DAILY NEWS
Children held hostage | 3 of 4 oppose tax plan | Our Alabama
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
THIS WASHINGTON
► In today’s Seattle Times — Leave children’s health off the bargaining table (editorial) — Congressional leaders should stop using the vital federal Children’s Health Insurance Program as a bargaining chip and get it reauthorized.
► From KNKX — Washington bill would ban non-disclosure of sexual harassment, assault — State Sen. Karen Keiser (D-Kent) said she wants to encourage disclosure of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace. To that end, she introduced legislation on Dec. 4 that would place limits on non-disclosure agreements.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Insurance companies blamed this year’s increases on the uncertainty about whether Congress would repeal the ACA and stop subsidizing coverage. The tax plan approved last week by the Republican Senate, which repeals the ACA’s coverage mandate, would drive up consts even more. Consumer Reports says this “would allow younger, healthier people — as well as middle-class Americans whose premiums have soared under the ACA — to stop buying health insurance. But it likely would mean higher rates for everybody else who remained in the ACA.”
TRUMP’S TAX SCAM
► From the AFL-CIO — Working families reject GOP tax bill — AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: “President Trump said that he wanted to lower taxes for everyone as a Christmas gift to America, but this bill is simply a lump of coal to working families across the country. The only real gift is the major tax giveaways to Wall Street, big corporations and the super-rich, when what our country needs is investment in our schools and infrastructures that create jobs.”
ALSO at The Stand:
Tax giveaway aims to force big cuts elsewhere (by WSLC President Jeff Johnson) — The Republican/Trump tax plan is a set-up for defunding Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, health care, and privatizing our federal government and our natural resources.
It’s not over! Call your Representative to stop this tax scam for the rich
► From TPM — Why economists are warning that the Trump tax plan will be an epic disaster — Republicans insisted repeatedly over the past few weeks that the $1.4 trillion in tax cuts, most of them geared toward wealthy individuals and corporations, would pay for themselves by stimulating economic growth, they presented no evidence to support their claims. Instead, the economists and former government officials predicted, the bill will drive up the federal deficit, shrink and destabilize the health care market, exacerbate already historic income inequality, and pressure Congress to make deep cuts to the social safety net and government programs.
► In today’s NY Times — Conservative groups seeking support for tax cuts find it a hard sell — Conservative activist groups like the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, celebrating what they expect is the imminent passage of a tax package that they and the Republican Party’s corporate backers have sought for a generation, now need to convince ordinary Americans that this is good for them, too. The problem, as Republicans are learning, is that most Americans do not believe that is what the tax plan will do. Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist, said that amid all the talk about the need to score an important victory for their party, “it bears mentioning that the ‘win’ is something that is extraordinarily unpopular with 75 percent of the American people.”
► From Vox — Republicans need Roy Moore to pass their tax bill — Back before Moore was accused of enjoying sexual predation of teen girls, he was already a controversial figure due to his habit of defying valid court orders, his view that Muslims should be barred from serving in Congress, his view that homosexuality is a “criminal lifestyle,” etc. The GOP establishment wanted to nominate someone else for the seat, but when Moore won, they embraced his despite his disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution because — in the immoral words of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) — “he’s going to be for tax reform, I think.” That same calculus applies today.
► From The Onion — Alabama forced to release thousands of sex offenders after inmates deny charges
LOCAL
► In today’s (Longview) Daily News — Foss Maritime finalizing deal to build at least 10 tugs in Rainier — Foss Maritime confirmed Tuesday it’s finalizing negotiations with a Netherlands-based company to build at least 10 tugboats at its shipyard in Rainier. The deal could inject millions of dollars into the local economy.
► Everyday heroes, in today’s (Everett) Herald — Student saved by custodian’s Heimlich maneuver — Eisenhower Middle’s Christopher Hughes knew what to do when Julie Barnett alerted him to the girl.
BOEING
► A couple months ago in the Seattle Times — Analysts pan Boeing strategy in pushing for tariffs on Canada’s smaller jet — Aviation experts say Boeing’s blocking of Bombardier’s CSeries jet could be strategically disastrous long-term for both Boeing and the U.S.
THAT WASHINGTON
► From Politico — House GOP leaders vow no deals with Democrats on stopgap spending — House Republican leaders have promised conservatives that they won’t grant concessions to Democrats to get enough votes for a stopgap spending bill — gaining GOP support but also raising the specter of a government shutdown later this month. GOP leaders in the House tentatively decided Tuesday morning to hold tight on their plan to fund the government through Dec. 22.
► From the AFL-CIO — Congress can restore service members’ and veterans’ rights — In October, in a 50-50 tie vote broken by Vice President Mike Pence, Congress passed a resolution that stripped service members and veterans of their right to band together in court when companies violate the law and harm thousands or millions of people. Congress has a chance to right that wrong this week.
► From HuffPost — Trump plans to kill an Obama regulation protecting restaurant servers — The Labor Department said it intends to roll back what’s known as the “tip pooling” rule, which limits the scenarios in which tipped workers can be forced to share their gratuities with other employees. If the rule is done away with, it will be easier for management to divvy up the tips that flow to front-of-the-house restaurant and bar staff as it pleases.
► In today’s Washington Post — Rep. John Conyers Jr. resigns over sexual harassment allegations after a half-century in Congress — Facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) resigned as Congress’s longest-serving member Tuesday, becoming the first lawmaker to step down as Capitol Hill grapples with allegations of inappropriate behavior by lawmakers.
► From Politico — Another woman says Franken tried to forcibly kiss her — A former Democratic congressional aide said Al Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, three years before he became a U.S. senator.
NATIONAL
ALSO at The Stand — #MeToo power shift must be sustained by organized labor
► In today’s NY Times — Trump’s move on Jerusalem fuels alarm across Mideast — President Trump plans to name Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday, upending nearly seven decades of American foreign policy. Arab leaders warned Trump that it would disrupt the Mideast peace process, perhaps fatally, and could unleash a new wave of violence across the region.
TODAY’S MUST-READ
The truth is that if Alabama did not exist, we might have to invent it. In this moment of national doubt and angst, we need to look down our noses at someplace else, to express the disdain of those who themselves have become unmoored, complacent or resigned. Alabama is the perfect foil in the Trump era, a reference point on the Southern horizon — a safe distance from Los Angeles and New York — that offers us the sense that we are somehow different, better and above. My adopted home, smug Boston, like so many other places quick to judge, can block out its own dire record on race and religious intolerance as it spurns its Southern cousins (mine, literally). But it is self-delusion, the kind that compromises the conscience and allows for the rest of us to descend deeper into the abyss. In each of us, there is a bit of Alabama, the shameful and the noble, warring for dominance.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.