NEWS ROUNDUP
Clean air, concrete shoes, Dems vs. OT pay, rap is born…
Friday, September 16, 2016
STATE GOVERNMENT
► From AP — Washington state limits carbon pollution from large sources — Washington state adopted a new rule Thursday to limit greenhouse gas emissions from large carbon polluters, joining a handful of other states in capping emissions to address climate change.
► From KNKX — Looking to Clean Air Act, Washington finally gets a cap on carbon — It’s been eight years in the making, but Washington state finally has a rule that places limits on carbon pollution from its largest sources. It comes in response to reduction targets on greenhouse gas emissions first called for by the Legislature in 2008. That law called for limits that would get the state back down to 1990 levels by 2020, to 25 percent below the 1990 level by 2025 and 50 percent below it by 2050. Gov. Jay Inslee sought the action last year after failing to gain legislative support for a more ambitious plan to charge polluters fees and allow them to exchange credits, similar to California’s cap-and-trade program.
► From AP — Report cites lax security at Washington’s largest mental hospital — Corrections officials who investigated the April escape of two violent patients from Western State Hospital say they discovered a list of mistakes, blunders and deceptions at what should be a secure facility.
► In the Seattle Times — Legislature should not wait for Supreme Court pressure on education funding (editorial) — Although the court’s 2012 McCleary ruling has forced change, lawmakers now must lead and make progress on fixing the way the state pays for public schools. They must stop stalling and get a real plan ready before the 2017 legislative session convenes in January. As state Sen. Christine Rolfes (D-Bainbridge Is.) recently said, if there’s not a solid plan for legislative action on education funding by early December, the Legislature is likely to fail again. The solutions are all on the table. All that’s required is leadership.
LOCAL
► From KUOW — How labor movements shape the fight for living-wage employment — When it comes to the future of good jobs and a contented workforce in the United States, the outlook is tenuous at best: workers left in the wake of off-shoring, financial crises and game-changing robotic technology developments all shape market. Labor journalist Sarah Jaffe says community movements are a key to better outcomes. “For the people taking part in them it is not a question of left or right, but of the powerless against the powerful.”
► ICYMI (like we did)… from KNDO NBC-TV — A look back on Labor Day — UA 598 member Matt Wilkes of Pasco: “(This holiday is about) the men, and women, and children that have died so that we can have eight hours… So that we can have this weekend… Dignity at work… That’s really what we’re celebrating here.”
TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP
► MUST-READ from Bill Moyers — Guess who’s winning the argument on trade? — AFL-CIO economist and international trade expert Thea Lee tries not to say, “I told you so.” Instead she says:
“For too many decades there has been a mindset amongst elected officials and the corporate sector that our place in the global economy is to import and consume and to own the means of production… somewhere cheap, whether it’s China or Mexico or Bangladesh, and then importing the products and selling it to wealthy American consumers. The problem with that business strategy is that at some point the American consumers aren’t wealthy anymore because you’ve taken all the good jobs away.”
► From Reuters — Obama enlists Republican Kasich to press for TPP passage — President Barack Obama on Friday engaged Ohio Governor John Kasich, a high-profile political foe, to help press Republicans to approve the 12-nation TPP deal before he leaves office in four months.
ELECTION 2016
► MUST-READ in today’s News Tribune — Running for president in concrete shoes is not easy (by Garrison Keillor) — What some people see as (Hillary Clinton’s) relentless quest for power strikes me as the good habits of a serious Methodist. Be steady. Don’t give up. It’s not about you. Work, for the night is coming. The woman who does not conceal her own intelligence is a fine American tradition, going back to Anne Bradstreet and Harriet Beecher Stowe and my ancestor Prudence Crandall, but none has been subjected to the steady hectoring and jibber-jabber that Hillary Clinton has… Some day historians will get this right and look back at the steady pitter-pat of scandals that turned out to be nothing, and will conclude that, almost a century after women’s suffrage, almost 50 years after Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, a woman was required to run for office wearing concrete shoes.
► In today’s Seattle Times — Yakima Latinos ‘frustrated, scared’ by Trump’s campaign — The Latino vote is more important than ever in Washington. Hispanics, the largest ethnic group other than whites and the fastest growing, make up 11.7 percent of the state’s population, according to the latest U.S. Census figures. Hispanics could have even more sway in Yakima County, a magnet for Spanish-speaking immigrants due to its fertile fields and plentiful warehouse jobs. Roughly half of the county’s residents are Hispanic, up from less than a quarter in 1990. In a county that has long been reliably red, that could mean changing fortunes for Republican candidates and particularly bad news for Trump, whose call to build a border wall and portrayal of undocumented immigrants as murderers and rapists has infuriated even some conservative Latinos.
► From Medium — An open letter to Donald Trump: You lost my vote when you crossed my picket line (by IATSE member Dan Mahoney) — Mr. Trump, when I saw you running for president, I recognized you as the man you who mistreated the crew of “The Apprentice” and the man who crossed an IATSE picket line. The day you crossed our picket line was the day you showed me you how little you care about American workers.
► In today’s NY Times — America the Plunderer (by Timothy Egan) — Because he’s being graded on a doofus curve that is unprecedented in presidential politics, Donald Trump said more than a dozen outrageous, scary or untrue things in the last 10 days and got away with all of them. But with at least one statement, marking a profound shift in how the United States would interact with the rest of the world, Trump should be shamed back to his golden throne. He wants the United States to become a nation that steals from its enemies. He’s already called for war crimes — killing family members of terrorists, torturing suspects. He would further violate the Geneva Conventions by making thieves out of a first-class military. Trump would become a war criminal, a role he seems to relish — typical for a man who has never served a day in the military.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
► From The American Prospect — ‘Centrist’ Democrats team up with corporate lobby to undermine overtime rule — In July, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) introduced legislation that would delay the full implementation of the higher salary threshold for three years and eliminate indexing the threshold as stipulated in President Obama’s executive order to keep it in line with rising wages and inflation… While House and Senate Republicans are trying to repeal the rule through the Congressional Review Act, business is coalescing around the Democrats’ effort as a stronger vessel to undermine the new rule. But this legislation is only part and parcel of a broader campaign to dismantle the slew of pro-worker regulations that Obama has passed in his second term.
ALS) at The Stand — Oregon’s Schrader, other Dems seek to delay OT rule changes (Aug. 17, 2016)
► In today’s NY Times — EpiPen maker quietly steers effort that could protect its price — Against a growing outcry over the surging price of EpiPens, a chorus of prominent voices has emerged with a federal government solution that would allow Mylan to continue charging high prices for the product. Mylan is helping orchestrate and pay for the campaign behind this solution.
► In today’s NY Times — Senate dysfunction blocks bipartisan criminal justice reform — A major criminal-justice overhaul bill seemed destined to be the bipartisan success story of the year, consensus legislation that showed lawmakers could still rise above politics and take on a serious societal problem. Then the election got in the way. With Donald Trump demanding “law and order” and Senate Republicans divided on the wisdom of reducing federal mandatory minimum sentences, the effort that began with real promise stalled, and now its Senate authors acknowledge there is virtually no chance for action on the measure this year.
► In today’s NY Times — Obama’s trickle-up economics (by Paul Krugman) — The overall performance of the Obama economy has given the lie to much of the criticism leveled at President Obama’s policies.
T.G.I.F.
► On this day, rap and a rapper were born.
Although”Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang wasn’t the first rap song ever recorded, many consider it to be the one that introduced the world to hip hop — or more specifically, to “hip hop, the hippie, the hippie, to the hip, hip hop, and you don’t stop.” It was released on Sept. 16, 1979. That same day, Tramar Lacel Dillard was born in Carol City, Florida. You know him (or don’t) as Flo Rida, the man who described how Shawty got low low low low low low low low. Given that people and fashion from 1979 are MUCH more entertaining than their 2008 counterparts, The Entire Staff of The Stand presents… the birth of rap. Enjoy.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.