"Some wealthy elitists in our country, who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy.
For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people.
These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."
- Bob Murray, founder/CEO of Murray Energy Corporation
Sure, you kinda expect the "cigarettes don't cause cancer" mentality of big tobacco to be the modus operandi for big oil and coal when it comes to their public denial of the true, world-threatening effects of global warming.
But what's really hard to swallow is Big Bob pretending that his is a fight for the common man, especially when you consider these facts:
According to a January 15, 2006, article in The Columbus Dispatch of Ohio, Murray owns Ohio's two largest mines, which "recorded injury rates about one-fourth higher than the national average last year while being cited for serious violations by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration [MSHA]." In 2005, federal inspectors cited one of the mines, Ohio Valley Coal Co. Powhatan No. 6, "for 494 safety violations and the company paid $147,431 in fines -- nearly triple the combined amount of fines levied against Ohio's nine other underground coal mines."
The Pittsburgh office of the National Labor Relations Board issued a formal complaint against Murray and an associate in 2001 because they "threatened Union officers and its employees with reprisals for publicizing the labor dispute between the parties" and "threatened its employees with the loss of jobs, and the loss of wages and benefits if they failed to select new Union officers and because of their support for the Union," according to a 2002 United Mine Workers Journal article.
An October 20, 2006, article in Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader described Murray as "a huge donor" to Republicans. The article also reported on a meeting at an MSHA office in which "inspectors confronted him [Murray] about safety problems at his mines." During the meeting, Murray reportedly made reference to his connections to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and McConnell's wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Shouting at a table full of MSHA officials, Murray said (according to notes of the meeting): "Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and the last I checked, he was sleeping with your boss."
And on a final note, Mr. Murray served on Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, as noted in these documents.
Kinda puts Mr. Global Goofiness in a whole new, revealing light, doesn't it?
Source material from "CNN gave coal company CEO a platform for Gore-bashing, did not report company's labor and safety violations"
