Coal CEO Lays Off Workers, Blames Obama "War On Coal"
By Samantha Abernethy in News on Nov 9, 2012 9:20PM
The chairman and CEO of a coal company blamed the reelection of President Barack Obama for forcing him to lay off 156 employees on Wednesday. Robert E. Murray of Ohio-based Murray Energy, the country's largest privately owned coal company, read a prayer to his employees when announcing the layoffs.
Murray said the company "must totally go into a survival mode and generate all the cash that we can from whatever we still have left that can help us." His prayer lamented the direction of the country saying America's young people "never will know what America was like or might have been." An excerpt:
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.
Murray Energy has operations in southern Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Utah. Murray Energy was the operator of the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah that collapsed in 2007 killing nine people. The company faced 17 safety violations and paid a $1.1 million settlement to the Mine Safety and Health Administration in September.
Read Murray's full prayer and "outline of America's future" on The Intelligencer-Wheeling News-Register website.