> “Bullcrap”
West Virginians know better than you.
Everything you posted was part of the media and Obama smear job against those coal mines as part of their ‘War on Coal’.
It was the government that cut the airflow in half that formed the explosive mixture leading to the deaths of the miners. Obama’s government then piled on with cataloging safety violations from the past and adding more to it. The previous violations were addressed and responded to. The coal miners themselves had a very big part to address the concerns. That is what I read objectively in the background from miners themselves.
The democrat liar media was supported and prodded to focus on coal mines and to make them look unsafe, dirty, and not worth operating. The violations that piled on were part of the Obama War on Coal. Obama directed and approved for his administration to do whatever could be done to take down the coal industry. Obama himself predicted the coal industry would be bankrupted.
As Blankenship said in the debate and which is confirmed as true, the safety record of the mine that suffered the explosion and loss of life was incident-free for 17 years prior to the explosion and the explosion was caused by Obama’s inspectors cutting the airflow in half which occurred eight hours before the explosion. Blankenship’s lawyer fought the government in court over their felony charges that bits were not sharpened properly, sprays were plugged, that regardless it was necessary to have an explosive mixture which was shown in court to have been caused by government inspectors who were weaponized by Obama in his War on Coal.
It was shown in court that the government was at fault so they dropped the felony charges against Blankenship and fabricated a misdemeanor charge that he didn’t inform the miners that the government inspectors were at the mine.
The government tried to blame the workers but Blankenship wouldn’t allow that. They offered him a plea deal if he would agree that the miners were at fault and he wouldn’t go along with it. So they railroaded him into prison on a fake misdemeanor charge where he was the only misdemeanor convict in the prison, the rest were felons.
This episode is in the mode of Dinesh D’Souza, Joe Arpaio, and others that Obama targeted for prison. It was Obama, not Blankenship, that was the root of the conflict. All the bitching and moaning you describe from some of the miners is just typical union bitching. The violations you mention are Obama related. Often, selected members from democrat unions are used by union lawyers and liar media to raise a ruckus over conditions and negligent management. It’s what they do. It appears to be the case here.
Funny, because the West Virginians that I know, that have worked in Massey Mines and all voted for Trump, voted for Morrisey or the other guy. If MHSA was pursuing a “war on coal” in this instance, they would have shut the Upper Big Branch Mine down. Most of those MHSA inspectors are either former Coal Miners or the family members of current Coal Miners, they sure as hell aren’t after Miners, Mines or Coal Companies. I’m not disputing that Obama launched a War on Coal, but it’s a long way from DC to the hills of WV and KY. Sometimes regulations are a necessary evil. Blankenship is not a hill to die on.