NEWS ROUNDUP

Welcome home, Vietnam vets ● June clearing for takeoff? ● “I don’t know French”

Friday, May 24, 2019

LOCAL

► In today’s Seattle Times — ‘Welcome home’: New Vietnam War memorial park draws the Mattis family to Seattle — The dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park at the Museum of Flight just south of downtown Seattle will be held this Saturday. James Mattis, the former defense secretary and retired Marine general, will give a keynote address in a rare public appearance since his January departure from the Trump administration. The ceremony is expected to draw several thousand people, including some from Washington’s Vietnamese American community, to a 1-acre tract on the museum grounds dominated by a refurbished B-52G Stratofortress bomber.

ALSO at The Stand — All invited to Vietnam Vets park dedication May 25 in Seattle

► In today’s (Everett) Herald — New Seattle tunnel routes, at $1 billion, approved for study — Snohomish County officials worry the underground segments could slow light rail’s arrival in Everett.

► In today’s Columbian — Herrera Beutler gives birth to girl — U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3rd) gave birth to her third child Tuesday.

BOEING

► From Reuters — U.S. regulator sees approval of Boeing 737 MAX to fly as soon as late June: sources — The FAA expects to approve Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX jet to return to service as soon as late June, representatives of the U.S. air regulator informed members of the United Nations’ aviation agency in a private briefing on Thursday, sources told Reuters. The target, if achieved, means U.S. airlines would likely not have to greatly extend costly cancellations of 737 MAX jets they have already put in place for the peak summer flying season, but the FAA representatives warned that there was no firm timetable to get the planes back in the air.

► In today’s Seattle Times — FAA will move first to approve the Boeing 737 MAX to fly again, possibly within weeks

ALSO TODAY at The Stand — Congress hits Boeing on SC unionists’ firings — More than 70 members of Congress have written Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg seeking information regarding reports of retaliation against six union organizers at the company’s South Carolina facility late last year. According to the reports, it appears that Boeing may have wielded its authority as a “self-regulator” to improperly dismiss three inspection employees.

THIS WASHINGTON

BREAKING — Sen. Guy Palumbo resigns — Sen. Guy Palumbo (D-Maltby), who represents the 1st Legislative District encompassing the majority of Whatcom, Skagit, and Snohomish counties and parts of King County, has reportedly resigned “to return to the private sector and be closer to home and family.” The (Everett) Herald’s Jerry Cornfield reports that Palumbo will become Amazon’s new director of public policy.

► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Feds ask why some people at Hanford should be compensated for illness and not others — A decision could come within two weeks on whether the state of Washington is within its rights to make it significantly easier for most of the employees at the federal Hanford nuclear reservation to get paid workers’ compensation.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Tim Eyman’s co-defendants found liable in AG’s long-running lawsuit — The signature-gathering firm Citizen Solutions and one of its officers have been found liable in a lawsuit that claims they secretly paid anti-tax crusader Tim Eyman from funds they received to gather signatures for Eyman’s initiative drives. Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Citizen Solutions, Agazarm and Eyman in 2017, alleging a years-long scheme in which Eyman solicited more money for his signature-gathering campaigns than was needed, and then secretly — in violation of campaign finance laws — got paid kickbacks from Citizen Solutions.

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Liberty State supporters raise funds at event after tense ‘silent protest’ by ex-Matt Shea backers — A fundraising event for the proposed creation of a 51st state called Liberty started on a tense note Thursday evening as onetime loyalists of state Rep. Matt Shea held what they called a “silent protest” and stood toe-to-toe with armed security guards.

► From The Onion — Jay Inslee recalls decision to run for President after 5 teens from across globe pressed enchanted rings together to call him into existence — “The leadership in Washington has failed the American people, and that’s been clear to me from the moment I was summoned into being by a multinational group of youngsters holding aloft magical jewelry given to them by the spirit of Mother Earth,” said the 68-year-old governor.

THAT WASHINGTON

► Things We Can’t Afford, from Politico — Infrastructure Week dies — again — Hopes for a grand $2 trillion infrastructure deal were rapidly vanishing even before Wednesday’s White House meeting between Trump and congressional Democrats blew up in a cloud of recriminations. One big reason: Neither party has offered a serious way to pay for one. Wednesday was far from the first time one of Trump’s planned infrastructure milestones has veered off the rails.

► Things We Can Afford from the AP — Trump sending another $16 billion to ailing farmers — Trump is delivering another $16 billion in aid to farmers hurt by his trade policies, an effort to relieve the economic pain among his supporters in rural America. The latest bailout comes atop $11 billion in aid Trump provided farmers last year.

► From The Hill — Frustration boils over with Senate’s ‘legislative graveyard’ — The Senate voted on two bills Thursday, breaking a nearly two-month drought during which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has focused instead on judicial nominations, his top priority.

► In today’s LA Times — Trump administration moves to roll back healthcare protections for transgender people — In the proposed rule, the Health and Human Services Department says laws banning sex discrimination in health care don’t apply to people’s ‘gender identity.’

► In today’s Washington Post — USDA to shift some inspector tasks to pork plant workers — in everything but name — The shift in language is central to the USDA’s efforts to make the most dramatic changes to federal meat-inspection policy since Congress passed a 1906 landmark law that seized control of food safety from plant owners and made it the province of federal inspectors.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Jets, bacon… what’s next for corporate self-regulation?

► In today’s Washington Post — Mnuchin’s excuse for delaying the Harriet Tubman $20 bill is insulting (editorial) — Some would argue there are bigger issues facing the country than who is on the $20 bill, and no doubt the administration is guilty of far more serious offenses. But symbols matter. Backpedaling on putting the first African American woman on paper money tells women and girls and people of color that they don’t — and never have — mattered. Mr. Trump has found yet another way to show that he does not really aspire to be president of all Americans.

SWAMP UPDATE

► In today’s Washington Post — ‘He always brings them up’: Trump tries to steer border wall deal to North Dakota firm — President Trump has personally and repeatedly urged the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to award a border wall contract to a North Dakota construction firm whose top executive is a GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News, according to four administration officials.

► From Politico — Judges fast-track court fight over Trump financial records — Trump’s fight to stop the release of his financial records is on the fast track for a key court decision after a three-judge appellate panel agreed Thursday to hear oral arguments later this summer. The focus of the congressional panel’s subpoena has been on trying to corroborate claims that Trump artificially inflated and deflated the value of his assets for his personal financial benefit.

NATIONAL

► In the Wall Street Journal — McDonald’s workers strike to protest pay and harassment complaints — Hundreds of McDonald’s workers walked off the job on Thursday to protest what they described as low pay, unsafe workplaces and sexual harassment. The walkouts prompted operators to close 10 restaurants in St. Louis, and workers picketed outside McDonald’s in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The day’s events are among the most visible disruptions to the chain’s operations in the years since unions have sought to organize workers.

► From Bloomberg — Gig workers are living on the financial edge, Fed research finds — Three in 10 Americans do gig work of some kind, a broad class of temporary employment that covers everything from babysitting and house cleaning to driving for ride-sharing applications such as Uber and Lyft, according to the Fed’s annual report on the financial health of U.S. households. But those who depend on such work are struggling to make ends meet. Nearly one-fifth of gig workers rely on it for their main source of income, and more than half of these people would have a hard time affording an unexpected $400 expense, the report showed.

► From the AP — Older Americans more likely to cite workplace discrimination — Three-quarters of adults 60 and older say their age puts them at a disadvantage when looking for work.

► From Splinter News — The brutal labor battle consuming Pittsburgh’s biggest newspaper — Here’s a shortlist of recent offenses by Post-Gazette publisher John Robinson Block: screaming at union employees and allegedly manhandling his daughter in a possibly drunken tirade; refusing to budge in a contentious contract dispute; being found to have illegally deprived union employees of healthcare premium increases; and further rattling the newsroom by appointing Burris, the author of a notorious racist editorial, to the position of executive editor.

T.G.I.F.

► Today, The Entire Staff of The Stand wishes a very happy 75th birthday to the one and only Patti LaBelle! This, her most famous song, was written by a couple of guys inspired by their experiences with New Orleans sex workers. (“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?” translates to “Do you want to sleep with me tonight?”) Patti later claimed she was oblivious about the song’s subject matter: “I didn’t know what it was about. I don’t know French and nobody, I swear this is God’s truth, nobody at all told me what I’d just sung a song about.” Here are Patti and fellow singers Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash pretending to sing their classic. Enjoy!

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