DAILY NEWS
MultiCare doesn’t care ● Forced labor in the U.S. ● ‘Militia’ means White
Friday, October 9, 2020
COVID-19
► LIVE from the Seattle Times — Coronavirus daily news update, Oct. 9 — The latest count of COVID-19 cases in Washington totals 91,918 infections (7-day average of new infections per day: 549) and 2,183 deaths (7-day average of deaths per day: 7)
► From KING 5 — ‘It is dangerous’: L&I investigator talks about enforcing Washington’s mask mandate — “There are threats that have been made, there is a significant security concern,” said Brian, an L&I employee who was afraid to have his last name published. He performs face mask spot checks at businesses in western Washington, saying, “It is dangerous,” said Brian, “This is a highly charged topic.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Frontline workers like grocery store employees who are told to enforce mask policies face the same threats and danger on a daily basis, in addition to the threat of contracting COVID-19. And yet, the grocery stores have taken away their hazard pay.
► From The Guardian — Trump plans Florida rally on Saturday amid COVID test secrecy — The president, who is still recovering from COVID-19, refuses to say if he has tested negative as he aims to revive his election campaign.
LOCAL
► From the News Tribune — MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care physicians picket over contract, COVID-19 safety — Indigo Urgent Care providers and Tacoma-based MultiCare have squared off over PPE supplies amid COVID-19 pandemic along with hours and allowable breaks. “We’re concerned for the health of ourselves and our families, but they don’t seem to care,” said Indigo Physician Amir Atabeygi, M.D.
The Stand (Oct. 8, 2020) — MultiCare physicians in Tacoma picket over unsafe conditions
THIS WASHINGTON
► From the AP — Washington eviction moratorium extended through Dec. 31
► From the Seattle Times — ‘It’s infuriating’: Backlog of unpaid jobless claims in Washington is still high, advocates say — Even as the number of new jobless claims continues to fall, the number of workers still waiting for jobless benefits in Washington state remains stubbornly high.
► From the (Everett) Herald — State wants Monte Cristo Ballroom to pay back employees — The state Attorney General’s Office wants to make the shuttered Monte Cristo Ballroom in Everett pay back employees their allegedly stolen wages.
► From the Seattle Times — Washington dubbed top state to be an educator during 2020 — The report compared 50 states (and D.C.) in the U.S. based on key indicators of teacher friendly environments, including teachers’ income growth potential, student-teacher ratio and whether the state has a digital learning plan.
ELECTION
► From Politico — Unions predict a Great Awakening during a Biden presidency — Labor leaders are eyeing a Joe Biden victory in November as the start of a union revival, one with the potential to undo decades of policies that have diminished union influence, undermined the right to organize and exacerbated income inequality. And they’re planning on playing a central role.
► From the AFL-CIO — Sen. Harris again proves her dedication to working people — Sen. Harris’ dedication to the most critical issues facing working families was on full display Wednesday night. It was a stark contrast to Vice President Pence, who continues to fail miserably as the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Harris clearly laid out the plans a Biden administration would take to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and provide relief to working people, while Pence still cannot answer for the lack of a national strategy.
► From KUOW — Trump calls Harris a ‘monster,’ reviving pattern of attacking women of color — Trump referred to California Sen. Kamala Harris as “this monster” in an interview on Thursday, a continuation of his pattern of attacking Black women with demeaning insults. The president has previously reserved the term “monster” for terrorists, murders and major natural disasters.
► From the NY Times — Under Pence, politics regularly seeped into the coronavirus task force — In taking a leading role in managing the White House’s response to the pandemic, the vice president and his team had an agenda that extended beyond public health.
THAT WASHINGTON
► From the Washington Post — U.S. accused of violating international labor laws, forced-labor protections in new complaint — SEIU and the AFL-CIO filed a complaint with the United Nations’ labor agency Wednesday, arguing that the country under President Trump has violated international labor standards during the coronavirus pandemic. It charges the United States with violating workers’ rights in terms not typically associated with well-off countries, at one point saying the bind many essential workers have been placed in during the pandemic — forced to risk infection or lose their jobs and potentially unemployment benefits — amounts to a system of forced labor.
► From Reuters — Trump steel tariffs bring job losses to swing state Michigan — Trump promised a new dawn for the struggling U.S. steel industry in 2016, and the lure of new jobs in Midwestern states including Michigan helped him eke out a surprise election win. Four years later, Great Lakes Works – once among the state’s largest steel plants – has shut down steelmaking operations and put 1,250 workers out of a job. A year before the June layoffs, plant owner United States Steel Corp called off a plan to invest $600 million in upgrades amid deteriorating market conditions.
► From Vox — Trump’s obstruction of the 2020 census, explained — An undercount doesn’t just affect politics and general funding: It impairs local communities’ ability to effectively respond to public health emergencies, like the current pandemic, by making it harder to track the spread of disease and who is suffering the most. But the Trump administration has repeatedly stood in the way of a complete count. President Donald Trump has pursued policies that make immigrants less likely to respond. The census officials he appointed, for example, decided to conclude operations weeks earlier than they had previously announced, leaving little time to reach the people who are hardest to count — despite a pandemic that has made such people even more elusive.
NATIONAL
► From the Seattle Times — Workers with health insurance face rising out-of-pocket costs — While premiums rose only slightly from the 2019 survey, the increase in premiums and deductibles together over the past decade has far outpaced both inflation and the growth in workers’ earnings. Since 2010, premiums have climbed 55%, more than double the rise in wages or inflation, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Q: Why do journalists insist on calling these people “militia” instead of simply “domestic terrorists”? A: Because they are White men. Militia is defined as a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. If these men were Black or brown, do you think they’d be called a “militia”? Discuss.
► From the AFL-CIO — Extremists taking cues from Trump — AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: “By refusing to flatly condemn white supremacy; by continually mocking champions of justice and emboldening agents of hate; and by undermining democracy at every turn, Donald Trump has given new life to the dark underbelly of our nation. Division and chaos are President Trump’s political oxygen, but fortunately his reign over America is running out of air. Working people are voting for hope and unity and a better tomorrow in this election. In a few short weeks, we will send Vice President Joe Biden to the White House and the haters back into irrelevance.”
► From Reuters — Meet the Americans ‘standing by’ for possible election violence — A common fear is that the contest between Trump and Biden remains undecided after Election Day, leading to protests that could escalate into civil unrest, or even sectarian conflict.
T.G.I.F.
► For those of you who weren’t around back then, it’s hard to explain how HUGE the band Van Halen was, and how important lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen was to the evolution of rock and roll music. They reinvigorated rock music in the late 1970s, became pop culture icons in the 1980s with their crazy live performances and the dawn of MTV, and Eddie’s “tapping” technique and revolutionary sound inspired a generation of bands to rock harder and take their guitar solos more seriously. Unfortunately, that momentum devolved into “hair metal” in the late 1980s, where bands took their Van Halen worship to a visual extreme rather than focusing on the musicianship. (Nirvana would again rescue rock and roll from that hot mess.) But after struggling most of his adult life with alcoholism and drug abuse, Eddie died this week at age 65. So today, we salute him and his band when they were at the height of their powers. Enjoy.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.