DAILY NEWS
TPP’s new low, early 737 Max, ‘vindictive’ foundation…
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP
From The Calendar™ at The Stand — Fight the TPP today in Seattle — Join fair trade advocates at a “Roll Up Our Sleeves: Fight TPP” event at noon on Feb. 3 at Seattle City Hall Plaza, 600 4th Ave. Rally there then march to the Federal Building (5 blocks downhill) to deliver the message to Sens. Murray and Cantwell. Get details.
Fight the TPP tomorrow in Bellingham — Join fair trade activists as they rally against the TPP on Thursday, Feb. 4. Wave banners from 2 to 4 p.m. at the end of Lincoln Street (Sunnyland Pedestrian Overpass), gather at Holly and RR street at 2:30 p.m. for more banner waving and leafleting. From 4:30 to 6 p.m. come to West Chestnut Street near the old granary to shine the light on the granary for all to see and leaflet. Email Dianne Foster for more info.
AEROSPACE
► In the P.S. Business Journal — AIM Aerospace acquired for $220M — A London-based private equity firm has acquired Renton-based AIM Aerospace, one of the region’s largest aerospace companies, for $220 million. AIM Aerospace has more than 1,000 employees at facilities located in Renton, Auburn and Sumner.
EDITOR’S NOTE — If it happens, it will be another “insourcing” success story for Washington’s engineers and machinists at Boeing, and a far cry from what happened when the company outsourced 787 development: years in delays and billions of dollars in added costs.
STATE GOVERNMENT
► In today’s (Everett) Herald — Lawmakers seek solutions to public records request abuses — Tales of abuse of Washington’s public records law are piling up in cities, counties, schools and other local government around the state. So, too, is the tab for taxpayers, compelling civic leaders to once again press lawmakers for help.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Case in point…
ALSO at The Stand — “Freedom” Foundation: Driven by greed, powered by lies
► In today’s Columbian — Leavitt blasts Rep. Pike over river crossing — Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt criticized efforts in Olympia to renew discussions about a crossing over the Columbia River and asked key lawmakers to kill the proposed legislation.
► In today’s Seattle Times — You can still hit health-insurance deadline, if site outage affected your enrollment — People who couldn’t sign up for health insurance on the state exchange during a website outage on Saturday can apply for extensions on a case-by-case basis, state officials said.
CAMPAIGN 2016
► In today’s News Tribune — Brewery owner from Bonney Lake seeks state House seat — Bonney Lake Republican Pablo Monroy announced Monday he would challenge Rep. Chris Hurst in a 2016 race that could help decide the balance of power in the House that Democrats control by a narrow 50-48 margin.
► In today’s Columbian — Rep. Wilson is running for Benton’s seat — State Rep. Lynda Wilson (R-Vancouver) announced Tuesday she will run to succeed longtime Republican state Sen. Don Benton.
► In today’s Seattle Times — State’s donors hot for Bernie Sanders (by Danny Westneat) — Bernie has amazingly gotten more donations from our state than all the other presidential campaigns combined.
LOCAL
► In today’s Bellingham Herald — Auction of Haggen’s core stores moved to Feb. 11 — The auction of the Bellingham-based grocer’s 33 core stores has been rescheduled for 6 a.m. Pacific time Thursday, Feb. 11 and will be held in a law office in New York City.
► In the Seattle Times — Seattle hair salon terminates staff via weekend text message
EDITOR’S NOTE — UR fired. :(
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
► From Politico — Shuster’s FAA breakup bill readies for takeoff — The legislation, expected to be unveiled Wednesday, would shift the FAA’s thousands of air traffic controllers to a quasi-government corporation or nonprofit.
► From The Hill — House fails to override ObamaCare veto — The House on Tuesday failed to override President Obama’s veto of legislation that would have repealed much of ObamaCare and defunded Planned Parenthood.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Washington Republican Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse, and Dave Reichert all voted “yes” in the failed effort.
► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Rep. Newhouse asks Obama for solid Hanford funding — A reduction in nationwide spending for Department of Energy environmental cleanup would be a problem for Hanford, the advocate for small government and reduced spending told the president.
► From The Hill — Democrat pushes for on-demand focus in labor survey — Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is pushing the Department of Labor to update a worker survey so that it gathers information about on-demand economy companies like Uber and Lyft.
► In today’s NY Times — The conservative case for campaign-finance reform (by Richard Painter) — Big money encourages big government. So why aren’t the Republican candidates talking about it?
EDITOR’S NOTE — Isn’t the answer pretty obvious? As the recipients of most of that largess — by more than a 2-to-1 margin — Republican politicians put self-interest and their quest for power ahead of the professed conservative values.
NATIONAL
► From AFL-CIO Now — West Virginia, the latest battlefront in the conservative assault on working people — Propped up by out-of-state interests, extremists in West Virginia are pushing “right to work” legislation that benefits only a tiny percentage of West Virginians and outsiders and takes away rights from hardworking people trying to support their families.
► In today’s Washington Post — The crazy thing Bill Gates used to do to monitor workplace productivity — In his early days at Microsoft, he would “prowl” the parking lot on weekends to document who had arrived at work. Not surprisingly, Gates’ monitoring wasn’t well-received.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.