If it’s Wednesday then it’s time for an open thread. Let’s thread!
Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has already demonstrated his contempt for safety and the life of his workers. He’s also a PR disaster and the shareholders of his company want him gone.
Shareholders are calling on Massey Energy to seek the immediate resignation of chairman and CEO Don Blankenship in the aftermath of the West Virginia disaster that killed 29 miners, the worst in forty years. The Change to Win Investment Group — a union pension fund group with over $200 billion in assets — believes the Upper Big Branch mine explosion is the “tragic consequence of the board’s failure to challenge Chairman and CEO Blankenship’s confrontational approach to regulatory compliance.” New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, who controls about $14.1 million of Massey stock as the trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, blasted Massey’s “callous disregard for the safety of its employees” as a “failure both of risk management and effective board oversight”:
Massey’s cavalier attitude toward risk and callous disregard for the safety of its employees has exacted a horrible cost on dozens of hard-working miners and their loved ones. This tragedy was a failure both of risk management and effective board oversight. Blankenship must step down and make room for more responsible leadership at Massey.
Blankenship will become the fall guy but he’ll get his golden parachute and will still be a rich a-hole. Massey Energy will pay a minimal fine and the profits will keep rolling in for the shareholders. (Yes, I’m cynical)
Yesterday we talked about Carl Paladino, Republican Tea Party candidate for governor of New York (Teapublican). Paladino talked to the Buffalo News but didn’t really help himself:
“I shouldn’t have sent them, no question about it,” he told The Buffalo News late Monday. “But they were sent to friends to illustrate the humor of the day as Obama was running for president.”
Did you ever notice how Republicans always call their mean-spirited stuff humor?
Paladino said he “absolutely” would not resend such e-mails if he were elected governor or now as a candidate.
“I apologize to women who may have been offended,” he said. “I’m not politically correct and never have been. I’m not perfect.”
“But if the worst I ever did was send out some nonpolitically correct e-mails — my God,” he added.
He’s only apologizing to women who might have been offended? What about everyone else?
This part’s just for David:
Still, Paladino found himself in damage-control mode, even though his Republican and Conservative allies were not abandoning him. Erie County Republican Chairman James P. Domagalski, who has not officially endorsed Paladino but has been saying increasingly favorable things about his candidacy, declined to comment.
But his Conservative counterpart, Ralph C. Lorigo, said he was sticking with Paladino. He noted Paladino did not create the e-mails but simply forwarded humorous items that e-mail subscribers receive all the time.
It’s just good, clean fun to forward racist emails and videos of a woman engaged in bestiality.