Video after the jump:

“Pattern of violations” status would have allowed Massey Energy’s Tiller No. 1 Mine in southwestern Virginia to be shut down, due to the safety hazards for workers. But as Joe Main of MSHA points out, even though the judge acknowledged the mine’s poor safety record, he ruled that it did not merit a pattern of violations. Here’s an excerpt of Main’s indignant statement on the ruling:

“The underground coal mine operation had contested 29 violations that would have formed the basis for issuance of a pattern notice. Judge Barbour agreed that the company committed all 29 violations, but he did not find a ‘pattern’ because he concluded that only 19 violations were significant and substantial. To place Tiller No.1 Mine on a pattern, 25 of those violations needed to be upheld as S&S.

“The citations disputed by Massey Energy involved hazardous roof or rib conditions, inadequate pre-shift examinations, inadequate ventilation, hazardous accumulations of combustible materials, hazardous electrical conditions and the use of non-permissible underground equipment – all serious violations that could ultimately lead to accidents and injuries.

“We believe that this case exemplifies the need for reforming the definition of S&S so that we can more easily prove in court that genuinely hazardous conditions are S&S. For example, attorneys for the Labor Department were unable to establish that the Tiller Mine’s use of non-permissible electrical equipment in the most gassy and dusty areas of the mine was S&S. Permissible electrical equipment is designed to prevent electrical sources from igniting methane, which can result in an explosion. MSHA believes that permissibility violations are obvious candidates for an S&S designation. While we are certainly disappointed in the judge’s ruling, it only underscores our unwavering resolve to fix the pattern of violations system.

“The pattern of violations system was designed to force persistent violators of safety rules to clean up their act. But under the current pattern of violations system, no mine has ever been successfully placed into pattern of violations status. As today’s ruling demonstrates, even mine operators with serious safety problems can evade pattern of violations status. The system is broken and we will fix it.”

h/t: Mike Lillis

Stanley "Goose" Stewart, right, testifies alongside relatives of victims of the Upper Big Branch explosion before the House Education and Labor Committee in Beckley, W.Va., on Monday. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/ZUMApress.com)

A coal miner working at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine when it exploded last month, killing 29 colleagues, described the operation this week as “a ticking time bomb,” where the management valued production over safety and workers didn’t protest for fear of being fired.

“The ventilation system they had didn’t work,” said Stanley “Goose” Stewart, a 15-year veteran of the UBB mine who was 300 feet underground when the blast occurred. “With no air moving it gave me the feeling that area was a ticking time bomb.”

[Environment1] There was plenty of warning that the conditions in the UBB mine were dangerous, Stewart told House lawmakers. The mine had experienced “at least two fireballs” prior to the April 5 blast, he said, suggesting not only that the vent systems were faulty, but that there were also problems with the mine’s methane sensors.

“How could methane build up to that point where a fireball could start?” he asked during a field hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee in Beckley, W.Va., near the site of the UBB blast.

The allegations — which are strikingly similar to those coming from a growing number of Massey workers, both veterans and active miners — arrive just four days after Don Blankenship, Massey’s bellicose CEO, told Senate Democrats that miner safety is the company’s top priority.

“Massey does not place profits over safety,” Blankenship testified before the Senate Appropriations Labor Subcommittee last Thursday. “We never have and we never will. Period.”

Although the UBB mine had been cited for safety violations more than 600 times since the start of 2009, Blankenship argued that the mine’s safety history is irrelevant because “abatement [of hazards] is mandatory.”

“At Massey, we always fix the problem,” he said, “even if we disagree with the penalty.”

But Stewart, along with a number of relatives of UBB victims, had a dramatically different story, telling lawmakers that Massey managers frequently cut corners to maximize production, even when it came at the expense of the workers’ safety.

Steve Morgan, for instance, father of 21-year-old Adam Morgan, who was killed during the blast, testified that it was common for workers in UBB to pull down the ventilation curtains — the plastic sheets that direct the flow of fresh air and prevent methane gas from accumulating — because those curtains can get in the way of heavy equipment, slowing down production.

“Ventilation was so bad he was sent home early several times, including once about a week before the explosion because they weren’t getting enough air,” Morgan said.

Gary Quarles, a Massey miner whose son, Gary Wayne, was also a victim of the UBB disaster, told lawmakers that Massey foremen in the mines are warned when inspectors arrive on the site — a system lending workers some time to get the place cleaned up before the inspectors get underground. “When the word goes out,” Quarles said, “all effort is made to correct any deficiencies or direct the inspector’s attention away from any deficiencies.”

And Stewart said that his crew was once asked to switch out a ventilation system without evacuating the affected section of the mine, as required by law. “I’m not sure MSHA was aware of the whole situation,” he said, referring to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Workers didn’t complain, Stewart said, because “we knew that we’d be marked men and the management would look for ways to fire us” — a message echoed by most of the other witnesses to Monday’s hearing.

As a sign of how highly Massey values efficiency, UBB miners were denied vacation last summer after they failed to meet production targets, Stewart said.

“I felt like I was working for the Gestapo at times,” he said. “We did some things right, but were forced to do some things wrong.”

If the allegations were isolated, they might be easy to ignore. But there’s a pattern emerging from all the scrutiny of Massey that’s followed last month’s disaster. Chuck Nelson, another former Massey miner who spoke with TWI from his West Virginia home last month, said the trends are hardly limited to the UBB mine.

“I worked at six different Massey mines and every single one of ‘em operated the same way,” said Nelson, who now volunteers for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

Massey, which was quick to issue a statement following last week’s Senate hearing, has so far been silent in the face of the more recent allegations.

Nine state pension funds or treasury offices are urging Massey shareholders to purge the company next week of its president and two board members who sit on the company’s safety committee, charging that they ignored safety concerns in the lead up to the April 5 blast that killed 29 miners in Montcoal, W.Va.

Melzer notes that one of those board members, Richard Gabrys, also sits on the board of directors of CMS Energy, a Michigan-based energy giant with a record of environmental disdain that have also been viewed as a threat to shareholders. That Gabrys is now under a microscope for his position at Massey, Melzer writes, is also raising eyebrows more locally over his position at CMS.

The fact that Gabrys also directs one of Michigan’s biggest energy companies has raised some concerns here.

CMS has it’s own history of problems with environmental violations, and in a March filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission the company acknowledged that these violations are a liability that could cost shareholders and/or ratepayers.

Melzer outlines the company’s track-record of environmental problems, including EPA citations filed against several of its coal burning electric plants.

And then there’s this:

In March 2007 EPA cited the company for violating the Clean Air Act by releasing more than the legal amount of soot from 14 of the company’s boilers for a total of 37 days between 2004-2005.

And this:

In October 2008 EPA issued violations to the company for violating the Clean Air Act by carrying out 10 projects at the J.H. Campbell Plant in West Olive; the B.C. Cobb Plant in Muskegon; and the D.E. Karn and J.C. Weadock Plants in Essexville without regard for the law that required them to install technology to reduce emissions (NOx and/or SO2) which cause ozone formation and acid rain.

These violations remain unresolved.

In corporate America, none of this will change as long as the penalties for violating the rules — whether they be safety regulations or environmental safeguards — are less than the cost of preventing the mishaps to begin with. In this sense, it’s no stretch to say that miner deaths and environmental degradation are simply the cost of doing business — another line-item on a long tally sheet designed to meet some bottom line.

Company shareholders could change this. But that would require them to care about something other than that aforementioned bottom line. So don’t go holdin’ your breath.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tonight, at 6 pm, he’ll be on The Ed Show on MNSBC, discussing Massey’s safety record (or lack thereof) with Ed Schultz. He’s scheduled for the top of the show, so be sure to tune in early.

As the Project on Government Oversight reveals in a special report today based on internal FDA document obtained by POGO,  senior officials within the FDA made this decision without public notice.  Manufacturers have been trusted to monitor themselves ever since.

The problem is particularly alarming because last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that patients harmed by these devices have no right to sue the manufacturers, if the device was approved by the FDA.

So now, the FDA is letting the manufacturers set their own safety standards, and the Supreme Court is shielding those manufacturers from lawsuits.

So who’s watching out for the hapless heart patient?

Update: Congress could step in to do that.  First, it could boost funding for the FDA and require it to enforce those laboratory safety standards the agency effectively discarded.  Second, it could pass the Medical Device Safety Act of 2008, which would nullify the Supreme Court’s decision in Riegel v. Medtronic last year and restore the rights of patients injured by medical devices to sue the companies that made them — restoring a critical incentive for manufacturers to ensure the safey of their own products.

Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother’s wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.

“My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security,” Irfan said. “The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window.’ I think they were remarking about safety.”

According to the article, five of the six adults in the party were of South Asian descent, and the men all wore beards while the women wore traditional headscarves. Kashif Irfan is an anesthesiologist and his brother, Atif, is a lawyer. Both were born in Detroit and currently live in Alexandria, Va. They said they suspected they were profiled because of their appearance, which AirTran disputed.

“At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn’t have made on the airplane, and other people heard them,” [AirTran spokesman Tad] Hutcheson said. “Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions.”

I realize that many people in this country want airlines to target Muslims for additional security screening, which, even if you agree with that idea, this seems a bit excessive. I’m not sure this approaches the level of impropriety of, say, someone joking that he had a bomb in their bag at the ticket counter.

More importantly, if you don’t agree with targeting travelers based on race, think about why. If a white person made a similar comment, it is very unlikely that anyone would even take notice. And that’s the point: If it was inappropriate for a Muslim, then it would also be inappropriate if someone like, say, myself said the same thing.

At the very least, the airline could have rebooked them on another flight after they were cleared.