Tuesday, June 20, 2017

BOEING

► In today’s Seattle Times — Paris Air Show: Boeing stacks up more MAX 10 orders and offers detail on ‘797’ — Boeing said that the fuselage of its proposed next new airplane will be made from carbon fiber composite… Boeing has never built a composite fuselage in the Puget Sound region. The various fuselage sections for the 787 are made in North Charleston, S.C.; Wichita, Kan., and Nagoya, Japan. Building the 797 fuselage will require further massive investment, wherever Boeing decides to locate that work.

► From KOMO News — Boeing racks up $14.7 billion in orders at Paris Air Show, raises sales forecast — With the new firm and tentative orders, Boeing raised its forecast for new airplane demand, projecting the need for 41,030 new airplanes over the next 20 years valued at $6.1 trillion.

THIS WASHINGTON

► From KNKX — A noisy march, a cordial meeting but no sign of a budget deal — The state of Washington is 15 days from a partial government shutdown if lawmakers can’t come to agreement on a budget. In ponchos, in the rain, unionized homecare workers noisily marched through the Capitol campus Thursday. Their message to lawmakers: don’t cut our healthcare benefits in the new budget. Inside the Capitol, top budget writers from the House and Senate met in the governor’s office.

ALSO at The Stand — Day of Action this Thursday against looming state shutdown

► In today’s Seattle Times — Health-plan rates in Washington state’s individual market could go up an average of 22% — Health-insurance rates in Washington’s individual market would increase an average of 22 percent based on filings under review by state officials. Partisan finger-pointing ensued, but an industry analyst said Democrats, Republicans and insurers share blame.

► A related story from TPM — Study: Political uncertainty driving two-thirds of 2018 Obamacare premium increases — The bulk of the premium increases in the Affordable Care Act exchanges expected next year can be blamed on the political uncertainty driven by the Trump administration, a report by an actuarial firm found this week. Experts at Oliver Wyman estimated that two-thirds of the rate increases in the 2018 plan year will be due to the White House’s refusal to say whether it will continue paying out key Obamacare subsidies to insurers, as well as the ambiguity as to whether the law’s individual mandate will be enforced next year.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Student debt out of control and getting worse (editorial) — Considering how important it is to the nation’s economy that more young people go to college and get trained for the jobs of the future, lawmakers in Olympia and Washington, D.C., need to find more ways to make college more affordable and lower student debt.

► In the Seattle Times — I’ve been in the same trenches, lawmakers, and I know you can do better (by Brendan Williams) — The budget conferees meet behind closed doors, if they meet at all — typically they just, in passive-aggressive fashion, “exchange paper” through staff. Political permanence doesn’t infuse any desire to change the rules of the game. Both the Democratic House speaker and Republican Senate majority leader have served more than 22 years.

LOCAL

► From KUOW — Opposing views on a hunger strike at Tacoma’s immigration lockup — Immigrant advocates say more than 25 women joined a hunger strike this weekend at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. This follows reports of similar protests at the immigration lockup in April. The detainees are reportedly demanding better food and medical care, as well as fewer delays in their court cases.

TRUMPCARE

► From The Hill — A frantic scramble before possible healthcare vote next week — The pace of activity is picking up ahead of the informal July 4 deadline set by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for a vote. Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said he expects a Senate vote on the bill as soon as next week, underlining the importance of the next two weeks.

ALSO at The Stand — House Trumpcare analysis:, 344,000 will lose coverage in Washington, while wealthy get $62K tax cut

► From Politico — Sen. Corker expects Trumpcare bill will be made public Thursday

► From Reuters — Democrats protest Senate Republican health care secrecy — In a series of floor motions, inquiries and lengthy speeches, Democrats criticized the closed-door meetings that Republicans have been holding to craft a replacement for Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. They called for open committee hearings and more time to consider the bill before a Senate vote, which Republicans say could come in the next two weeks, although a draft bill has yet to emerge publicly.

ALSO at The Stand — Senate Dems’ talkathon to decry GOP’s secret Trumpcare talks

► In today’s NY Times — Senate Democrats try to gum up works ahead of ACA repeal vote — Democrats vowed on Monday to slow work in the Senate to a crawl to protest the secrecy surrounding the Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, as Republican leaders raced to prepare a bill for a vote as soon as next week.

► In today’s Washington Post — In Trump era, more Washington business handled behind closed doors — On issues ranging from the health-care bill to the president’s golfing, federal leaders are hiding from public scrutiny — and their penchant for secrecy represents a stark departure from the campaign promises of Trump and his fellow Republicans to usher in newfound transparency.

► From HuffPost — Ironworker Randy Bryce challenges Paul Ryan in powerful new ad: ‘Let’s Trade Places’ — Randy Bryce, a union ironworker, announced on Monday that he would seek the Democratic nomination to run against Ryan, and released a video emphasizing what has so far been the biggest issue of the year: health care.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Watch Bryce’s great ad…

THAT WASHINGTON

► In today’s Seattle Times — Cantwell promotes bill that would give tax incentives for firms that offer apprenticeships — Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced a bill that would give companies tax incentives for providing apprenticeships to prospective employees.

► In today’s NY Times — Exxon Mobil lends its support to a carbon tax proposal — Exxon Mobil, other oil companies and a number of other corporate giants will announce on Tuesday that they support a plan to tax greenhouse gas emissions and return the money to taxpayers as a “climate dividend.” The underlying idea is that, by making energy derived from fossil fuels more expensive, the free market will move more quickly and effectively toward renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions. The oil giants could simply pass the cost of new taxes on to customers. Environmental organizations, including the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute, are also endorsing the plan.

NATIONAL

► From Public News Service — Shoplifters face harsher penalties than employers stealing wages — Retail employers are stealing as much from their employees as shoplifters are stealing from their stores, according to a new report. But the report’s author notes, “A retailer that’s stealing millions of dollars in wages from its employees often faces a lower risk of punishment and really a lighter penalty than a shoplifter who nabs a pair of shoes off the shelves of the store.”

► In today’s NY Times — If liberals voted… (by David Leonhardt) — If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, Hillary Clinton would be president. Even with Donald Trump’s working-class appeal, Clinton could have swept Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, Democrats would control the Senate. Clinton or Barack Obama could then have filled the recent Supreme Court vacancy, and that justice would hold the tiebreaking vote on campaign finance, labor unions and other issues. If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, the country would be doing more to address the two defining issues of our time — climate change and stagnant middle-class living standards. Instead, Trump is making both worse… It would be a big deal if Democrats could close their passion-and-commitment gap. Even modestly higher turnout could help them at every level of politics and hasten the policy changes that liberals dream about.

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From Harper’s — Labor’s Schoolhouse: Lessons from the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913 (by Garret Keizer) — What triggered the 1913 strike, and perhaps what makes it most relevant to us today, was the ruthless appropriation of technology for the bottom line. The introduction of the so-called four-loom system enabled mill owners to double their production while laying off half the workforce, which they undertook to do with no increase in pay for the weavers who remained. The strikers were hardly Luddites; destroying the new looms was not one of their demands. But they weren’t dunces either. They understood that the touted benefits of technology are always contingent on who owns the means of production and on whose behalf those means are employed. Such an understanding feels almost as antique today as a general strike. During the presidential debates, for example, I never heard Donald Trump mention automation in his demagogic lamentations for the loss of American jobs, or Hillary Clinton mention automation by way of deflecting his attacks on “horrible trade deals.” Both were constrained by prevailing pieties. More secular in their outlook, the Paterson strikers would have had fewer scruples about offending the gods of high tech and their tweeting evangelists.

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