STATE GOVERNMENT

► At the Slog — “Why should the voters be willing to sacrifice for themselves if the state worker unions are not willing to do the same?” — After she announced her drive for a half-cent sales tax increase yesterday, Gov. Chris Gregoire was asked the above question by a reporter. In response, Gregoire, clearly pissed, gave an uncharacteristically tough defense of her “demoralized” state workforce. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Gregoire said, leaving the podium to grab a large chart that she could hold over the reporter’s head. “I don’t know how you can say that.” Watch this clip of the “new Gregoire” emerging:

► At SeattlePI.com — Gregoire: Tax hike, not education cuts, is the answer — Community college officials are warning of huge enrollment reductions if Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed 13 percent budget cut is approved by the Legislature. The governor went back to school to South Seattle Community College on Tuesday with the message of an alternative: a tax increase.

► From AP — Lawmakers pushing for a $42 million Wenatchee bailout — Key members of the Legislature are set to file a bill Wednesday to help avoid default on the city’s Toyota Town Center arena. The package that would make a key bond payment next week and allow jurisdictions in the Wenatchee area to pay it back over time.

► In today’s Olympian — Political lines tough to draw — Work to redraw Washington’s political boundaries to adjust for a decade of population growth is moving slowly. But not to worry … not yet.

LOCAL

► In today’s (Longview) Daily News — Herrera Beutler holds ‘community coffee’ in Longview — U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler says she’s happy with the smaller settings of her invitation-only “community coffees” and isn’t planning to hold another large-scale town hall.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Why is she afraid to hold public meetings? Find out why by reading Where’s Jaime? Herrera Beutler avoids her constituents (The Stand, Aug. 31)

► In today’s Yakima H-R — Yakima County officials say ‘no’ to eVerify — E-Verify, the controversial federal worker status verification program, won’t be used by Yakima County. Instead, the county will stick with a Social Security-based system for checking employment eligibility that has worked well, county commissioners decided Tuesday.

NATIONAL

► At Politico — CBO: Stimulus added up to 3.3 million jobs — The economy would have been in much worse shape without the 2009 stimulus — which increased employment in the third quarter of this year by as many as 3.3 million full-time jobs, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office.

EDITOR’S NOTE — The next time your teabagging neighbor spouts his Faux News nonsense about how the “wasted” stimulus didn’t help the economy, remind him that millions of U.S. families — and thousands in our state — avoided the unemployment line for two years because of it. (In fact, Hanford was the biggest recipient of federal stimulus contracts.) Now, those families in the Tri-Cities and across the state and nation have lost those jobs and conservative lawmakers are aggressively pursuing budget cuts that will make things worse, not better.

► From Esquire’s “Americans of the Year” — Richard Trumka, American — The American worker has been getting thrashed for thirty years. Jobs leaving the country, wages flat, his boss getting rich. One coal miner from Pennsylvania knows exactly what to do about it.

► In today’s NY Times — Republican might quit NLRB — The National Labor Relations Board, the subject of particularly intense partisan sniping this year, could soon be completely paralyzed. The labor board’s sole Republican member, Brian E. Hayes, has threatened to resign to deny the NLRB the three-person quorum it needs to make any decisions, according to board officials.

► In today’s LA Times — Obama turns anti-tax message on GOP — The president says Republicans are playing politics by voting down his jobs plan, which includes an extension of the payroll tax break. He tells a crowd in New Hampshire that the move could cost the average middle-class family $1,000 in 2012.

► In today’s NY Times — Health care and the states (editorial) — It would be a serious mistake for the Supreme Court to use the states’ rights argument in the reform case to restrict Congress’s spending power.

► In today’s LA Times — South Korea ratifies trade deal with U.S. amid tear gas, scuffles — It was just another bitter battle Tuesday between some less-than-stately South Korean legislators as ruling conservatives forced into law a controversial free-trade deal with the U.S. The vote was complete with pushing and shoving, shouting and screaming, and even tear gas.



TODAY’S MUST-READ

► At Huffington Post — Industrial policies for economic development (by SPEEA’s Stan Sorscher) — In capitalism, when a business needs capital, it goes to the capital market. Banks and lenders impose conditions on borrowers that protect the lenders. We should do no less. When a company comes to government, we should have conditions that encourage production to stick in our local economy. We should see a clear public good that raises the standard of living for workers and communities.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 9 a.m. These links are functional at the date of posting, but sometimes expire.