Tuesday, September 20, 2016

LOCAL

► In today’s Seattle Times — Seattle City Council approves worker-scheduling law — The Seattle City Council unanimously passed a “secure scheduling” law on Monday, making Seattle the second major U.S. city to regulate how large retailers and food-service employers schedule their workers. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who has supported the scheduling effort all along, has indicated he would sign the legislation, likely this week or next.

ALSO at The Stand — History made: Seattle OKs secure scheduling

MORE coverage from The Stranger and the P.S. Business Journal.

► In the Seattle Times — Are low earners in Seattle moving up or moving out? — Faster than any other big city, Seattle is losing its lowest-earning residents. A UW public-policy professor thinks that while some are being forced out by rising rents, the strong economy is probably helping more climb to higher income levels.

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Owner of Deaconess, Valley hospitals exploring options for troubled company — Community Health Systems Inc., a troubled U.S. hospital chain with a market value of about $1.4 billion, said it’s exploring a variety of options with its financial advisers.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Microsoft cuts jobs locally and abroad — The company laid off about 520 employees in the latest round of job cuts, about 220 of them in London and most of the rest in the Puget Sound area.

STATE GOVERNMENT

► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Pasco votes to create more Latino-friendly council districts — The council voted 5-1 for a system that would elect six from districts with one at-large position. The plan is expected to create three Latino-majority districts. Their choice will now be submitted to U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington in an effort to override a state law that does not allow district-based elections in non-charter cities such as Pasco.

EDITOR’S NOTE — If Republicans in Washington state hadn’t blocked consideration of the Washington Voting Rights Act — for the past four straight years — maybe Pasco could have resolved this issue outside of the courtroom and saved some money.

ELECTION 2016

► From Slog — Seattle Subway: Think ST3 is too expensive? Check your Seattle Times subscription — After yet another anti-Sound Transit 3 editorial from Seattle’s the suburbs’ newspaper of record, the transit advocates at Seattle Subway have a simple response: Think paying for a transformational expansion of light rail is too expensive? Consider killing your Seattle Times subscription.

► In today’s Washington Post — Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems — Donald Trump spent more than a quarter million dollars to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Imagine if the Clinton Foundation has done the same.

► From Huffington Post — Trump won tax breaks while donating tens of thousands to corrupt official — Donald Trump gave at least $45,000 to the campaign of Alan Hevesi, a New York state comptroller who later went to prison for his role in a pay-to-play bribery scandal. Trump’s donations coincided with a $500 million lawsuit he filed against the city of New York. Hevesi played a role in evaluating and settling the claim as the city reduced the tax assessment for Trump’s newest building and awarded a special tax abatement.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Sound familiar?

► In today’s NY Times — The success of the voter fraud myth (editorial) — There is essentially no voter fraud in America, but Republicans have spread the myth so persistently that a lot of people now believe it. Behind closed doors, some Republicans freely admit that stoking false fears of electoral fraud is part of their political strategy.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

► From The Hill — Senate negotiators near deal to fund government — Senate negotiators are nearing a deal to fund the government that would allow lawmakers to get out of town and back on the campaign trail by the end of the week.

► From Huffington Post — Republicans want to use Zika funding bill to keep truckers on the road longer — Want to keep the government open? Want to fund the Zika response? The trucking industry and Republican allies in Congress say the price for that could be weakening rest rules for truck drivers.

► From Think Progress — Paul Ryan would give nearly all of his tax cuts to the richest 1 percent — According to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, after a decade of being in place Ryan’s tax plan would hand 99.6 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of Americans. That leaves just 0.4 percent to be doled out to everyone in the bottom 99 percent.

► From The Onion — Teens throwing rocks at overgrown, long-vacant Supreme Court seat — Trading legends they had heard about the old chair as they gathered together a safe distance from the abandoned, dilapidated structure, a group of neighborhood teens reportedly stopped while passing through Capitol Hill this afternoon and spent several minutes throwing rocks at the heavily overgrown, long-vacant Supreme Court seat. According to sources, the youngsters frantically hopped onto their bikes and pedaled away in terror when Clarence Thomas ran out with a gavel and told them to beat it or he’d call the cops.

NATIONAL

► From Huffington Post — The racial wage gap between black and white workers is getting worse — Black men and women earn significantly less than white counterparts largely due to job market discrimination, and this racial wage gap has significantly widened over the last 36 years, according to a report released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute.

► In today’s NY Times — GM, union avoid strike by 3,900 Canadian workers — General Motors and a union narrowly averted a strike by 3,900 Canadian workers on Tuesday in a deal that the union (Unifor) hopes could serve as a model for preserving dwindling auto jobs in Canada.

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From AFL-CIO Now — AFL-CIO’s Gebre to UN: ‘We must build a more just system for migrants and refugees’ — AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre addressed the United Nations on Monday about embracing this historic opportunity to create a more just system for migrants and refugees.  Gebre is a refugee from Ethiopia and walked 93 days through the desert as a teenager to find his freedom in America. Read Gebre’s remarks.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.