Coal Boss: If You Take Photos, 'You're Liable to Get Shot'

[Bozita]

Source: ABC News


Coal Boss: If You Take Photos, 'You're Liable to Get Shot'
Don Blankenship Grabbed an ABC News Reporter's Camera During the Incident

By BRIAN ROSS and MADDY SAUER
April 3, 2008—

"If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot," the chairman of one of the country's biggest coal mining companies, Don Blankenship of Massey Energy, told an ABC News reporter before grabbing the reporter's camera.

The incident this week, in the parking lot of a Massey Energy office in Belfry, Ky., is just the latest chapter in the saga of Blankenship's controversial relationship with the West Virginia Supreme Court, which is hearing appeals that could cost his company hundreds of millions of dollars.

Photographs recently emerged showing Blankenship vacationing on the French Riviera with the state Supreme Court Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard.

Earlier, Blankenship helped to raise $3.5 million for a television advertising campaign that led to the defeat of another Supreme Court justice.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4582452&page=1

---

Video and still photos available at the link above.

This story will continue tonight on Nightline.

[fascisthunter]

1. Money and Power Has Gone to this Guy's Head

Making a death threat is a Big No No.......

[msongs]

2. next thing you know he will vote to support and fund a war in...say...iraq nt

[dogfacedboy]

15. Making a death threat is likely to lead to "pre-emptive" self defense.n/t

[Mojambo]

3. This is how the robber barons operated.

Buying off the court, hiring thugs to intimidate, screwing working class people to make a buck.

This is the new gilded age, man.

[Auggie]

6. Exactly where the U.S. is headed

[Blue_Tires]

28. +1

talk and attitudes like that are straight out of the rise of the industrial age...

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. "Both men deny discussing the case while on vacation together." - yeah right . .

.
.
.

From the posted article:

Blankenship and Justice Maynard have acknowledged they spent several days together on vacation in Europe at a time when the court was considering appeals involving Blankenship's coal company, the country's fourth largest.

"Each of us paid our own way," Blankenship said.

Justice Maynard told ABC News of Blankenship, "I think he bought a dinner, I bought a dinner. I think we each bought a dinner."

Both men deny discussing the case while on vacation together.



So shoot me already

[davidinalameda]

8. Maynard is the worst kind of DINO out there

he's in the pocket of the coal companies, especially Massey

[wundermaus]

5. The obvious response to such a threat is -

If I am shot, if I am scratched, if I so much as get a hang nail, ... you get the idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccqdEhytKOk">Here is an example for you to reference to

[ramapo]

7. Read Coal River

You will be appalled at what has taken place in West Virgina over the past 40 years.

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. You are correct - and "appaled" is a mild description of my reaction

.
.
.



Brave men protecting USAmerica



Non-violent civil disobedience is never a step that is taken lightly. But we've tried so many possible avenues of redress without success. People’s very lives are at stake. This is our latest effort to be heard. Anyone present at the protest couldn’t help but come away with a sense of awed horror at the extent to which Coal’s minions in the State Capitol are willing to go to protect Coal’s profits. The pictures here and the three YouTube videos (see links in left column) tell the story best. Shame! Shame! Shame!

http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/people_in_action/2007/03_16/index.html

[awoke_in_2003]

13. Why do people hate cops?

Those two pics sum it up pretty good.

[dogfacedboy]

16. I can't think of much more disgusting than a fat, stupid redneck with a badge. n/t

[hollowdweller]

9. Watch the documentary "The Last Campaign" by Wayne Ewing

It documents Don Blankenship using a 527 he put 2.5 million of his own money in to smear Justice Warren McGraw in the WV Supreme Court race, and put his stooge Benjamin in.



"The Last Campaign" - a sequel to Ewing's legendary first film in 1972, "If Elected…" - covers the 2004 campaign of Justice Warren McGraw for the re-election to the West Virginia Supreme Court, dubbed the 'nastiest' judicial race, if not the most expensive in the nation. Scenes from "If Elected…" -which covered Warren McGraw’s 1972 race for the West Virginia State Senate and was originally broadcast by Bill Moyers in 1973 - are interspersed with the story of McGraw’s 2004 Supreme Court race to create a unique, cinema verite portrait of American politics over a 32 year span.
One man’s struggle to resist corporate interference in the electoral process is the continuing theme. In 2004, the US Chamber of Commerce is suspected, of funneling millions of dollars from multi-national corporations into West Virginia in the primary and general election in a successful effort to defeat Justice Warren McGraw as a part of what Forbes Magazine described as a "secret war" against judges in America. The Chamber’s shadowy efforts were joined in the general election by a group calling itself "For the Sake of the Kids" which spent millions, supplied from a coal company executive to wage a smear campaign against McGraw alleging that he let a sexual predator loose to work in a school. That same coal company executive has a pending 50 million dollar judgment against his company on appeal before the West Virginia State Supreme Court."

http://www.thelastcampaign.com/about.php

[alfredo]

12. If you want to get some history on the coal fight. IFC is showing

"Harlan County USA" an award winning documentary.

http://www.ifc.com/ Look at the schedule.

[Bozita]

14. here's the schedule ...

More air dates (hide)

Tue, Apr. 8 at 01:30 AM GMT-04:00
add to my calendar
Tue, Apr. 8 at 12:25 PM GMT-04:00
add to my calendar
Wed, Apr. 16 at 07:25 AM GMT-04:00
add to my calendar
Wed, Apr. 16 at 02:05 PM GMT-04:00
add to my calendar
Tue, Apr. 22 at 09:40 AM GMT-04:00
add to my calendar
Tue, Apr. 22 at 05:15 PM GMT-04:00
add to my calendar

[alfredo]

18. Reminds why I am a union man.

[hollowdweller]

21. Thanks but I live up a hollow and can't get cable.

[alfredo]

30. Order it from Amazon or from another distributor. It's well worth

having.

If you want some good down home music and movies:


http://appalshop.org/

[michreject]

23. My mother was born in Harlan County in 31

Her father was a miner. He died of black lung. I lived there as a child.

[alfredo]

31. That's hard country for hard people.

[Peanut Butter]

10. Ah The good ol Days when they would just shoot ya

And throw you in a ditch

Them balsted Librals got everyting messed up !

[Bozita]

17. The story continues in 4 minutes on Nightline. This oughta be something!

[gratuitous]

19. Bush and the Republicans take America back to a simpler time

Enjoying the fruits of your sub-moronic votes, you fucking idiots who are so riled up about gay marriage you'll sacrifice your livelihoods, lives and even your children on the altar of unbridled rapacious greed? Corporate kings murder you, torture is no longer against the law, and the judges in our courts let them get off scot-free.

[Occulus]

20. Shut them down.

Right now. Confiscate the company's assets, direct the creditors' liabilities toward the personal property of the owner/board of directors, auction off the equipment to the highest bidder, and divide the proceeds among the employees. Oh, and let each employee sue for not less than five years' pay.

Ruin this man. He does not deserve to be able to play the game ever again.

Honestly, he needs to go to jail for a while. A long while.

[acmavm]

22. This whole story just boggles the mind. The threats from this pig

to the 'judge' vacationing with him on the French Riviera.

Just amazing.

[Tesha]

24. We saw that story and neither Mr. Tesha nor I understand...

...why he isn't warming a cozy little jail cell bench
tonight on charges of assault and battery (on the
videographer) and criminal threatening.

But he's a rich white Republican so I guess the laws
for him are different.

Tesha

[Billy Burnett]

25. A MUST SEE doc here...

Anaconda Mining, dead miners, the I.W.W., Pinkertons, capitalist hit men, martial law, government union busting, murder, environmental disaster. It's all here. The capitalist pattern.

Well worth clearing 53 minutes of your time. Beautifully done. INTENSE. Ominous.

Frank Little - An Injury to One
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4218679084249257684&q=an+injury+to+one&total=3199&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

[mainegreen]

26. Good. Then you could legally shoot back and kill him in self defense.

Perhaps this is the best way to eliminate these people?

What a dipshit he is.

[paparush]

27. NOTHING has changed in the Coal industry since the dawn of time.

Watch the movie Maetwon (http://imdb.com/title/tt0093509/)

[NashVegas]

29. The Original "Ownership" Society