Palm Sunday

This is a heavy day for me for several reasons. First is the nature of the day itself, which commemorates Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem in the days leading up to his crucifixion and death. The day was triumphant, with blessings and shouts of hosanna...but we know what happens five days later.

Then there's the date itself. Ten years ago today, 29 coal miners were killed in Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine. Subsequent investigations, like this one written by my then co-worker Beth Spence, found a deliberate pattern at the company of evading mine safety regulations. The company no longer exists and its CEO spent a year in federal prison, although that's cold comfort to the friends and families of those who died.

I was literally on the far side of the world attending a karate seminar in Okinawa when I got the word. It felt so strange to be that far away at such a time, not that I could have done anything about it.

Finally, the holy day if not the date marks another sad loss for West Virginia and the world. It was on Palm Sunday in 1979, (April 8th to be exact, Easter being a movable feast) that Breece Pancake, in my opinion the state's greatest writer killed himself in Charlottesville.

He was from my home town of Milton and we had some family connections. At the time, I was working at the town library with his mother Helen. I remember going to work to pretend to clean the library that Sunday and finding main librarian Toney Reese there, visibly upset.

I'd work with Helen every Tuesday night and every other Saturday for the next six years and we grew very close over that time. It was sad but still a privilege watching his book of short stories come together and take off. It hasn't landed yet.

If nothing else, this day is a reminder of how quickly and drastically things can change...although we probably didn't need to be reminded of that today.

Read it and weep

I'll say it again, it's time to shelve West Virginia's old state motto, "Mountaineers are always free" and replace it with something more fitting. (Although I hope we can reinstate the old one when conditions change.)

My nomination for the motto has oft appeared here. It's "You can't make this **** up." I was hoping to come up with a Latin version, but the Republican controlled state legislature declared English to be the official language.

Perhaps that will save the billions of dollars currently spent on printing official documents in Urdu...

But I digress.

The most recent example of why we should use the new motto can be found in the publication from prison by former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship titled An American Political Prisoner.

Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo had this to say about that here. The truly...interested can read the whole document here. I actually skimmed it.

Let's just say it ain't Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The big news

It's not enough. But it took so much to get this far. Here's the Gazette-Mail on the Blankenship verdict. Here's the New York Times. Here's NPR. And here's the Washington Post.

Six years out

I'll probably never forget when I heard about the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. I was in Okinawa attending a karate seminar. It was the dream of a lifetime to meet and train with the greatest living masters of the traditional styles.

I think it was morning Okinawa time when I got a profanity laced email from my daughter, who was interning at a Charleston hospital then. Her email said something like "****ing Massey just killed a bunch of miners."

It was weird for something like that to happen at home when I was so far away, not that I could have done anything about it if I was there. This post was my first reaction. In it, I expressed my desire that the goddess Nemesis be swift to render justice.

I'm not sure about the swift part, but I'm hoping there will soon be a little justice to report.

A little justice or a slap on the wrist:

Federal legal memos don't always make for the most interesting reading, but this one on the sentencing of former Massey CEO Don Blankenship is an exception:

It shocks the conscience that in the 21st century, knowing all that has been learned from decades of grief in our nation’s mines, the CEO of a major coal company would willfully conspire against the laws that protect his workers’ lives. One struggles for words to describe the inhumanity required for a mogul like Defendant to send working men and women into needless, mortal jeopardy for no purpose other than to pile up more money. The law, as it stands, offers no adequate punishment for his crime. But what the law does allow, the court should impose: a year in prison and the maximum fine. Don Blankenship owes at least that much to the men and women who worked at UBB. 

The Gazette-Mail's Ken Ward has more to say on that here.

A HOT MESS. West Virginia's state budget is in pretty much disaster mode. Programs and services have already been cut to the bone and are facing more. One perennial target of cuts is higher education, which is perverse in a state with the lowest educational attainment in the nation. A friend of mine offers some common sense solutions here. The legislative purse string, however, are held by the tax cut crew.

The verdict

Sorry about the slow posts. Aside from running around, I was without phone and internet for a good chunk of last week, which was very frustrating. The big news, obviously, was the Don Blankenship verdict. Short version: guilty on conspiracy to evade mine safety laws, not guilty on charges related to corporate reporting and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Here's my thought: how (fill in the blank)-ed up is it that the maximum sentence he could face for helping to bring about the needless deaths of 29 miners is one year, whereas the sentences for misleading investors carried a penalty of decades? OK, so that was a rhetorical question.

I mean, golly, one might almost think that the interests of the wealthy and powerful count for more than those of working people in this country.

Still the fact that a corporate boss got any penalty (or even inconvenience) at all for causing the deaths of workers is a big deal, so I'll try to focus on the positive.

Anyway, the story is all over the web. I think WV Public Broadcasting did a good job on Inside Appalachia and Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo had this to say after following this developing story for years.

Two from the Times

I'm grateful to live in a state where we had a political leader with enough humanity to expand Medicaid coverage to nearly 170,000 low income working West Virginians. (Yes, that would be Gov. Early Ray Tomblin.) Unfortunately, that isn't the case in many states. If you want to see what the all too predictable pattern looks like, click here.

Meanwhile, the Times ran this editorial last week on the case of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who is facing federal charges in the wake of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 WV coal miners.

Good question

A select committee of mostly Republicans in the WV legislature have spent a good part of 2015 pondering state tax reform. It's pretty clear that what they'd like to do is further cut business taxes. But Gazette statehouse reporter Phil Kabler asks a good question: how does that plan play out when the state budget is going under?

COULD THERE BE A PATTERN HERE? In this piece, WV Public Broadcasting looks at the troubled history of safety violations at Upper Big Branch before the 2010 disaster.

Hypocrisy, skulduggery and one to watch

Perhaps the Gentle Reader will recall the crocodile tears shed by political candidates who oozed with compassion for miners and were eager to fight against the alleged "war on coal."

(The winning state candidates who did this demonstrated their sincerity in the last legislative session by rolling back some coal mine safety measures despite the firm opposition of the United Mine Workers.)

Meanwhile, at the federal level, the only member of WV's congressional delegation to support a bill making it simpler for deserving miners to get black lung benefits is Joe Manchin. This would be another put up or shut up moment for people who apparently have little inclination to do either.

NOW SKULDUGGERY. Workforce WV just completed a survey mandated by the legislature last year to calculate prevailing wages for public construction projects. It looks like state legislative leaders really wanted to kill prevailing wage and drag down conditions for working people all along.

NOW ONE TO WATCH. I'm referring of course to the trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

Two ironies and a novelty

It occurs to me lately that the world is increasingly divided into two kinds of places: those in which it is difficult or impossible to stay and those to which it is difficult or impossible to go. And the difference between the two is shrinking.

AND HERE'S ANOTHER IRONY. Former Massey CEO Don Blankenship has achieved total political victory even while he faces criminal charges from the Upper Big Branch disaster.

NOW FOR THE NOVELTY: would you believe Buddhist campus sororities and fraternities?

Three for the road

It's late and it's been a long day, but here are three links in case you missed them.

FIRST, here's a call for the US to do right by WV coal miners in this difficult time.

SECOND, if I was Don Blankenship, I wouldn't want UBB to be discussed at my trial either. But it should be.

THIRD, here's a profile of a guitar playing friend of mine who offered me shelter from the storm years ago.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In case you missed it...

...this rather lengthy NY Times article on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship came out while I was traveling. I agree with Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo that it's a bit odd an article of that length didn't mention the role of federal prosecutor Booth Goodwin.

Speaking of coal, WV's ruling class is celebrating the Supreme Court ruling on the EPA. I'm not sure that this will be enough to bring back a booming economy in southern WV, however.

Today in coal

How's this for randomness: a court decides that Alpha Natural Resources needs to pay for former Massey CEO Don Blankenship's legal fees. I'm not sure about the legal niceties but I think I'm with Alpha on this. I'm guessing the court ruled this was part of the deal for assuming Massey's liabilities.

Then there's this: WV coal production has been projected to drop by nearly 40 percent over the next 20 years from its 2008 high point. Most of that drop is expected to occur in southern WV, while production in the northern part of the state is comparatively stable.

I'm not sure how WV's ruling class will be able to blame all this on you-know-who but I'm guessing they'll find a way.

Curiouser and curiouser

The latest developments in the federal prosecution of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship just got more interesting with the release of the contents of recorded conversations. Ken Ward, as usual, is all over it.

Five years out

Yesterday, April 5, marked the 5th anniversary of Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 miners. On the bright side, it looks like the families of those who lost loved ones might be a little closer to some kind of justice. On the other hand, as mine safety expert Davitt McAteer argues here, congress has yet to act on mine safety and the Republican WV legislature actually rolled back some mine safety regulations in the last session.

West Virginia's late great Senator Robert C. Byrd nailed it:

"First, the disaster. Then the weeping. Then the outrage. And we are all too familiar with what comes next. After a few weeks, when the cameras are gone, when the ink on the editorials has dried, everything returns to business as usual. The health and the safety of America's coal miners, the men and women upon whom the Nation depends so much, is once again forgotten until the next disaster..."

Two WV bright spots (really)

I've been very impressed by US Attorney Booth Goodwin. He made headlines last month with the indictment of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. This week, it was for the indictment of six owners and managers of Freedom Industries, the company that poisoned the water of 300,000 West Virginians last January. It's nice to see corporate crimes treated as real crimes.

Another WV bright spot is Charleston Gazette reporter and Coal Tattoo blogger Ken Ward, who really shines the light where it needs to go. If you click here, you can hear what he had to say  on NPR today about the chemical spill, the Blankenship indictment and more.

Last year, the WV legislature passed some pretty strong water protection legislation. Word is that incoming Republican leaders want to weaken that legislation in the 2015 session. That should be an interesting fight.

Maybe they should start by poisoning their own water.

In case you missed it

The Sunday New York Times had a good piece about the indictment of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship on federal charges in the wake of the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners. 

I especially like the first three paragraphs, which lay out just how historical this really is:

 On a memorial to West Virginia’s most recent mining disaster, the silhouettes of 29 figures are etched into black granite, men posed with arms around each another like teammates.

On the back of the solemn slab, the disaster is put in the context of the state’s long history of coal tragedies, including a 1968 explosion that killed scores, and a dozen other deadly events earlier in the century.

In not one of those cases did a coal mine owner face criminal charges for the loss of life. That history ended in November, with the indictment of Donald L. Blankenship, the chief executive whose company owned the Upper Big Branch mine near here, where an explosion of methane gas in 2010 spread like a fireball through more than two miles of tunnels, feeding on illegally high levels of coal dust.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: whatever happens, this sends a message to future CEOs that there are limits to the games they can play with the lives of other people in their search for profit.

One to watch

The latest legal developments in the case of former Massey CEO Don Blankenship are interesting. First, the gag order will make events a little hard to follow. The accused pleaded not guilty, which wasn't a surprise. I was a bit surprised to learn about the requirement for him to post a $5 million bond.

A friend of mine suggested that the judge might have been afraid of another Marc Rich incident. Rich was a financial speculator who fled abroad to avoid prosecution until pardoned by President Clinton for some ungodly reason during the final moments of his presidency. Ken Ward reports that the federal magistrate seems to be concerned about Blankenship's financial affairs as well.

The irony in all this is that Blankenship's legal troubles are occurring just as his political dreams for West Virginia have come true in the wake of the last election.

Light reading

If you are curious about the 43 page indictment of former Massey CEO Don Blankenship, you can read the whole thing here. There are 108 numbered sections, although I may not be using the right term.

THIS SHOULD BE EASY TO FIX. There's a lot of talk here and elsewhere about the need for economic transition in West Virginia. One thing that could easily help is more state investment in promoting WV tourism. Oh yeah, and it might help if we stop trashing and poisoning the place.

BIG DOGS TAKE AIM AT A GOOD POLICY. One policy idea long advocated here is the creation of a system of Voluntary Employee Retirement Accounts for workers without pensions. The financial industry, which so far hasn't stepped up to do squat for these people, is gunning to kill the idea.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Will justice be done?

The news of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship's indictment on federal charges related to the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster has made national news. The show starts this week, but it looks like we won't see a lot of it unwind due to a gag order by the judge.

Meanwhile, as my friend Ken Ward reports, it looks like Blankenship's tendency to micromanage Massey operations provided an opening for prosecutors.

This NY Times editorial on the subject is worth a look. It both commends the investigation and condemns Congress for its failure to act in the wake of the deaths of 29 miners. Final paragraph:

The investigation is praiseworthy for seeking accountability for miners who should not have died. But the question of industrywide reform has been shamefully neglected by Congress in general and by industry allies in the Republican Party, like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the incoming majority leader, in particular. The Upper Big Branch disaster continues to expose the need for stronger federal fines and for the authority to shut mines that are repeat offenders of safety rules and threaten the lives of their employees.

While we're at it, you can find my two cents near the bottom of this item from Desmogblog.com:

“I think the fact that these indictments have gone this far up the corporate ladder is truly historic,” said Rick Wilson, of the American Friends Service Committee's West Virginia Economic Justice Project, “and will send a message to future CEOs in coal and other industries that there are limits to the liberties that can be taken with the lives of other people.”