Little Laird Blankenship and the WV Fiefdom

Just a quick call-out: Don Blankenship is a jerk. Unfortunately, he's a jerk who owns runs mines *as CEO of Massey Energy Corp, so he gets to be a powerful jerk who employs good, hardworking people, and suffers under the delusion that he owns them, just like he runs the mine. He looks at the bottom line and determines pretty much how many fines and wrongful deaths his business can get away with, versus the "increased productivity" of doing stuff with violations, which he sees as just a part of the coal business. Since those violations are safety violations, which means that failures to keep mines safe results in deaths, that means that Blankenship has accepted that sometimes, people have to die for his profits.

I just wanted to comment that this is the worst kind of feudalistic mindset. He couldn't be more abusive of his "lord of the manor" position if he decided to practice the droight de seigneur* over miners' wives.

I'd love to see this guy get some kind of comeuppance. He's already figured the toll of this latest disaster into his balance sheet.

*(Yes, I know the concept of the droight de seigneur isn't historically verified. Nonetheless, he's getting a "leg-over" financially, but people would probably get madder if it was physically, no?)

(*Yes, I know better, yet rhetoric overtook me. Actually, it's kind of worse because there's a corporate board that must like him this way. After all, he rose in the ranks of the company by ensuring the company was non-union.)