DAILY NEWS
Show colleges the money ● Medicare for All’s enemies ● Labor’s revolution
Monday, December 10, 2018
THIS WASHINGTON
► From KNKX — Analysis: Legislative workgroup releases recommendations aimed at addressing sexual misconduct — Following eight months of meetings, a workgroup on the prevention of sexual harassment in the Washington state House is recommending the formation of an independent office where victims could report misconduct, among other reforms.
► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Task force sends Legislature its thoughts on open records — In an effort to have something to show legislators when they return to Olympia in January, the task force settled on a series of recommendations.
ELECTION
LOCAL
► In today’s Olympian — Providence distribution center closure in Lacey will result in 26 layoffs — The Providence St. Joseph Health Consolidated Service Center, a distributor of medical supplies in Hawks Prairie, is set to close in February and result in more than 20 layoffs.
► In the (Longview) Daily News — Port of Kalama to hold public hearing on planned methanol plant Thursday — The hearing will occur from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Cowlitz County Event Center located at 1900 Seventh Avenue in Longview. Doors will open at 5 p.m.
► In today’s Seattle Times — ‘You should get on a waiting list’: Seattle’s child-care crunch takes toll on parents, providers — The growing population has outpaced the increase in number of spots available in child-care centers. Providers operating in large centers or from their own homes now have waiting lists crowded with hundreds of families, who are going to extraordinary lengths to seize a spot in line, filling out lengthy applications even before their babies are born — or even conceived.
THAT WASHINGTON
► In today’s Washington Post — Investigation of generic ‘cartel’ expands to 300 drugs — What started as an antitrust lawsuit brought by states over just two drugs in 2016 has exploded into an investigation of alleged price-fixing involving at least 16 companies and 300 drugs. The unfolding case is rattling an industry that is portrayed in Washington, D.C. as the white knight of American health care.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (AND WOMEN)
► In today’s Washington Post — Trump: Payments to silence women were a ‘simple private transaction,’ not illegal campaign contributions — President Trump asserted Monday that payments to buy the silence of two women about alleged affairs were not illegal campaign contributions, as federal prosecutors contend, but instead a “simple private transaction.”
LAME-DUCK POWER GRABS
► From AP — GOP tries to hamstring incoming Democratic attorneys general — Republicans pushing to hang on to power in Wisconsin and Michigan aren’t stopping at curbing the authority of incoming Democratic governors. They’re also trying to hamstring Democrats who are about to take over as attorneys general.
► In today’s Washington Post — Are Republicans abandoning democracy? (by E.J. Dionne) — In case after case, Republicans have demonstrated an eagerness to undercut democracy and tilt the rules of the game if doing so serves their ideological interests… most in the party are either complicit or silent. Is it any wonder, then, that most Republicans are also willing to go right along with Trump?
NATIONAL
► From Education Week — The nation’s first charter school strike has ended with a union victory — After a four-day strike, the Chicago Teachers Union announced on Sunday that the bargaining team for the educators at the Acero charter school network reached a tentative deal with management. The deal agrees to raise pay for teachers and paraprofessionals to better align with their peers in Chicago Public Schools, to reduce class sizes, and to provide sanctuary for undocumented students.
► In today’s NY Times — The War on Truth spreads (editorial) — New information technologies — the internet, social media, smartphone cameras — were supposed to overcome censorship. They did, but they also armed autocrats with new ways to undermine the credibility of honest news. Fake news — the really fake kind — has proliferated, along with notions such as “alternative facts.”
TODAY’S MUST-READ
My argument here is a simple one: If we want a powerful movement, workers have to fight their employers not just at the ballot box but at the workplace, too. These two kinds of struggle can complement each other; union fights, in particular, pose clear class battles that raise consciousness. In addition to this year’s electrifying teacher strikes, we can learn from three other large-scale union victories that took place in the year before Donald Trump was elected. Those victories happened where we might least expect them: in the old, blue-collar economy, where unions are down to 6.5 percent of the workforce and workers are said to be on their way out. Yet at Chrysler, Verizon, and a huge Teamster pension fund, thousands of union members organized to put a stick in management’s eye.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.