When coal trumps miners

West Virginia's Upper Big Branch coal mine, where 25 miners were killed in the worst U.S. mining disaster in 25 years, is operated by Performance Coal, a subsidiary of Massey Energy. Massey's CEO is Don Blankenship, who Rolling Stone described earlier this year as "a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will." Some examples (h/t The Atlantic):

--He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company.

--He hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. A year later, the justice voted in Blankenship's favor.

--Global warming, he says, is nothing but "a hoax and a Ponzi scheme."

--Between 2003 and 2006, the New York Times reported, Blankenship spent over $6 million in an attempt to boost Republican representation in West Virginia.

"Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office," Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. "He would be twice as accountable and half as feared." Most important, however, are the safety violations that he and his company routinely commit. From the NYT:

For at least six of the last 10 years, federal records indicate, the Upper Big Branch mine has recorded an injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations. The records also show that the mine had 458 violations in 2009, with $897,325 in safety penalties assessed against it, of which it has paid $168,393. "Massey's commitment to safety has long been questioned in the coalfields," said Tony Oppegard, a lawyer and mine safety advocate from Kentucky. Those concerns were heightened in 2006 when an internal memo written by Mr. Blankenship became public. In the memo, Mr. Blankenship instructed the company's underground mine superintendents to place coal production first. "This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills," he wrote.