DAILY NEWS
#AlmostOver, Microsoft’s H-1B layoffs, bigger breach, live Dead…
Friday, July 10, 2015
STATE GOVERNMENT
► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Senate OKs delaying I-1351 — With no votes to spare, the Senate on Thursday mustered the super-majority needed to suspend parts of the citizen initiative requiring smaller class sizes. With that vote and a pair of others, senators paved the way to end the longest session in state history sometime today. The bill needed 33 yes votes, and got them, but only after Sen. Don Benton (R-Vancouver) switched his vote from no to yes.
EDITOR’S NOTE — These high-stakes tests trip up lots of good students, like Lesley Delgadillo.
► From KPLU — More than half of state’s 1th graders skipped required standardized tests — So many eleventh graders skipped the exams — more than 42,000 in total — that the state’s overall participation rate on the required tests dipped below a minimum level required by federal law. That could trigger interventions or harsh penalties from the feds, at least in theory.
► In the (Aberdeen) Daily World — Twitter helped keep lawmakers in overtime, Hargrove says — Partisan positions were hardened, said Sen. Jim Hargrove (D-Hoquiam), by 140-character position papers on Twitter and by Facebook entries that afforded none of the nuances that U.S. mail brochures and newspapers can offer.
LOCAL
Microsoft has just announced it is laying off another 7,800 workers, on top of the 18,000 layoffs it has already announced. This means Microsoft has shed roughly one-fifth of its workforce in the past couple years. And yet Microsoft, perhaps more than any other major U.S. company, has claimed it suffers from a shortage of American workers and must therefore import more H-1B foreign guest workers.
► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Rules eased to compensate more ill Hanford workers — The new rules should help more workers receive $150,000 compensation plus reimbursement for current medical expenses related to Hanford exposures that may have caused certain cancers.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
► From The Hill — Obama’s immigration orders face dim outlook at federal court — The same two Republican-appointed judges who denied an earlier administration attempt to lift a hold on Obama’s immigration actions will hear arguments today at the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
► Today’s sign of the apocalypse from The Hill — Trump leads GOP presidential field in new national poll — Donald “Mexicans Are Rapists” Trump was the preferred GOP nominee for president for 15 percent of respondents — 4 points ahead of Jeb “Work Longer Hours” Bush and Rand “Make Vaccines Optional” Paul, who were tied for second place.
NATIONAL
► From Huffington Post — The Shadows of the Confederacy (by John Burbank) — Taking down the confederate flag is a constructive and symbolic financial decision for most corporations. Actually ceding power and income to workers, to pay taxes for education for all, to negotiate with workers as equal partners, those acts will be much harder to achieve. But we must achieve them, if we are truly going to put behind us the confederacy, white superiority, and institutional racism.
T.G.I.F.
► Last weekend, the Grateful Dead reunited for three final, sold-out shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field. (Dead Heads: here’s the streaming audio from each show.) As mere casual fans, The Entire Staff of The Stand will stick to the pioneering jam band’s days before the untimely passing of leader Jerry Garcia in 1995. Here they are playing one of our favorite Dead songs — the B-side to the single “Truckin” — at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall in October 1980. “Reach out your hand if your cup be empty. If your cup is full may it be again.” Enjoy!
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.