well, well. If it’s not the pot calling the kettle black. The current union stance of welcoming illegal aliens to this country to take jobs “no one else wants” is just the tip of the iceberg. Come on, you big union bosses. “Fez up” you are welcoming illegal aliens because they’re your next best hope for increasing union membership now that you’ve sold the average union member down the road. What’s the difference between an exorbitantly paid union boss and and exorbitantly paid big business boss? One can probably evade taxes better than the other.
This is an article about corporate greed murdering workers. The culprit then went to Washington to give a speech, saying ” Corporate business is what built America, in my opinion, and we need to let it thrive by, in a sense, leaving it alone.” The question is, do you agree with the idea of the government letting big business do whatever it wants, or do you want a government that intervenes to enforce strict safety standards and save lives? Is your response somehow to try and blame the unions, or immigrants, for the fact that corporations sacrifice workers lives daily on the altar of greed with impunity?
Rayson is spot on Cappy!! Come on, give it a rest about illegal workers and concentrate on the Employers who exploit these human beings to no end!Also,please give me 1 example of Unions hiring Illegals to do your or my job!
Organizing all Workers,because they are Human Beings exploited and oppressed by their Governments and American Corporations,is something we can all get behind!!
if you havn’t been or are a coal miner like me then you don’t know about big don. do you know if he needs to balance his books he cuts peoples wages this comes from massey miners in ky. and wv. not me. he thinks mine rules and regulations are only to be used when MSHA or STATE inspectors are around. i worked union and those miners would like to unionize but out of fear for their jobs they don’t they just think if they go union don will fire them all and this comes from miners themselves and also contractors who massey hires that are nonunion to do work for them. i cringe at any miners death but the only way to cut down on them is to unionize.viva unions!
To dream the impossible dream. ALL THESE CHARACTERS IN PRISON. AND I DON’T MEAN CLUB FED! WITH JUDGE JUDY ON THE PA SYSTEM, PRICELESS!
Miners have always had a dangerous job. In early America slaves were used. When slaves became too expensive, the owners started to use immigrants – Irish, Chinese, etc. These immigrants would work for little and there was no loss when they died on the job. The bosses are still doing it – blame them not the immigrants. If everyone was organized and the union was run democratically, your fears (except for bigotry that the bosses use to split the workers) would be severely diminished. That, too, may pass. As other immigrant groups have been assimilated, so will these. Learn from history! Immigrants helped build America!
Thankyou Kent. The threat facing workers is a nascient facism that has found some fertile ground among large numbers of monolingual caucasians living outside the big cities who can’t find work and are susceptible to racist propaganda blaming immigrants for all of our problems. The far right is sowing the seeds of division to weaken us, so that when they move to destroy us we will be unable to defend ourselves, just like in Germany.