Author: Don Blankenship

Cecil Roberts, in the March/April addition of the UMWA Journal, said “I commend U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin for taking this investigation where no one else has, and look forward to the day when Don Blankenship is behind bars; where he belongs.” Cecil has never been reluctant to say outrageous things or to lie about me, as he can’t get over his failure in the strike of 1985. In this case, I hope people will see his obvious effort to influence prosecutors for what it is. The statement serves purposes for Cecil:It compliments a prosecutor which, if you a bad guy…

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It was reported last week that an unidentified “UMWA spokesman” said about my prior essay, “There’s not a word of truth to anything Blankenship said.” During my debate with Robert Kennedy, Jr., even he said that “Don will tell you the truth.” So, I went back and looked over what I had written to see if anything I said was true. The essay says the following dozen things which I believe to be true and I would appreciate the UMWA marking any specific one as false if it is not true. Cecil Roberts said Blankenship should be behind bars where…

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The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lisa Jackson, announced she will be leaving the agency. The President praised Jackson saying she has “taken sensible and reasonable steps.” The truth is that the EPA has been neither sensible nor reasonable and can fairly be blamed for the loss of American jobs and an increase in worldwide pollution. To me, the EPA has meant “Equal Poverty for All” in America for at least the past two decades. The passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act effectively allowed the EPA to become an agency gone wild. The EPA is a bureaucracy…

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The media and the politicians have successfully made the so-called “fiscal crisis” a real life drama. Countdown clocks abound with how many days, hours, minutes and seconds are left before we go over the cliff. The countdown reminds me of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis wherein Walter Cronkite was also counting the minutes until the Russian ships passed a certain line in the Caribbean. But there is a big difference between the Cuban missile crisis and the fiscal crisis. The Cuban missile crisis was a threat to our very existence by a foreign enemy and a dictator named Nikita Khrushchev.…

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Don, I found time today to go on your website and read your wonderful account of growing up in Appalachia . I enjoyed learning even more about your background. You and I are very, very different in so many ways while having much in common. We both grew up poor financially but rich in a strong German (for me) work ethic and desire to learn. I am clearly what many would label a liberal and a greenie if that means that I have a huge concern about being good stewards of our planet and learning to live gently on the…

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Last month I wrote and posted an essay about what could be done to help keep the politicians’ promise to make sure a mine tragedy “never happens again.” The reactions based on e-mails and other feedback was not surprising. Politically motivated organized labor “leaders” used the media to make derogatory comments about me personally, but failed, as usual, to address my underlying argument or the facts I presented. Instead, they threw rocks and ran away. On the other side, many of you who care about the facts and about miners provided positive, supportive and appreciative responses, so thank you. The…

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Last month I posted an essay on this website and sent it along with a letter to Congress and some state Governors suggesting that they ask the Mine Safety and Health Administration a few basic questions. The issues the essay brought attention to include the idling of mine equipment scrubbers, the fact that the “MSHA” Upper Big Branch tragedy investigation was flawed (i.e. UBB was a natural gas explosion, not a dust explosion), the continued poor quality of mapping and its risks, etc. The overarching point that the essay made is that MSHA is a bureaucracy dominated by outdated “union…

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