From the NY Times of 8 April 2010 is why Federal prosecutors are building felony charges against the owner of the Big Branch Mine:
Quote:
Deaths at West Virginia Mine Raise Issues About Safety
Rescue workers began the precarious task Tuesday of removing explosive methane gas from the coal mine where at least 25 miners died the day before. The mine owner’s dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting that Monday’s explosion might have been preventable. ...
In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch because of dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. ...
Mr. Blankenship sent a memorandum to his deep mine superintendents. ...“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,”
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Even after burning off in the explosion, methane remained at dangerous levels? Alarms that warned of methane were disabled. A critical fan necessary to remove methane was compromised?
But this was only an accident because they did exactly what the memo ordered? The current administration would prosecute because employee lives were only secondary to coal? Yes. They know the GOP will protect profits at the expense of safety. After all, the purpose of a company, as taught in business schools to both George Jr and Romney, is only profits.
Top management (Don Blankenship) needs GOP protection. Otherwise profits will be harmed by the upcoming criminal lawsuits that target the reason for that (and other previous) explosion. After all, the only purpose of a business (and the mafia) is profits.
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