Wednesday Open Thread [5.21.14]

Comments (8)

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1. John Manifold says:

   May 21, 2014 at 1:17 pm

   Power plant advocates are so desperate that they label Roe letter as “elitist.”

   Whenever Chris Bullock feels a “moral imperative,” check your wallet.

2. John says:

   May 21, 2014 at 2:34 pm

   John Manifold – I agree they may be taking this too far, and I fully admit I have not read the entire letter (I’m not sure it’s publicly available), but I do question Ms. Roe’s comments. I can think of many reasons to advocate against the power plant, but the excerpt we’ve seen suggests Ms. Roes’ argument is that the presence of workers would put female college students at risk. Her argument seems to be that working class men are sure to be predators. To me, the argument is as bad as blaming a woman who wears a low-cut top for being sexually assaulted. Ms. Roe is insinuating that men, in this case blue collar workers, are certain to be abusive. I think she deserves to get a little flack for a flawed argument.

3. Geezer says:

   May 21, 2014 at 2:44 pm

   Indeed she does. But Ken Grant’s comment in TNJ goes beyond that to claim her fears, not reality-based complaints about noise, pollution and UD bigfooting Newark’s residents, are the real reason for her activism.

   The letter was sent anonymously to those lamenting its “racism” (which is a load of crap, because it wasn’t only about the laborers, and the majority of the pipefitters and boilermakers aren’t African-Americans). If somebody was truly interested in correcting Amy Roe’s hysteria rather than in scuttling the project by any means necessary, they would have spoken up with their names attached.

4. Geezer says:

   May 21, 2014 at 3:00 pm

   Hey, wait a sec — John Manifold is against the project? Wassamatta, John, nothing in it for John Carney or Tom Carper?

5. John Manifold says:

   May 21, 2014 at 4:10 pm

   The redesign of the News Journal demands that the front page be filled with local stories. The State News comes north. This one was particularly weak.

   The power plant is engendering much concern-trolling. The elitists-vs-hardhats trope will likely be this project’s last refuge. The developers aren’t paying their bills on time. Had Markell named Forsten as a judge instead of Wharton, one of the remaining legs on this stool would have been dislodged.

6. rustydils says:

   May 21, 2014 at 7:20 pm

   Barack Obama in his speech on the VA problems says “he won’t stand for it”. I think every time Barack Obama gives one of these post scandal speeches, he forgets that he has been in charge of things for over 5 years now. His speeches have the tone that someone else has been in charge of things for the last five years, and he is just stepping in to take over from that other bumbling idiot who made a mess of all this. He never actually connects the dots that he IS the other bumbling idiot who has been running the country into the ground for the last five years!

7. Jim C. says:

   May 21, 2014 at 7:21 pm

   Obama must begin relentlessly letting the American people know that it is NOT “the congress” that is keeping us from moving forward, but that it is the REPUBLICANS in Congress and the obstructionist Senate that are keeping us from fixing the problems that were caused by Republicans. It doesn’t help that our stupid, corporately owned Tom Carper can’t figure out that if the Post Office did not have to prefund their pension obligations for the next seventy years they would be turning a profit every single year! What a putz!

8. Geezer says:

   May 22, 2014 at 7:23 am

   @JM: I think TNJ bit on the story because of the race angle, not the class angle. And the “racism” charge was particularly sketchy.

   Isn’t the fact that the developers aren’t paying their bills on time a better story than this was?