Coal miners required to attend Romney rally, give up day's pay

What do you expect from a guy who likes being able to fire people?  

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

When repugican presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.

The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.

And this was priceless from the coal company CFO Rob Moore:

Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend."

Ha! If that wasn't a perfect Romneyism: Your attendance is mandatory, says your boss, but no one is forcing you to attend.

You'll be surprised to hear that the coal company has contributed $900,000 to repugican candidates over the past few years.

Then there's this, from the king of flip-flops himself:

Romney used his appearance at the coal mine to blast what he called a "war on coal" by the Obama administration that he said was costing jobs in the coal industry.

You know what else costs jobs in the coal industry? Not paying coal miners because their attendance is required at a Soviet-style Romney rally.