Last week Snohomish County state representatives Mike Sells and June Robinson, D-Everett, Cindy Ryu, D-Shoreline, Derek Stanford and Luis Moscoso, D-Shoreline, and Mary Helen Roberts, D-Edmonds, joined Jessyn Farrell, D-Seattle, in proposing to increase our state’s minimum wage to $10 in 2015, $11 in 2016, and $12 in 2017. It is about time. Our minimum…
The slow recovery from the great recession has heightened stark inequality in Puget Sound. Corporate profits and the stock market are soaring (think Boeing) but wages are stagnant, workers have lost their company pensions (think Boeing) and job growth is still lagging. Even with the 777X, think of Boeing again — they pushed 1,500 engineering…
Last month voters approved a $15 an hour minimum wage for workers at Sea-Tac. In California, Ron Utz, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire, is pushing an initiative for a $12 minimum wage. In Seattle, there is a growing movement for increasing the minimum wage to $15 within the city limits. Is this a trend? Perhaps…
So how about that $8.7 billion tax give-away Boeing just received to build the 777X? We have been here before. In 2003, the Legislature excused Boeing from $4 billion in taxes, in order to build the 787 in our state. What happened to that $4 billion? Over $1 billion was used to construct a copycat…
Now that the election is over, it is a good time to reflect. We elected these public servants. What do we expect our governments to do, from local fire districts and water districts to libraries to school boards, city councils, public utility districts, and county governments? These local governments are the street-level face of democracy…
On my way to a conference in Philadelphia last week, I took the subway from the train station. It was in disrepair, with no signage and blocked exits and entrances. And the people I saw on the subway reflected the cards they had been dealt — somewhat forlorn, not much hope and a lot of…
Republicans in the Congress have lost. They failed to stop the Affordable Care Act from starting up. Every day, more and more people sign up for health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. And every day, by doing nothing, the hole the republicans have dug for themselves gets deeper and deeper. The numbers in…
I looked out the window as I was getting ready for work and realized that, yes, fall has come to Puget Sound and with it, rain. So we start our six months of gray, dark, rainy weather. Twilight comes earlier and earlier. Could it be that fear also ratchets up? There are reasons — fear…
The other day I went onto the Washington Health Benefit Exchange website to look at the actual costs for health coverage. (In the interest of full disclosure, my spouse works for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange.) I wanted to escape the non-stop rhetoric from those who are panicked that the Affordable Care Act will actually…
This past week I flew out to visit my 94-year-old dad in Vermont. We drove around a large part of the state, taking in the Green Mountains, the old towns chartered before the revolution, the pastures and forests and hills… Then I flew to Minneapolis and drove back to Seattle in a two-day, 1,700-mile marathon…