Dear Lord, help Murray Energy’s Laid off workers get used to being “takers” who “outvoted the Producers.”

The founding fathers fought to free corporate people from the taxes of the king…or Obama in this case.

So why has the Lord forsaken business interests, like Murray Energy in the presidential election?

Murray Energy laid off 163 workers.

WestSideStory:  Chief Executive Officer Robert Murray read a prayer to workers that asked God’s forgiveness for the decisions that the company was forced to make to preserve the very existence of enterprises that God has helped them build. He did this during a conference call. the company’s CEO read a prayer. Here’s the complete text:

Courier: “Dear Lord: The American people have made their choice. They have decided that America must change its course, away from the principals [sic] 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.

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.”

That employers can dismiss workers on a whim, on the basis of speculation, for the sake of retribution, or to make a political point, is simply wrong. When businesses don’t like the decisions we make democratically, they withdraw the resources we need to work and thrive, often shipping them abroad, until they get their way. 

Here's Ed Schultz:

After Employers threatened workers to vote Republican or else, they're now taking on each other.

Big corporate conservatives are now threatening to go after Democratic businessman who don't share their ugly greed factor.

HuffingtonPost: The Oxdown Gazette: This is what Home Depot's founder Bernie Marcus said on a conference call yesterday:

"If a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to Norm Coleman and these other guys," Mr. Marcus said, apparently referring to Republican senators facing tough re-election fights, then those retailers "should be shot; should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs."

It's nice to know Home Depot supports the death penalty for not supporting their politics.

Seminars on Employer voter intimidation!

Right wing partisan groups like the National Federation of Independent Business, are easy to spot if you've been in business yourself, because their policies have never made any sense. Example; while other countries businesses don't have to worry about the expense of health care, companies here have to, and whine about the disadvantage all the time. Yet the NFIB opposes the idea. It never ends with these guys, so it should come as no surprise that they would love to commit legalized election fraud by forcing employees to vote for their endorsed candidates. Thank you Citizens United:

Think Progress: The National Federation of Independent Business is offering a seminar next week called “How to Speak With Your Employees About The Importance of the 2012 Elections,” for business owners who haven’talready tried to pressure employees into voting for their preferred candidate. The NFIB, officially nonpartisan, is a notoriously conservative organization that has donated millions to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads GPS Super PAC.

The Supreme Court greatly expanded corporations’ and unions’ flexibility in political speech, setting the groundwork thatallowed employers to compel employees to participate in political campaigns.

The NFIB denies that the seminar is meant to show employers how to pressure their employees..."we really want our members to engage their employees in conversation.”

Of course, the idea that Obama has an “anti-business” record is mythology; since he took office, corporate profits have soared, the Dow Jones industrial average has gained 67.9 percent, and small businesses have received several tax cuts.

Milwaukee Company Threatens Employees to vote Romney.

More corporate bullies are joining on to threaten your freedom to vote. The “will of the people” may soon become an anachronistic phrase laugh at by the oligarch’s.

Just after Bain Capital told Sensata employees to stop their protest, or see the plant closed down a month early, this news broke out of Milwaukee:

jsonline: Mike White, the chairman and owner of Rite-Hite, a major Milwaukee manufacturer of industrial equipment, told employees in an email this week that all employees "should understand the personal consequences to them of having our tax rates increase dramatically if President Obama is re-elected, forcing taxpayers to fund President Obama's future deficits and social programs (including Obamacare), which require bigger government."

With so many large corporate bosses sending out these not so veiled threats to their employees, is anyone in Washington paying attention? Those who have not followed this quickly developing story are completely outraged, conservatives and liberals alike:

The email stunned some employees. One employee said he felt threatened by the email. "It's a good company, but for this to come out, it's absurd," the employee said. The employee said even supervisors were surprised by the tone of the email.

White, a Summerfest board member and village trustee in the Village of River Hills, did not return several calls requesting comment. The firm employs an estimated 1,400 people worldwide.

I can’t help wondering if the following language will hold harmless the company’s involved. I doubt it. With big puppy dog eye’s they’re claiming they don’t want to “prejudice any employee for their political views and totally respect your right to vote as you choose. I am simply trying to present the facts as I know them and to protect the business you have helped build! Please think carefully about your vote on Nov. 6.”

In his email, White said the firm's retirement savings program contributions were based on after-tax profits. "The tax rate we pay is not 17%, as Warren Buffett would have you believe; with state taxes it is roughly 45%. President Obama has announced that our planned tax rate would increase to roughly 65%, reducing our after tax income by 36% and dramatically reducing, if not eliminating, your and my RSP contributions … White also wrote that Obama's re-election means there is a "good chance of losing Rite-Hite insurance and being put into Obamacare."

You have to wonder how companies grew and prospered in the 50’s and 60’s when taxes were dramatically higher. This is all a pretext to freeloading off Obamacare:

White explained that employers can continue their existing insurance plans or “pay a penalty and have employees go into the Government Plan. Our plan costs much more per family than the penalty and hence the possible competitive need to drop the Rite-Hite Health Plan. Every opportunity to make up for lost profits to taxes will have to be re-evaluated.”

Here's Ed Schultz with the story:



Not only that, White doesn't pay taxes on anything until he takes all his business right-offs first. But

White is also a hypocrite:

jsonline: John Vitek, a Milwaukee tax lawyer, said it was possible that the company's combined tax rate would be near 45%. "But I don't know where the 65% is coming from," he said.

And while White was critical of President Barack Obama's tax policies, government records indicate his firm was awarded a grant of $26,471 in economic stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

From WTDY: 

But according to Wisconsin law, it's illegal for an employer to threaten workers in order to influence their political opinions: Statute 12.07 (3)

No employer or agent of an employer may distribute to any employee printed matter containing any threat, notice or information that if a particular ticket of a political party or organization or candidate is elected or any referendum question is adopted or rejected, work in the employer's place or establishment will cease, in whole or in part, or the place or establishment will be closed, or the salaries or wages of the employees will be reduced, or other threats intended to influence the political opinions or actions of the employees.The email went on to tell employees that Obama's policies would threaten their pensions and healthcare.

Professor Gordon Lafer, with the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, says laws like Wisconsin's were enacted to protect employees from feeling threatened.

"It seems to me that what this manufacturer has done is quite likely a violation of that law, maybe unknowingly, but there'e a good reason for the law," Lafer said. "What we want is that everybody who votes is maximally free to think whatever they want , to say whatever they want, to shout whatever they want, and to speak up in public. That's how democracy is supposed to work."

Lafer insists there is an implied threat in these kinds of emails.

"My boss is essentially telling me 'I'd better not see you wearing an Obama button or all those little perks that you need from me or your job security is going to be on the line,'" Lafer said. "Because that's what every normal person reads between the lines of that kind of language."

Hearkening in the new Gilded Age with Employer Voter Intimidation.

Ed Schultz and John Nichols take a look at the latest conservative ploy to take down the country through employer intimidation of their employees voting choices. It's the return of the Gilded Age.

Thanks to Citizens United, such practices are now legally allowed in this country. It's really all over isn't it?