Thursday, January 18, 2018

WOMEN’S MARCHES & ACTIONS

► In the News Tribune — 5,000 people expected to rally for women’s rights in Olympia this weekend — The Women’s March that brought 10,000 people to the state Capitol last year to protest President Donald Trump and advocate for the rights of women is set to return to Olympia in the form of a Saturday rally.

► In the Yakima H-R — Organizers prepping for second Women’s March on Yakima, set for Saturday

► In the Seattle Times — Thousands expected to attend Seattle Women’s March, related events

ALSO at The Stand — This weekend, women will march again–and take action — Get the details on all the events across the state, including where the labor contingent is meeting up before joining the big Seattle march on Saturday.

LOCAL

► In the News Tribune — Fallen deputy–a hero at home and on the job–is honored

THIS WASHINGTON

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Equal pay bill passes House — Washington workers would have more protection to ensure that they receive equal pay for equal work regardless of gender and couldn’t be fired for comparing paychecks under a bill that passed the House Wednesday.

► From AP — House passes bill aimed at lowering gender wage gap — The House passed a measure that seeks to reduce the wage gap between men and women and provide equal growth opportunities and fair treatment in the workplace. The Democratic-controlled House passed the measure on a bipartisan 69-28 vote Wednesday. The bill has passed the House in previous years but always died in the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans for the past five years. Democrats regained control of the chamber in November.

► From The Stranger — State House passes pay equity bill

ALSO at The Stand — House OKs equal pay on bipartisan vote

► In today’s Seattle Times — Report details trouble at Washington institution for disabled people — The report by the advocacy group Disability Rights Washington is the latest to raise questions about the Rainier School, which cares for adults with serious intellectual and developmental disabilities.

HEALTH CARE

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Children’s health insurance funding at center of shutdown battle splitting Washington delegation — Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Democrats would be to blame if funding for the program, known as CHIP and administered as Apple Health in Washington state, isn’t reauthorized as states across the nation face dwindling reserves in their accounts.

EDITOR’S NOTE — What a despicably cynical crock of shit. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and her Republican Party, who control Congress and the White House, allowed CHIP to expire 109 days ago while they were busy pushing trillions in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. This despite the fact that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says killing CHIP will cost taxpayers more money that funding it! Republicans are transparently trying to use the health care of 9 million children as a bargaining chip to get Democrats to approve yet another short-term government funding bill that includes no resolution for Dreamers or other victims of Trump’s incoherent, inhumane immigration policies. Even President Trump opposes Cathy’s cynical bargaining strategy!

National bottom line: There is a bipartisan deal to keep the government open. But Donald Trump, a racist, decided he is prepared — perhaps even eager — to shut the federal government down because the deal doesn’t do enough to keep people of color (from “shithole countries”) out of America.

Local bottom line: Cathy thinks you’re dumb.

► In today’s NY Times — When states make it harder to enroll, even eligible people drop Medicaid — In 2003, Washington State was facing a budget crisis and wanted to reduce spending on Medicaid. Instead of requiring people to establish their eligibility annually, the legislature began requiring them to do so twice a year, and added some paperwork. It worked: Enrollment in the health insurance program fell by more than 40,000 children in a year… The Trump administration’s decision to approve a first-of-its-kind work requirement for Kentucky’s Medicaid program last week has inspired concern that the program will leave behind Medicaid beneficiaries who are unable to find or keep work. But a large body of social science suggests that the mere requirement of documenting work hours is likely to cause many eligible people to lose coverage, too.

► In today’s NY Times — Fed up with drug companies, hospitals decide to start their own — For years, hospital executives have expressed frustration when essential drugs like heart medicines have become scarce, or when prices have skyrocketed because investors manipulated the market. Now, some of the country’s largest hospital systems are taking an aggressive step to combat the problem: They plan to go into the drug business themselves, in a move that appears to be the first on this scale.

► From Shelf Talk — City Council Reads: Teresa Mosqueda on Sickness and Wealth: The Corporate Assault on Global Health — Sickness and Wealth is a tremendous resource to learn more about the commodification of public systems that impacts our health, and the ways in which we must fight the corporate assault on our health locally and internationally… (It) has been my manifesto; it drives the way I shape policy and fight for justice. If we care about improving population health, which is what I have devoted my work to, then we must fight for greater shared economic prosperity, against the privatization of our health and human service programs, and invest in housing, health care, food access and workers’ rights.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Who knew that Teresa reads?

THAT WASHINGTON

► In today’s Washington Post — Trump tweets create confusion on GOP plan to avert shutdown; Ryan tries to calm Republicans — House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sought to calm Republicans frustrated by President Trump’s confusing tweets on children’s health insurance, saying the White House supports a short-term bill to avert a government shutdown.

► In the USA Today — Working people are watching, Mr. President (by Richard Trumka) — To Washington, D.C. insiders, this month’s budget negotiations are just the latest partisan exercise in a series of manufactured crises that too often result in short-term solutions. But for those who live and work outside of the Beltway bubble, much more is at stake. What happens in the coming days has the potential to fundamentally shift the balance of power in the workplace. Nothing less than the right to dream, live, work and retire in security is on the table as Congress faces key decisions and deadlines.

► From Politico — ‘He made promises that he didn’t keep:’ Laid-off factory workers feel betrayed by Trump — Over the past year since he took office, the president who once pledged to slap tariffs on trading partners and crack down on China has so far softened or abandoned — at least for now — many of his hard-line stances on trade. Trump has moved instead to cut the corporate tax rate and launch a deregulatory push, but those plans offer no comfort for the Steel Valley workers at companies like Carrier that had counted on him to keep their jobs in Indiana.

► From The Hill — Steelworkers union president ‘disappointed’ and ‘frustrated’ with Trump — “We’re terribly disappointed and hugely frustrated,” USW President Leo Gerard told CNN. “There’s been no action that has done anything to protect and defend American jobs. … In some cases we’re worse off now than we were then.”

► From CNN — Trump’s slow-burn trade agenda is poised to heat up — It took Trump just two and a half days to make good on his promise to pull the U.S. from the TPP. But nearly a year later, the rest of Trump’s ambitious trade agenda is still largely unfulfilled.

NATIONAL

► In today’s Seattle Times — No jobs recovery for many Americans without a college degree — The vast proportion of recent job gains have gone to those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Of 10.7 million net new jobs added from January 2013 to December 2017, nearly 7.7 million went to college graduates. Degree holders also saw all the gains during the most difficult years of the recovery, through 2013, while those with less education continued to see losses.

► In the SF Chronicle — Feds planning massive Northern California immigration sweep to strike against sanctuary laws — U.S. immigration officials have begun preparing for a major sweep in San Francisco and other Northern California cities in which federal officers would look to arrest more than 1,500 undocumented people while sending a message that immigration policy will be enforced in the sanctuary state, according to a source familiar with the operation.

► From IBEW — Union activists help kill right-to-work in Delaware, but the fight goes on — The IBEW and other unions scored a win in Delaware on Jan. 9, when the GOP-dominated Sussex County Council voted 4-1 against a proposed right-to-work law. It’s unclear if the proposed ordinance could have been enforced.

► From KUOW — Here are the 20 cities still in the running for Amazon’s HQ2

► From AP — Sound familiar, Seattle? Apple shops for site to build a new campus, will also add 20,000 jobs

OH, CANADA

► From Alberta Politics — Canadian labour movement abuzz in wake of Unifor decision to quit Canadian Labor Congress — The national executive of 300,000-plus-member Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, decided yesterday to pull the plug on its affiliation to the national labour organization, which if nothing else will result in a significant financial hit to the CLC and possibly to provincial labour federations as well. Summarizing the reasons in a length suitable for tweeting – in this case by quoting yesterday’s Tweet by Unifor President Jerry Dias – “#Unifor has decided to disaffiliate from the Canadian Labour Congress due to inaction on U.S.-based unions trampling the rights of Canadian workers to choose representation or express dissent.”

ALSO SEE the letter Dias sent to the CLC with more detail.

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