NEWS ROUNDUP
Labor Day, DNC, ‘school choice,’ when capitalists cared…
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
LABOR DAY
► In today’s (Longview) Daily News — Union members, politicians meet, greet and eat at picnic — Members of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council and their families barbecued, played croquet with plus-sized wooden sledgehammers and soccer balls, and listened to live music at Toutle River RV Resort in Castle Rock during their second annual Labor Day picnic. The event was revived in 2011 after a hiatus of more than 30 years.
► In the (Everett) Herald — Labor’s native home (editorial) — On Lombard Street in Everett, the red-brick Snohomish County Labor Temple is a workers’ citadel, a reminder of a labor movement that scratched, punched, and picketed for living-wage jobs (and its ironic fallout, those with living-wage jobs who now castigate unionism.) In Snohomish County we can memorialize Labor Day by teaching this history to the next generation, and by creating a monument that acknowledges the legacy of the Everett Massacre, that working people shed blood to ensure that one day others live free and equal in dignity and rights.
LOCAL
► In the News Tribune — High stakes for Tacoma, West Coast ports— While Prince Rupert, B.C. is the port of most immediate concern for U.S. West Coast ports, other ports in Mexico and planned port developments in Eastern Canada could prove to be formidable competitors to the established import business order.
► In the Seattle Times — Wave of new hotels planned in Seattle — Business is up at downtown hotels, which had been hit hard by the recession. They’re renting more rooms, and getting higher rates for them. Developers, buoyed by those numbers, are responding by proposing more new rooms than the city has added in years.
► In the Skagit Valley Herald — Demand for truckers on the rise — Truck driving schools in Skagit County are beginning to see long backlogs for students looking to get into an industry with enormous demand around the nation.
STATE ELECTIONS
► In today’s News Tribune — McKenna draws ‘unprecedented’ support from Indian tribes — Rob McKenna is siding with Indian tribes and against some fellow Republicans in the Legislature who look to the nontribal gambling industry as a potential jackpot for the state budget. Tribes have rewarded him with a share of their campaign contributions. The money he has received is far less than Democrat Inslee but still vastly more than other Republicans who have run for governor in the recent past.
► In the (Everett) Herald — Finding courage to help (by Brendan Williams) — Setting aside the politically-charged question of its expansion under the Affordable Care Act to the uninsured, the existing Medicaid program is the lifeline for the impoverished with long-term care needs at home or in facilities. And it serves those needs more efficiently than private long-term care insurance. Why, then, does no one fight for it?
DNC
► In The Hill — Unions dig in for Obama despite disappointment in his record— Organized labor is working hard for President Obama, looking upon him as the lesser of two evils compared to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Labor has been repeatedly let down by Obama, who didn’t put his strength behind legislation that would have made it easier to organize unions and signed trade deals opposed by workers. Still, union members insist they’ll be going all-out to elect Obama in the fall.
► At BuzzFeed — Labor brings its frustrations to Charlotte — The newly-elected president of the giant public workers’ union AFSCME, Lee Saunders, took a page out of Clint Eastwood’s book at an Ohio delegation Labor Day breakfast on Monday, speaking to an empty chair that he pretended was occupied by Eastwood. At first it was just a lark.
► In today’s NY Times — Ohio unions battle conservative Super PACs for votes — As unions around the nation plunge in earnest into another election season of phone banks, door-to-door canvasses and leafleting, they find themselves confronting a political landscape that is more daunting than any they have faced in decades.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Will the DNC in right-to-work North Carolina be any different?
NATIONAL
► In Sunday’s NY Times — School choice is no cure-all, Harlem finds — The idea, one that became a model for school reform nationwide, was to let parents shop for schools the same way they would for housing or a cellphone plan, and that eventually, the competition would lift all boats. But Harlem parents described two drastically different public school experiences, expressing frustration that, among other things, there were still a limited number of high-quality choices and that many schools continued to underperform.
► From AP — U.S. Steel, union agree on pact for 16,000 workers — U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers announced a tentative agreement Sunday on a three-year contract covering more than 16,000 workers at domestic facilities. Details of the contract were not announced. The union said members will vote after reviewing details over the next few weeks.
► From Reuters — Lufthansa cancels hundreds more flights as strikes hit — Deutsche Lufthansa cancelled hundreds more flights on Tuesday as cabin crew launched a second round of strikes in a row over pay and conditions that threatens to drag on for weeks and cost Germany’s biggest airline tens of millions of euros.
► At Huffington Post — How we can bring millions of Americans to the middle class (by Bob Herbert) — The decline of the middle class was also the result of public policy choices, only this time they were geared to overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthy. Today’s downward mobility can only be reversed by a range of new choices consciously aimed at helping working Americans regain their financial footing. Demos’s report can be an important guide to that process. The goal is a fairer, more economically just and equitable America.
TODAY’S MUST-READ
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