Jeff Bezos is building a $500 million mega-yacht with masts are so tall that a historic steel
Rotterdam bridge may have to be partially dismantled so the superyacht can sail from its shipyard to the open sea. Rotterdam residents are so riled up that more than 4,000 people have already signed up on a Facebook event page to throw rotten eggs at Bezos’ superyacht when it’s finished, most likely in early June.
Rotterdam's beloved Koningshaven Bridge (popularly known as De Hef) was decommissioned as a railway bridge in 1994 after being replaced by a tunnel. The vertical lift bridge was later declared a national monument. De Hef underwent a major restoration from 2014 to 2017, and afterwards the city said it would not be dismantled again, according to Dutch broadcaster Rijnmond.
De Hef has a boat clearance of 130 feet, which is not enough to accommodate the three 229-foot masts of Bezos’ yacht. The city of Rotterdam told news media a week ago that it had agreed to temporarily dismantle part of the Koningshaven Bridge, but local officials quickly backtracked in the face of a public backlash, issuing a statement saying that the plan had not yet been approved.
"From an economic perspective and maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project," Walravens told Dutch broadcaster Rijnmond. "Rotterdam has also been declared the maritime capital of Europe. Shipbuilding and activity within that sector are therefore an important pillar for the municipality."
But many residents and some local lawmakers are not impressed by such economic arguments, saying Bezos is benefiting from a double-standard that favors billionaires. “This man has earned his money by structurally cutting staff, evading taxes, avoiding regulations and now we have to tear down our beautiful national monument?” Rotterdam GroenLinks (Green Left) councillor Stephan Leewis wrote on Twitter. “That is really going a bridge too far.”
Protest organizer Pablo Strormann told NL Times that the egg throwing event “started more as a joke among friends” after they heard the news about the possible dismantling of the historical bridge. But what he said was originally intended to be a satirical message is “now getting way out of hand” after thousands of people responded to the event invite. Strormann said, "Normally it’s the other way around: If your ship doesn’t fit under a bridge, you make it smaller. But when you happen to be the richest person on Earth you just ask a municipality to dismantle a monument. That’s ridiculous."
Bezos now has more money than he knows what to do with after seeing his fortune rise by 70% during the pandemic — from $113 billion in March 2020 to $192.2 billion in October 2021.
The Amazon founder provided $5.5 billion in funds for his space company, Blue Origin, to build a rocket and spacecraft that took him and three others on a suborbital flight 66.5 miles above the earth last July to experience four minutes of weightlessness. An October mission took “Star Trek” star William Shatner to the edge of the final frontier.
Bezos could have spent that windfall on giving every Amazon employee a hefty bonus for putting their lives and health at risk to fulfill the orders that flooded in during the pandemic. But he didn’t.
The global charity Oxfam issued a report in January 2021 that said Bezos’ wealth had increased so much between March and September 2020 that he could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still be as wealthy as he was before the pandemic. Amazon did give full-time, front-line workers a $500 bonus in June 2020. As if that didn't make Bezos look like a complete asshole, he went ahead and spent additional millions on a union-busting campaign to thwart an organizing drive at the Amazon “fulfillment center” warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
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