Roy Blankenship is back in the coal business. He is free as a bird and back in the coal business after his company paid a measly $200 million fine (the fact that this is a record breaking fine just makes this more depressing) for knowingly endangering the lives of his workers in order to make more money. The government's investigation found that:
"managers at…Massey put profits ahead of workers' safety, and that an ingrained corporate culture of greed and recklessness ultimately led to a catastrophe that should have been prevented…federal investigators found that a preventable methane ignition triggered the explosion, which was then fueled by an accumulation of coal dust…"The results of the investigation lead to the conclusion that PCC/Massey promoted and enforced a workplace culture that valued production over safety, and broke the law as they endangered the lives of their miners." Management showed a "systematic" and "intentional" pattern of covering up safety hazards at the mine, such as the inadequate ventilation and poor roof supports that contributed to the disaster, according to investigators. The mine also had an "established" practice of tipping off managers when federal and state safety inspectors were on the way…The company went so far as to maintain two sets of safety books -- one that included known dangers, and another watered-down version that miners and inspectors could see…Workers who tried to bring forth safety concerns were routinely bullied by their superiors and feared losing their jobs making them unlikely to seek out inspectors. "
Now if Massey were a real person rather than a corporate "person" this would be 29 counts of manslaughter at the very least, more likely reckless homicide. The fact that no one is going to go to jail for killing 29 people, even when it has been demonstrated that systematic and deliberate behaviors mandated by Massey Energy caused this explosion, is as clear an example of our inculcated and compromised justice system as you'll find.
Our justice system has been contorted and leveraged to serve the interests of capital to such as extent that it is impossible within the law to hold the responsible parties to account when their misbehavior causes calamity and death. Our elites; be they energy executives, barons of finance or members of the legislature; have completely insulated themselves from just retribution for their crimes by contorting the law to either make their criminal activity legal or by making their crimes not subject to incarceration. Sure they pay fines, fines that seem like a lot of money to regular people, but these aren't regular people. Blankenship got a $12 million severance when he left Massey AFTER The Big Branch explosion! Massey was sold for $7 Billion AFTER the accident happened!
If justice were to be served, every person who ever ordered a subordinate to implement one of these profit generating, life endangering policies would be going to jail and every lackey who intimidated a whistleblower would be going to jail. But as right now, just one guy might be going to jail for obstruction of justice for actions related to the investigation, not the accident.
When people kill other people out of passion; be it hatred, love or anger; our justice system holds them to account. But when incorporated people kill other people out of greed, it goes unpunished. Personal responsibility dissolves into the soft focus capital C corporate, designed to absolve these entities of the responsibilities of personhood while preserving the rights of personhood.
I think people might believe that there is some higher logic than greed at work here. There isn't. I think people might believe that our laws are held to some ultimate standard of fairness. They aren't.
In a society where justice had any value, our awareness of the pretty well established effect of bureaucracy on perception of personal responsibility ("I was just doing my job loading those cattle cars! It wasn't my decision!") and the difficulty of assigning guilt to groups of people who come together for the sole purpose of making money, should have lead us by now to a simplified and effective method for punishing these transgressions. That the reality is just the opposite speaks to the utter corruption, dysfunction and illegitimacy of the system.