That’s the charge for letting all those men die:
Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of Massey Energy Company transformed him into one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Appalachia, was sentenced on Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards.
The sentencing, in Federal District Court here, came six years and one day after an explosion tore through Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine, killing 29 people. Although Mr. Blankenship was not accused of direct responsibility for the accident, the deadliest in American coal mining in about 40 years, the disaster prompted the federal inquiry that led to Mr. Blankenship’s indictment.
In addition to the year in jail, Mr. Blankenship was fined $250,000 and is subject to a year of supervised release.
“My main point is wanting to express sorrow to the families and everyone for what happened,” Mr. Blankenship said in court before the sentencing. But he added later: “I am not guilty of a crime.”
Yes, you are guilty of a crime. And you’re getting a slap on the wrist.
SiubhanDuinne
Back-of-envelope, he’ll serve about 12.5 days per miner death.
I don’t know whether to scream or cry.
dr. bloor
It sucks, but a jury let him walk on the felony charges.
MattF
These days, my thoughts keep going back to what happened to Mussolini at the end. Too bad about his mistress, though.
sigaba
@dr. bloor: The judge specifically forbade the jury from knowing what the sentences for the various verdict options were — in fact I’m informed this is a federal court rule. Members of the jury were interviewed by the media afterward and were surprised themselves that the thing they convicted him of was a misdemeanor and only could be punished by a year in jail.
Paul in KY
Initially posted in previous thread: Back in the Middle Ages (in London, for instance), for some kind of crime that got 25 regular people killed, a mob would have been waiting outside the court & if Bishop or Lord Blankenship didn’t have a very numerous group of armed guards, they would have grabbed his ass & hung him.
He is sooooo lucky he lives in these more civilized times.
LAO
Not to quibble, but that’s the sentence, not the charge. A fine West Virginian jury acquitted Blakenship of the felony charges.
LAO
@sigaba: That is the standard operating procedure for most jurisdictions; mainly to prevent jury nullification.
Mike in DC
It would be wrong to hope he gets shanked in the shower or in the exercise yard, and I certainly do not want to leave the impression that I support or condone such sentiments. Heavens forfend.
Paul in KY
@LAO: Common clay of the New West, I deem.
Mike J
@Mike in DC: That kind of stuff doesn’t happen in Club Fed.
SiubhanDuinne
@John Cole:
John, I will never forget the thread you posted that morning. Before that, I had known you mostly through political opinion, pets, high snark, and bizarre accidents. But your anguish that day really came through, and — to me, anyhow — fully rounded you out as a wonderful, compassionate human being.
dr. bloor
@sigaba: That’s as it should be; juries shouldn’t decide guilt on a charge based on how much time they think the defendant should get.
Didn’t follow the trial closely, so I have no idea whether the prosecutor didn’t to a good job, the jury was out to lunch, or Shithead was overcharged and should have walked on the felony, but he got as much time as the law allows.
LAO
@Mike in DC: Prison violence really isn’t a joke. But — totally unlikely here because Blakenship will be sent to a minimum security Federal Camp. Where he will be safe as houses.
John Cole
@dr. bloor: They were not allowed to know what the misdemeanor charges were and which the felony charges were. In exit interviews they all wanted him to do more time.
dedc79
Conspiracy to violate federal mine safety standards is a misdemeanor with a max 1 year sentence. Given that this was the only count he was convicted on, this was the most time he could possibly serve. Perhaps congress should make it a felony going forward.
dr. bloor
@Mike J: Well then, maybe someone will give him some shitty stock tips.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
I actually doubt that, but only because there would be no need. The courts back then were happy to sentence people to death for all kinds of crime, so there’s no way a conviction in a case resulting in multiple deaths would result in anything less. Not that I think Medieval justice is something we should be trying to emulate today, mind you.
LAO
@dr. bloor: That made me LOL.
Mike J
@LAO:
Every prison should be as safe as the one he’ll go to.
sigaba
You’d think there’d be some kind of enhancement if people died.
Trollhattan
That he’ll skate through the rest of his life fat, happy and rich is a travesty, just on the face of it. Learning of his deep involvement in creating the conditions that killed those men and his efforts after the fact to cover his tracks makes this far, far worse than that. Hard to imagine a fictional character more vile than Blankenship–would be too unbelievable.
Deepwater Horizon had a dozen fathers, Big Branch, primarily one.
schrodinger's cat
If we had broken up Goldman Sachs, this wouldn’t have happened.
/snark
JustRuss
@dedc79:
Which is insane, given the potential death toll for pulling that kind of crap. It’s almost as if our justice system isn’t too concerned about workers’ safety.
sigaba
@dr. bloor: Your point is sound, though this does not say much for the Jury–as in the Jury as an institution–as the source of our court’s legitimacy, or the legitimacy of its rulings.
So like, when something like this happens and we say, “we’ll that’s what the jury decided,” no, that’s not true, that’s what the lawyers and the judge worked out, and the decision of a jury was grudgingly tolerated, by the judge and the lawyers, to have some input on some questions of fact.
singfoom
I’m shocked, shocked that in our country a wealthy mine owner can get away with this…. Except I’m not. The four-tier justice system has been rolling along for decades.
Remember the tiers (from lowest to highest)
1.Poor and/or minority – You commit a crime and the full weight of the law will be felt. You’re fucked.
2.Not poor and/or white but not rich – You commit a crime and the full weight of the law will be felt, but you can probably afford an attorney that should be able to defend you ably.
3.Rich (and most likely white, but money matters more here) – You commit a crime and your high priced lawyer gets you off.
4.A corporation – You’re a “person” but you live forever, you commit a crime, you pay a fine and admit no wrongdoing. It’s just the cost of business.
Blankenship here obviously fell into tier 3. Call me cynical, but this really seems to me how our justice system works overall.
Fuck that guy and fuck this tiered system of justice. We’re supposed to be a nation built on the rule of law. One tier.
I’m surprised that a family member of one of the 29 miners hasn’t taken things into their own hands.
LAO
Agree 100%
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: This is basically an acquittal. I was talking about an acquittal situation (or a situation where they were convicted, but the punishment was essentially waived). You are correct that punishments for the convicted were generally harsh. However, if one was a Duke or something like that, your incarceration might be not that bad (for the Middle Ages).
Calouste
If you really want to express sorrow, Blankenship, divide your fortune into 29 pieces and give it to the families of the miners that you killed.
Villago Delenda Est
Blankenship, you are PROFOUNDLY GUILTY of a crime.
Capital punishment has its uses against those who shirk responsibility for their actions in leadership roles.
Villago Delenda Est
@Calouste: Let’s not get carried away here!
Germy Shoemangler
Interesting article on Blankenship from six years ago:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040704835.html
Germy Shoemangler
@singfoom:
Maybe they were waiting to see how the sentencing went.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike J: Adam had a post up a few days ago where he talked about the purpose of incarceration. There’s punishment and penance, there’s rehabilitation, there’s crime control. Our incarceration system gives lip service to rehabilitation, but is really about crime control. For some crimes. Blankenship’s crime is not one that society feels, it seems, to be in need of being controlled.
LAO
@Mike J: My comment (#26) was in reply to you — all prisons should be monitored like federal camps.
Not sure what’s going on with the replies.
Elizabelle
Sounds like a real miscarriage of justice.
The laws for Corporate America are not like the laws for thee and me.
Either that, or that jury joins the infamous juries of recent years: the Trayvon Martin (sidewalk attacker) jury, OJ’s; you will think of many more.
Mike J
@LAO: Was that reply from mobile? Somebody mentioned last night that their reply didn;t show up properly if done from mobile, but the two things may not have been connected.
dedc79
@JustRuss: Yeah, any charge that follows the form “conspiracy to violate federal _____safety standard” doesn’t sound like it should be a misdemeanor.
singfoom
@Villago Delenda Est:
Crime control is for tier 1 and tier 2 defendants. Rich people are tier 3 defendants and behave better because rich.
scav
He will no doubt feel oppressed and put upon and want his country back based upon even the minor and nevertheless somewhat surprising sentence he got. What is this country coming to oppressing the jerb-creators with all these jack-booted regulations and consequences?!
Trollhattan
In case of any doubt that crime literally pays….
I am assured by Libertarians that government regulation is unnecessary because shareholders and the courts ensure everybody operates by the rules.
Just Some Fuckhead
Now maybe Hillary Clinton will finally be brought to justice for the exact same thing in Benghazi.
Elizabelle
@dedc79:
And you’ve hit the reason the Kochs and Adelsons of the world are so happy to spend millions to own our congresscritters. The NRA showed them the way.
Steve in the ATL
@singfoom:
Yeah, this is the type of situation that cries out for a brass verdict
dr. bloor
@sigaba: The jury was free to convict him on any or all of four charges; they didn’t have to pick one from the charge sheet. Somehow, they found him guilty of conspiring to avoid mine safety, but let him walk on a making false statements charge.
Either the prosecutor didn’t do a good job drawing the arrow pointing to his guilt, or this specific jury tripped over their own shoelaces. It doesn’t say Word One about The Jury as a part of the judicial process in general.
Trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
Flabbergasting, isn’t it? How many of those families vote Republican?
dr. bloor
@singfoom:
You’re surprised that their sense of morality is stronger than Blankenship’s? I’m not.
singfoom
@Trollhattan: Sigh. Yeah, here’s an example of a job creator. A maker. A taker of lives who valued his profits over the lives of other human beings.
I hope he gets asshole cancer that slowly and painfully robs him of any possible joy before it finally kills him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trollhattan: This is why Libertarians get priority seating in the tumbrels.
LAO
@LAO: It was. Will stay away from my phone! I only clarified because I disagree with singfoom comment at 25 — but don’t have the type or energy to example why, other than that I’m a criminal defense attorney.
@Steve in the ATL:
Hey, now Steve — as an attorney can you maybe not encourage vigilante justice. Do we really need a world filled with all sorts of “Punishers”?
Elizabelle
In other news out of West Virginia today, one of Gregg Allman’s tour buses crashed in Jackson Country; three crew members injured; taken to nearby hospital and already released. Tonight’s show will go on. Newspaper photo shows us springtime is lovely in the coal state. Also a bus against a tree.
And Merle Haggard died. But not in West Virginia.
JaneE
If corporations really were people, Massey Energy would be a serial killer. Deliberately refusing to follow safety standards and killing about a dozen employees a decade just like clockwork.
Paul in KY
@LAO: One could argue that this type of verdict and sentence diminishes faith in the legal system.
CONGRATULATIONS!
There is no such thing as perfect law. This is a better (for society) outcome for a rich man accused of a crime than a lot of societies would allow.
At one point in the history of the Roman Empire, a guy like Blankenship would have been able to say “fuck your verdict” and have the presiding judge, all jurors, and all his accusers killed, because that society believed that the ultra-wealthy should have that right.
Little disturbed at the many calls for extrajudicial justice here. I understand the urge. I also understand you lose having a civilized society when you indulge or condone such acts.
Trollhattan
Speaking of corporate shenanigans, impacts of the Panama papers are circling the globe.
Oopsie. Of all the countries to be caught in bed with, this is probably the worst. And there are a LOT of countries.
Steve in the ATL
@LAO: @CONGRATULATIONS!: in my case at least it was hyperbole. I am, of course,a big believer in the rule of law. He should be publicly shamed and shunned, however.
Roger Moore
@singfoom:
FTFY. The greatest injustice at this level is that guilt or innocence often don’t matter. Poor people are often forced to accept plea bargains because they can’t get out on bail, and the time they’ll serve for copping a plea is less than they’ll spend in jail waiting for a trial. And, of course, once they have a criminal record, they’ll always be a target for police and have a hard time finding good jobs.
LAO
@Paul in KY: Are you arguing in favor of the “Punisher” and the general concept of vigilante justice?
I understand people’s frustration with our criminal justice system, I battle my personal disappointed daily. But, there is no federal general homicide statute (under certain limited circumstances, there is federal jurisdiction for homicides — RICO, CCE). Any charges against Blakenship that would really have satisfied the public would have had to have been state charges and I don’t know anything about the CJS in West Virginia. There must have been a reason that this was a federal prosecution rather than a state prosecution.
Bottom line — prosecutors did not do their jobs properly. It was their job to present sufficient evidence establishing Blakenship’s guilt. They failed.
qwerty42
@John Cole: John, what kind of press is this getting in WV? It seems an appalling wrong, and “job creator” or not, I’d think a lot of folks would be po’d. How (whether) that is translated into law is another matter.
Kay
This is a really good series on how lax our workplace safety rules are. Some of the sanctions are laughable. The worst offender profiled in this series all but deliberately killed 9 employees and they were eventually prosecuted not for crimes against their employees but environmental crimes, because the sanctions under federal environmental law were much stronger than those that protect workers.
I think people have a false sense of security in dangerous jobs where they think they have a lot of protections, believe that there are a lot of inspections and enforcement and it just doesn’t seem to be true.
I don’t know if we always had such weak rules or if it’s a combination of conservative ideology and gutting regulatory agencies or maybe it’s regulatory capture but I was shocked by the series. Let the worker beware is all I can say. Don’t take for granted that anyone is regulating or enforcing.
LAO
@Steve in the ATL: I thought so — I do agree: He should be mocked and shunned at the country club.
singfoom
@LAO: @CONGRATULATIONS!:
There’s the law and there’s justice. I see this as a miscarriage of justice. 29 families are left without a family member. Beyond the heartache of not having their family member around, given the accident, the people lost were breadwinners, primary or not. The psychological, emotional and financial effects of this are staggering. They will live with it for the rest of their lives….
I heartily believe in the rule of law and I don’t really condone vigilante justice, but if I was one of those family members, my emotion might overcome my sense of morality.
I still hope he gets asshole cancer. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.
raven
If We Make It Through December
Merle
Linnaeus
@Kay:
It’s pretty much all of the above.
ETA:
I think OSHA, for example, has something like 7,000 inspectors, which may sound like a lot, but it’s not much at all when you consider how many workplaces in this country there are to inspect. Poor staffing of regulatory agencies is all too common. Which makes me chuckle when I hear my company’s clients complain about regulatory oversight. They get off easy, IMHO.
LAO
@Roger Moore:
Absolutely, disgustingly true. NYC is ending bail for non-violent arrests out of recognition of to many kids killing themselves in Rikers.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO:
Pedants gotta pedantify, so I agree with you (and because you’re correct, of course). I suspect Cole meant “that’s the cost/price paid for 29 dead miners.” Who knew lawyers might get technical about language?
LAO
@singfoom:
No. It doesn’t.
I agree justice wasn’t served.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mike J:
I agree.
piratedan
well… at a minimum, I hope that they show Matewan every fucking day and that it’s mandatory that he be there to see it.
Joel
@Roger Moore: Yeah, the whole avoidance of medieval justice is kind of the point of the modern court system.
LAO
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
bemused senior
Can the families sue him for wrongful death? At least it would punish his pocketbook.
Mike J
@Linnaeus:
Which brings us to another bugaboo of Republicans. Illegal immigration. Want to stop people from coming here for work without filling out the paperwork? Put the people who hire them in jail. Undocumented workers at Trump Tower? Let the Donald smash rocks for a few years. No wall needed.
Prescott Cactus
@Paul in KY:
Presidente Trump will fix this. Blacked out for local viewers, it will be a Pay Per View event nationwide.
boatboy_srq
Sounds like time for a new prosecutor, if this is all they could persuade the jury.
piratedan
RIP Merle Haggard….
Trollhattan
@Kay:
Loomis at LGM does the heavy lifting trying to follow worker safety (the lack thereof) around the globe and connecting it to our love of of cheap consumer goods. It’s heartbreaking how safety has regressed in the States, considering the 20th century efforts to establish it where none existed.
Linnaeus
@Mike J:
Which the cheap labor conservatives in the GOP would never allow.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: A language lapse you and other lawyers in this thread may appreciate. I was talking about Psychiatry and Law today to 3d year med students doing a psych rotation. The lecture starts with Tarasoff* which I explained and then told them that the Tarasoff duty has since been codified in a number of states, but that fact is essentially an item of trivia since the duty is always there. A brave student raised his hand (particpation! I was excited). His perfectly reasonable question that was asked on probably 98% of the students in that room:
Embarrassed at my failure to know my audience and present information on a level that’s clear to them, I nevertheless resisted the urge to say “turned into a cod, of course.” I did laugh, and thank him for asking the question since there was no reason to expect them to know “codify” any more than I should expect an audience of lawyers to know what anhedonia means, though many might.
*Tarasoff is the seminal case in which a duty to warn and protect a person specifically threatened with harm by a patient became an exception to the general obligation of confidentiality of medical communication.
Citizen_X
@qwerty42:
I’m sure they are, at all those responsible: Obama, the homosexuals, and gubmint regulation. {/snark}
Trollhattan
@boatboy_srq:
Any reason to think this wasn’t the desired outcome? Coal doesn’t provide that many WV jobs but its political influence seems undiminished.
We’ll tune in June 29 for the sentencing of now-bankrupt Freedom Industries over the Elk River chemical spill There are various charges against former employees as well..
Prescott Cactus
@Linnaeus:
Feds set the minimum safety / hazard standards and states are allowed to make conditions even safer (California is great).
Some states allow the Feds to oversee their state. Others, like Arizona handle their own state OSHA and are notoriously under staffed.
36 years in construction and never once met an OSHA inspector face to face. The only time they were on a job I was working was because of 3 deaths occurred by engulfment due to the of improper confined space procedures.
Linnaeus
@Prescott Cactus:
True. Environmental regulation (which I am more familiar with as it’s a big part of my job) works much the same way. For good and for ill.
gvg
Why does the company have to honor the golden parachute contract when he broke the law and they are firing him for it? When ordinary people get fired for cause, they lose their pensions don’t they?
Stockholders have been known to run up debt, then declare bankruptcy to loot pensions…could these stockholders legally do something like that to mister golden parachute bad manager and not the workers? they shouldn’t have to pay a guy who cost the company so much even when warned by them.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
In fairness, some of the difference in safety is because of the prisoner population. It’s hard to make a prison full of violent offenders as safe as one full of white collar criminals.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: Holding on; thanks for asking.
Linnaeus
Potentially silly question: would Blankenship’s appeal keep him out of jail?
Brendan in Charlotte
@SiubhanDuinne: that’s also $8,620.69 he’s being fined per miner death…
LAO
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Lots of fun in Oregon today, according Maxine Bernstein @maxoregonian ‘s twitter feed.
Prescott Cactus
OSHA Tidbit:
You are working at Mega Energy Super Refinery (MESR) building scaffold for other workers. You are very likely to be working for a General Contractor or a Sub Contractor. The fire alarms don’t work at MESR and you call OSHA. They are employee / employer centric. So IF they were to issue a citation & fine, the would go after your company (Billy’s Scaffold-o-rama Inc). MESR would need to fix the sirens, but the smaller contractor would get nailed.
LAO
@Linnaeus: If he moves for bail pending appeal, and it’s granted by the Circuit Court. (which it probably would be because of the short sentence).
Linnaeus
@LAO:
Thanks for that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: Oh, thanks for that.
And I’m sure you knew the Tarasoff explanation was for the Juicers who are not law grads, though I didn’t make that clear.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brendan in Charlotte:
That’ll break his bank:
Per Trollhattan
LAO
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): No problem, I’m 20 years out of lawschool — It took my a minute to remember the case, the explanation was helpful.
ALSO, did you know Jake Ryan was in custody??? He was in court. He must of self-surrendered because there was a distinct lack of brouhaha on the internets.
Trollhattan
@Prescott Cactus:
The company I worked for at the time lost the majority of the fifteen killed at the BP Texas City Refinery in 2005. The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board conducted the investigation and placed most of the blame on BP, but also on OSHA and my company (which had put a job trailer in a dangerous location on refinery grounds). My company was working on a project unrelated to the failed unit that cause the explosion, but our team was meeting in the trailer when the explosion occurred. The report (available at a link on this page) is a disturbing read, and indicative of 1. Texas, 2. Bush-Administration OSHA and 3. BP.
As my employer dealt with the aftermath I learned how industry insiders view BP’s lackadaisical take on safety, which made Deepwater Horizon not terribly surprising.
Amaranthine RBG
I believe that is the maximum time sentence the judge could have imposed given the jury’s decision that he was not guilty of any felonies. Fuck West Virginia jurors, indeed.
That said, I can’t think of any recent convictions in America of any kind for CEOs whose companies have killed workers, so there’s that.
Germy Shoemangler
@Linnaeus:
Could drag it out for years until he dies of natural causes. He can afford the best lawyers.
danielx
@LAO:
In any prison, “safe” means “for certain values of safe”.
eric
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): if i recall right, the murderer left the country and was never prosecuted.
danielx
@Trollhattan:
True, true…except there’s one set of rules for people like Blankenship and a whole ‘nother set of rules for people like you or me. I am nothing short of amazed that he’s actually going to do any time at all.
Bill E Pilgrim
My favorite Merle story: a few years after Okie From Muskogee at least some people had picked up that it was sort of tongue in cheek, and that Merle and his band The Strangers were a bunch of musicians on the road after all, so a reporter finally asked him “So, the line “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee” .. is that true?” And Merle sort of smiled and said “Well yeah. But we’re not in Muskogee very often”
Bob In Portland
“Sell Coal Cheaper And Drive Union Coal Out of Business” – Don Blankenship’s business model.
Prescott Cactus
@Trollhattan: Will review that report, but not today. Rough enough already.
I worked the refineries (including BP Whiting, IN. – city without a Sun: read pollution) and steel mills for about 10 years. Eventually got into nuclear power as the industry is very focussed on safety. People and plant safety go hand in hand there. Can’t deny working inside during the winter didn’t help sway that decision, but I think I made a good call anyway.
Amaranthine RBG
And, before I forget, here is my Blankenship story. A relative owns a company in WV that contracted with one of Blankenship’s companies. They’d done work for few years earning $100-200K a year and were paid with no problems. They always dealt with middle level managers at the company. My relative’s company grossed under $1M so this was a significant part of their revenue.
They got some additional contracts, ramped up with employees, and pretty soon they had about $400K outstanding. My relative is getting anxious because about $250K of that is for salaries and expenses that he has paid out, so he contacts the company people he’d always dealt with. They tell him that “Mr. Blankenship” has to approve payments over $200K. So my relative waits. A few weeks pass. His calls now go unanswered. Eventually he gets a call from Blankenship who says “I’ve been looking at these invoices and these charges are excessive. I’ll pay you $200K or you can sue me and never get another dime of business from us.”
My relative swallowed his pride and took the offer.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: I read that at the twitter feed. I’m guessing he turned himself in, or was quite polite about stop and arrest. It was very quiet…
Linnaeus
@Amaranthine RBG:
Ah, the sanctity of contracts…
Bob In Portland
Here’s that quote from Larry Summers, who’s overseen the greatest income inequality in US history:
-as told to Ron Suskind early in the Obama administration. LISTEN, LIBERAL, page 173.
While Summers was devaluing the left-behinds, I’m sure his mindset can be applied to murder. There are reasons why Blankenship and his ilk find that kind of justice.
Trollhattan
@Prescott Cactus:
You won’t miss the “awl” industry any after reading it. From the summary:
I’m reminded of the Texas congressman who apologized to BP during the Gulf Spill hearings, for their ill-treatment of the company.
Tim C.
@Linnaeus: But…. but John Galt would never do such a thing!
rikyrah
This is a BIG.PHUCKING.DEAL.
Up until now, the financial advisers who help retirees decide where to put their investments could legally steer clients toward decisions that made themselves more money at their clients’ expense. Now that practice will be against the rules.
On Wednesday, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule that will require those advisers to adhere to a “fiduciary standard,” or in other words to always put clients’ interests ahead of their own when they make recommendations about investing in exchange for fees or other payment. They will have to make “prudent” investment recommendations, according to the DOL, that don’t take their own interests into account, as well as charge reasonable compensation that doesn’t create a conflict of interest and fairly represent their recommended investments. Compliance will be required in a year, beginning in April of 2017.
qwerty42
@Citizen_X: …I’m sure they are, at all those responsible: Obama, the homosexuals, and gubmint regulation. {/snark}
Of course! The real criminals were right there all along! Rookie mistake on my part.
dollared
@schrodinger’s cat: Wow. you are some kind of prick. And ignorant. Unaware of how capitalism works? Need a book on how maximization of shareholder value leads to premature deaths in our society and in others?
Prescott Cactus
@Trollhattan: Yeah I started to read it. . . Had to.
The 3 guys who died on job I was at was a Romeoville, IL refinery. Months before it had gone “boom” which killed 17 plant employees. It happened around 6pm and most day shift working stiffs were home. The admin building had all the widows blown inward. If a curious many would have been watching this unfold, they would have been mince meat.
The picture on the first page of your report was like a flashback. Trucks were metal skeletons. No plastic, fabric or rubber.
rikyrah
He should BURN.IN.HELL.
Let’s get a little Prison Justice.
Linnaeus
@Tim C.:
No! Hell no!
Trollhattan
@Prescott Cactus:
Trust me, you won’t miss the awhl bidnez one bit after a read. Just the summary has some galling conclusions.
An entire corporation of Don Blankenships.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eric: I thought he (Prosenjit Poddar) fled before sentencing, so I went looking. This is what I found here:
Not the worst legal result in my view; a new trial would not have brought Tatiana Tarasoff back to life, and would likely have renewed her family’s grief. And the previously convicted murderer would become India’s danger to monitor. Cynical, I recognize.
Trollhattan
@Prescott Cactus:
Horrid to have gone through that. I received a lot of (HAZWOPER) safety training and of the dozens of accident examples presented, each was preventable. Safety culture, human error, system failure, staffing, training, you name it, one or more failed.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amaranthine RBG: Blankenship and Trump: twins sons of different mothers. Full metal assholes both of them. It sucks that your relative got fucked over, but he was really without a choice other than suck up the loss.
polyorchnid octopunch
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): If I were to guess, what happened to Finicum made the rest of ’em rethink their certainty of superiority.
Trollhattan
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
In a weird way, Blankenship is worse because he actually worked in mines, so knows the conditions and personally knows the miners he later basically screwed and killed. Every decision was made with a deep knowledge of its impacts. Little lord Drumpf has never associated with the working class in any meaningful way. His aloofness is preordained.
My $0.02, anyway.
randy khan
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I expect a very high percentage of lawyers know what anhedonia is, even if they don’t know the technical term.
randy khan
@Germy Shoemangler:
Most criminal appeals don’t take that long, and he won’t get a stay of the sentence if the appeals court doesn’t think he has much of a case. I’d figure he’ll go to jail within a couple of months (with no stay) or within less than two years if he gets the stay and loses the appeal.
Prescott Cactus
@Trollhattan:
Thankfully I didn’t arrive on scene till 2 days later. Monday evening the explosion took place, my biz agent called Tuesday and I started Wednesday. It was like a movie set. Was in 1984 and got almost 2 years out there.
In the nukes we did close to 45 minutes a day on plant status and safety before move we would move an inch. Been gone almost 2 years and don’t miss a minute of it.
LAO
@randy khan: if he is granted bail on appeal (which I believe is highly likely), the time to file and perfect an appeal is expedited. So he can’t delay the inevitable by drawing out the process.
rikyrah
Michigan governor Rick Snyder faces racketeering lawsuit over Flint water crisis
The Guardian THE GUARDIAN
06 APR 2016 AT 16:18 ET
A federal racketeering lawsuit by hundreds of resident in Flint, Michigan , is alleging the city’s two-year water crisis was the result of an“intentional scheme” crafted by state officials and Michigan governor Rick Snyder to balance the city’s budget.
In a press conference announcing the 17-count racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations ( Rico ) complaint on Wednesday, attorneys said the state of Michigan ran Flint’s day-to-day operations through an emergency manager, who prioritized balancing the city’s budget through a cost-cutting measure: switching Flint’s water source in April 2014 from Lake Huron, which serviced the city for more than 50 years, to a local river.
Prescott Cactus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
When you earlier mentioned “Tarasoff duty” I didn’t think it was going to be good for her / him. Sad stuff.
burnspbesq
@dedc79:
I certainly would be down with upgrading that charge to a felony. And there should be a general rethink of how we deal with safety violations. The fact that the only Federal felony with which he could be charged was securities fraud continues to astound.
Ken T
@Prescott Cactus:
Not true. If an OSHA inspector arrived to inspect the sirens, the only thing he would know was that he was responding to an “employee complaint” – he most likely would have no knowledge of whose employee had called it in. And there would be no question that he would find MESR to be the employer with primary responsibility. At worst, Billy would receive a de minimus violation (i.e., stern warning) for allowing his employees to work in that environment. OSHA has enforcement guidelines for dealing with “multi-employer workplaces” that do very clearly distinguish which employer has the primary responsibility.
Prescott Cactus
@Ken T:
Ken,
What happens in the field and how it’s supposed to be in the real world don’t always match up.
I called in the siren problem. I didn’t want to give my company info, BUT in order to file a complaint I had to name my company to make sure I was not a disgruntled ex-employee or a competitor trying to sink another company. They assured me I would not be exposed and they would confirm my employment thru the plants entry / exit logs.
I know for a fact that “Billy’s” got cited for the siren issue and for having dirty port a potties. Really.
Perhaps MESR got wrote up & fined too. Don’t know. This was at a plant that had 17 people killed earlier (and 3 would die months later). I was just a hired field hand. They never talked to me or anyone with our company. About 2 weeks after the call, the 2 citations were posted on the wall in our trailer and we got a lecture about safety.
Sirens got fixed too.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
I think the general rule of thumb is that when something really bad happens it’s generally more than one failure. The whole point of safety as a process is that you’re supposed to have multiple levels of protection against any failure, so any real disaster will almost inevitably require failures at those multiple levels.
Prescott Cactus
@Roger Moore: Yes, we used to call it the cascade effect.
When they break down major screw ups they would always find multiple people, rules and procedures (step by step instructions) that were not followed.
Someone left a wrench and half a roll of paper towels in a pipe that eventually brought steam into the blades of a turbine at a power plant. No one hurt, but multi million $ mistake. Foreign Material Exclusion (FME) became an industry buzzword.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Shit. I guess it’s better than nothing, but I wonder how the people left behind after those miners died feel about this. I can only guess. What a shitty ending.
oz29
@sigaba: The source of the jury’s (and by extension the system’s) legitimacy is precisely what you seem not to like — that is, that the jury was bound to determine only whether Blankenship was legally guilty (as opposed to morally or ethically guilty.) Allowing a jury to make decisions of guilt based on what punishment is appropriate for a given offense invites findings of guilt based on reasons other than whether the defendant violated the law in the instance and by the conduct complained of. I would rather see Don Blankenship walk free than see a system that allows juries to determine guilt by considering factors other than the law and the evidence.
dollared
@rikyrah: Gawd, I would love to see that asshole pay for all the evil he has done.
Steve in the ATL
@rikyrah:
Careful–several of us were reprimanded earlier (by one of the anhedonistic attorneys!) for wishing violence upon the defendant outside of the legal process
oz29
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I wonder about that too. Speaking as an outsider (I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and went to school in Southern WV): West Virginians are weird about coal.
In 1995-96, I worked for a small polling firm that was surveying in support of lobbying efforts to fight the Ballenger Bill. I was working largely on people in McDowell, Mingo, Wyoming, Boone, and Logan counties, and a lot of respondents — upwards of a third — indicated that a family member had died from some connection to mining. Nonetheless, the general attitude toward deaths/injuries/black lung was something like “Yeah, it sucks pretty much, but leaving coal in the ground don’t pay nothin’.” Similar to what they’ve found more recently with attitudes toward Mountaintop Removal.
I’m sure Cole or someone on here is a Golden Horseshoe winner, and remembers exactly what the payout was to the families of the miners killed in the Fairmont No. 6 explosion. Monongah, Eccles, Benwood, and Farmington are (or at least were) as much a part of every West Virginian’s make-up as pepperoni rolls and slagging on Don Nehlen. Oddly, they collectively seem to take a lot of shit in stride as long as the coal trucks keep rolling, even if the money follows the coal right across the border.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@randy khan: I expect you are correct. But damn it, they ought to know the right words. They’re lawyers. It’s what we do. Oops, I meant they. What they do.
J R in WV
There’s going to be litigation over this on all sides. The company will seek release from that severance contract, the survivors of the deceased will seek civil damages from Donald.
People generally won’t attempt to seek vigilante justice against Donald because he can afford serious security all around his homes.
I really believe the jury found him guilty of the most serious crime- in their eyes. Stock fraud is a worse crime than conspiracy to avoid federal safety laws–> REALLY?? You gotta be kidding me!!!!
So that’s what I think about the jury. Obviously they should have nailed him for everything, but I wasn’t on the jury. Sometimes all it takes in one asshole holding out for acquital, after months of trial and weeks of deliberation.
The judge is generally well respected, and did give him the max for the conviction. Damm! At least he gets to serve some time. Hope he doesn’t get bail while preparing an appeal!
J R in WV
@oz29:
You make good sense, in a way.
But how is which charges are felonies and which charges are misdemeanors not part of “the law”?
Riddle me that, please.
J R in WV
@oz29:
My Grandma and Mrs J’s Grandma lived next door in Eccles back in the 1920s… which we learned after we were serious.
My grandfather died of (pick as many as you want) lung cancer, COPD, black lung… and he never worked underground. He was the hoist engineer at Eccles Number 5, a 555 foot deep shaft mine. The coal hoist dumped into chutes right next to him, all day (or night) long.
My uncle, before enlisting for WW II, drove moonshine into town, so as to not go “into the mines.” Grandma was a Baptist, but to her, even running ‘shine was better than going into the mines. Me too…
But I know smart young men who have gone into the mines. It’s good money in a Union mine, especially for someone not into school enough to get a degree in something that pays well. Union mines have union safety committees, and are generally safer and better to work in that dog-holes, which is what non-union mines are often called.
But the UMWA is nearly broken now, thanks to Republican work on the NLRB. And mining is nearly as dangerous as it was when Monongah blew up, in 1907. The sooner we stop using coal the better in my book.
oz29
@J R in WV: The jury is the “finder of fact.” That means that its responsibility is to determine whether the facts, as it believes them to be, prove the elements of the offense as provided by law (which is the province of the judge, who instructs them what those elements are.) When a jury goes beyond that, they are, as someone said above, toying with jury nullification or worse (i.e. People’s Courts.)
A court of law is not the same as a court of justice.
oz29
@J R in WV: I went to Concord. Lots of coalfield kids there. The baseball coach at the time loved Chapmanville and Oceana kids, so I spent a lot of weekends and holidays back on up a holler er two. Within the same family, there would be the cousin who went to Concord or A-B ’cause his dad didn’t want him in the mines and his cousins who never even thought of anything other than going underground.
Paul in KY
@LAO: I think that in very rare circumstances, one can make a case for ‘vigilante’ justice. Is this one? Probably not.
Paul in KY
@Prescott Cactus: Would not surprise me, if that nutwad gets in. Year 3 of the Trumpenreich.
Ken T
@Prescott Cactus: Prescott – I’m not doubting your story, but I’m speaking from 20 years of experience in the field as a regulatory compliance manager and consultant. Here’s my take on what you are describing – Yes, “Billy” received those two citations, but I would be shocked to my core if there were any actual fines attached (that’s what “de minimus” means) (UNLESS it was a case where “Billy” was known as a habitual offender, in which case the OSHA CO might have cracked down harder than normal). In other words, posting the citations and holding that safety meeting were all he had to do to satisfy the requirements. On the other hand, the fact that the sirens were fixed pretty well proves that “MESR” was also hit, and hit hard enough to get them to take action to fix things.
Of course, none of this has anything at all to do with the original post about Blankenship, since OSHA has no jurisdiction over mining operations. That’s MSHA, which is a completely different agency, and which has been almost completely eviscerated by regulatory capture (I.e., taken over by industry insiders).