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| Romney Campaign Rally in OHIO |
This
is very sad for a presidential candidate of such to force people to attend his
events to get publicity. How worse can it get?
A
group of coal miners in Ohio feel they would have been fired if they did not
attend an Aug. 14 event with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt
Romney and contribute to his campaign — and to make matters worse, they lost of
day of pay for their trouble.
In
phone calls and emails to WWVA
radio host David Blomquist, employees at the Century Mine in Ohio said they
feared retaliation if they did not attend the Romney event.
“Yes,
we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without
pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried
employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to
take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes,
letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended
or donated to political events.”
Murray
Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore told Blomquist that the charges were
untrue.
“There
were no workers that were forced to attend the event,” Moore said. “We had managers
that communicated to our work force that the attendance at the Romney event was
mandatory, but no one was forced to attend the event. We had a pre-registration
list. And employees were asked to put their names on a pre-registration list
because they could not get into the event unless they were pre-registered and
had a name tag to enter the premises.”
“What
about not getting paid for an eight-hour day?” Blomquist wondered. “If the mine
was shut down for the visit, I understand, but wouldn’t it be fair — let’s use
the word ‘fair’ — to still pay these individuals for that day? I mean, it
wasn’t their fault they weren’t working.”
“But
why not still pay then their wage for that day?” Blomquist pressed.
“By
federal election law, we could not pay people to attend the event,” Moore
replied. “And we did not want anyone to come back and see where anyone had been
paid for that day.”
“I’m
not saying pay then to attend the event, I’m saying, ‘Hey look, we have to
close down the mine, if you want to attend this event, that’s fine, but you’re
still going to get a day’s pay for the work that you would have done,’”
Blomquist pointed out. “Why not do that?”
“As
a private employer, it was our decision and we made the decision not to pay the
people,” the Murray chief financial officer said.
At
the time, conservative blogs and websites like The
Daily Caller, The
Gateway Pundit andTownhall trumpeted
the fact that “hundreds of Ohio coal miners attended” the event. Even though
the mine was closed on Aug. 14, soot-covered miners were staged behind the GOP
hopeful as he spoke.
Robert
Murray received national attention in 2009 after his Crandall Canyon Mine in
Utah collapsed, leaving six miners trapped inside. Between 2005 and 2009, the
Murray Energy Corp. Political Action Committee had given
more than $150,000 to Republican candidates. Murray personally gave
$15,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2004 and $10,000 in
2006. The Ohio Valley Coal PAC, a group affiliated with Murray Energy, gave
$10,000 to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000.
One
thing we know is that this campaign of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan has been
nothing but lies from the start. They are continuing to feed the American
people with lies as they seek to gain attention on the national stage.
We
can also see clearly that Mitt Romney is not getting all of his campaign donations
by free will donors. Mitt Romney and his campaign is forcing people to attend
his events and donate to his campaign what a wimp.
This
is a candidate that can’t be trusted on no front. Just as he is hiding his tax
returns, he’s hiding the truth on many other issues from the American people.
