Labor & Employment Law

Blankenship Knows No Shame

By Mike Hall

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.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on July 26, 2010 (boomark / email).