Pro-Romney CEO lays off workers with a prayer -- BARF!

What a jerk!  If coal magnate Robert E. Murray wanted to lay off his workers he should lay them off, but don't blame President Obama for it, much less hide behind God!  Here's his self-serving pink slip "prayer:"

Dear Lord:

The American people have made their choice. They have decided that America must change its course, away from the principals of our Founders. And, away from the idea of individual freedom and individual responsibility. Away from capitalism, economic responsibility, and personal acceptance.

We are a Country in favor of redistribution, national weakness and reduced standard of living and lower and lower levels of personal freedom.

My regret, Lord, is that our young people, including those in my own family, never will know what America was like or might have been. They will pay the price in their reduced standard of living and, most especially, reduced freedom.

The takers outvoted the producers. In response to this, I have turned to my Bible and in II Peter, Chapter 1, verses 4-9 it says, “To faith we are to add goodness; to goodness, knowledge; to knowledge, self control; to self control, perseverance; to perseverance, godliness; to godliness, kindness; to brotherly kindness, love.”

Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build. We ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.

Amen.

Yet nothing changed on November 9 in the mining industry.  And since Murray Energy is privately owned, we have no idea how well it's doing, or will do, we just have to take old Bob's word for it that he's in "survival mode" now.  

In fact, Murray just wanted to make a political point against President Obama -- and he used the Lord's name and 156 workers and their families to make it.  (Gee, do you think it'll work if they pray to God to get their old jobs back; or will their prayers just cancel each other out?)

And let's not forget the complaint to the Federal Election Commission in October that alleges Murray threatened employees with reprisals, including the loss of their jobs, to coerce them to make contributions to the company's PAC.

Self-made millionaires like Robert E. Murray can be the most insufferable egotists.  They figure if they made it big then everybody else should be able to as well.  People like Murray discount luck and chalk up all their success to themselves (and maybe "God," in the abstract.)  He's probably too dumb to realize his father and himself probably could have avoided their terrible mining accidents if Big Government had been allowed to ensure adequate mine safety.  

So anyway, now Murray says he's in "survival mode," trying to generate all the cash he can.  I wonder what survival mode means for a rich CEO like Robert Murray?  I bet it's not the same, quantitatively or qualitatively, as survival mode for his laid-off workers.

Coal executive explains layoffs with prayer lamenting Romney loss

By Kim Geiger

November 10, 2012 | Tribune Washington Bureau

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/09/174281/coal-executive-explains-layoffs.html

The myth of the 'self-made American'

Robinson's post jibes perfectly with Tea Partiers' cognitive dissonance when it comes to Big Gubument bailing them out their entire lives. The home mortgage interest tax deduction is one of the biggest examples of their willful ignorance: Big Gubument pays them to own a house, while propping up the housing sector. I'm not saying that's a bad policy, necessarily, but it's certainly a distortion of the free market and a handout to those who should "fend for themselves."

Going further back, let's recall that many of your parents or grandparents were the recipients of FDR's G.I. Bill home loan guarantees: "From 1944 to 1952, VA [Veterans Administration] backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans." And how much are those 2.4 million homes (now owned free and clear) worth today?

Wrote Robinson:

"Did Mr. Self-Made Man grow up in a VA or FHA-funded house? Attend a public school or college? Go to school on the GI Bill, Pell Grants, or student loans? Does he claim a mortgage interest tax deduction every year? Does he support his retired parents out of pocket, or does Social Security do it for him? Does his employer get government contracts or subsidies that make his paycheck possible? Does his business depend on a sound currency, enforceable contracts, or reliable transportation systems?

"It's like his rich Uncle Sam, the benefactor whose generous bequests paid his way into the middle class, has been written totally out of his entire life story. Forget gratitude; these social contract deniers insist loudly that none of that ever happened. At all. They pay taxes; but they've never seen a cent returned to them for anything. And they write their 'self-made' myths accordingly.

["...]

"Sixty percent of people who get home mortgage interest deductions (one of the most important and lucrative middle-class subsidies going) don't see this as a form of government help to their households, even though many of them wouldn't be homeowners at all without it. Fifty-three percent of the people who got through college on student loans -- and 40 percent of GI Bill beneficiaries -- also think they've paid their own freight. And 44 percent of Social Security recipients don't think that Social Security is a government program -- which comes as no surprise to those of us who remember the ubiquitous calls during last year's health care fight to 'get your fllthy government hands off my Social Security.'"

I would also add that any "self-made" man who hired employees who were products of public education did not make it on his own. Or hired somebody who lived in public housing, received food stamps, aid for their dependent children, Social Security survivor's benefits, Medicaid, or used subsidized public transportation -- because these gov't services lower their employees' expenses and depress their wage demands.

This is not to mention that people who are working -- even if they are working poor people -- commit fewer crimes and cost the state less in terms of social ills. Thus it behooves gov't to subsidize workers' expenses so that they can work honestly and still meet their basic needs.

Unfortunately, you'll never hear obvious, commonsense arguments like this from the Right. There are no more grownups left at the table.

The Myth Of The Self-Made American: Why Progressives Get No Respect

By Sara Robinson

October 29, 2010 | Campaign For America's Future

URL: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104329/myth-self-made-american-why-progressives-get-no-respect