Bob Murray made his miners be a Romney backdrop. Now he's laying them off for political points.

Yeah, the workers of Murray Energy are being exploited in the name of their boss's politics again. Bob Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy who made his miners lose a day's pay to serve as a backdrop for Mitt Romney and who pressures his salaried employees to write checks to his favorite candidates, is just not ready to stop campaigning against President Barack Obama. And as usual, he's using his workers as pawns for his politics.

Robert E. Murray read a prayer to a group of company staff members on the day after the election, lamenting the direction of the country and asking: "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."

On Wednesday, Murray also laid off 54 people at American Coal, one of his subsidiary companies, and 102 at Utah American Energy, blaming a "war on coal" by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Yes, Lord, forgive Murray for firing people to make a bullshit political point the day after the election. That would be a good use of divine forgiveness. But anyone, deity or human, tempted to forgive Bob Murray for anything in his life should remember that this is who he is:

Besides American Century, Murray's company, the largest independent coal operator in the country, also owns, via a subsidiary, the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. Five years ago this month, six miners and three rescue workers were killed in that mine. Murray showed his true colors with his belligerent behavior after the accident. The Mine Safety and Health Administration fined the operation more than $1.85 million for violations that it says directly contributed to the deaths. Murray had said the violations were trivial and lied about one of the them, withholding information from the federal government about a dangerous mining technique the company decided to use to meet its coal quota just before the lethal collapse.

Murray has lobbied against new safety regulations, arguing that these are "playing politics with the safety of my employees."

Firing 156 people and blaming it on an election is totally consistent with who Bob Murray is. He's evil. He's putting these people out of work just to make a political point without basis in fact, since coal industry woes come from the "free market" so beloved of Republicans, coal jobs aren't collapsing (Murray aside), and all this whining is stuff we've heard before from coal executives only to have their industry survive. As a Reddit user who said s/he was among those laid off wrote, "Despite the fact that nothing has changed in the two days since the election they decide to lay off employees. I've seen how corrupt the company can be over the years and am fairly certain the layoffs are just a way to make the President look bad."