by Bob Walsh
Oakland, CA. is a shithole. I don't hate Oakland. I was born there. I lived in the projects there when I was a rug rat. It wasn't so bad there while growing up with Wally and the Beaver. It has, however, turned into a shithole. You could damn near put a fence around the whole place and turn it into a prison as almost half of the adult population is on probation or parole. Most of the blue collar jobs are civil service. There used to be an auto assembly plant, a large Coke bottling plant and any number of large retail stores where people could work, buy stuff and not get robbed or shot in the parking lot. That was then. This is now.
Oakland decided a while back, for feel-good liberal purposes, to ban the transport of coal thru the city. There is a very large port in Oakland which has a fair number of blue collar jobs attached to it. Right now the city has spent close to $1.5 million in legal fees fighting over the issue. A major developer, Phil Tagami, asserts that Oakland reneged on their deal for a bulk coal transshipment terminal at the old Oakland Army Base.
Back n 2013 Tagami (who is a road dog of Jerry Brown) got permission to build the terminal with the promise that he would NOT be shipping coal. He spent $250 million on the set-up and has now decided he wants to ship up to 10 million tons of coal a year thru there. The coal would come in by rail, get loaded onto ships and sent overseas. The social justice and green groups went bat-shit crazy. Tagami says his deal did NOT include an agreement to not ship coal.
He is suing for breach of contract and interference with interstate commerce. The trial starts in federal court next week.
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