Stand with people of Faith .... inter alia......

 

Ya mean a CEO might ACTUALLY go to JAIL?

Rainforest Action Network with Don Blankenship

BREAKING: Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship indicted on federal charges for systematic safety violations leading to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster that killed 29 coal miners in 2010. Blankenship now faces 31 years in jail.

From the text of the indictment: "Blankenship knew that [Upper Big Branch Mine] was committing hundreds of safety-law violations every year and that he had the ability to prevent most of the violations that [the mine] was committing. Yet he fostered and participated in an understanding that perpetuated [the mine's] practice of routine safety violations, in order to produce more coal, avoid the costs of following safety laws, and make more money."

Don Blankenship needs to be held accountable for his greed and recklessness that cost 29 coal miners their lives!

Read more: http://a.ran.org/s0u

 

 

We could end poverty in this country, end children going hungry if we just did a few things. #1. Treat all income the same, earned or unearned should be taxed at the same rate and graduate the tax rates so that the 1% pays higher taxes unless they invest in businesses that support the US economy and jobs. (Eisenhower's highest tax rate was 91%, it's called pay or play!) #2. Fine and criminalize people or businesses hiding money off shore to avoid taxes. #3. the Supreme Cou...

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Bold Nebraska

 

President Barack Obama must REJECT Keystone XL and PROTECT our land, water and climate for future generations. 
‪#‎ActOnClimate‬ = ‪#‎NoKXL‬

 

350.org

 

Congress is about to vote on another bill that would force approval of Keystone XL. But today President Obama's Press Secretary said he would veto the bill, even if it did pass.

That's testament to the power of your organizing. Let's keep pushing.

League of Conservation Voters

Sponsored · 

Senator Ed Markey's victory on Election Day was a big win for all of us who care about the environment.

Join LCV in congratulating Sen. Markey!

Senator Markey will continue to be a strong advocate for clean air and water and stand up to the climate change deniers in Congress. Send a note to show support for his efforts!

WWW.LCV.ORG

 

Stand Against the Keystone XL Pipeline

Stand with Interfaith Power & Light and thousands of people of faith to urge President Obama: Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline on moral grounds.

WWW.INTERFAITHPOWERANDLIGHT.ORG

10 DUMBEST THINGS EVER SAID ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

The quotes might be amusing were the stupidity not so stunning.

Earthjustice

10 DUMBEST THINGS EVER SAID ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: In light of the soaring heatwave sweeping across the western US and President Obama's new plan to tackle climate change, we wanted to share these past quotes from politicians and CEOS who apparently never got the memo about global warming. http://ow.ly/mwhNz

Click SHARE or LIKE! TELL US >> Which quote did you find most outrageous? Does Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) take the cake, or is Don Blankenship or Rick Santorum the winner?

(Thanks to RollingStone magazine for compiling the list)

More scars upon the land

In West Virginia, coal companies are pumping coal sludge (the toxic byproduct of washing coal) underground, poisoning the well water for thousands in our state. The Sludge Safety Project, a collaboration of Coal River Mountain Watch, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and mountain communities, is pushing for a law to ban underground coal sludge injection and protect our waters.

Update: Challenging Permits on Coal River Mountain

We continue to challenge the mountaintop removal mining permits on Coal River Mountain:

•CRMW co-director Debbie Jarrell, Citizen Enforcement Project Coordinator Rob Goodwin, and other local residents are appealing the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)'s decision to approve the Collins Fork permit, a 250-acre strip mining permit on Coal River Mountain that was approved in October. They are arguing that DEP failed to properly evaluate the cumulative effects of strip mining in the watershed of the Clear Fork of the Coal River, including the impact on human health. DEP also refused to grant CRMW an inspection of the permit prior to the permit hearing and the agency also blatantly disregarded a clear statute requiring the hearing on the permit to be held within 3 weeks after the end of the comment period; instead the hearing was held 3 years later. The hearing for the permit appeal was originally scheduled for January 11 but has been postponed until February 14.

•We just filed a complaint with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection over the Eagle II permit, the largest mountaintop removal permit on Coal River Mountain, covering 2,000 acres. This permit was granted in 2008 and has not yet been started. According to federal law, any permit which does not start within 3 years of being issued is automatically terminated. Eagle II is one example of what appears to be Alpha/Massey's strategy of getting permits for areas that they have no immediate intention to mine before they are faced with stricter regulations and more science clearly proving the irreversible impacts of mountaintop removal. We are still awaiting DEP's response to this complaint.


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Stand With These Three Appalachian Communities And Help Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining

My name is Donna Branham, and I live in Mingo County, West Virginia. I’ve seen first-hand the results of mountaintop removal mining, an extremely destructive form of coal mining that entails blowing up mountains, removing the tops, and dumping the rubble into streams, filling entire valleys and waterways. My family’s homeplace was destroyed by it, and the ruthlessness of the coal mining industry. Our drinking water was contaminated, and blasting shook our house and our community every day. We also dealt with extreme dust pollution and noise pollution, and flyrock, or large boulders that the explosion spits out through the air. I’m so thankful that people like you are getting involved in this fight. I’ve been in this for 20 years, and for so long, I felt like I stood alone. One voice doesn’t go very far. Many voices do. I am asking you to join this chorus of voices so that we are heard by our nation’s leaders.
Please take action now and help stop mountaintop removal mining.

Donna’s story is not unique—there are families across Appalachia who are living with the same injustice. Across this ancient mountain range, coal companies are blowing up mountains, burying streams, and contaminating waters—forever altering in the most extreme way possible our nation’s landscape and contaminating drinking water supplies for local communities.

The health impacts of this radically destructive form of mining are staggering. No one can survive without clean water, and scientific research shows that people living near mountaintop removal mines face greater threats to their health and their lives. Cancer rates are two times higher in areas of mountaintop removal mining; babies born near mountaintop removal mining are 26 percent more likely to be born with birth defects as well. How long will we let this go on?

President Obama and his administration have shown a strong commitment to the law and science by vetoing one of the largest mountaintop removal mines ever proposed, Spruce No. 1 Mine in West Virginia. But coal companies and their lobbyists are pushing for more than 100 new mountaintop removal mining permits, seeking permission to blow more mountains up and destroy more mountain streams in even more communities. When so many local communities are facing the same level of devastation, one permit denied is just not enough.

If the Obama administration issues more unlawful and harmful permits, violating the very purpose of the Clean Water Act to protect the integrity of our nation’s waters, coal companies could fill over 300 more valleys, level over 30,000 more mountain acres, destroy over 100 miles of streams, and pollute many more local waterways. The stakes could not be higher.

It’s not too late to stop more harmful mining permits from going forward. Please tell the Obama administration now to stop these mines.

Read about three permits in particular that must be denied immediately: HERE

Massey Energy Guilty: West Virginia Probe Finds Coal Giant Systemically Failed to Comply with Law

Video and transcript available on link:

Massey Energy Guilty: West Virginia Probe Finds Coal Giant Systemically Failed to Comply with Law

An independent state probe in West Virginia concludes that mining giant, Massey Energy, was responsible for the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 underground coal mining workers. It echoes preliminary findings by federal investigators earlier this year that Massey repeatedly violated federal rules on ventilation and minimizing coal dust to reduce the risk of explosion, and rejects Massey’s claim that a burst of gas from a hole in the mine floor was at fault. The report also notes Massey’s strong political influence, which it uses "to attempt to control West Virginia’s political system" and regulatory bodies. We speak with J. Davitt McAteer, who oversaw the probe and is a former top federal mine safety official. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

J. Davitt McAteer, lead author of the “Upper Big Branch Report,” which investigates the April 5, 2010, coal mining accident at a Massey Energy mine in West Virgina. He was formerly the assistant secretary of the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Clinton administration. He is now vice president of Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia.


The Fight over Coal Mining is a “Fight About Democracy”: New Documentary with Robert Kennedy, Jr. Chronicles Campaign to Halt Mountaintop Removal


ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: I’ve been involved in the industry, in the coal industry in West Virginia, on and off for 27 years. I was invited down about three or four years ago by the local group at Coal Mountain to help them in their battle to save this last mountain, as Bill says.

Massey Coal is the third largest coal company in the country, but it is by far the biggest practitioner of mountaintop removal mining. Over the past decade, they have leveled an area of the Appalachians the size of Delaware, 1.4 million acres. They’ve cut down 500 of the biggest mountains in the state. And they’ve buried, as Bill said, thousands of miles of rivers and streams.

They have to break the law to do this. They cannot survive in the marketplace without violating the law. They violate labor laws. They violate health and safety laws. And by their own records, they’ve had some 67,000 violations of just one of the environmental statutes. But they’re in violation of many, many other environmental statutes. Last year, I debated Don Blankenship in West Virginia in front of a statewide audience, a televised debate. And I asked him during the debate, "Is it possible for you to do your job without breaking the law?" And he said, "No, it is not." So this is a criminal enterprise, even by his own estimation.

As Bill says, you know, one of the things that they always say in West Virginia is, "Well, coal brings jobs and prosperity to the state." But this is one of the things that my father explained to me when I was 14 years old and he was fighting strip mining in Appalachia. He said, "This ought to be the richest state in the union because of the huge resources they have in West Virginia. But it’s the 49th poorest population, because the benefits of coal do not help the people of the state of West Virginia."

And if you look at the way that Massey operates, Massey doesn’t want to hire—it won’t hire unions. Its whole business plan has been to break the United Mine Workers, which it succeeded in doing in the state. When I was a little kid, there was 151,000 coal miners in West Virginia taking coal out of tunnels in the ground. Today there are fewer than 18,000 left in the state, and most of them aren’t unionized, because the strip industry isn’t, because Massey broke the unions. They’re taking more coal out of West Virginia than they were in 1968, but the money is not staying in the state for salaries or pensions or reinvestment in the community. It goes straight up to Wall Street. Ninety-five percent of the coal in West Virginia is owned by out-of-state interests. And Massey doesn’t like to hire—it won’t hire union labor, but not only that, it doesn’t like to hire people who have a union culture. So it won’t hire, if it can help it, West Virginians. So it advertises in Myrtle Beach, in the Atlanta Constitution, in USA Today, to bring people into the state. They work on these sites, cutting down the mountain. It takes about six years for them to cut down a mountain, and then they move someplace else.

They buy up the communities. They’ve bought up dozens and dozens of communities. They board up the houses. They make the people sign contracts saying that they’ll never come back within 20 miles of that community. And they empty the landscapes of people. So then, when they come to us and say, "Well, we’re bringing prosperity in West Virginia," what we say to them is, "Why is it that the places with the most coal in the state are the places with the poorest people? How can you bring prosperity to a community when you’re emptying the community?"

Well, this film is about a group of people in West Virginia who said, "We’re not leaving. We’re going to stay here. We’re going to protect our mountains." And they climbed up trees and built tree houses. They confronted the industry. They walked—they demonstrated in front of—they walked into the governor’s office. They had public demonstrations.

You know, one of the things that—one of the reasons that I’m interested in what’s happened in West Virginia and that Bill really got interested in doing the film here is that it’s not just about the destruction of the environment. It’s about the subversion of democracy. And wherever you see widespread environmental injury, you’re also going to see the subversion of democracy. And West Virginia is really the template for that dynamic. You’ll see the destruction of the public process at the local level, where people no longer have a say in the allocation of the public trust, the resources of the commons. You’ll see the destruction of transparency in government. You’ll see the capture of the agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from pollution. They become—in West Virginia, the West Virginia DEP has become the sock puppet for the industry that it’s supposed to regulate. You’ll see the widespread corruption of public officials, which you’ve also seen. Virtually every relevant public official in the state of West Virginia is now an indentured servant for the coal industry. And you’ll also see the destruction of the press and the role of the fourth estate. And again, in West Virginia you see the press largely blind, holding a blind eye to this wholesale destruction of the landscapes and to the people whose lives are being destroyed in this process that’s making a few people rich by systematically impoverishing virtually everybody else in the state.



The Last Mountain

MSHA Failed to Watchdog Deviant Mine Company

MSHA Failed to Watchdog Deviant Mine Company
Today, the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel submitted to the governor of West Virginia its report on the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster that killed 29 men in April 2010. Liz Borkowski at The Pump Handle blog has a detailed summary. Be sure to read it, especially if you’re going to bypass the 126-page report.

From a regulatory perspective, the bottom-line is this: Massey Energy, the owner of UBB, was a scofflaw – a repeat violator of critical safety standards; but for a variety of reasons, some explicable and some inexplicable, nothing was done to halt the company’s chronically dangerous practices at the Upper Big Branch mine. At a more visceral level, the transgressions and events leading up to and surrounding the disaster are a blow to human dignity.

MSHA clearly could have done more, according to the governor’s report: “Despite MSHA’s considerable authority and resources, its collective knowledge and experience, the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine is proof positive that the agency failed its duty as the watchdog for coal miners.” In the year leading up to the disaster, the UBB mine was sending all the signs that it was about to be a big problem:

Inspectors spent 1,854 hours at the mine in 2009, nearly twice the time as in 2007. During 2009, they wrote 515 citations and orders for safety violations, including 48 withdrawal orders for repeated significant and substantial (S&S) violations. The monetary penalties proposed for violations in 2009 and early 2010 totaled nearly $1.1 million.
But MSHA didn’t exercise elements of its regulatory authority. The agency’s inability to place UBB, or any mine, on its pattern of violations list has been well documented. The governor’s report also points out that MSHA chose not to use its power to declare “flagrant” violations at UBB, which come with a $220,000 fine.

The agency also failed “to see the entire picture” and “to connect the dots of the many potentially catastrophic failures taking place at the mine,” the report says. As a result, MSHA lost sight of its most important goal: prevention. “Enforcement aimed at prevention is what Congress envisioned for MSHA when it passed the federal Mine Law,” the report reminds us.

Of course, Massey wasn’t making it easy. The company has years of experience gaming the system. It routinely appeals violations and generally gives MSHA the legal runaround. The governor’s report relays this tale: “Massey’s Vice President for Safety Elizabeth Chamberlin reportedly took a violation written by an inspector, looked at her people and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll litigate it away.’ ”

I feel obligated to highlight one other element of the report, summarized by Borkowski:

Autopsies on 24 of the victims, ranging in age from 25 to 61, found that 17 of them (71%) had coal workers' pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. Five of them had less than 10 years of coal mining experience. The current limits on coal mine dust, put in place in 1973, were intended to be sufficient to prevent CWP, but have apparently not succeeded in eliminating this irreversible respiratory disease.

Even if the explosion at UBB hadn’t occurred, holes in the regulatory safety net were going to jeopardize these men’s lives anyway. This is no way to treat humankind.

Liz Borkowski's summary is worth reading:

The "Failure of Basic Coal Mine Safety Practices" that Killed 29 Miners


The report references a study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University's School of Communications; it found that Massey Energy had the worst fatality record among US coal companies from 2000 to 2010. During that time, 54 workers were killed in Massey mines, including the UBB victims. The company had an average of one fatality per 17.5 million tons of coal produced -- compared to one fatality per 296 million tons at Peabody energy, the top US coal producer. The AU team calculated that between 2000 and 2010, Massey was cited for 62,923 violations, and 25,612 of those were "significant and substantial." MSHA proposed $49.9 million in fines for these violations -- although, as the GIIP notes, the company made a habit of contesting proposed penalties, and so far has paid only one-third of the penalties proposed for violations at UBB between 2000 and 2009.

'The Last Mountain': Appalachia vs. Big Coal

Interesting video offered by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has actively opposed mountaintop removal for more than 20 years:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NBC Washington
Robert Kennedy Jr. introduces a new film, "The Last Mountain," which illustrates the fight to save the last great Appalachian mountain from "mountaintop removal." A giant coal mining corporation is pushing to blow it up using a devastating strip-mining practice which has destroyed entire landscapes. The Coal River mountain community is fighting to preserve the mountain and build a wind farm on its ridges instead. "The Last Mountain" turns a light on the battle being played out in America between energy needs and environmental and public health concerns.



'The Last Mountain': Appalachia vs. Big Coal
Janet Donovan
Actor Woody Harrelson was a surprise guest at D.C. premiere of "The Last Mountain" at E Street Cinema, also attended by Sens. Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Boxer, Director Bill Haney, and Bobby Kennedy Jr. who speaks out on West Virginia's struggle.

In the Midst of a Coal Field War

Coal Ash, Mountaintop Removal and Massey's poor safety record have been obscured by the Dirty Energy Disaster in the Gulf created by the arrogant energy giant BP.

The environmental degradation continues, as does the loss of life.

Maybe it's time for a sensible energy policy and time to adopt energy efficiency solutions.


Jeff Biggers: In the Midst of a Coal Field War (Video)


More GRITtv


Yet another coal miner was killed on the job this week, and journalist and author Jeff Biggers says that the situation has reached crisis level - that it's a war on miners. He also notes that abuse of the land and abuse of the people who work on it has always gone hand in hand, so as pressure for mountaintop removal and new coal mines mounts, so do safety violations - the latest being a story broken by NPR, that a methane gas monitor at the Little Big Branch mine, where 29 workers died in an explosion in April, had been deliberately shut down.

Biggers joins us to fill us in on the latest news from coal country--and from D.C., where Lisa Jackson and the E.P.A. faced a unique protest.