Why Today I Despair for the American Political System...

On the Republican side: Republicans signal that not even total capitulation will stop them from portraying financial reform as "permanent bailouts."

On the Democratic side, Obama is still willing to cave in and "compromise" with the Republicans, despite the Republicans saying point blank that they will not compromise. (Also, Obama's Treasury department used its voting power in Citigroup to block disclosure and transparency in derivatives at that company- proving that its calls for "more transparency" are outright lies.)

Back on the Republican side, we get proof that Republicans will destroy anyone who dares to even suggest compromise or working with the Democrats.

Back on the Democratic side, the president we elected to stop criminal conduct in office protects the lawbreakers while punishing those who blew the whistle on them.

There is no hope, no change, in either party.

I'm considering moving to England and joining the Liberal Democrats. At least every issue listed in this article, I agree with and support...

... and more to the point, there's at least a third option that has a chance, however small, to win when the big two parties both become too odious to stand.

Not So Much Cull Day, as Think About It Links

... but since it's mostly a list of links, I'll put the Cull Day tag on it anyhow.

First, file under good news v. bad news: Good news is, a ban on unmarried couples adopting is struck down in Arkansas, thus a win for gay families; bad news is, word is coming out that Obama is ordering that the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell be halted, thus yet more proof that Obama is no friend of gay rights.

Bruce Bartlett, conservative bloviator, tells us about the day he figured out that most conservatives hear nothing outside of Fox News, Limbaugh, and other right-wing propaganda outlets. Interesting reading.

Ezra Klein points out that corporations regard contracts as sacred when they're getting paid, but not so much when they have to pay employees.

Securities and Exchange Commission investigators knew "Sir" Allen Stanford was breaking the law with a Ponzi scheme... but did nothing about it for eight years. Why? Because it was too much hard work:

We found that senior Fort Worth officials perceived that they were being judged on the numbers of cases they brought, so-called "stats," and communicated to the Enforcement staff that novel or complex cases were disfavored. As a result, cases like Stanford, which were not considered "quick-hit" or "slam-dunk" cases, were not encouraged.

But that's not all: the head of the Fort Worth office of the SEC's enforcement division was in Stanford's back pocket:

The OIG investigation also found that the former head of Enforcement in Fort Worth, who played a significant role in multiple decisions over the years to quash investigations of Stanford, sought to represent Stanford on three separate occasions after he left the Commission, and in fact represented Stanford briefly in 2006 before he was informed by the SEC Ethics Office that it was improper to do so.

And, finally, a very interesting and thought-provoking story that points out why the fundamentalists are absolutely determined to defend the literal text of the Bible as the direct word of God Himself:

Because if God wrote it, personally, then its authority cannot be questioned. And wielding authority that cannot be questioned is what this story is all about.

This is a story about control. It is about, in the unintentionally candid terms of one of the main actors, "absolute authority" and the desire to wield that authority over a text so that the text, in turn, may be used to wield absolute authority over others.

This is very intriguing to me because, in no small part, it explains why fundamentalism is so strongly associated with the South. After all, politics in the South- indeed, every single aspect of the antebellum South, and most aspects of the post-Reconstruction South- centered around control, around making sure no one got above his or her proper station in life. From colonial days right down to the present, the South was split between the few who gave the orders and the many who obeyed- the few who organized the lynchings and the many who either carried them out or became the targets, the few who controlled the government and the many who voted as they were told to vote.

For these people, religion is merely a tool to maintain their control over society- and to defend that control when it is threatened by change.

So- read these links, and think about what they have to say.

It's not a threat- it's a WARNING.

So, today being the anniversary of Lexington and Concord (and Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing), all the militia groups (including a lot of teabaggers) are holding protests across the country.

Two are being held in the Washington, DC area, and they couldn't be more different; one is a simple Second Amendment rally, whose organizers are deliberately keeping out anyone who might actually bring a gun into the District or threaten the government.

The other one, being held just across the river in gun-legal Virginia, is more or less the exact opposite:

According to the Washington Post, protesters at the "Restore The Constitution" rally will take advantage of new gun laws signed by President Obama allowing the carrying of firearms in national parks to make an armed stand for liberty today.

Rally organizer Daniel Almond put the event together "because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a 'totalitarian socialism' that tramples individual rights," the Post reports.

Almond will be packing heat, and he's calling on others to join him. The park is just a few miles from downtown D.C. and, on a clear day, the Capitol dome is visible from the location.

This second rally is so extreme in its orientation that even the organization calling for the military to mutiny against the federal government withdrew its support:

An Oath Keeper's board member explained his group's decision to pull out of Almond's event April 12 to the Post.

"It had gotten to the point that it would be dangerous to attend," the Oath Keeper told the paper. "There are people out there willing to do anything to create chaos in an uncontrolled situation, and [the event] is wide open for disaster."

Yeah, when an organization that waits with breathless anticipation for civil war with a "tyrannical" federal government doesn't want to be part of an armed anti-government rally, you can bet there's trouble.

The thing to remember, though, is that this second protest is absolutely NOT an isolated fringe group. It's part and parcel of the modern conservative movement- and especially the Republican Party. Remember, these people elect representatives who call for their constituents to be "armed and dangerous" in opposition to federal laws, who appear in the South and praise efforts to "rise again" in either ignorance of history or support of rebellion.

And, of course, these are the voters without whom the Republican Party would fall to the ranks of the "third" parties. In part, the armed rally within sight of the capitol is a reminder of this: do as you're ordered, or next time we won't bother with an election.

These are people who, more and more, are coming round to the idea of an armed rebellion against the elected government of the United States.

Granted, there is a little bit of good news about this. In my home state, the governor who said Texas might need to secede is in a tight race against a Democrat... and, by the way, that three-point lead is from a polling outfit with a six-point Republican bias, as (repeatedly) proven by FiveThirtyEight.com . And the Democrats are on the attack, mocking the neo-secessionists and militiamen:

Barnes, in particular, took aim at what he characterized as Republicans’ frivolous pursuits since they took power, such as making it illegal to implant a microchip in a person without his permission and threatening to secede from the U.S.

“Do they not know that the Yankees have got the atomic bomb now?” he joked. “We won’t make it through Bull Run.”

So perhaps there's hope.

But in the meantime... maybe it's time to organize gun owners who SUPPORT the currently elected government for a rally of our own.

Someone needs to make it clear that, if these loonies go to war to overturn an election, they WILL be opposed.

Tea Party: They Are Who We Thought They Were

Recently efforts on the right have been made to make the Tea Party movement more mainstream- to present tea party activists not as ignorant racist Republicans, but as independents intellectually concerned about the direction of our nation.

Well, recently CBS News and the New York Times released their own poll of the tea parties- the largest sample size yet.

CBS News and the New York Times surveyed 1,580 adults, including 881 self-identified Tea Party supporters, to get a snapshot of the Tea Party movement.

. . .

Eighteen percent of Americans identify as Tea Party supporters. The vast majority of them -- 89 percent -- are white. Just one percent is black.

...Three in four are 45 years old or older, including 29 percent who are 65 plus. They are also more likely to be men (59 percent) than women (41 percent).

More than one in three (36 percent) hails from the South, far more than any other region. Twenty-five percent come from the West, 22 percent from the Midwest, and 18 percent from the northeast.

They are better educated than most Americans: 37 percent are college graduates, compared to 25 percent of Americans overall. They also have a higher-than-average household income, with 56 percent making more than $50,000 per year.

More than half (54 percent) identify as Republicans, and another 41 percent say they are independents. Just five percent call themselves Democrats, compared to 31 percent of adults nationwide.

Nearly three in four describe themselves as conservative, and 39 percent call themselves very conservative. Sixty percent say they always or usually vote Republican.

Beginning to get the picture?

This poll does make one distinct change from certain previous polls, specifically the previous CBS-NYT poll on the subject- education. In the February poll, the average teabagger was as likely as the general public to have a college degree; in the April poll, considerably more so. (Average income was also slightly higher in the April poll.)

So, let's compare numbers with the old poll and the new, and throw in the Daily Kos's poll of Republicans for good measure when applicable.

TEA PARTY SUPPORTERS BROKEN UP BY REGION:

SOUTH: February poll 37%, April poll 36%, KOS GOP poll 42%
WEST: February poll 29%, April poll 25%, KOS GOP poll 25%
MIDWEST: February poll 19%, April poll 22%, KOS GOP poll 22%
NORTHEAST: February poll 16%, April poll 18%, KOS GOP poll 11%

BY RACE:

WHITE: February poll 95%, April poll 89%, KOS GOP poll 89% (national proportion about 60%)

BY AGE: February poll 59% over 45, April poll 75% over 45, KOS GOP poll 70% over 45 (national proportion about 50%)

Do you notice the parallels?

The teabaggers ARE the Republican Party, and vice versa. (The poll shows 3/4 of teabaggers calling themselves conservative, and 60% saying they consistently vote Republican.)

With that in mind, consider some other datapoints from the new survey:

Fifty-three percent of Tea Party supporters describe themselves as "angry" about the way things are going in Washington, compared to 19 percent of Americans overall who say they are angry. (Note: that means teabaggers are about half of all the people who are "angry" about Washington for any reason whatever. - Kris)

. . .

Eighty-eight percent disapprove of President Obama's performance on the job, compared to 40 percent of Americans overall. While half of Americans approve of Mr. Obama's job performance, just seven percent of Tea Party supporters say he is doing a good job.

Asked to volunteer what they don't like about Mr. Obama, the top answer, offered by 19 percent of Tea Party supporters, was that they just don't like him. Eleven percent said he is turning the country more toward socialism, ten percent cited his health care reform efforts, and nine percent said he is dishonest.

Seventy-seven percent describe Mr. Obama as "very liberal," compared to 31 percent of Americans overall. Fifty-six percent say the president's policies favor the poor, compared to 27 percent of Americans overall. (Note: And why is this supposed to be a bad thing again? - Kris)

. . .

Sixty-four percent believe that the president has increased taxes for most Americans, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans got a tax cut under the Obama administration.

. . .

Twenty-four percent of Tea Party supporters say it is sometimes justified to take violent action against the government. That compares to 16 percent of Americans overall who say violence against the government is sometimes justified.

. . .

An overwhelming majority of Tea Party supporters, 84 percent, say the views of the Tea Party movement reflect the views of most Americans. But Americans overall disagree: Just 25 percent say the Tea Party movement reflects their beliefs, while 36 percent say it does not. (Note: As with all Republicans, the theme is this: if you disagree, then you're Not Really An American. - Kris)

. . .

Thirty percent of Tea Party supporters believe Mr. Obama was born in another country, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Another 29 percent say they don't know. Twenty percent of Americans overall, one in five, believe the president was not born in the United States. (Note: The Daily KOS poll of Republicans showed almost identical numbers on the same question - Kris)

The poll also shows distinct animus towards non-whites, especially blacks. Considering some of the people who take an active role in organizing tea party protests, that shouldn't be surprising:

[Brian "Sonny"] Thomas is the founder and president of the Springboro Tea Party in southwest Ohio. He faces a misdemeanor charge after recently going to the home of the mother of his son, in violation of a protection order. The woman had previously told police that their son had returned from Thomas's home with bruises.

Thomas had already been in hot water, after he tweeted during a march in support of immigration reform: "Illegals everywhere today! So many spicks makes me feel like a speck. Grr. Where's my gun?"

Thomas's son, and the son's mother, are Hispanic.

. . .

The tweet wasn't the first evidence that Thomas may be unusually preoccupied with race. Among the links to the Springboro Tea Party site is one to a site called white-pride.org, which sells t-shirts expressing pride in various European ancestries. CNN found a picture on Thomas's MySpace page -- no longer available -- of him wearing a "white pride" t-shirt. The "White Pride" slogan is frequently used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Remember, that's not just a group of independent fringe people. As the polls show... that's the mainstream Republican Party- the old rich white folks trying to preserve their privilege and undermine or outright destroy the federal government.

And if anybody tells you different... don't believe it.

Post-Convention Cull Day

Wow, a LOT apparently happened while I was busy at, or recovering from, the convention I worked at this past weekend. Too much for me to keep track of, or research, or comment in detail on.

So... it's Cull Day!

First off: Oklahoma becomes the first state to begin organizing its secessionist army.

Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

. . .

"Is it scary? It sure is," said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. "But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?"

Incidentally, folks, it should be borne in mind that, just before the Civil War, most newspapers in the South were agents of the fire-eating secessionist wing of the Democratic Party, deliberately ginning up fear, hatred and paranoia among their readership. Today... we have Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, NewsMax.com, Drudge, National Review... so, yeah.

The Tea Parties are trying to unite... except, well, it's only those tea party groups funded and run by Republican Party activists that are uniting:

Mark Skoda, a Tea Party leader from Memphis (and a founder of the recent Tea Party Convention), is serving as the chief spokesman for the effort, and appears to have played a leading role in putting it together. Skoda, working closely with Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, had helped organize and promote February's convention, at which Sarah Palin delivered the keynote speech and which enjoyed widespread media coverage. Also part of the new coalition is the Tea Party Express, the brainchild of a team of California Republican political consultants.

But one prominent group, the Tea Party Patriots (TPP), doesn't appear to be joining the party. Jenny Beth Martin, a leader of TPP noted to TPMmuckraker that her group already considers itself the largest grassroots Tea Party organization, and said it hadn't been involved in planning the new federation. TPP had also stayed away from February's convention.

It should be noted that Tea Party Nation is the group founded and led by former Republican leader Dick Armey. This is a clear case of the Republican Party trying- and failing- to co-opt the teabaggers, who are definitely much more radical and bigoted than the national average. Even Fox News is calling the teabaggers out on their lunacy, now that they realize they won't be controlled.

Even as Virginia Governor McConnell apologizes and backtracks on his leaving slavery out of the Civil War, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour brushes slavery off as unimportant:

CROWLEY: You know what I'm trying to get at here is that there's a sort of feeling that this is insensitive. But you clearly don't agree?

BARBOUR: To me, it's a sort of feeling that it's a nit, that it is not significant, that it's not a -- it's trying to make a big deal out of something doesn't amount to diddly.

So, yeah: slavery was wrong, "everybody knows that," but apparently it wasn't important at all to the Confederacy. Riiiiight.

Matthew Yglesias cuts right to the heart of both the Republican desire to celebrate the CSA, and the core of teabagger support:

... something that links the mentality of today’s right to the mentality of the slaveowners and segregation proponents is the white southern political tradition’s very partial and selective embrace of majoritarian democracy. As long as national institutions are substantially controlled by white southerners, the white south is a hotbed of patriotism. But as soon as an non-southern political coalition manages to win an election—as we saw in 1860 and in 2008—then suddenly the symbols of national authority become symbols of tyranny and the constitution is construed as granting conservative areas all kinds of alleged abilities to opt out of national political decisions. Even if you think opposition to the Affordable Care Act has nothing whatsoever to do with race, the underlying political philosophy by which a George W Bush or James Buchanan is a national president but an Abraham Lincoln or a Barack Obama merely a sectional one remains incoherent and pernicious.

Meanwhile, if you haven't had enough reminders of innate Republican evil, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff in the State Department, testified that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld knew full well they were imprisoning- and torturing- innocent people in Guantanamo and elsewhere:

I came to understand that there were several different reasons for the refusal to release detainees in Guantánamo, even those who were likely innocent. These reasons continued to the time of my departure from the Department of State in 2005. At least part of the problem was that it was politically impossible to release them. The concern expressed was that if they were released to another country... the leadership of the Defense Department would be left without any plausible explanation to the American people...

. . .

Another part of the political dilemma originated in the Office of Vice President Richard B. Cheney, whose position could be summed up as “the end justifies the means”, and who had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent, or that there was a lack of any useable evidence for the great majority of them. If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it. That seemed to be the philosophy that ruled in the Vice President’s Office.

Of course, with Dawn Johnsen's nomination to the Office of Legal Counsel scuttled, the last faint hope of Obama ever following up on this testimony has long since flown away.

And finally, a recent federal court ruling puts a major kink in plans for net neutrality regulations. That said, it was almost certainly the right ruling:

If “ancillary jurisdiction” is enough for net neutrality regulations (something we might like) today, it could just as easily be invoked tomorrow for any other Internet regulation that the FCC dreams up (including things we won’t like). For example, it doesn't take much imagination to envision a future FCC "Internet Decency Statement." After all, outgoing FCC Chairman Martin was a crusader against "indecency" on the airwaves and it was the FCC that punished Pacifica radio for playing George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” monologue, something you can easily find on the Internet.

Of course, this ruling can- and probably will- lead to more direct and stringent regulation of telecoms and internet providers by the FCC, since they won't be allowed to do spot-checks on egregious incidents. This issue is by no means settled.

Of course, the local newspaper has NOTHING on the runoffs...

I've just been given a major reason to vote in the almost totally forgotten Republican primary runoffs: a lunatic, hypocritical theocrat who, despite being almost totally unqualified, wants to be on the state supreme court.

Currently locked in a tight runoff in the GOP primary for a six-year term on the Texas Supreme Court, the self-described "patriot and Reagan conservative" came in first in a six-way primary last month. The runoff between Green, who has a law degree but no judicial experience, and Fort Worth family district court judge Debra Lehrmann is next Tuesday.

. . .

Green once punched a political rival on election day 2006, and his four-year tenure as a legislator in the Texas House was marked by controversies like the time he filmed an TV infomercial for a nutritional supplement in his Capitol office (more on both of these episodes below).

Since 2001, Green has been going around the country speaking as a representative of WallBuilders, a group dedicated to education about America's "forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built."

. . .

Green, for his part, has also embraced the Tea Partiers. In a video of a tea party rally featured on his own YouTube channel, Green exhorts the cheering crowd to say that "we are firing the first shots of the second American Revolution right here in Texas."

Green's last stint in public service, as a state representative from Dripping Springs south of Austin, was marked by ethical problems, In one incident, he successfully lobbied the state parole board to release a man who owed $400,000 to a company owned by Green's father, according to the Dallas Morning News. In another, prosecutors looked into his role lobbying the health department on behalf of a dietary supplement firm, Metabolife, that was also represented by Green's law firm.

More coverage here and here.

Now, obviously this person should not be allowed within a mile of being a judge. And since the Republicans hold all the seats on the Supreme Court, it's highly unlikely that the winner of the Republican primary will win.

But...

... if the Democratic candidate has any chance at all, it's only with this lunatic carrying the GOP standard. His primary opponent is, by comparison, quite sane and moderate- and, in a contest that leans Republican at best, probably unstoppable.

So, your advice: should I gamble, cast my vote for the crazy man, and hope the Democrats win in November... or vote for the sane family court judge, knowing that she will almost certainly stomp on the Democrat with cleats come November?

Don Blankenship: Teabagger, Racist, Greedy, Sociopathic... Republican

So the big news the past couple days is the big mine explosion in West Virginia.

This is by no means the first time that a mine belonging to the Massey Corporation has caused the deaths of workers. The CEO of the corporation, Don Blankenship, has said in an interview that despite the multitude of safety violations, there was nothing wrong with how the mine was run:

I mean violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process. You have inspections every day and it’s hard to differentiate sometimes between head count or number counts of violations and the seriousness or type of it.

[Upper Big Branch] was a mine that had violations. I think the fact that MSHA and the state and our firebosses and the best engineers you can find were all in and order this mine and all belive it was safe … speaks for itself.

Any suspicion that the mine was improperly operated or illegally operated or anything like that would be unfounded. None of these groups would have allowed this mine to operate had it been unsafe.

Yes, this nitwit does not realize- or will not admit- that safety regulation violations are a definitive sign that the mine IS unsafe.

Of course, you'll notice that he mentiones the Mine Safety and Health Authority, the state government, and his employed engineers... but he doesn't mention union safety crews or inspectors. That's because, over the past decade, he's purged the United Mine Workers of America from his corporation's mines.

The combative head of the nation's sixth-biggest coal company has benefited greatly by facing down the union. But it's not his only enemy. Environmental regulators, who he says are in cahoots with the union, aren't particularly fond of him either. They say he runs some of the industry's dirtiest mines. Now Wall Street has joined the party. The cocky, independent streak that served him so well has led to bad decisions, such as hiring cheaper but inexperienced workers.

. . .

The 53-year-old made his name in 1985, when Massey insisted on separate negotiations for each of the company's mines. In protest the United Mine Workers of America struck at mines run by Blankenship. But after 15 months, with one worker shot to death, 91 others sent to the hospital, three of Blankenship's armored cars trashed and those 11 bullets fired into his office, the union caved in, agreeing to less featherbedding and less job security. Now Massey's liabilities for future retiree benefits and land reclamation equal $11 for each ton it ships annually; its three biggest rivals average $20 a ton.

. . .

The 53-year-old made his name in 1985, when Massey insisted on separate negotiations for each of the company's mines. In protest the United Mine Workers of America struck at mines run by Blankenship. But after 15 months, with one worker shot to death, 91 others sent to the hospital, three of Blankenship's armored cars trashed and those 11 bullets fired into his office, the union caved in, agreeing to less featherbedding and less job security. Now Massey's liabilities for future retiree benefits and land reclamation equal $11 for each ton it ships annually; its three biggest rivals average $20 a ton.

. . .

Blankenship, making a contrarian bet that the supply of low-sulfur coal will fall even faster than demand as more eastern miners fold up shop, has bought mines in West Virginia. Massey now has a third of Central Appalachia's proven and probable reserves. It mined 44 million tons last year, up from 13 million in 1990. "We're skating where the puck is going to be," says Blankenship.

. . .

n October 2000 the floor of a 72-acre wastewater reservoir built above an abandoned mine in Kentucky collapsed, sending black sludge through the mine and out into a tributary of the Big Sandy River. The sludge killed fish and plants for 36 miles downstream... Blankenship says the accident "could have happened to anyone" and partly blames faulty maps of the old mine . . . the reservoir had shown signs of leaking right before the accident and Massey failed to report that fact to regulators as required, according to the U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration. The cleanup has cost $58 million so far.

. . .

The state's Surface Mine Board, which includes the vice chairman of the state lobbying group for the coal industry, called Massey's actions at Madison "absolutely the worst behavior by any company that any member of this board has ever seen over the decades that this board has been in existence."

Over the two years through 2001 Massey was cited by West Virginia officials for violating regulations 501 times. Its three biggest rivals, mining twice as much coal in the state as Massey, were cited a collective 175 times. Blankenship says Massey is unfairly targeted by regulators. "We don't pay much attention to the violation count," he says.

. . .

In the winter of 2000-01 electricity demand rose and the spot price for Central Appalachian coal jumped from $24 a ton to $48 a ton. Mining companies began digging furiously, hiring more workers and pushing up wages. Blankenship refused to match the increases. Miners quit in droves. The timing was awful. Blankenship had planned to increase Massey coal production for the coming year from 44 million tons to 56 million tons and so needed to add staff. He had to turn to people with little experience. By the end of 2001 half of his 5,000-person staff were new hires.

The company's cost of sales, which includes miner's wages, jumped 11% in 2001 for each ton of coal sold. And, despite the surge in coal prices, Massey's operating margin fell a third, to 13%, that year. Blankenship says his decision to let the old workers go will be vindicated as savings from lower wages pile up.

And the above is a Forbes article from 2003- in other words, that was his closest FRIENDS writing about him. His allies in big business were, at the time, sharply critical of his short-sighted policies combined with his monopolistic desires- as you see above, his corporation controls a third of all coal in Appalachia, and holds near total dominion over West Virginia, where coal is the only industry.

Here's what his ENEMIES say about him, and it's based on more recent material:

Here's something else about Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Company: Blankenship spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year's Labor Day Tea Party, also known as the "Friends of America Rally."

. . .

Massey ranks among the nation’s top five coal producers and is among the industry’s most profitable. It has a spotty safety record.

The federal mine safety administration fined Massey a then-record $1.5 million for 25 violations that inspectors concluded contributed to the deaths of two miners trapped in a fire in January 2006. The company later settled a lawsuit naming it, several subsidiaries and Chief Executive Don Blankenship as defendants. Aracoma Coal Co. later paid $2.5 million in fines after the company pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges in the fire.

. . .

The Manville Trust filed the case in July 2007 against company Chairman, CEO, and President Don Blankenship and certain other current and former officers and directors. The plaintiff sought several corporate governance reforms, specifically regarding environmental compliance and worker safety. Citing several incidents involving Massey Energy, including a major federal water pollution lawsuit, penalties for two coal miners' tragic deaths and other safety and environmental compliance problems, the lawsuit claimed that a "conscious failure" by the defendants to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations and other legal obligations posed a "substantial threat of monetary liability for violations."

. . .

Blankenship will spend millions to keep the Massey Energy's workforce non-union, is perfectly happy to discriminate against union workers even if it means being sued and losing, and might hate unions as much as he hates 'greeniacs'.

This is the same mine where the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently ruled that Spartan Mining illegally discriminated against 82 UMWA members by refusing to hire them because of their union membership status.

“This settlement highlights yet again the treacherous and backhanded manner Massey treated the miners who had worked at the Cannelton mine for decades,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said. “While it was discriminating against these experienced miners because of their age or union status, the company was at the same time publicly crying about the lack of experienced miners in the coalfields.

“But it wasn’t that Massey couldn’t find experienced miners,” Roberts said. “They were there all along and wanted to work. It was that the company would rather break the law than allow its employees to have a strong voice at work and the tremendous benefits of a union contract.

Penny-wise, pound-foolish. An investment in experienced workers trained in state-of-the art safety measures combined with OSHA compliance and mine safety measures might have saved at least 25, and possibly 29 lives.

Instead Don Blankenship spent that money and more on a US Chamber of Commerce corporate-sponsored tea party to convince good, hard-working honest people to work against their best interests.

Scared yet? That's only the beginning:

On April 3, 2008, ABC News reported that Blankenship attacked an ABC News photographer at a Massey facility near Belfry, Kentucky . . . "If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot," Blankenship stated in the video.

. . .

A former employee of Blankenship, Deborah May, has filed a lawsuit claiming that stress from personal abuse forced her to quit her job as Blankenship's personal maid in November, 2005. The lawsuit claims that a wrong breakfast order from McDonald's, misplaced ice cream in the freezer and an improperly hung jacket in the closet caused difficulties with Blankenship.

. . .

He referred to the support of President Jimmy Carter for energy conservation in the 1970s to communism: "Buy a smaller car? Conserve? I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia and China, and that's the first stage."

In a letter to the editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette dated Oct. 30, 2009 Blankenship denied that global warming exists, and states: "Why should we trust a report by the United Nations? The United Nations includes countries like Venezuela, North Korea and Iran."

In 2005, Blankenship wrote a memo to 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."

So here we have a man who has no value whatever for the lives of other people, who believes that any form of regulation or conservation is Communist tyranny, who attacks and abuses other people and routinely gets away with it...

...oh, and did I mention he's one of the biggest Republican donors in four states, to the point that he's de facto boss of the Republican machine in West Virginia?

Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy — which owns the Whitesville mine — is a looming figure in West Virginia politics. Indeed, it's difficult to think of a figure like him in any other state in the current century. He financed a takeover of the state Supreme Court that wound up setting U.S. Supreme Court precedent around politics and the judiciary, and then tried to take over the Legislature.

And look down in the comments:

1) Massey Energy is based in Richmond; 2) Massey's Knox Creek site in Tazewell County "was one of ten sites in the country to be cited for major health and safety violations last October"; 3) our fine Attorney General is not only NOT cracking down on Massey, he "is actually working with Massey Energy on his lawsuit against the EPA;" and 4) Massey hearts Virginia Republicans, having donated $61,000 to Virginia Republicans in 2009 ("and $0 to the Dems"), not to mention $441,463 to Virginia Republicans since 1997 (just $8,250 to Democrats), including $40,000 to Bob McDonnell for Governor and $10,000 to Ken Cuccinelli for Attorney General.

And what did Blankenship get for his money? An attorney general who ordered Virginia universities to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and a governor who just declared April to be Confederate History Month... and then left out slavery altogether from his proclamation because:

"there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."

Yeah... because the single biggest reason the secessionists themselves cited for forming the Confederacy isn't significant enough to be part of history.

So... Don apparently got what he paid for there.

And how did this nutbar not only survive, but prosper, in the decade he's been CEO of Massey? One word: politics.

Blankenship was abetted by former employees placed at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was named a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board. After being rejected twice by the Senate, one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler was put in charge of the MSHA in a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.

. . .

U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell.

. . .

In May 2007 the EPA filed suit for $2.4 billion against Massey for violating “Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2006″ in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Martin County spill. In January 2008 Massey agreed to pay $20 million to settle the case.

In short language: Blankenship is one of many crazy, self-obsessed CEOs who have bought off the government. We can only wait and hope that this fresh tragedy actually goads a Democratic federal government into putting some teeth into the regulations and nailing Blankenship's hide to the proverbial war.

But, since the Democratic Party is the Party of Caving In to Evil, I'm not holding my breath. No doubt they have More Important Issues to Focus On. No doubt they Don't Want to Alienate Republicans in Congress. No doubt they wish to Seek Bipartisanship.

If the Democrats don't act now, and act definitively, it will be merely another example of why we desperately need some other party besides the Big Two- one irredeemably evil, the other useless.