DL Open Thread: Thursday, September 1, 2022

Trump Tries His Hand At Three-Dimensional Chess, Loses At Checkers.  His call for a special master to review documents led to this photo:

Those Secret and Top Secret documents are but a few of those that a special master would have been expected to review.  Trump tried to play rope-a-dope, but the dope got roped.

It’s Official: Wonderful Political Upset In Alaska.  First Alaska Native Mary Peltola defeats Sarah Palin to fill out the term of long-time Congressman Don Young. There will be a three-way rematch in November for a full term.

The Tragedy Of North Birmingham: A Century Of Environmental Racism:

No Southern city has experienced a longer and more damaging legacy of environmental injustice than Birmingham. As coke production fueled the city’s rise — powering plants that made everything from cast-iron pipes to steel beams — white leaders enacted housing policies that forced Black people to live in the most hazardous communities. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called Birmingham America’s “most thoroughly segregated city,” and the evidence of oppressive pollution was blatant. The air in north Birmingham residents’ lungs and the soil beneath their feet became more contaminated than in nearly any other corner of America.

Generations of business leaders amassed fortunes by cooking coke without regard to the pollution raining down on neighboring communities. With few exceptions, each plant owner left the facility in worse shape than they found it, passing off costly upgrades to the subsequent owner, who then passed them on to the next. This pattern was able to continue, in part, because powerful industry lobbyists fended off the kind of proposals and policies that better protected communities in other states. Nowhere was that more apparent than at one of the country’s worst-polluting plants, on 35th Avenue in Birmingham.

Would it be gratuitous to point out that Deb Heffernan buried a bill in her committee that would have addressed environmental racism in Delaware?  No.  It’s the literally toxic nature of the Delaware Way.  Get rid of Heffernan and her polluter co-conspirators, and not only can a bill like this pass, but communities like Edgemoor can be saved from a dredging project that Heffernan secretly funded in the Bond Bill:

Today, the state again is pouring millions of public dollars into the now-financially ailing port, just as Delaware lawmakers are on the verge of allowing the lucrative terms of its once celebrated lease deal to be amended – or even scrapped.

The 150-page lease contract – signed in 2018 by Gulftainer subsidiary GT USA Wilmington – contains thousands of clauses that set terms for the privatized port operations.

It is unclear which sections of the lease could be targeted for change in newly proposed legislation. The primary sponsor, Rep. Debra Heffernan-D, Bellefonte, declined to comment. Also not answering questions were officials from the governor’s office.

In an email Wednesday, Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock said the legislation “is needed as we move forward with building Edgemoor.” (With no input from the people who live there. No wonder Heffernan killed the bill protecting underserved communities, even those in her district.)

Even with the new money, construction at Edgemoor depends on whether challenges to the port’s permit are approved and sustained through appeals.

Last fall, three groups – a local community organization and Delaware River ports in Philadelphia and New Jersey – separately challenged a permit that had been granted by environmental regulators with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

The permit allows the port to carry out construction in the underwater and wetland areas of the Delaware River.

Read the entire article, it casts an essential, if unwanted, peek behind the (asbestos) curtain hiding Delaware Way machinations from the public.

Support For Unions Surges:

As union activity continues to make headlines, more Americans are coming around to the idea that protecting workers’ rights is a good thing—maybe even a great thing. A new Gallup poll shows that public support for unions is now at a whopping 71 percent, the highest the research firm has seen since 1965.

The low unemployment rate that developed during the pandemic altered the balance of power between employers and employees, creating an environment fostering union membership that has resulted in the formation of unions at several high-profile companies. While already on an upswing, public approval of unions has only increased further during the pandemic and is now at a level not seen in nearly six decades.

The Forces Of Evil Respond:

“For Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz, Amazon and Starbucks are their babies,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “They feel a union is a violation of everything they achieved. This is real personal for them. They’ll fight to the end to prevent a contract.”

Bronfenbrenner said Starbucks and Amazon know that if they drag out contract negotiations, there will be huge employee turnover and workers might grow impatient and disgruntled with their unions, which may prompt them to vote to decertify it.

“I think Amazon is going to drag out negotiations unless we put pressure on them,” said Seth Goldstein, a lawyer for the Amazon Labor Union, which scored a huge union victory at an 8,300-employee Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in New York in April. Putting pressure on a colossus like Amazon won’t be easy, Goldstein acknowledged, although he cited one example that could help: 70 prominent TikTok creators with collectively more than 51 million followers have called for boycotting Amazon unless it halts its anti-union efforts and grants big concessions to its workers.

Tiktok, tick-tock.

What do you want to talk about?