Romney uses unpaid miners in campaign ad???

[WOT?*]

Really? I hope this isn't true. If it is, the employees should sue for wage and hour violations, class action status, stat.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-ad-miners-rally-20120919,0,5570673.story

Romney ad features miners allegedly forced to attend rally

The Romney campaign's ad, "War on Coal," which features miners who say they were forced to attend a pro-Romney rally.

By Neela Banerjee

This post has been corrected, as indicated below.

September 19, 2012, 2:33 p.m.
WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday, the Mitt Romney campaign released an ad spotlighting President Obama’s putative "War On Coal," despite a controversy in Ohio about the coal miners’ rally featured in the spot. In the ad, Romney appears on a stage before rows of hard-hatted miners, their faces smudged with coal dust, as he says, “We have 250 years of coal. Why wouldn’t we use it?”

The rally was held last month in Beallsville, Ohio, thick with miners from the Century coal mine, owned by Murray Energy, a major donor to Republican causes. Within days of the rally, Murray employees contacted a nearby morning talk radio host, David Blomquist, to say they were forced to attend the Aug. 14 event at the mine.


Murray closed the mine the day of the rally, saying it was necessary for security and safety, then docked miners their pay for those hours. Asked by WWVA radio’s Blomquist about the allegations, Murray Chief Operating Officer Robert Moore said, somewhat confusingly, “Attendance was mandatory but no one was forced to attend the event.”

The "War On Coal" ad is clearly aimed at shoring up Romney’s support among working-class white men and at making inroads into Obama’s persistent lead in the crucial battleground state of Ohio.

Asked about Romney’s use of video from a rally that miners were forced to attend and that cost many a day’s wages, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams chose instead to focus on Obama: “"It remains a widely accepted fact among Democrats and Republicans alike that President Obama has spent the past four years waging a war on coal that has devastated Ohio workers and coal communities. This is one reason why the nation's largest coal mining union, the United Mine Workers of America, has refused to endorse his reelection.”

The union has not endorsed Romney either. Obama supporters, like the AFL-CIO, pounced on Romney’s use of the Beallsville footage. “The Romney Campaign now knows full well that those miners, wage earners as they are, missed a day’s pay when they were required to attend the event,” Ohio AFL-CIO spokesman Michael Gillis said. “Instead of those workers providing for their families and putting food on the table that day, they were used as political props by a candidate that understands nothing about the plight of the average American.”

The mine is owned by Robert Murray, an enthusiastic Romney supporter and major contributor to the Republican Party on his own and through Murray Energy, one of the largest private coal companies in the U.S. Murray and his wife have given Republican candidates a total of $471,185 since the 2008 election, including the maximum of $5,000 each to Romney this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Additionally, employees of Murray Energy and its subsidiaries contributed almost $1.5 million to Republicans over the same period.

Murray Energy is among the biggest employers in the coal-rich Ohio valley, and worries run high there that the increased use of natural gas at the nation’s power plants and more stringent air pollution regulations are gradually throttling coal.

Coal jobs have risen in Ohio during most of Obama’s tenure, but mines all over the mid-Atlantic have been laying off people this year, said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, which endorsed Obama in 2008.

Murray, in an interview in Tampa, Fla., with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said “nobody was ordered to attend” the rally. “Nobody knows who attended and who didn’t. But I can tell you this: We had 3,000 people there, it was a great day, our people enjoyed it. Barack Obama is destroying their lives, their livelihoods. These people are scared, and they came out in droves to see Mitt Romney and that’s what it was all about.”

[For the record, 8:27 p.m., Sept. 19: An earlier version of this post failed to credit the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the Murray interview in Tampa, Fla.]

[Deleted]

I hope it is true.
#nailinthecoffin

[WOT?*]

I hope Stewart and/or Colbert run with it. That would be some fun times.

Bullshit Mountain subsidies pulls ahead. Unpaid 47%ers (52%ers?) for the win!

[Daria Morgandorffer]

What? Nah, these folks look THRILLED to be forced to be there!

[epphd]

I'm not sure how much MORE out of touch Romney can seem. FFS. He makes the Onion article ESF posted the other day look extraordinarily plausible :/

[teflep]

Just to play dA, how fast of a turn around are these ads? It says 4+ days after did the miners come forward. If its not pulled, I definitely take it back, but could it have been an oversight? (And, I probably missed, but was this by campaign or a paid for by friends blah blah?)

[mominatrix]

Back when it happened last month, there was a piece (I think it was in Mother Jones, online) and we discussed it here.

[soontobeka]

Tef- It sounds like it is from the Romney Campaign

[mominatrix]

Here's the post from 8/28:
pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=50676&page=1#809289


All this stuff was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer article back then. IMHO, the fact that they are still using these images is incredibly tone-deaf to the potential controversy around them.



ETA: edited to fix link to prettier proboard formatting.

[teflep]

Ah, okay. I do see now it says the campaign. (I hate how you can't see the op when posting in the app,,.sorry, sidebar). It is bad, I don't disagree. I am just playing DA to get discussion, not seething, out.

[heyjude]

Most incompetent campaign management ever.

[lys]

208 coal mines will close before the end of the year due to the Obama regulations that make it cost prohibitive to stay in business.
I am sure you will find many union workers at political rallies ("highly recommended you attend" --- (or else) at no reimbursement.) This is not anything new. How about the union workers who "volunteer" their time to help a campaign (but if you don't there are consequences??_not comsidered a team player etc)

[ttt]

Did we also talk about the "coal miner" in the Republican ad who was actually an executive dressed in overalls and helmet?

www.kentucky.com/2012/09/17/2340777/miners-union-criticizes-barr-ad.html#storylink=cpy

[heyjude]

Lol at Romney being Kerry 2.0.

[heyjude]

I do think Palin was one of the greatest political miscalculations of all time.

[copzgirl1171]

I have no idea why but I can't stop laughing at this.

The absurdity of it is almost better than Palins classic "all of them"

[crazytalk]

Murray closed the mine the day of the rally, saying it was necessary for security and safety, then docked miners their pay for those hours.

Ok, so they weren't working at all that day, but they're there in full garb and coal-smudged faces? They actually used coal as make up to prep them for the event. And then didn't pay them for the hours either. That's fricken nuts.

[lyssbobiss, Command, B613]

Sept 21, 2012 13:22:40 GMT -5 ttt said:

Did we also talk about the "coal miner" in the Republican ad who was actually an executive dressed in overalls and helmet?

www.kentucky.com/2012/09/17/2340777/miners-union-criticizes-barr-ad.html#storylink=cpy

I kind of love this. They've started running the commercial about how Andy Barr did it and it made my tiny heart grow three sizes because the picture in the rebuttal ad has the exec posed with Mitt Romney. Bwahahaha.

[epphd]

Sept 21, 2012 13:36:02 GMT -5 crazytalk said:

Murray closed the mine the day of the rally, saying it was necessary for security and safety, then docked miners their pay for those hours.

Ok, so they weren't working at all that day, but they're there in full garb and coal-smudged faces? They actually used coal as make up to prep them for the event. And then didn't pay them for the hours either. That's fricken nuts.

Oh my god you're right - that's just precious. I can't stop laughing at the utterfucking absurdity of this.