Massey CEO Don Blankenship is back in the news again, and so are the Senators from West Virginia. One still trying to make money and keep unions out of mines, the other fighting for better mine safety regulations. I’ll let you guess who’s who.

The POTUS’s religion comes into question yet again, and this time the White House tries to set things straight. Massey Energy is hit with federal fines totaling roughly $4 Million in 2nd quarter 2010, but will either of these efforts make an impact on their respective current situations?

Perhaps inadvertently, a television station in Kentucky covering the first Congressional committee hearing on the Mine Safety and Health Act calls out the US Chamber of Commerce’s “Coalition for Workplace Safety” as an Astroturf creation.

CEOs commonly make incongruous assertions to protect profits after corporate-caused disasters. They’re driven by the same factor that is fundamental to the catastrophes – greed. Nothing wrong with that, right? Not in a society that has converted greed from a vice to a virtue. Still, American church-goers might recall that greed is one of the seven deadly sins. When it afflicts CEOs, it’s deadly to workers.

BP, Massey Energy and Tessoro are all using their safety award plaques like shields to deflect accusations of recklessness. The disconnect between safety prizes and dead workers has enabled these corporations to characterize the three explosions at their facilities in April that killed 47 workers as accidents, random events for which no one really is to blame. That’s why these pseudo-safety awards are so destructive. No agency or association should ever again deceive the public or delude workers by handing awards to corporations that fail to accomplish comprehensive hazard avoidance by meeting the standards of process safety management.

Last week, Massey Energy and its CEO Don Blankenship repeated their contention that although 29 of their workers died in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion earlier this month, they emphasize safety and no problems were found in the mine just before the blast. Blankenship suggested that the disaster was caused by nature or man. This bogus excuse — that workers died at their own hand or God’s — is a common dodge managers use to evade responsibility. It’s a lie.

Canada went beyond erecting a memorial to commemorate 26 workers killed in a coal dust and methane explosion at the Westray mine 18 years ago. Canada criminalized corporate disregard for worker safety. It’s called the Westray Law. America needs its own such statute – an Upper Big Branch Law – holding corporate managers and directors criminally accountable for ditching safety for dollars.