Don Blankenship
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Don Blankenship’s record of profits over safety: ‘Coal pays the bills’
Cross-posted from The Wonk Room. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. […]
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This week in comically evil corporate behavior
Updated It’s only Wednesday and we’ve already got way more than a week’s worth of comically evil behavior from the fossil-fuel sector. Item the first: A Chinese coal freighter tried to take a shortcut through Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and rammed into the world-reknowned ecological treasure. The stranded ship remains in danger of […]
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Massey’s mine in Montcoal has been cited for over 3,000 violations, over $2.2 million in fines
Cross-posted from Think Progress. Massey Energy is actively contesting millions of dollars of fines for safety violations at its West Virginia coal mine where disaster struck yesterday afternoon. Twenty-five miners were killed and another four are missing after a explosion took place at 3 pm Monday at Massey subsidiary Performance Coal Co.’s Upper Big Branch […]
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes on mountaintop-mining magnate Don Blankenship
On Thursday the University of Charleston in West Virginia hosted a debate between Don Blankenship, CEO of mountaintop-removal mining firm Massey Energy Co., and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., environmental lawyer and founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance. I kept up a running play-by-play that can be accessed by scrolling back through my Twitter feed, but I […]
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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
If the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to stop the massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, can we honestly believe they will be able to phase out coal emissions at the level necessary to stop climate change? –Dr. James […]
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We are all from Wise County
Want to get really angry about health care and global warming? Not the ginned-up rage of the Obama-was-really-born-in-Kenya crowd, but an anger that fires you up to take action in the name of justice? Anger like the rage felt by so many white Northerners and Southerners in 1963 when they saw Birmingham’s fire hoses turned […]
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University president quits Massey board after green group campaign
After a 14-week campaign by green groups, Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee stepped down from the board of directors of mountaintop-removal mining company Massey Energy today. Ohio Citizen Action, then Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth, said that Gee’s relationship with Massey worked against his school’s efforts to develop […]
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WV Supreme Court to get out of bed with Blankenship, reconsider his case
A while back, loathsome mountaintop-mining outfit Massey Energy was hit with a $50 million judgment in a West Virginia court, in a ruling that they had illegally driven other area mining companies out of business. They appealed to the W. Va. Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling in a vote of 3-2. Later, pictures turned […]
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Don Blankenship is an evil bastard
A while back, I wrote a piece for a magazine called Old Trout, in an issue devoted to the “Thirteen Scariest Americans.” It was edited down to about 200 words there; here’s the full original piece. Don Blankenship Is an Evil Bastard There is no greater threat to the future habitability of the earth than […]
