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Scott out, Ormsby in, pizza up, adjuncts broke…

Thursday, May 5, 2016

 


CAMPAIGN 2016

 

scott-elizabeth► In today’s (Everett) Herald — Rep. Elizabeth Scott ends campaign for Congress, citing health reasons — State Rep. Elizabeth Scott (R-Monroe) announced she is ending her campaign against Democratic U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene in the 1st CD. Scott cited health reasons for her decision to halt the effort she began a year ago. She did suffer a bout of whooping cough earlier this year but returned in the final days of the legislative session. Her sudden departure leaves the Republican Party without a candidate and the filing period opens on May 16. State Sen. Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) could jump in.

► In today’s (Everett) Herald — Frustration boils over for Sanders’ supporters — At the convention of the Snohomish County Democratic Party, they unleashed their frustration at Sen. Patty Murray and Reps. Rick Larsen and Suzan DelBene for pledging their superdelegate votes to Hillary Clinton. They expressed themselves by repeatedly interrupting the speeches of Murray, Larsen and DelBene by stamping on the bleachers and chanting, “Bernie.”

sanders-clinton-debate► From The Hill — Sanders: I’ll stay in ‘until the last vote is counted’ — Sanders trails front-runner Hillary Clinton among delegates and superdelegates and would need landslide victories in the remaining primary states to grab the nomination from the front-runner.

► In today’s NY Times — Bernie Sanders’s legacy? The left may no longer need the rich (by Nate Cohn) — Sanders’s weakness among affluent Democrats and his strength among working-class Democrats might seem unsurprising, given his class-focused message. But in broader historical terms, it might be something of a turning point in Democratic politics: the moment when the party’s left no longer needs an alliance with wealthy liberals to compete in national elections.

► In The Onion — Report: Well, here we go — With Donald Trump’s two remaining GOP rivals suspending their candidacies and clearing a path for the billionaire businessman to assume the Republican presidential nomination, reports indicated Wednesday that, well, hoo boy, here we go.

wilbur-hutchison-paycut► In today’s Seattle Times — State GOP: Rally for Trump or run for the hills — or Hillary? (by Jim Brunner) — State Republican Party Chairman Susan Hutchison said, “As this moves into a general-election contest we believe that our Republican is better than their Democrat.” But Bill Bryant, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, has deflected such questions for months. “I don’t like to cross hypothetical bridges,” he said in March.

► In today’s NY Times — With Trump in charge, Republicans have a day of reckoning — Republican elected officials, donors and strategists grappled uncomfortably on Wednesday with the inevitability of Donald J. Trump as their presidential nominee, an unexpectedly sudden denouement that left many in a state of political paralysis and others vowing to oppose the party’s new standard-bearer.

trump-rtw► From AFL-CIO Now — Trump seems to be fine with outsourcing to “right-to-work” states — Donald Trump trashed NAFTA and outsourcing in his Hoosier primary victory speech, but he failed to mention that before he was a candidate, he was cool with shipping U.S. jobs and production abroad. It also sounds like he is fine with companies busting unions in free bargaining states and heading for “right-to-work” states:

“I like it [right to work] better because it is lower. It is better for the people. You are not paying the big fees to the unions. The unions get big fees. A lot of people don’t realize they have to pay a lot of fees. I am talking about the workers. They have to pay big fees to the union. I like it because it gives great flexibility to the people. It gives great flexibility to the companies.”

► From Politico — Trump begins in a massive hole — He’s trailing Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders by margins not seen in a generation.

 


STATE GOVERNMENT

 

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Rep. Timm Ormsby to head House budget panel — Rep. Timm Ormsby (D-Spokane) was named chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. Ormsby, first elected to the Legislature in 2002, has been the committee’s vice chairman since 2012. He succeeds Hans Dunshee, who resigned recently after being appointed to the Snohomish County Council.

tax-loopholes► In today’s (Everett) Herald — Weighing benefit of tax breaks for Boeing, others (editorial) — It’s not a simple calculus, weighing what the state concedes in tax breaks against the benefits now and in the future in jobs, economic growth and even the potential for additional tax revenue. That evaluation, however, now benefits from a recent law that requires Boeing and other industries to provide an accounting of what the tax breaks provide them. Now, at least, we have one side of the equation to inform that debate.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Botched toll billing loses Washington state millions of dollars — A new audit confirms many drivers’ complaints about Washington’s toll system: It is rife with mistaken data and uncollectable bills, and quality control hasn’t been the top priority.

 


LOCAL

 

► From SkunkWorks — One year ago, conservatives predicted a pizza drought in Seattle. Were they right? (by Paul Constant) — Now that a year has officially passed since the Z Pizza saga exploded in the local media as a small-scale indictment of Seattle’s minimum-wage battle, I thought I’d check out the Capitol Hill pizza scene. How many pizza restaurants have opened within walking distance of Z Pizza since its closure last year? Eight pizza places, ranging from fine dining to cheap and on-the-go, all within 15 minutes’ walk of the restaurant that supposedly closed due to the minimum wage. From here, it looks like raising the minimum wage didn’t damage the local pizza economy — in fact, anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest that raising the minimum wage supercharged the local pizza economy.

► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Total of 42 Hanford workers evaluated for chemical exposure — The number of workers receiving medical evaluations for possible exposure to chemical vapors over the last week at Hanford reached 42 Wednesday.

 


BOEING

 

► From AP — Illinois lawmakers urge Boeing not to sell aircraft to Iran — Three Republican congressmen from Illinois are urging the chief executive officer of Chicago-based Boeing to avoid doing business with Iran and not sell aircraft to upgrade its fleet.

 


FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

 

► In today’s Washington Post — Justice Dept. says North Carolina’s so-called bathroom law violates Civil Rights Act — The government gave Gov. Pat McCrory until Monday to pledge that he will walk away from the controversial law, which requires transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender at birth, or risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

► In today’s NY Times — Safe ways to shorten U.S. airports’ security lines (editorial) — Security lines have gotten longer in part because more Americans are flying and government spending on security has not kept up with that growth.

 


NATIONAL

 

support-adjuncts-sign► From Gawker — Your broke adjunct professors would like a little solidarity, please — America’s bloated higher education industry is supported by the work of an immense pool of well-educated and very poorly paid workers: the adjunct professors. They are telling us all about it. And they have a few ideas. Hundreds of adjuncts have written us with their stories. Last week, we told you about their general themes: low pay, no job security, overstuffed and overpaid college administrations, and an unsustainable system that pumps out more Ph.D.’s than the market can handle. This week, adjuncts explain why their jobs suck, who is to blame, and who has the power to change things.

► From AFL-CIO Now — Many adjunct professors make little more than minimum wage — If you spend much time talking to adjunct professors across the United States, you start to realize that it sounds a lot like what fast food workers fighting for better wages and working conditions are saying.

► From the Washington Post — This man sued his former company because his work was ‘too boring’ — The plaintiff, 44-year-old Parisian Frédéric Desnard, is demanding more than $400,000 from his former employer, a perfume enterprise, as compensation for the boredom it allegedly caused.

 


TODAY’S MUST-SEE

 

► From Public Citizen — 4-year Korea data release: Warning for TPP — Data on 4 years of the US-Korea trade deal was just released—and the news is frightening: The trade deficit with Korea has more than doubled, equating to the loss of more than 106,000 U.S. jobs.

 


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