Photo by Rainforest Action Network
Pakistan has taken a lot of guff for failing to nab Osama bin Laden. After all, it turns out that the man wasn't hiding in a cave, or hunkering in the depths of some elaborate underground lair ala Doctor No. Instead bin Laden was in a large modern home in the midst of a subdivision in a prosperous town, not that far from major government offices. How could they have missed him?
But we shouldn't be too hard on the Pakistanis. After all, the man who represents the greatest threat to America has for years lived only a short distance from the nation's capitol. More than that, he's been extremely visible. He's given speeches, written editorials, and never shied away from the public eye. Far from cowering in fear of justice, Don Blankenship has thumbed his nose at local, state, and federal officials and laughed at every attempt to restrain his actions.
He's successfully bribed a state Supreme Court justice.
A justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court and a powerful coal-company executive met in Monte Carlo in the summer of 2006, sharing several meals even as the executive’s companies were appealing a $50 million jury verdict against them to the court.
A little more than a year later, the justice, Elliott E. Maynard, voted with the majority in a 3-to-2 decision in favor of the coal companies.
He's also subverted an election of another justice to protect his profits.
You've got to give mining executive Don Blankenship credit for this much: By spending $3 million on venomous ads to unseat a West Virginia Supreme Court justice, Blankenship has inadvertently done what no reform group ever could: He has vividly illustrated how big money corrupts judicial elections. It puts justice up for sale to the highest bidder...
He's crushed smaller companies using illegal tactics, used his political connections to skate around massive violations of environmental rules, and not just repeatedly voiced the claim that global warming is hoax, but funded mock-science studies and attacks on climate scientists. Forget trying to clean up our energy system. According to Blankenship, even trying to conserve energy is communism.
And of course, there's the little matter of murder. Actually multiple murders. Enough murders to make Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer look like pikers.
On April 5 of last year, a spark from a longwall mining machine set off a blast that rocketed through the Upper Big Branch Mine near Montcoal, West Virginia. Fueled by unrelieved accumulations of methane and accelerated by untreated build up of coal dust, the blast ripped through the mine in a matter of seconds. Those working near the source of the explosion had no warning. The pressure from the blast didn't kill them... it destroyed them. Obliterated them in a wave of extraordinary heat and pressure constrained by the close quarters of mine passages less than 20' wide and barely high enough to stand. Only one person was injured, while 29 others died -- a ratio that reveals the explosion as both overwhelming and unavoidable.
There's no doubt the event was a tragedy. No doubt that it was monstrous. No doubt that it was horrible in every sense of the word.
And there's no doubt that it was not an accident.
An independent report (pdf) completed this month made the nature of what happened there, more than 1,000 feet underground and miles from the mine's entrance, very clear.
Ultimately, the responsibility for the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine lies with the management of Massey Energy. The company broke faith with its workers by frequently and knowingly violating the law and blatantly disregarding known safety practices while creating a public perception that its operations exceeded industry safety standards.
The story of Upper Big Branch is a cautionary tale of hubris. A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk-taking.
The April 5, 2010, explosion was not something that happened out of the blue, an event that could not have been anticipated or prevented. It was, to the contrary, a completely predictable result for a company that ignored basic safety.
The explosion at Upper Big Branch was no more an accident than a collision caused by a driver racing through crowded streets with reckless abandon. In fact, even the most inebriated driver sailing down city streets at murderous speed is much less to blame for the results of his actions. Because what happened in the darkness of the mine was not a lapse of judgement. It didn't happen out of ignorance. It was a deliberate and well-understood refusal to follow rules of basic safety. It was murder for profit.
Blankenship, as CEO was not some absentee executive removed from the day to day business of the mines. Violations of health and safety regulations happened expressly on his orders.
In the fall of 2005, Blankenship wrote a memo to his employees telling them that maximizing coal production was more important than spending time constructing things like support beams or ventilation shafts:
If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal.
Buying judges, ignoring environmental and safety rules, putting his employee's not just in harm's way but deliberately throwing their lives away to line his own pockets. How has Blankenship paid for these crimes?
In the same year leading up to the deaths of 29 people in Upper Big Branch, Don Blankenship took home over $17 million, including an $11 million "performance bonus." Since the explosion, Blankenship has retired. But don't worry, his golden parachute should keep him in hookers and caviar along the Riviera.
The full breadth of Blankenship’s retirement package is still not known, but the web site Footnoted.com laid out some of the terms in an item posted this morning, including what it says is a $5.7 million pension, generous stock options, and $27.2 million from a deferred-compensation account, “a combination of pay he set aside and interest Massey has promised to pay him on those sums.” The web site also noted that the free housing Blankenship has enjoyed during his tenure as CEO will continue into his retirement, as will the company’s agreement to handle any income taxes he would owe for getting use of the house.
All this comes after a tenure which saw the controversial coal boss receive $38.2 million total compensation in the last three years alone, $26.7 million of it in cash, Footnoted reports.
It may be more fun to pretend that some scary foreigner hiding somewhere in Africa or the Middle East is a bigger threat to America. But Blankenship is more of a threat than any of them will ever be. Because he's not a threat; he's proof. Proof that our democracy is at least as corrupt as any you'd care to name. Our elections are just as much a farce. Our notion of justice just as big a sham.
Don Blankenship proves that the only government in America is the government of the dollar.
Why should we expect Pakistan, or anyone else, to sweat looking for those who threaten to topple our government or kill our citizens, when America won't lift a finger? Unless CEOs like Blankenship are held accountable for their actions, being a corporate executive isn't just a way to get rich, it's a license to rob, cheat and kill.