{"id":1194,"date":"2010-04-18T01:12:51","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T08:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2010-04-18T01:12:51","modified_gmt":"2010-04-18T08:12:51","slug":"the-empathy-of-massey-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/04\/18\/the-empathy-of-massey-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Empathy of Massey Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Hard as it is to shock me, this did.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/masseyblankenship.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; margin: 2px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"Rally12  ..  8x  Tues.  ellis&#10;Don Blankenship got the crowd on its feet with a searing assessment of the U.S. government direction.\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Rally12  ..  8x  Tues.  ellis&#10;Don Blankenship got the crowd on its feet with a searing assessment of the U.S. government direction.\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/masseyblankenship_thumb.jpg\" width=\"364\" height=\"232\" \/><\/a> Yesterday, the AP <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wvgazette.com\/ap\/ApTopStories\/201004160510\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> that Marlene Griffith, a widow of William Griffith, one of the 29 men killed in last week\u2019s explosion at a coal mine in West Virginia, is suing Massey Energy, the owner of the mine. Griffith filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Raleigh County Circuit Court, arguing that Massey\u2019s handling of work conditions at the mine plus its history of safety violations amounted to aggravated conduct that rises above the level of ordinary negligence. Marlene and here husband were to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary weeks after the deadly blast on April 5. <\/p>\n<p>Indeed, as the Wonk Room\u2019s Brad Johnson has reported, the mine where William Griffith worked had been cited for <strong>over 3,000 safety violations<\/strong>. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who has <strong>mocked safety regulators as being \u201cas silly as global warming,\u201d<\/strong> had gummed up the safety regulations process by filing endless appeals instead of paying fines and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nowpublic.com\/world\/marlene-griffith-wife-west-virginia-miner-sues-massey-energy-2606578.html\" target=\"_blank\">fixing safety problems<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Responding to the lawsuit, Nathan Coffey, the Public Affairs Coordinator of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) [a front group for Big Coal], took to Twitter yesterday to mock Marlene Griffith. Coffey posted a link to the AP story about Marlene Griffith, sarcastically commenting that \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/nathancoffey\/status\/12301512249\" target=\"_blank\">Everyone wants free money<\/a>!\u201d\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2010\/04\/17\/alec-massey-mine\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Free?&#160; He said FREE?&#160; The loss of a life partner of 33 years is FREE?!!?&#160; It doen\u2019t get more expensive than that!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hard as it is to shock me, this did. Yesterday, the AP reported that Marlene Griffith, a widow of William Griffith, one of the 29 men killed in last week\u2019s explosion at a coal mine in West Virginia, is suing Massey Energy, the owner of the mine. Griffith filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Raleigh <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/04\/18\/the-empathy-of-massey-energy\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}