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

GOP donor: 'I'm not a miner, I just play one on TV'

This story made my day.  You can't make this stuff up, folks.  I mean, to think that somebody would think they could get away with this in today's Internet age is just hilarious.

WTF was he thinking?  Was he too cheap to hire an actor?  Too worried that none of his workers would do the ad for him, or they'd f--k it up?  Or was he just so vain that he had to be on TV himself, front and center?

Master thespian Heath Lovell missed his chance to add several authentic touches to his performance, such as coal dust on his cheek, a pack of Marlboro reds in his overalls front pocket, a canary on his shoulder...

Heath Lovell, Coal Executive, Poses As Miner In Ad For Republican Congressional Candidate Andy Barr

By Bonnie Kavoussi

September 20, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://huff.to/S783mXhp_ref=tw

Try EPA's new greenhouse gas data tool!

This tool from the good folks at the EPA is kind of neat. It allows you to see what enterprises are emitting the most greenhouse gases in your area, whether it's carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) or others.

So it lets me see, for example, that the biggest polluter near me in my home state is a coal-fired Duke Energy power plant spitting out 4,117,452 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide, 10,219 MT of methane and 21,942 MT of nitrous oxide a year.

Using their handy-dandy equivalencies calculator, I can see that amount of greenhouse gas equals the amount emitted by 1.98 million passenger vehicles a year, or the CO2 emitted by consuming 23.5 million barrels of oil.

EPA ghgdata

URL: http://www.ccdsupport.com/confluence/display/ghgp/Home

Here is a real man

I don't use the word hero too lightly, but Charles Howard of Kentucky is one.

He has black lung but he continues to work in coal mines, and he continues to blow the whistle -- and be vindicated -- for unsafe working conditions for himself and his fellow miners. He is not some "movement" nerd with no skin in the game; he continues to work in, and will probably die from, Kentucky's coal mines.

All you who purport to be for the working man, for the Little Guy, should bow your heads in homage to this real man.

Charles Scott Howard: The Miner Who Took On Big Coal

By Dave Jamieson

September 14, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/charles-scott-howard-whistleblower-miner_n_960180.html

Here's your well funded climate change conspiracy

Like I've said before, if you're looking for a well funded conspiracy, you need look no further. Follow the money.

Just take a look at all these quacky "experts," think tanks, "institutes," and "research centers" making millions from Big Oil and Coal for their "research," which, by the way, they don't do any of.

BTW, the name of the industry-funded organization "FACES of Coal" is the most unintentionally alarming/funny one I've seen in a while.

The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial
By Josh Harkinson
December 4, 2009 | Mother Jones

URL: http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-exxon

Study: Coal electricity hides $62 B in costs per year

Report finds massive hidden energy costs, mostly from coal
By David Roberts
October 20, 2009 Grist.org

A new report from the National Research Council on the "hidden costs of energy" is, frankly, stunning. In a sane world, it would be headline news.

Producing and using energy imposes all sorts of costs on public health, crop yields, ecosystems, recreation, educational performance ... the list goes on. Many of these costs don't end up reflected in the market price of energy; consumers don't see them or factor them into purchasing decisions. They are hidden, paid indirectly through, for example, health-care spending or environmental-remediation costs. Such costs are external to energy markets—externalities, as economists call them—and they represent an enormous subsidy to the dirtiest sources of energy.

I'm always left somewhat dissatisfied by discussions about externalities. People seem to imagine them as external in some sort of metaphysical way, as though the costs inhabit an immaterial and weightless ether. ("Social" costs, they're sometimes called.) But costs are costs. Someone pays them, with real money. They dampen economic productivity, like driving with one foot pressing the brake.

In 2005, Congress set about finding out just what these external costs of energy production and use amount to. It requested that the National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Science) attempt to place a number on them. On Monday, the NRC released its report: "Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use."

First, note that the report did not attempt to quantify the damage to ecosystems and agriculture wrought by climate change. It did not attempt to quantify the national security costs of securing energy supplies. It did not attempt to quantify the land-use costs of biofuels. It didn't attempt to quantify the costs of mercury pollution, which as Bill Chameides documents, are substantial. It didn't attempt to quantify the impact on taxpayers that subsidies to the coal industry impose.

So a huge chunk of costs were written out, meaning the results are extremely small-c conservative. Nonetheless, the NRC found that hidden costs amounted to $120 billion in 2005.

Of that $120 billion, a whopping $62 billion—over half—came from one source: coal-fired electricity plants. And that's only a partial accounting, as Ken Ward Jr. reports:

Maureen L. Cropper, a panel member and professor of economics at the University of Maryland, noted that the study also did not examine "upstream" costs of coal-fired power—such as damage from mountaintop removal mining— or "harm to ecosystems" from other impacts, such as disposal of toxic power plant ash.

If MTR mining, ash disposal, mercury emissions, market-distorting subsidies, and climate damage were taken into account, how much farther do you think coal's costs would rise, in both absolute and relative terms?

Remember this report the next time you hear that "coal is cheap."