DAILY NEWS
Sunny Jay, ‘Corporate Kadlec,’ Scalia’s flip-flop…
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
STATE GOVERNMENT
MORE coverage from AP, The Olympian/News Tribune, and the Spokesman-Review.
ALSO at The Stand:
State, nation face the future with confidence (WSLC President Jeff Johnson’s statement on the State of the State and State of the Union addresses)
Improving early learning starts with raising teacher pay (by John Burbank)
► In today’s News Tribune — State schools chief Randy Dorn walks out on Gov. Inslee’s speech — The state’s public schools superintendent, Randy Dorn, showed his displeasure with Inslee’s education funding agenda by not attending the governor’s annual State of the State address.
ALSO at The Stand — Minimum wage/paid sick leave initiative is filed
► In today’s Seattle Times — Hey, Washington state: Try to tune out that endless gloom (by Danny Westneat) — Sunny Jay Inslee tried to bring a little sunshine into the state Capitol Tuesday. After years of warnings that regulations or taxes would kill jobs and devastate the fragile economy, the economy peskily continues to boom… It’s the same story with crime rates, which are mostly down, and graduation rates, which are up, and the medically uninsured rates, which are way down, and so on. None of it seems to register. People are still hacked off. Local pollster Stuart Elway did a survey of 500 registered voters in Washington state last week and found that optimism about the state and the country had plunged from a year ago, by 40 percent. People are more pessimistic now than they were even in 2009, the height of the recession.
► From KPLU — Lawmakers weigh different approaches to restoring charter schools — A panel of state lawmakers weighed their options for keeping charter schools open long term in Washington during a meeting in Olympia on Tuesday.
► In today’s Yakima H-R — Thousands more in state sign up for health care — Advertising, community outreach, direct mailers, YouTube videos — local providers and statewide insurance advocates have been promoting health coverage every way they know how. And it appears to be paying off.
LOCAL
► From KEPR TV — Kadlec nurses light candles to remember hospital before ‘Corporate Kadlec’ — Kadlec nurses gathered Monday night to mourn the lives of the two Richland students lost last week in addition to the hospital they say they lost to “Corporate Kadlec” about a year and a half ago when it was taken over by Providence Health and Services. A major question asked and sung by supporters Monday night, ‘When will the nurses staffing and sick time rights ever return?’
► In today’s Seattle Times — Aerospace supplier Zodiac fined $1.3M over factory explosion — Washington state safety regulators have fined aircraft cabin supplier Zodiac $1.3 million, citing workplace safety and health violations that led to an explosion last July in a carbon fiber curing oven. Seventeen workers were injured at the production plant north of Spokane.
► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Hanford guards to vote on tentative labor agreement — Hanford security guards will vote on a new contract Jan. 26 after a tentative agreement was reached late Monday night.
FRIEDRICHS
EDITOR’S NOTE — Ironically, the plaintiffs’ attorneys in this case argue that everything public employee unions do is inherently political. The truth is, this case is inherently political, financed by right-wing billionaires and their “public policy” think tanks whose very existence is to gain political advantage. They could care less about the “freedom” of public employees to get something for nothing, except to the extent that it weakens their political opponents.
CAMPAIGN 2016
► From Huffington Post — Hillary Clinton wins endorsement from UFCW — The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million workers in grocery and retail, described Clinton as “the best qualified and positioned candidate to win in 2016.” UFCW said it came to its endorsement decision after a series of meetings between union officials and internal polls of its members.
STATE OF THE UNION
► In today’s NY Times — Obama urges Congress to pass Pacific trade deal — “With TPP, China doesn’t set the rules in that region, we do,” he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Or more specifically, multinational corporations set the rules. Rules that undermine democracy and set out to protect profits and shareholder, not people and the planet.
► From AFL-CIO Now — State of the Union: Don’t let TPP sink our wages (by Celeste Drake) — The thing that’s dangerous about the TPP, and the reason we should worry about it shrinking our paychecks, is not the idea of trade. Trade is good — but we shouldn’t confuse “trade” with so-called “trade agreements,” which set down rules not just for “trade,” but for food safety, Wall Street regulations, prescription medicines and investor rights. These are the kind of rules that should be made in public, in democratic fashion, not in a secretly negotiated agreement that can’t be amended. The TPP’s corporate giveaways are dangerous.
NATIONAL
► In the Washington Post — How worker-friendly laws changed life as a server in San Francisco restaurants — Over the past few years, as liberal priorities have been stymied on the state and federal level, a number of cities have emerged as islands with worker-friendly policies like higher minimum wages and mandatory paid sick leave. More are likely to emerge in the years ahead… They might look first to San Francisco, which has served as a proving ground for many of these policies — the minimum wage there is now $12.25, and all employers are required to offer paid sick days and contribute to their employees’ health insurance.
ALSO at The Stand — State minimum wage, sick leave initiative is filed
TODAY’S MUST-READ
► From Esquire — More than half of Americans reportedly have less than $1,000 to their names — In a recent survey, 56 percent of Americans said they have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined. Nearly a quarter (24.8 percent) have less than $100 to their name. Meanwhile, 38 percent said they would pay less than their full credit card balance this month, and 11 percent said they would make the minimum payment—meaning they would likely be mired in debt for years and pay more in interest than they originally borrowed. It paints a daunting picture of the average American coming out of the spend-heavy holiday season: steeped in credit card debt, living paycheck-to-paycheck, at serious risk of financial ruin if the slightest thing goes wrong.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.