Murray an expert on abandoning coal miners

If you want to see an example of chutspaw, look under Murray American Energy.

When the West Virginia House of Delegates put a year-long hold on large severance tax cuts for the coal and gas industries passed by the state Senate last week, Murray Energy spokesman Gary Broadbent sputtered:

“The leadership of West Virginia's House of Delegates and, particularly, Speaker Tim Armstead, have abandoned our coal miners today.”

Murray pumped a quarter-million dollars into the elections to get Republicans elected in West Virginia in hopes of getting the .

This is the same Murray Energy that:

1. Has thousands of safety violations at its Illinois Galatia mine had thousands of safety citations. Talk about “abandoning” coal miners.

2. Filed with the state Department of Environmental Protection to expand a coal slurry impoundment near the Harrison County mine, former called the Robinson Run mine.

3. Murray’s Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah collapsed and trapped six miners.

4. Laid off 214 people at its mines in Harrison, Ohio and Marshall counties.

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

The tax reductions would cost West Virginia $100 million a year. And would hardly reverse the decline in coal consumption in America. In West Virginia, for example, there are about 20,000 coal miners, a far cry from the John L. Lewis/United Mine Workers days when there were 800,000 UMW members.

West Virginia history is littered with companies that ripped out its coal and timber resources with relatively little return to its tax revenues.

Although per-miner production has increased FIFTEENFOLD since 1950, thanks largely to rapid mechanization improvements, the median income in coal mining communities is 25% less than the national average. Tax cuts go to the corporations, not the miners.

Robert Murray – a former miner and the son of a paralyzed miner -- is CEO of the corporation based in St. Clairsville, Ohio that he founded in 1988.