DAILY NEWS
Dueling budgets, TPP moves, Amazon beats Walmart…
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
PRIVATIZATION
ALSO TODAY at The Stand — Tell legislators: Pass the Taxpayer Protection Act
► And then there’s this…
STATE GOVERNMENT
► At KPLU — Senate Democrats target tax breaks to fund education — Minority Democrats in the Washington Senate want to tax oil refineries, bottled water, prescription drug resellers and out-of-state shoppers. The proposal released Tuesday could generate $100 million per year for public schools.
► At KPLU — Senate GOP includes nearly two dozen tax breaks in its budget plan — The Senate is proposing the creation or extension of nearly two dozen tax breaks, mostly for businesses. Beekeepers, companies that hire unemployed veterans and data server farms would all benefit. So would alcohol resellers, log haulers, and technology and energy companies.
► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Senate Republican coalition budget dodges challenges (editorial) — The budget released Monday by the Republican-controlled majority coalition in the Washington Senate deserves an un-A, for un-ambitious.
► In today’s Yakima H-R — Care centers feeling left out with lack of Medicaid reimbursements — Nursing homes and assisted-living centers on Tuesday pounced on the proposed Senate budget for excluding $29 million to boost Medicaid reimbursements, saying continued low rates could jeopardize quality of care.
► In today’s Seattle Times — Inslee plans bill requiring state test scores in teacher evaluations — Gov. Jay Inslee met Tuesday afternoon with lawmakers from both parties to hammer out a compromise that would allow the state to keep its waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law — and keep control over some $40 million that comes with the waiver.
LOCAL
► At PubliCola — Report: $15 minimum wage in Seattle will hurt human service providers — The Seattle Human Services Commission says that — while it “fully supports raising the minimum wage for all human services workers (and others) to $15 an hour” — an immediate, across-the-board increase, in the absence of additional revenues, they say, would force human service agencies to cut services and lay off workers.
► In today’s Columbian — Pickets briefly block road near Vancouver port — Pickets marking Thursday’s one-year anniversary at the Port of Vancouver’s grain terminal briefly blocked an entrance to the port this morning, as well as a nearby street.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE
ALSO at The Stand — America surrenders democracy under Trans-Pacific Partnership (by Gordon Lafer)
► From AP — US-led trade deal talks to carry on to next round — Negotiators ended talks on a comprehensive trans-Pacific trade pact on Tuesday without a final agreement, but said they were pleased with the progress they had made in Singapore despite persisting conflicts over agricultural tariffs and other issues.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
EDITOR’S NOTE — Co-sponsors include Reps. Dave Reichert and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.)
► At Politico — Democrats to push minimum wage discharge petition — House Democrats will formally launch a discharge petition Wednesday on raising the federal minimum wage – adding a new pressure tactic against Republicans in their arsenal on a hot-button election-year issue.
► In The Hill — Reid stalling action on minimum wage — Reid has not yet unified his caucus on the issue, which is a constant in the Democrats’ election-year playbook. Of the 55 senators who caucus with the Democrats, only 32 have signed on as official co-sponsors of Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) bill.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Both Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) are co-sponsors of the bill.
► In today’s Washington Post — Unions seek federal pay raise at least three times greater than Obama’s proposal — The president will make his proposal for a 1% pay increase in his budget message next week. But union officials say the pay raise should be at least three times what Obama is seeking.
► At Politico — Obama to urge $302 billion transportation bill — On paper, the bill’s annual price tag would be a 38% boost over the anemic $109 billion, two-year highway and transit bill that Congress enacted in 2012. But the true increase over current spending would be considerably smaller: The CBO has said it would take $279 billion over four years just to keep up with current demands.
AMAZON
EDITOR’S NOTE — To sum up: Amazon, a company the IRS says owes more than $1.5 billion in back taxes, has hired Norm Dicks & Co. to help it secure a federal contract to lease space in its data farms to store U.S. government data.
Oh, the humanity.
NATIONAL
► In The Onion — American Airlines to phase out complementary cabin pressure — The company is also planning to discontinue complimentary landing gear on flights under four hours.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.