David Roberts: Don Blankenship is an evil bastard

[excerpt] Massey is the biggest and most aggressive practitioner of environmentally devastating mountaintop-removal mining and his safety record at its underground mines is appalling.

[excerpt] Today, Blankenship wields political clout via his grotesquely titled 527 PAC, "...And for the Sake of the Kids," into which he's poured millions of dollars of his own money. (When he founded the PAC he promised to start a foundation for the actual kids, but years later that hasn't happened.) He's going after the only other liberal Supreme Court judge in WV, and has vowed to shift the balance of power in the state legislature to Republicans. His interest is in maintaining WV's low taxes, paltry social services, and lax regulatory enforcement.

[excerpt] Every December, Massey funds a lavish Christmas Extravaganza in a small WV town. Blankenship arrives in a limo, dons a Santa hat, and moves among residents -- his own people, whose ancestral land he is destroying, whose families he is impoverishing, whose children he is sickening -- and passes out gifts.

This is a well written article. Please follow the link to read the entire story by David Roberts.