NEWS ROUNDUP

Where the money is ● America’s shame ● FEMA ICE’d ● Prime pee

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

PAY OUR TEACHERS!

SHOW YOUR SOLIDARITY! Tomorrow (Thursday, Sept. 13) at 3:30 p.m. join the striking #UnionStrong teachers of the Tacoma Education Association for a solidarity rally at Peoples Park, 900 MLK Jr. Way in Tacoma. RSVP here. Wear your union colors!

Meanwhile, striking teachers in Tumwater are rallying this morning outside the Thurston County Courthouse as Superintendent John Bash sues his teachers. Stay tuned for updates.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Inslee weighs in, but Tacoma teachers’ strike extends into fifth day — On Monday, Gov. Jay Inslee spoke with Tacoma schools Superintendent Carla Santorno and separately spoke with Washington Education Association President Kim Mead. “He listened to their concerns and positions,” said an Inslee spokeswoman.

► From the Tacoma Education Association — The McCleary Promise (graphic) — At least ten administrators at Tacoma Public Schools have bigger salaries than Governor Inslee.

► From KNKX — Amid Tacoma strike, one teacher resigns after looking at administrator salaries

► In today’s Columbian — Battle Ground school board to consider ‘legal action’ — Battle Ground Public Schools on Tuesday announced a special board meeting to consider authorization of legal action to address the ongoing teachers strike. “It’s unfortunate that the district would take us to court instead of negotiating in good faith,” said BGEA Vice President Marina Heinz.

EDITOR’S NOTE — The board meeting is tonight at 6 p.m. at the Lewisville Campus, 406 N.W. Fifth Ave. in Battle Ground.

► In today’s Columbian — Vancouver teachers angry about losing paraeducators

► In today’s Daily News — Longview students return to school, parents reflect on strike — “I firmly supported it. This is a union strong town. My mother’s been a union worker and I was a union worker,” said Mary Hampton, mother of two elementary school students. “(Teachers) have one of the hardest jobs, and they should be compensated for it — more than fairly. They should be compensated well for what they do and how hard they work.” Hampton said the outcome means teachers “are going to feel appreciated and valued, and they are going to want to stay and work harder if they are treated fairly.”

BOEING

► From Reuters — Boeing calling back retirees to fix 737 production snags — The Boeing Co. is bringing retired workers back on the job as the world’s largest planemaker tries to fix delays at its 737 jetliner plant outside Seattle, a union official told Reuters on Monday. Boeing started hiring retired mechanics and inspectors on a temporary basis after reaching an agreement with the IAM District 751 on Aug. 15, union spokeswoman Connie Kelliher said.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Boeing Renton makes progress on 737 deliveries — Boeing airplane delivery figures for August suggest the manufacturer is at least beginning to get its production issues at the Renton 737 jet plant under control.

LOCAL

► In today’s Peninsula Daily News — Assaults on Clallam County jail staff increase — So far this year there have been eight attacks on jail staff, with six of those attacks happening during a one-week period last month. Last year there were only four such incidents.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Price tag for Sea-Tac’s new International Arrivals Facility soars to almost $1 billion — A review panel gave a new final estimated cost for the International Arrivals Facility of $968 million, up from the original $608 million. The project is also now eight months behind the original schedule.

AMERICA’S SHAME

► From The Guardian — ‘They were laughing at us’: immigrants tell of cruelty, illness, and filth in U.S. detention — All day and night they listened to the wailing of hungry children. Here, in a freezing immigration detention facility somewhere in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, adults and children alike were fainting from dehydration and lack of food. Sleep was almost impossible; the lights were left on, they had just a thin metallic sheet to protect against the cold and there was nothing to sleep on but the hard floor… The Guardian sat in with a team of volunteer doctors and nurses administering emergency medical care and listened as family after family gave jarringly consistent accounts of what they described as grim conditions in a variety of border detention facilities – conditions that have grown only grimmer since the advent of Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies.

HURRICANE FLORENCE

► From ABC News — Catastrophic flooding headed to Carolinas, 40 inches of rain possible — “This will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast,” says one National Weather Service meteorologist.

► From The Guardian — Trump says government ‘absolutely, totally prepared’ for Hurricane Florence — Trump says the storm will be “tremendously big and tremendously wet” while hailing the “unsung success” of his administration’s widely-criticized response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

► In today’s NY Times — Trump calls storm response in Puerto Rico, where 3,000 died, ‘one of the best’

EDITOR’S NOTE — More than 3,000 Americans died in Hurricane Maria. Local officials say many died needlessly due to widespread failure of the government’s food and water distribution system and the electrical grid that was only just restored for some after nearly a full year. “If he thinks the death of 3,000 people is a success, God help us all,” tweets Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan. Even today, new reports continue to trickle out about the federal government’s abject failure in Puerto Rico, like these new photos of a massive stockpile of water that remains on a runway there today. And then there’s this…

► In today’s Washington Post — Trump administration diverted nearly $10 million from FEMA to ICE detention program — The Trump administration appears to have diverted nearly $10 million in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency at the forefront of the president’s zero-tolerance immigration policy that led to the separation of hundreds of children from their parents.

► A related MUST-READ report from HuffPost — Climate change is becoming a major workplace hazard — As rising global temperatures and changing extreme weather patterns reshape the conception of “normal,” no one will be more affected than the workers who are sent out to the frontlines of climate change. That includes the farm laborers who harvest our produce under the summer’s hot sun, the firefighters who battle bigger and less predictable forest infernos, and the emergency responders sent out in the wake of major storms.

SUPREME COURT

► From Politico — Union leaders move to keep Kavanaugh from Supreme Court — As Judge Brett Kavanaugh faces Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court, organized labor is unveiling a playbook that may look familiar to Washington Republicans. “We intend to make it the same thing as repealing” Obamacare, said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry. “We are going to organize the three votes that are required to block this nomination.” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler agreed: “We cannot let this court continue to swing to the extreme right. It’s out of step with what America believes.”

► From Newsweek — Why Brett Kavanaugh should NOT be confirmed (by Robert Reich) — It’s not enough that a prospective Supreme Court justice has impeccable legal credentials. The person must also be chosen impeccably, so that the public trusts he or she will fairly and impartially interpret the Constitution. Process matters, now so more than ever. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, it will be due to a blatantly partisan process that has violated all prevailing norms for how someone should be chosen to be a Supreme Court justice.

NATIONAL

► From Business Insider — Missing wages, grueling shifts, and bottles of urine: The disturbing accounts of Amazon delivery drivers may reveal the true human cost of ‘free’ shipping — For Amazon, paying third-party companies to deliver packages is a cost-effective alternative to providing full employment… In interviews over the course of eight months, drivers described a variety of alleged abuses, including lack of overtime pay, missing wages, intimidation, and favoritism. Drivers also described a physically demanding work environment in which, under strict time constraints, they felt pressured to drive at dangerously high speeds, blow stop signs, and skip meal and bathroom breaks.

► From The Hill — Drug company CEO calls 400 percent price hike ‘moral requirement’ — Nostrum Laboratories, based in Missouri, raised the price of nitrofurantoin last month from $474.74 a bottle to $2,393. The drug treats urinary tract and bladder infections. “I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can … to sell the product for the highest price,” said CEO Nirmal Mulye.

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► In today’s NY Times — The recovery threw the middle-class dream under a Benz — A decade later, things are eerily calm. The economy, by nearly any official measure, is robust. Wall Street is flirting with new highs. And the housing market, the epicenter of the crash, has recovered in many places. But the scars of that financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession are still with us, just below the surface. The most profound of these is that the uneven nature of the recovery compounded a long-term imbalance in the accumulation of wealth. As a consequence, what it means to be secure has changed. Wealth, real wealth, now comes from investment portfolios, not salaries… Data from the Federal Reserve show that over the last decade and a half, the proportion of family income from wages has dropped from nearly 70 percent to just under 61 percent. It’s an extraordinary shift, driven largely by the investment profits of the very wealthy. In short, the people who possess tradable assets, especially stocks, have enjoyed a recovery that Americans dependent on savings or income from their weekly paycheck have yet to see. Ten years after the financial crisis, getting ahead by going to work every day seems quaint, akin to using the phone book to find a number or renting a video at Blockbuster.

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