NEWS ROUNDUP

Safety at St. Joe’s ● Boeing makes changes ● ‘Too hard to market’

Friday, March 22, 2019

LOCAL

► In today’s News Tribune — St. Joseph nurses launch informational picket before next round of talks — Nurses with CHI Franciscan St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma held an informational picket at the hospital Thursday. The nurses, who have been in contract negotiations for seven months, sought to bring attention to issues at the bargaining table and a complaint against St. Joseph they filed with the state about workplace safety.

BOEING

► From the AP — Boeing to make safety feature standard on troubled MAX jets — Boeing will make standard a safety feature that might have helped the crew of a jet that crashed shortly after takeoff last year in Indonesia, killing everyone on board. The equipment, which had been offered as an option, alerts pilots of faulty information from key sensors. It will now be included on every 737 MAX as part of changes that Boeing is rushing to complete on the jets by early next week, according to sources familiar with the changes.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Boeing pauses 737 production lines in Renton to catch up on delayed work — Boeing said Thursday it will stop its three moving assembly lines in Renton for three days next week, using the time “to help us recover from the impact of the winter storms and supplier delays.” The company sought to distinguish the slowdown from any impact of the MAX grounding, insisting the slowdown is to “focus on completing work that was previously delayed.”

► In today’s Seattle Times — Indonesia’s Garuda Airlines plans to cancel multibillion-dollar order for 49 Boeing 737 MAX jets — Indonesia’s national airline Garuda Indonesia is moving to cancel an order for 49 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets after the deadly crashes involving two of the aircraft, a spokesman for the company said Friday.

► From Politico — How the FAA delegated oversight to Boeing — Aviation unions and other critics offered dire warnings in 2004 when the Federal Aviation Administration proposed expanding the role of aircraft manufacturers like Boeing in deciding whether their planes were safe to fly: It would be “reckless,” they wrote, would “lower the safety of the flying public” and would lead to “ever increasing air disaster.” Fifteen years later, the FAA’s strategy of delegating much of its regulatory oversight to hundreds of employees at the companies it oversees may be too entrenched to reverse — even with the intense scrutiny on how Boeing’s troubled 737 MAX jet won approval to fly.

► In today’s Washington Post — NASA rocket becomes Boeing’s latest headache as Trump demands moon mission — Boeing senior executives arrived at NASA headquarters two weeks ago for what they knew would be a tense meeting. The rocket they’ve been building for NASA was behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Worse yet, there was no way it was going to be ready for a scheduled maiden launch in June 2020.

THIS WASHINGTON

► From KUOW — Jay Inslee says Boeing blackmailed Washington state — “I was not happy about the Boeing situation,” Inslee said. “These corporations put a gun to your ribs, ‘You’re going to lose 20,000 jobs unless you give us a tax break.'”

► In today’s Seattle Times — Lawmakers, stop underfunding Fish and Wildlife, the agency that protects our lands and water (by Rachel Voss, Mitch Friedman and Butch Smith) — While the Legislature has been allocating less than $50 million in tax money annually to WDFW, more than $170 million comes back to Olympia each year from sales taxes on purchases made to enjoy fish and wildlife. What’s more, Washingtonians spend hundreds of millions of dollars fishing, hunting and wildlife watching, often in small towns from Ilwaco to Chewelah — places that really need these dollars and jobs.

THAT WASHINGTON

► In today’s Washington Post — More workers deserve overtime pay. A compromise bill in Congress would be a good start. (editorial) — The Trump administration with a proposal to raise the salary threshold to $35,308 per year… For workers, it is better than nothing. Some 1.1 million workers who did not have coverage would get it by next year… (But) this is still far below what the Obama administration offered and would not make up for decades of past inflation erosion in the standard, as the Obama rule would have.

ALSO at The Stand — Trump administration’s federal OT proposal ‘way too weak’ — The DOL’s “insufficient” plan raises the urgency for Washington state to restore the 40-hour work week.

► From HuffPost — Marine Corps chief slams border deployment as ‘unacceptable risk’ to combat readiness — Gen. Robert Neller complains about “fiscal challenges without precedent” as he cancels important military exercises with the Marines stationed at the border.

► In today’s Washington Post — Pentagon plan to fund Trump’s wall could hit Puerto Rico, European allies hard — Pentagon plans to take money away from military construction projects to pay for President Trump’s border wall would potentially deal an outsized blow to Puerto Rico and particularly affect a program helping European allies deter Russia, according to a Washington Post analysis.

ALSO at The Stand — Rep. Heck decries potential cuts of state military projects for wall

► In today’s Seattle Times — U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Medicare for All and how to pay for it (podcast)

NATIONAL

► From HuffPost — Teachers reportedly shot ‘execution style’ with pellets in active shooter drill — Four teachers were led into a room, told to kneel and then were shot with a pellet gun “execution style” and injured during an active shooter training at an Indiana elementary school in January, according to the Indiana State Teachers Association.

EDITOR’S NOTE — What the hell is wrong with us?

► In today’s Washington Post — JetBlue pilots accused of drugging, raping female flight attendants — A lawsuit claims the airline failed to take any “corrective action” against the men even after the women reported the incident last year.

► In today’s Washington Post — Wisconsin judge blocks Republicans’ lame-duck power grab — The legislature’s post-election special session sought to strip authority from the Democratic governor-elect.

T.G.I.F.

► Tonight, The Entire Staff of The Stand will be at Seattle’s historic Showbox to see the New Orleans funk jam band Galactic. But we are just as excited to see the opener, Bay Area underground rapper Tsutomu “Tom” Shimura, better known as Lyrics Born. He founded the legendary hip-hop collective Solesides (later Quannum Projects) with DJ Shadow and Blackalicious. But while the others got signed by major labels, Lyrics Born never did. A&R guys told him he was “too hard to market.” (Read: Too Asian.) Thankfully, he never quit and recently released his 10th(!) album independently. Here he is, backed up by his wife, soul singer Joyo Velarde.

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