A River Runs Through It wasn’t filmed on the Delaware River but it could have been. Controversy Erupts Over Proposal For PA’s First National Park. I took my brother fishing on the Upper Delaware.

My brother Joe and me went on a fly fishing trip. We camped along the Delaware River near Hancock NY on the Pennsylvania side. My brother had been fishing with his friend in Gardiner Montana every summer for some time. He remarked how the Delaware and the fish in it are like Montana rivers.  Joe and his son live in Bozeman MT now. 

Along the banks of the Delaware

While the Delaware Water Gap is currently overseen by the National Park Service, National Recreation Areas are not privy to quite the same level of protection. For one, more intensive land use and consumptive activities like hunting are allowed in a National Recreation Area. National Parks more aggressively enforce the protection of the natural environment from other uses. They also typically prohibit hunting, although the Sierra Club's proposal for the Delaware Water Gap is unusual in that it would still allow hunting at the same level as is currently permitted. It would create a preserve within the park and continue protections where they exist now.

The Delaware is special. It's the longest free-flowing waterway east of the Mississippi. Meandering 300 miles from the Catskill Mountains to the Delaware Bay. 

I'm not sure of what the physical effect in changing the Delaware Water Gap from national recreation area to national park will be. I think the beauty of the Delaware will be introduced to more people as a National Park. 

There is some controversy over eminent domain. But it won't be like the 1990s & early 2000s. 

“Americans for Prosperity” doesn’t do eminent domain anymore. The issue was never about the rights of physical property, say a farm, it was property rights for corporations. Once Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission became the law of the land the fight was over, corporations won. 

The photo at the top of my Riverseekerblog is in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park.
 

Right now the roads we used to access fishing in the Lamar Valley are closed to fishing. For information on when it might re-open, see:

Yellowstone National Park, ID, MT, WY 

Flood Recovery and Operations

I didn't want to re-format my post on Riverseekerblog. A click on the link below should take you to it.

tuesday, august 9, 2022

A River Runs Through It wasn’t filmed on
the Delaware River but it could have been. Controversy Erupts Over Proposal For PA’s First National Park.

At the January 6th. Committee: "Tuesday’s virtual interview with Mr. Mastriano is expected to be short, because he plans to object to the panel’s rules about video recording."

"Tuesday’s virtual interview with Mr. Mastriano is expected to be short, because he plans to object to the panel’s rules about video recording. A lawyer for Mr. Mastriano, currently a state senator, said Mr. Mastriano believed the committee would selectively edit his testimony, and planned to insist on making his own video recording of the interview. The committee has rejected that option for other witnesses, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

“Senator Mastriano has nothing to hide and would be happy to answer their questions. Our only concern is to prevent the committee from releasing misleading and edited portions while keeping the proper context hidden. Either release the entirety or let me make a copy and we have no issue,” Timothy C. Parlatore, Mr. Mastriano’s lawyer, said in a text message. “Unfortunately the committee has refused to discuss any arrangements other than to demand that they be allowed to exclusively control what portions can be released.”

It is unclear what the committee’s response will be if Mr. Mastriano ends the interview abruptly.

Mr. Mastriano, a former Army officer, was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, though he later explained in a statement that “he followed the directions of the Capitol Police and respected all police lines” that day. The committee has said it wants to interview Mr. Mastriano because he spoke directly with Mr. Trump about his “postelection activities.”

Emails reviewed by The New York Times also show that Mr. Mastriano served a point person for the Trump campaign as it assembled groups of pro-Trump electors in states won by President Biden. The emails showed Mr. Mastriano needed assurances to go along with the plan because other Republicans had told him it was “illegal.”

Mr. Mastriano has turned over documents to the Jan. 6 committee that included information about busing people to Washington for a large rally that preceded the violence, and copies of posts he made on social media."

MORE AT:

New YorkTimes

The House Jan. 6 panel is scheduled to interview Pompeo and Mastriano on Tuesday.

Aug. 8, 2022, 11:07 p.m. ET57 minutes ago

We know Trump hates Jews. We know he has a Hitler book. More Trump/Nazi stuff keeps coming out. “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” “Which generals?” Kelly asked.“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded

As a boy who grew up in the 1940s in a town that sent many people off to war including several of my uncles, Hitler and the Nazis were not exactly boyhood heros. 

In my 72 years I came across a number of people who think Hitler was not such a bad guy. One "Hitler wasn't a bad guy" statement came from a former artillery soldier in Hitler's army. Sort of understandable. 

The other times it was from just plain right wing folks in America. That's harder for me to swallow. 

MORE AT:

Friday, January 8, 2016

I watched the Wereth Eleven-About the all African American 333d U.S. Field Artillery Battalion

***

"The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: 'You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?'

'Which generals?' Kelly asked.

'The German generals in World War II,' Trump responded.

'You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?' Kelly said.

But, of course, Trump did not know that. 'No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,' the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition…

In the days after the Lafayette Square incident, Milley sat in his office at the Pentagon, writing and rewriting drafts of a letter of resignation. There were short versions of the letter; there were long versions. His preferred version was the one that read in its entirety:

I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thank you for the honor of appointing me as senior ranking officer. The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.

Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.

Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.

And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.

The letter was dated June 8th, a full week after Lafayette Square, but Milley still was not sure if he should give it to Trump. He was sending up flares, seeking advice from a wide circle. He reached out to Dunford, and to mentors such as the retired Army general James Dubik, an expert on military ethics. He called political contacts as well, including members of Congress and former officials from the Bush and Obama Administrations. Most told him what Robert Gates, a former Secretary of Defense and C.I.A. chief, did: “Make them fire you. Don’t resign.”

“My sense is Mark had a pretty accurate measure of the man pretty quickly,” Gates recalled later. “He would tell me over time, well before June 1st, some of the absolutely crazy notions that were put forward in the Oval Office, crazy ideas from the President, things about using or not using military force, the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, pulling out of South Korea. It just went on and on.”

Milley was not the only senior official to seek Gates’s counsel. Several members of Trump’s national-security team had made the pilgrimage out to his home in Washington State during the previous two years. Gates would pour them a drink, grill them some salmon, and help them wrestle with the latest Trump conundrum. “The problem with resignation is you can only fire that gun once,” he told them. All the conversations were variations on a theme: “ ‘How do I walk us back from the ledge?’ ‘How do I keep this from happening, because it would be a terrible thing for the country?’ ”

After Lafayette Square, Gates told both Milley and Esper that, given Trump’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior, they needed to stay in the Pentagon as long as they could. “If you resign, it’s a one-day story,” Gates told them. “If you’re fired, it makes it clear you were standing up for the right thing.” Gates advised Milley that he had another important card and urged him to play it: “Keep the chiefs on board with you and make it clear to the White House that if you go they all go, so that the White House knows this isn’t just about firing Mark Milley. This is about the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff quitting in response.”

MORE AT:

The New Yorker

Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals

How Mark Milley and others in the Pentagon handled the national-security threat posed by their own Commander-in-Chief.

By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker

Pat Toomey sad 😭 & angry 🤬. Pat’s "Credit Default Swaps" (CDS) investment banks are loosing, jobs gaining. “This is a job market that just won’t quit," Will Senator Toomey kill veterans to get even?

"Congressman Toomey pioneered the use of derivatives, including the risky "credit default swaps" that are blamed for the current economic situation. In a 2003 video on the House floor, he lavished praise on derivatives, calling them "perhaps the most important, creative and innovative development in finance in the last 30 years." [Morning Call, 8/17/10]

Credit Default Swap v. Jobs-  “The financial markets have lost trillions of dollars in value…” “This is a job market that just won’t quit," said Becky Frankiewicz, president of the ManpowerGroup North America…empowered worker is still calling the shots.” 

MORE AT:

The Washington Post

Employers added 528,000 jobs in July more than doubling expectations

The labor market has been a pillar of strength for an economy dealing with surging inflation

Lauren Kaori Gurley

"Congressman Toomey spent years working on Wall Street, where he "developed and managed a $21 billion derivatives trading operation for Morgan Grenfell Finance, Inc." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/13/2009]

Congressman Toomey referred to his experience at Morgan Grenfell as a "serious derivatives operation" and said he was "dealing in various currencies, all kinds of interest rate and currency-related derivatives-options, swaps, forwards and so on." [Derivatives Strategy, May 1999]

Congressman Toomey pioneered the use of derivatives, including the risky "credit default swaps" that are blamed for the current economic situation. In a 2003 video on the House floor, he lavished praise on derivatives, calling them "perhaps the most important, creative and innovative development in finance in the last 30 years." [Morning Call, 8/17/10]

Congressman Toomey helped write the legislation that broke down the wall between commercial banks and investment firms, allowing commercial banks - where the majority of Americans go to protect their savings - to engage in the risky activities previously limited to investment banks. [HR 10 Gramm-Leach-Bliley/Financial Services Modernization Act, enacted 11/12/99; House of Representatives Biography, U.S. Representative Patrick J. Toomey]

Congressman Toomey voted for legislation which deregulated derivative trading and allowed Wall Street firms to increase the kind of risk-taking which led to the economic crisis. [Commodities Futures Modernization Act, HR 4541, House Vote 540, 10/19/00]

Congressman Toomey voted to privatize Social Security and proposed creating risky private accounts, which would put the welfare of 20 million seniors in jeopardy, while creating a windfall for Wall Street. [HR 2590, 7/25/01, House Vote 273; Morning Call, 4/25/2003; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/11/2010; The Century Foundation on Social Security, 12/14/04]

Congressman Toomey served as President of the conservative Club for Growth from the time he left Congress in 2005 until he began his run for the Senate. [Politico, 8/27/10]

As President of Club for Growth, Toomey earned $1.6 million in salary and bonuses. [2005-2008 Club for Growth 990 Form; Morning Call,5/27/09 ]

"The Washington-based Club [for Growth], established in 1999, mounts lobbying and public-education campaigns but is best known for its political-action committee, which directs money to Republican candidates." [Wall Street Journal, 5/19/09]"

FROM:

New TV Ad: Joe Sestak Asks Pennsylvania Voters to Compare A Distinguished Record of Public Service vs. A History of Fighting for Wall Street 

 

Veterans gathered at the Capital to celebrate the passage of the PACT ACT. Instead, at the direction of Senator Toomey as revenge for tricking Mitch McConnell, Republicans killed the PACT ACT. Senator Toomey is indirectly responsible for the suicides of 2 veterans who killed themselves after Toomey directed Republicans to vote down the PACT ACT.

Idaho Sun

U.S. Senate fails to advance burn pits bill for veterans in dispute over spending

Legislation has been bogged down for nearly two months as lawmakers debate amendments

BY: JENNIFER SHUTT - JULY 27, 2022 6:06 PM

My arm got burned on my first day at Lukens, a Saturday. I was a helper for gas cutters cutting the ends of “heads.” Heads were the caps of what would become tanks, mostly propane tanks, I think.

 There were 1 inch hoops of steel cut off by the gas cutters lying underfoot. I stepped on one. It slapped up to my arm burning through my shirt. I thought I did something wrong.  

I was taken to a doctor at the mill. I had a 2 inch long welt on my arm. 

The next workday a Monday I learned the crane operator was supposed to pick up the rings. It was not my fault that I was burned. 

I was 18 when the summer job at Lukens Steel came. I was one of 4 at a bending brake. 

The brake in the photo is much newer & wider. The brake we used was likely 1940s vintage and foot petal operated but basically the same.

GaspariniIndustries

I was a pressman 3d class.  I was a hookup man. When the crane grabbed a magnet I would hook up the electric wires.  Once in a while the crane operator used a magnet to hold steel for us at the bending brake. Mostly the crane held the metal plate with hooks.

I would put a steel hook, a three or so foot long 6 inch wide mostly flat piece of steel with a 90° bend that fit under the steel plate. Another man would do the same on the other side of the plate. The plates were about 30 feet long by 10 feet wide 1 inch thick steel. 

Once the hooks were attached the crane operator would lift the plate. 

It’s supposed to bend longways. Like a piece of cardboard, the long ends down. Sometimes the plate would bend at the short sides. 

The plate needed to bend longwise to fit into the brake. When the plate bent at the short sides the 90° angle hook didn’t have as much purchase. The crane operator would bounce the plate to make it flip correctly. All the time lifting it above the steel plates & “heads” on the plant floor that would become caps of steel tanks.

Sometimes a hook would come loose. The plate would fall throwing heavy steel sideways around the floor. The hooks would swing wildly crossing back & forth across the building. 

For me it was exciting. Like an action movie. 

We would wait for the hooks to stop swinging and re-attach them under the plate. 

The crane operator with 2 hooks attached and 4 of us guided the steel plate held 4 ft in the air by those 2 steel hooks.

With the crane operator’s help we eased it up to put a bend in one end with the hydraulic bending brake.

Occasionally we had a “hot job.”  One end of a three inch wide plate needed to be heated to red hot to put a bend in it in a large oven on the opposite side of the brake. I think a magnet was used to guide the plate into the oven. 

We would turn the plate to face to bending brake. 

I would stand in back of the brake holding a long steel wrench to the hot steel. I wore silver colored gloves. I was told that the gloves do nothing to protect my hands & arms.

I went outside in 90℉ weather to cool off. 

I had to be careful not to trip on a two inch deep about 3 foot diameter indentation in the plant floor while walking in one morning. Somehow a magnet fell from a crane. It fell in front of a man walking into the building. He had to go home that day.

I never thought about the danger. 

The bending break job opened up because one of the 4 man crew was crushed to death against the brake by a plate. 

You basically needed to have a relative or know somebody to get a job at Lukens. At the time about 6,000 people worked at Lukens and everyone who lived in Coatesville was likely to have a relative who worked there.

My dad was a crane operator who worked on the other end of the building known as "The Hill."

In 1926 when he was 16 James A. Pitcherella oldest child of Giuseppe & Fiorenza Pitcherella 

started working at Lukens Steel Company. He retired at 62 years of age.

My dad, James A. Pitcherella 

on his crane ladder.