Romney 2012?

There was an awkward moment on the convention floor this afternoon, just minutes before the official start of Day 2.

Rep. Ron Paul showed up and the hall erupted in whistles and cheers. But the mood changed when a chant of "President Paul, President Paul" started up from a large number of people on the floor.

Paul responded with a small smile.

Clearly, some Mitt Romney supporters were not pleased with this turn of events. A chant of "Rom-ney, Rom-ney," started up, and the Ron Paul supporters picked up their chant to compensate.

After a few seconds, it was clear that the Paul supporters were winning in the war of words and the Romney supporters quieted down. Later chants included "Let him speak" and "seat him now." Paul was quietly escorted to a seat and the chanting died down.

Murray Energy Miners Allege They Had To Give Up Pay To Attend 'Mandatory' Romney Rally (AUDIO)

Would you give up a day’s pay to see Mitt Romney in the flesh? Workers at one Ohio coal mine might not have had a choice.

Earlier this month, Mitt Romney was welcomed for a campaign event at the Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio, by hundreds of coal workers and their families. Now many of the mine's workers are saying they were forced to give up a day-worth of pay to attend the event, and they feared they might be fired if they didn’t, according to local news radio WWVA.

The claims have been mostly denied by Rob Moore, Chief Financial Officer of Murray Energy Company, which owns the mine. He acknowledges that workers weren’t paid that day but says no one was made to attend the event. Well, kind of.

"Our managers communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend," he told local news radio WWVA, which has received several emails from workers claiming that the company records names of workers that don't attend those types of events.

The company's interest in having its employees show support for Romney may be a result of its CEO's close ties with the presumptive Republican nominee. In May, Romney teamed up with Murray's CEO Bob Murray for a fundraising event in West Virginia. And Murray's made no secret of his support for the Republican party, previously backing Rick Perry.

In addition, his company has donated more than $900,000 to Republican candidates in the last two years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Murray, who is also a climate-change denier, has been an outspoken critic of President Obama’s stance on coal. That view may be why Moore told WWVA that having employees attend the Romney event “was in the best interest of anyone that's related to the coal industry in this area or the entire country."

This isn’t the first time workers have been frustrated by a Mitt Romney campaign event either. Employees of Sensata Technologies, a company owned by Romney’s previous employer Bain Capital, protested a campaign event earlier this month in Bettendorf, Iowa. In that case, Romney didn't respond to questions about what he would do to prevent their jobs being outsourced, The Rock River Times reports.

GOP approves platform barring abortions, gay marriage

Republicans emphatically approved a toughly worded party platform at their national convention Tuesday that would ban all abortions and gay marriages, reshape Medicare into a voucher-like program and reject federal spending as an antidote for the nation's ailing job market.

Quote:

GOP approves platform barring abortions, gay marriage

Republicans emphatically approved a toughly worded party platform at their national convention Tuesday that would ban all abortions and gay marriages, reshape Medicare into a voucher-like program and reject federal spending as an antidote for the nation's ailing job market.

Under "normal" circumstances, this would have spelled the death knell for Romney's chances at the white house, but this country has gone bonkers.

Need I say more? Women, gays and lesbians, and minorities will be voting for Romney.

Go figure.

The line in Gov. Chris Christie’s budget speech Tuesday that sticks with us most was this one: “Why not cut income taxes when your fiscal house is in order?”
This is political spin of the highest order. For the record, Fitch Ratings downgraded New Jersey’s general obligation bonds in August to AA-, among the lowest in the nation.
One key problem is that the state is still shorting its pension funds by more than $2 billion a year. The reason is that when Christie and Democrats agreed on last summer’s landmark reform, they let themselves off the hook by phasing in full pensions payments over seven years. Thus, next year’s deposit of just over $1 billion is really only two-sevenths of the sum actuaries recommend.

So when the governor says we can afford a tax cut, it’s sort of like saying you can afford to go a nice restaurant because you are making only partial payments on your mortgage. That’s the kind of thinking that got us into this jam in the first place.
Yes, Christie is doing better than most governors. Several of them skipped the pension payments entirely. Gov. Jon Corzine made two payments of roughly $1 billion each, then stopped making deposits, too, as the recession hit.

However, New Jersey’s fiscal picture isn’t nearly as rosy as Christie portrays it to be. Gordon MacInnes, president of New Jersey Policy Perspectives, a nonprofit organization that conducts research on public policy issues in the state, points out that Christie has tried to keep the 2012 budget afloat by borrowing or diverting money from funds dedicated to other sources—funds for transportation, affordable housing and foreclosure prevention. And New Jersey risks running into the red for years to come.
A major part of the problem is that revenue collection for 2012 is already falling significantly short of the Christie administration’s own projections. The state’s Office of Legislative Services (OLS), a non-partisan agency, estimated earlier this year that New Jersey will face a $1.3 billion shortfall by the end of 2013. NJ Spotlight details the gap between their projections for the upcoming year, and the budget shortfall that’s expected:

The state’s fiscal woes have prompted serious concern from ratings agencies like Moody’s, which said recently that the state’s economy through the next year “will likely remain muted given recent tax revenue trends and our expectation that the state’s economic recovery will lag the U.S,” as the New Jersey Record reports. The revenue shortfalls have neither quelled Christie’s own appetite for a 10 percent tax cut, however, nor his opposition to the state Democrats’ call for a millionaire’s tax hike.

When Mitt Romney campaigned at an Ohio coal mine earlier this month, he might not have realized that the miners were forced to be there — without pay — by the owner, Murray Energy.

That’s according to accounts from multiple coal miners, who sent anonymous letters to a local radio station criticizing Murray Energy for allegedly requiring all workers to take the day off, forgo pay, and attend a Romney campaign event.

“Just for the record, if we did not go, we knew what would happen,” wrote one miner.

In an interview with a talk radio show host, Murray Energy CFO Rob Moore denied allegations that workers were “forced,” choosing instead to use the word “mandatory.”

“Our managers communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend,” Moore said. He confirmed that pay was docked for all the workers.

In another email read on air, a miner expressed frustration with being “forced” to attend the event, characterizing a culture of “intimidation” within Murray:


“No one likes to be forced to do anything, let alone without pay. I recall hearing a caller claiming that his $100,000 plus Murray salary was grounds for crapping if Murray says crap, or eating broccoli if Murray says to eat it. I say to that man: Many of us, though well educated or hard workers ourselves, do not make half, a third, or sometimes even a quarter of that pay. Had the event not been mandated, most of us probably would have still attended. We are grateful to have the chance to listen to our leaders or potential leaders first hand and to be a part of political history in the making. We do not appreciate being intimidated into exchanging our time for nothing.”

Romney campaigned with Bob Murray, CEO of the company, back in May.

Murray Energy is perhaps best known for operating the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah that collapsed in 2007, killing six miners and two rescue personnel. After that tragedy, reporters uncovered thousands of violations resulting in millions of dollars in fines at various mines owned by the company.

Bob Murray is also an outspoken climate denier who is known for his fact-free rants on global warming. Here’s one:


“The fraudulent individuals around the world who have attempted to capitalize on the promotion of their theory that the Earth is warming are now finding out that it’s just not true. … They did it for what I call crony capitalism – to make money off global warming. … Albert Gore has made hundreds of millions of dollars over his hoax, and now they’re finding it’s simply not true.

… So it’s changed, and the vast majority of Americans today know now that this was a hoax and it was done to get money from America for other countries for people in America to make money off of it. … Now some want to create a commodity market in carbon tax credits. So now you’ve got Wall Street and all these commodity brokers in the United States, they want to see the legislation because it creates a market to trade … carbon credits. So all of these people, for reasons not very pure, not very honorable and certainly not honest, are perpetuating the fraud. People like me, they called me a skeptic. Now I’m right … and I see America moving beyond that issue.”

According to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics, Murray Energy has donated more than $900,000 to politicians in the last year — all of them Republicans.

And now the company has donated more than money. It’s donated workers.

The RonPaulites... were protesting a decision by RNC officials not to seat members of the Maine delegation.... There were energetic shouts of “Aye!” and “Nay!” as a Puerto Rican party functionary—Zoraida Fonalledas, the chairwoman of the Committee on Permanent Organization—took her turn at the main-stage lectern. As she began speaking in her accented English, some in the crowd started shouting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

The chanting carried on for nearly a minute while most of the other delegates and the media stood by in stunned silence. The Puerto Rican correspondent turned to me and asked, “Is this happening?” ... None of us could quite believe what we were seeing: A sea of twentysomething bowties and cowboy hats morphing into frat bros apparently shrieking over (or at) a Latina.

Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico's in America!