*** When I saw the video of Mitt Romney and Josh Mandel speaking in front of coal miners, I noticed that the coal miners did not appear to be happy. They all looked mad, and without any interest in the speakers. Now the truth comes out----they were props.
PlainDealer:
When GOP 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.
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.
A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend
the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA
radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their
beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob
Moore.....
It was MANDATORY! This was the event where right wing puppet, Josh Mandel, tried out his southern accent and made an issue of contributors from New York and Hollywood (even though he himself has gotten mega bucks from California and New York, and has visited both coasts for fundraisers numerous times). OpenSecrets noted that Mandel has received over $400,000 in campaign contribution from New York City. Mandel's supporters in California, have given him over $300,000 in contributions (see OpenSecrets).
Josh Mandel called Sherrod Brown "un-American" for voting for the auto loan program. President Obama's auto bailout saved the American auto companies, the jobs they create for hundreds of thousands of Americans in car factories and in part supplier manufacturing plants. As Andy Kroll at Mother Jones points out, Paul Ryan also voted for the same car bill.
Mother Jones:
....In a joint interview with Brown on Sunday, however, Mandel broke his silence in a big way. He called
Brown "un-American" for voting in favor of the auto industry bailout,
claiming that non-union retirees at Delphi, a GM parts supplier, got screwed out of of their pensions because of the government bailouts. (As PolitiFact notes, that's not quite true.)
There's a big problem with branding a yes vote on the auto bailout
"un-American": The presumptive vice-presidential nominee for Mandel's
own party, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), voted yes for that same bailout. Is
Ryan un-American, too?
....Ryan was one of 32 House Republicans
to vote for the auto bailout on December 10, 2008, vastly outnumbered
by the 150 House GOPers who voted against it. Then-Sen. George Voinovich
(R-Ohio), in Congress' upper chamber, also voted in support of the auto
bailout; he was joined by seven other Senate Republicans. Is Voinovich also un-American, according to Mandel?...
Those of us that live in Ohio are too familiar with Josh Mandel's smear campaign tactics. Josh Mandel is being manipulated by his right wing sponsors. He doesn't know much about policy, and as Plunderbund put it, is part of the "Palinization" of the GOP.
Plunderbund:
...Palin
famously was a policy and issues vacuum, preferring to rely mainly on
empty catch phrases, right-wing rhetoric, and thinly veiled racism.
Josh Mandel is like Sarah Palin’s cute little nephew, spewing the latest
far right buzzwords like some kind of possessed corporate owned puppet.
The Dispatch was able to witness the first head to head rhetorical
matchup between Brown and Mandel, and if their experience is a precursor
to debates we might see in the Senate race I’d say Sherrod Brown is in
pretty good shape. Despite giving the article a completely false
headline that seems to indicate both Mandel and Brown came unhinged [
"Mandel, Brown take off glove"], the article does a good job of
highlighting the difference between the sitting senior Senator from Ohio
and the wingnut boy wonder Treasurer. There was no point in the actual
article where you could come close to claiming that Brown took off any
gloves. He was, in fact, quite measured and factual – refusing to even
acknowledge Josh Mandel’s sleazy “un-American” attack.
Mandel not only takes his gloves AND his boots off, he starts
flailing around like that kid in the sandlot who knows he’s going to
lose and decides to start swinging madly in the hopes of landing a good
punch....
PlunderBund (http://s.tt/1lGZH)
Why would anyone voted for him? He didn't even know how much money was in the state retirement funds that he is supposedly protecting.
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